A DICKENS CELEBRATION Charles Dickens was a shrewd manager of his own public image and would be pleased that his birthday - February 7 1812 - is early enough to start the bicentennial ball rolling, well ahead of the Queen’s Golden Jubilee and the 2012 Olympic Games. There will be many celebrations of the man and his work during 2012. Dickens certainly knew the ancient churches of London; the Friends of the City Churches might only wish that he had loved them just a little better. His friend Anthony Trollope (1815-82) wrote perceptively of churchmen and their families in the imagined cathedral city of Barchester, and also anatomized London society, though he never united those themes in a single great work. Had Dickens only taken a comparable interest in the London clergy, the City churches might be replete with thinly-veiled references that could now be quoted with pride. In the event, Dickens was rather more engaged by the law than the church. Dickens’ references to City churches are fleeting – young David Copperfield watches “the giants of St. Dunstan's strike upon the bells” as its famous clock strikes twelve, views of the tower of St. Saviour’s (now Southwark Cathedral) and the spire of St. Magnus set up Nancy’s covert meeting with Mr. Brownlow and Rose Maylie in Oliver Twist, and St. Paul’s dome and churchyard neatly locate various scenes in the novels and sketches. Some just skirt the City – the ‘Bloomsbury christening’ in Sketches by Boz is set in the Hawksmoor church just south of the British Museum, while St. George the Martyr, hard by the Marshalsea debtors’ prison, is the site of Little Dorrit’s christening and wedding. Dickens knew the Marshalsea only too well, his own father having been confined there, and by choice and circumstance lived in and around Bloomsbury for many years. But his experience of the City also illustrates the great shift in population that had such critical consequences for its churches. As a very young man, he haunted Lombard Street for some four years in thrall to Maria Beadnell, pretty and frivolous, who rejected him but lived on in memory as a model for David Copperfield’s beloved but undeniably dizzy starter wife, Dora. Maria’s father was a banker, and the family, not unusually even in the 1830s, lived next to the shop. Poignantly, both the bank and the house were demolished in 1836, the very year in which Dickens married another; a restaurant now occupies the site, 1 Lombard Street, with the cornerstone of the erstwhile Smith, Payne & Smiths Bank just inside its doors. By 1859, when Dickens launched the weekly journal All the Year Round, bankers and clerks were decamping to the suburbs, thanks to new-fangled omnibuses and trains, and the residential population of the City was plummeting. Dickens himself realised a childhood dream with the purchase of Gads Hill Place in Kent, but kept a pied-a-terre above his office in Wellington Street, Covent Garden. Clearly, he often spent weekends in town, for he then embarked on a year of Sunday visits to City churches, recorded in The Uncommercial Traveller of 1860 (with expanded editions until 1869, the year before his death). Even here, few churches are named although many are described – all as decaying monuments of another age, where scant congregations “wink, sneeze, and cough” under “a strong kind of invisible snuff … made of the decay of matting, wood, cloth, stone, iron, earth, and … the decay of dead citizens in the vaults below”. Today, with the clearance of the City’s vaults and burial grounds, even the dead citizens now lie in suburban cemeteries – but many of their churches are thriving once again, with weekday services for City workers, and a rich mix of denominations on Sundays. It would be a fitting commemoration of the Dickens bicentenary to visit them all in 2012, starting with those where Friends of the City Churches volunteers will gladly help uncommercial travellers to find their way. Signe Hoffos, The Friends of the City Churches Friends of the City Churches, Church of St Magnus the Martyr Lower Thames Street, London EC3R 6DN, tel. 020 7626 1555 (answerphone) e-mail: [email protected] Why not visit our websites www.cityevents.org.uk for all the latest information, or www.london-city-churches.org.uk for downloadable maps and links to all the churches in the city? REGULAR SERVICES IN JANUARY & FEBRUARY 2012 The services below are the normal pattern for City Churches. They are subject to change during major festivals and holidays. You are advised to 1250 ‘Celebrate’ – ‘Informal Worship & Teaching’ telephone churches to check the details. See also our website at St Margaret Lothbury www.cityevents.co.uk which includes weekend services. 1300 Holy Communion St Mary at Hill 1305 Eucharist in the church St Mary le Bow Every Monday 1305 RC Mass St Mary Moorfields 0800 Mass St Alban the Martyr 1310 Mass St Alban the Martyr 0805 RC Mass St Mary Moorfields 1310 Choral Eucharist St Botolph Bishopsgate 0815 Morning Prayer in the crypt St Mary le Bow 1310 Pause for Reflection St Ethelburga’s Centre 0830 Morning Prayer All Hallows by the Tower 1310 Bible Talk, preceded by lunch at 1300, followed by 0830 Holy Communion (in the crypt) St Bride Fleet Street Question Time at 1340 at The Cuban Citypoint, 1 Ropemaker 0830 Morning Prayer St Giles Cripplegate Street under the auspices of St Helen Bishopsgate 0830 Morning Prayer St Lawrence Jewry 1310 Holy Communion (1662 said) St Michael Cornhill 1200 to 1500 Listening Service St Andrew Holborn 1315 Holy Communion (in the crypt) St Bride Fleet Street 1100 Morning Prayer (CW) St Martin within Ludgate 1730 Evening Prayer St Edmund King and Martyr 1215 Mass St Vedast alias Foster 1730 Evening Prayer St Lawrence Jewry 1230 RC Mass St Bartholomew the Less 1745 Evening Prayer in the church St Mary le Bow 1300 Prayer Meeting St Margaret Pattens 1800 Taizé Service All Hallows by the Tower 1305 Holy Communion (1662) St Mary Aldermary 1830 Mass St Alban the Martyr 1305 Healing Service St Mary le Bow 1900 Sung Mass St Andrew Holborn 1305 RC Mass St Mary Moorfields 1310 Mass St Alban the Martyr Every Thursday 1730 Evening Prayer All Hallows by the Tower 0800 Mass St Alban the Martyr 1730 Evening Prayer St Lawrence Jewry 0805 RC Mass St Mary Moorfields 1745 Evening Prayer in the church St Mary le Bow 0815 Morning Prayer in the crypt St Mary le Bow 1800 Said Mass St Andrew Holborn 0830 Holy Communion St Bartholomew the Great 0830 Eucharist All Hallows by the Tower Every Tuesday 0830 Holy Communion (in the crypt) St Bride Fleet Street 0730 Morning Prayer in the Crypt St Mary le Bow 0830 Morning Prayer St Giles Cripplegate 0745 Eucharist in the Crypt followed by breakfast St Mary le Bow 0830 Morning Prayer St Lawrence Jewry 0800 Mass St Alban the Martyr 12-00 to 1500 Listening Service St Andrew Holborn 0805 RC Mass St Mary Moorfields 1200 Eucharist St Clement Eastcheap [N.B. Not on 5th January] 0830 Eucharist All Hallows by the Tower 1210 Holy Communion (BCP) St Botolph Bishopsgate 0830 Holy Communion (in the crypt) St Bride Fleet Street 1215 Mass St Vedast alias Foster 0830 Morning Prayer St Giles Cripplegate 1230 RC Mass St Bartholomew the Less 0830 Morning Prayer St Lawrence Jewry 1230 Low Mass St Magnus the Martyr 1200 to 1500 Listening Service St Andrew Holborn 1230 RC Mass St Andrew by the Wardrobe 1215 Mass St Vedast alias Foster 1245 Lunchtime Service Wesley’s Chapel 1230 Holy Communion St Bartholomew the Great 1245 Sung Eucharist St Stephen Walbrook 1230 Said Eucharist St Dunstan in the West 1300 Sung Eucharist St Katharine Cree 1230 Low Mass St Magnus the Martyr 1300 Holy Communion (1662 said) St Sepulchre without Newgate 1230 Holy Communion (Said) St Olave Hart Street 1305 Mass St Mary Aldermary 1300 Bible Talk, with lunch at 1330 St Botolph Aldersgate 1305 Said Eucharist St Botolph Aldgate 1300 Bible Talk, with lunch at 1330 St Helen Bishopsgate 1305 RC Mass St Mary Moorfields 1305 Eucharist St Botolph Aldgate 1310 Mass St Alban the Martyr 1305 RC Mass St Mary Moorfields 1310 Said Mass St Andrew Holborn 1310 Mass St Alban the Martyr 1310 Bible Talk , preceded by lunch at 1300, followed by 1310 Said Mass St Andrew Holborn Question Time at 1340 St Helen Bishopsgate 1310 Eucharist St Mary Woolnoth 1315 Holy Communion (BCP) St Martin within Ludgate 1310 Holy Communion (BCP) St Margaret Lothbury 1315 Holy Communion St Margaret Pattens 1730 Evening Prayer All Hallows by the Tower 1315 Holy Communion Temple Church 1730 Evening Prayer St Lawrence Jewry 1730 Evening Prayer All Hallows by the Tower 1745 Evening Prayer in the church St Mary le Bow 1730 Evening Prayer St Lawrence Jewry 1745 Evening Prayer in the church St Mary le Bow Every Wednesday 1800 Said Eucharist St Dunstan in the West 0800 Mass St Alban the Martyr 1805 Eucharist in the church St Mary le Bow 0805 RC Mass St Mary Moorfields 1830 Evening Eucharist St Andrew by the Wardrobe 0815 Morning Prayer in the crypt St Mary le Bow 0830 Morning Prayer All Hallows by the Tower Every Friday 0830 Holy Communion (in the crypt) St Bride Fleet Street 0645 to 0845 'Prayer for the City' St Margaret Lothbury 0830 Morning Prayer St Giles Cripplegate 0730 Morning prayers St Margaret Pattens 0830 Holy Communion (BCP) St Lawrence Jewry 0800 Mass St Alban the Martyr 1200 to 1500 Listening Service St Andrew Holborn 0800 Eucharist St Mary Woolnoth 1205 Mass St Joseph Bunhill Row 0805 RC Mass St Mary Moorfields 1215 Mass St Vedast alias Foster 0815 Morning Prayer in the crypt St Mary le Bow 1230 Eucharist St Bartholomew the Less 0830 Morning Prayer