A Twist in the Tale: Charles Dickens and Islington
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INTRODUCTION A Twist in the Tale: Charles Dickens and Islington HARLES DICKENS (1812-70), England’s most affluent Pentonville, industrious Battle Bridge and St Luke’s popular Victorian novelist, knew Islington well. Hospital for Lunatics, Old Street, which he visited on the day Dickens recorded life in the area and its after Christmas 1851. surroundings in fiction and in fact throughout While never a resident of Islington, Charles Dickens was a Chis career as a writer. He was particularly attracted to frequent visitor to the home and studio of illustrator George Clerkenwell. The writer regularly visited this densely populated Cruikshank in Amwell Street. The pair first met in 1835, with district, drawing influences for his work from the people that the artist going on to create images for the writer’s early he encountered, the buildings that he passed and the scenes works, including Sketches by Boz and, famously, Oliver Twist. that he witnessed. Another of Dickens’s connections to the area was the Finsbury Charles Dickens’s early descriptions of Islington and Savings Bank on Sekforde Street where, in October 1845, he Clerkenwell are recorded in his Sketches by Boz (1836), deposited trust funds. a collection of observational pieces. Further local settings A Twist in the Tale: Charles Dickens and Islington explores appear in many of his works of fiction: Oliver Twist (1837-9), his connections with the Borough. for example, features locations from Angel to Smithfield and The reader is invited to discover the streets upon which Our Mutual Friend (1864-5) takes the reader to Holloway the great writer trod, observed and documented and where and to Belle Isle, an area of ‘noxious trades’ to the east of his celebrated characters could be found. In doing so, bear King’s Cross Station. witness to the invaluable social and historical record that Dickens also documented his observations of Islington Dickens created about this unique part of north London during in journal articles and through letter writing. He wrote about the Victorian era. THE FORMER FINSBURY SAVINGS BANK, Sekforde Street, 2010. Dickens deposited funds here in 1845. CHARLES DICKENS aged 46-years in 1858, by Charles Baugniet. CHAPTER I CHAPTER I influenced the publishing industry in Great Charles Dickens: Britain into producing novels in the format a writer’s life of inexpensive monthly instalments. Doughty Street In 1837 Charles Dickens and his young family moved to 48 Doughty Street, Bloomsbury, only a short distance from Clerkenwell. At the address Dickens HARLES DICKENS remains wrote Oliver Twist (1837-9), setting one of the most popular much of the book in this nearby Islington writers in the history of district. The story was a great triumph literature. He combined and Dickens subsequently maintained his masterly storytelling, humour, pathos, and C fame with a constant stream of novels irony with sharp social criticism and acute and journal articles, many again with observation of people and places, both Islington connections. real and imagined. Early years Charles John Huffam Dickens was CHARLES DICKENS, England’s most popular Victorian novelist. born on 7 February 1812 in Landport, Portsmouth, the second of eight children. Fame His father, John, was an assistant clerk A man of enormous energy and wide stationed in the town’s navy pay office. talents, Dickens also engaged in many However, young Charles spent most other activities. He edited the weekly of his childhood in London and Kent, periodicals Household Words (1850-9) both of which appear frequently in his and All the Year Round (1859-1870), novels. Dickens and his family moved to administered charitable organisations, and Camden Town, north London, in 1822. pressed for many social reforms. Dickens’s He started school at the age of nine but extra-literary activities also included his education was interrupted when his managing a theatrical company that father, mother and younger members played before Queen Victoria in 1851 and of the family were imprisoned for debt DICKENS HOUSE MUSEUM, 48 Doughty Street, 2011. The building is the only surviving Dickens giving public readings of his own works in in 1824; a job for Charles was found in residence in London. England and America. a blacking factory just off the Strand. In 1827 Dickens took a job as a legal Dickens as novelist FRONTISPIECE TO SKETCHES BY BOZ illustrated by Final chapter clerk. After learning shorthand, he began George Cruikshank. As Dickens matured artistically, his working as a court and parliamentary novels developed from tales based on In spite of international fame and reporter, developing the power of precise were collectively published as Sketches the adventures of a central character, success, Dickens’s career was shadowed description that was to make his creative by Boz in 1836. The same year he like The Pickwick Papers, Nicholas by domestic unhappiness. Incompatibility writing so remarkable. married Catherine Hogarth, with whom Nickleby (1837-8) and Oliver Twist to and his relationship with a young actress, he was to have ten children. Dickens works of important social relevance, Ellen Ternan, led to his separation from his Career transformed another project from a set psychological insight and narrative wife in 1858. He suffered a fatal stroke on 9 June1870 and was buried five days In December 1833 Dickens wrote of loosely connected vignettes into a complexity. Among his later, great works later at Westminster Abbey. the first in a series of original descriptive ‘serialised’ comic narrative, The Pickwick are Bleak House (1852-3), Little Dorrit sketches of daily life in London, under the Papers (1836-7). Its success made (1855-7), Great Expectations (1860-1), pseudonym ‘Boz’; these and similar pieces Dickens famous and, at the same time, it and Our Mutual Friend (1864-5). CHAPTER II CHAPTER II district of Holloway, he was less than The Lane was also the route from Battle In the footsteps of Dickens and his complimentary about its south-western Bridge to ‘Boffin’s Bower’, the home of neighbour, Belle Isle: the novel’s ‘golden dustman’, Nicodemus characters: Angel to Archway (Noddy) Boffin. “R. Wilfer locked up his desk one evening, and, putting his bunch of Archway keys in his pocket much as if it were While Dickens gave much of his his peg-top, made for home. His attention to Islington’s southern locations, the north of the Borough was not HERE are a number of home was in the Holloway region Islington High Street completely without mention. Dickens references to Islington and north of London, and then divided Another famous hostelry and just has characters travelling through the its northern reaches in from it by fields and trees. Between around the corner from the Angel was the Highgate Archway: Noah Claypole and the great fictional works Battle Bridge and that part of the Peacock Inn at 11 Islington High Street. It Charlotte from Oliver Twist pass through of Charles Dickens. It is still possible to Holloway district in which he dwelt, T is mentioned in Nicholas Nickelby (1838- when heading for London, The Holly Tree’s recognise some of these locations where was a tract of suburban Sahara, 9) as the first stopping place of the coach narrator comments on road conditions in the author’s characters lived, worked where tiles and bricks were burnt, that conveyed Nicholas and cruel school Islington having been on a “coach rattling or travelled. bones were boiled, carpets were master Wackford Squeers to Bothebys beat, rubbish was shot, dogs were for Highgate Archway over the hardest Angel Hall in Yorkshire. Dating back to 1564, fought, and dust was heaped by ground I have ever heard the ring of iron the Peacock is also mentioned in The Holly contractors. Skirting the border of shoes”, and it was “at the Archway Toll “Here London begins in earnest…,” Tree (1855). The story’s narrator found over at Highgate” that Inspector Bucket Noah Claypole remarks to his companion this desert, by the way he took, when “everybody drinking hot purl [an alcoholic the light of its kiln-fires made lurid first picked up the trail of Honoria, Lady Charlotte in Oliver Twist (1837-9) when winter drink], in self-preservation” at the Dedlock in Bleak House (1852-3). walking past the Angel Inn. There had smears on the fog, R. Wilfer sighed inn. The Peacock closed in 1962 and shop The Highgate Archway was replaced in been an inn on this site since the 16th and shook his head. ‘Ah me!’ said he, premises now occupy the site. 1900 by the present-day Archway Bridge Century and the Angel, so named around ‘what might have been is not what is!’ and it served much the same purpose – a 1638, was a popular stopping place for With which commentary on human gateway into and from London, linking the travellers to the City. Dickens would have life, indicating an experience of it not Great North Road with Holloway Road. been familiar with the Angel, by then exclusively his own, he made the best a well-known coaching inn; the site is of his way to the end of his journey.” now occupied by the Co-operative bank (Our Mutual Friend, Chapter IV) on the corner of Pentonville Road and Islington High Street. Today, the ‘Isle’ is an area of small businesses and residential housing between Caledonian Road and York Way; the latter once known as Maiden Lane. THE PEACOCK INN, Islington High Street, 1821, by Islington-born artist James Pollard. Battle Bridge and Holloway For his last completed novel, Our THE HIGHGATE ARCHWAY, c.1820. Mutual Friend (1864-5), Dickens turns in part to Battle Bridge (King’s Cross) and Belle Isle, an area of noxious trades to the east of King’s Cross Station.