We didn't have anything scheduled for today, so I thought I might go on a bit of a Charles Dickens pilgrimage. I googled "Charles Dickens sites in London" hoping for maybe a list of places referenced in his books and found instead an entire museum. Needless to say, I had to go.
It was a pretty easy tube ride to get there, plus there were handy signs directing me from the tube station to the museum, which was nice since this was my first solo London outing. The museum website said that it opened at 10, so I got there right on time to beat the possible rush. Unfortunately, a girl came out to say that they were experiencing some technical difficulties which would likely take about 40 minutes to rectify. I made friends with a man who was also waiting for the museum and we had a nice chat. He was a professional photographer who was coming to the museum to get photos for his next book. He's apparently pretty well known and his book is for sale at the British Museum, which I will have to check out when we go. He seemed rather put out by the wait, and I don't think he was much of a Dickens fan himself, as he didn't know whether Bleak House was one of Dickens's books or homes. My new friend did offer to take some pictures of me with my camera, and they actually turned out really nicely:
The girls kept coming out and telling us that things weren't fixed yet, so I took a little walk and got some swanky hot chocolate at a coffee shop. By the time I got back to the museum, things still weren't working, but I decided to stick it out to prove my Dickens devotion. Plus, I had nothing better to do. It turns out that the "technical difficulty" that made us unable to enter the museum due to "health and safety reasons" was that the internet wasn't working. Go figure. They finally decided to allow us in as long as we paid cash, since the card reader wouldn't work. I happily forked over my six pounds (student discount, yo) and entered the museum.
What's cool about the museum is that it's in a row house (48 Doughty Street) where Dickens actually lived from 1837 to 1839.
It was while he lived in this house that he wrote Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby, which were early in his writing career, but they also display many of his personal items from later in his life. It was a surreal experience to walk through the same door and up the stairs that he'd walked through so many times, and to see all the little things like tables, books, and dishes that had been part of his life. In his study where he did his writing, they'd placed the desk that he'd used later:
This is the desk on which he wrote A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. I almost cried; I kid you not. It was just such an amazing experience to be so close to where my favorite book was composed. As weird as it sounds, I think just standing and looking at this desk will be one of my very favorite parts of this trip. I just felt such inspiration and desire to go out and create, but also to create for good. I love that Dickens cared about his world and that he tried to create change in his society. He wrote great books, but he also tried to help people.
In another room was one of the tables that he used for his public readings, as well as a copy of one of his books that he had annotated for reading, which was pretty cool to see.
On the very top floor, they had the prison grille from the Marshalsea Debtor's Prison, where his father was imprisoned during Dickens's childhood and where part of Little Dorrit is set (shout out to Lucy who lent the BBC miniseries to Mom and me!).
After seeing all there was to see in the museum and taking lots more pictures that I won't burden you with, I headed back down to the gift shop where I was tempted by lots of things. I finally settled on buying a pretty little copy of Oliver Twist, since I'm a sucker for pretty books and it had actually been written in this very location and because Nicolas Nickleby was heavier and more expensive, and a keychain with an actual penny from the Victorian era (mine was dated 1895) because I needed a keychain and because it was awesome.
I stopped for lunch, then made my way back to my apartment. It's only about 2:30 now, but I have quite a bit of homework that I have to get working on, so I doubt I'll do anything too interesting for the rest of today, except possibly go read in Hyde Park.
I really enjoyed going out by myself today. It's fun to do things with a group, but it was also really nice to go to this museum that probably no one else in the group would have been too interested in and take all the time I wanted. I really like going to these sort of out-of-the-way places where there aren't huge lines or crowds. Even though it's a Saturday with a long weekend since Monday's a bank holiday, there were probably about ten other visitors in the museum total, which was refreshing.
Next week I'll be making another pilgrimage, this time with the whole group to Stratford-Upon-Avon, so look forward to that!
Thanks for reading!
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