Dickens and the Ghost at Rockingham Castle by Judith Allnatt

In the summer I visited Rockingham Castle in Northamptonshire and was fascinated to learn that it was a source of inspiration for Charles Dickens. In particular, he drew on its ancient rooms and the story of its resident ghost in his novel Bleak House, a work of Gothic fiction and a satirical treatment of the English legal system. Its plot concerns the long running probate case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce in which, by the time it is brought to conclusion, the lawyers' fees have actually used up all of the money in the estate.  Rockingham Castle, was the inspiration for Chesney Wold, home of Lord and Lady Dedlock in Bleak House. 

 

In a letter, Dickens described Rockingham as “a large old castle, approached by an ancient keep, portcullis, etc., filled with company waited on by six-and-twenty servants” and his time spent visiting as “the dear old Rockingham days.”

Dickens first met the owners of Rockingham Castle, Richard and Lavinia Watson, in 1846 on holiday in Switzerland, discovering shared interests in Liberal principles, art and theatricals. It seems to have been a lively and joyous friendship with reference made in letters to playing Tricks, Charades and Battledore  (similar to badminton). 

When staying at Rockingham he put on plays in the Great Hall  and wrote with gratification of ‘all the household headed by an enormously fat housekeeper occupying the back benches . . . laughing and applauding without restraint.’ On occasion the plays were followed by dancing until three in the morning.

When Richard died at the age of only fifty two, Dickens was shocked and saddened. He wrote to Lavinia “We held him so close in our hearts ... and we have been so happy with him”. He and Lavinia continued to be lifelong friends and correspondents.

 Dickens had a favourite room at Rockingham, on the first floor looking out along the gap between two yew ‘cloud hedges’. 

These enormous topiary creations are known as the Elephant Hedge and are cut to resemble elephants following each other, trunk to tail.  Looking out of his window Dickens claimed to have seen a ghost and the story attached to it caught his imagination.

 

In the Civil War, Sir Lewis Watson was a royalist but his wife espoused the cause of the parliamentarians. In Sir Lewis Watson’s absence, the parliamentarians conquered Rockingham and, so the guide told me, it was thought to be a bit too easy. In Bleak House, Sir Morbury Dedlock thinks that his wife is laming their stabled horses to stop the royalists being able to make use of them and in a physical struggle with her she falls and injures her hip. 

Dickens continues the story thus: 

She had been a lady of a handsome figure and a noble carriage. She never complained of the change; she never spoke to anyone of being crippled or of being in pain but day by day she tried to walk upon the terrace, and with the help of the stone balustrade, went up and down, up and down, up and down, in sun and shadow, with greater difficulty every day. At last one afternoon her husband (to whom she had never on any persuasion, opened her lips since that night), standing at the great south window, saw her drop upon the pavement. He hastened down to raise her, but she repulsed him as he bent over her, and looking at him fixedly and coldly, said ‘I will die here where I have walked. And I will walk here though I am in my grave. I will walk here until the pride of this house is humbled. And when calamity or when disgrace is coming to it, let the Dedlocks listen for my step!’ Bleak House, Charles Dickens.

The character that Dickens uses to tell this story is Mrs Rouncewell, who has been housekeeper for fifty years and  who is reminiscent of the ‘enormously fat housekeeper’ referred to in his letter. On my visit, the tradition of both housekeepers and ghosts was apparent in the comment of the guide to the grounds. She said that she and others had heard the sound of children playing when none were in the castle and that on one occasion when the housekeeper was hoovering, a back door had flown open and the plug was pulled out, as if snatched by an unseen hand! 

 

When being shown around the Long Gallery, I also learned that Dickens had a favourite chair, which is still there in the same position.  I pictured Dickens ensconced in this wing-backed leather chair, musing or writing, taking breaks to gaze down the length of the long room at theItalian glass chandeliers, low hanging and tipped with pink flowers, the red drapes hanging heavy and the busy gold and green wallpaper providing the rich, ornamented interior so typical of grand Victorian taste. Perhaps he would have imagined the shades of ladies past, making their promenade up and down the room, as was their wont when the weather outside was inclement. 

 

This idea of musing makes me think of the famous painting of Dickens  imagining his characters.

The painting, Dickens’ Dream by Robert William Buss, consists of a combination of painted and sketched characters because it was unfinished. However, when standing in front of it, I can’t help seeing it as a visual representation of the creative process of writing – the development of characters first as having the shady outlines of a ghost then filling out with life and colour as the author actually puts pen to paper and the story, drawing inspiration from a multitude of interesting fragments of experience begins to take shape. Rockingham is rich in such fragments and it’s no surprise that its people, atmosphere and legends lodged with Dickens and fed his remarkable creativity.

For those interested in finding out more, Rockingham Castle has lots of Dickens memorabilia  and the castle’s own long history is also fascinating.  https://rockinghamcastle.com

Acknowledgements: My thanks to David Shipton, Head Guide, Rockingham Castle for his excellent pamphlet ‘A Short Account of Charles Dickens, the Watsons and Rockingham Castle’, which is available from the castle, and to Mike Burton and the grounds guides for their help and informative comments.

 

THE GHOSTS WITHIN A CHRISTMAS CAROL by Penny Dolan

Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, In Prose. A Ghost Story of Christmas  was written in a single six-week burst of energy and, unusually at that time, appeared as one single volume.

Up until that point, Dickens had worked in serial form, writing sections at a time, planning almost as the chapter before appeared in print. 

Even as he scribbled away, bringing Scrooge into life, he was struggling with Martin Chuzzlewit, his American novel, and with fears about his own popularity as an author.

Dickens wanted A Christmas Carol to be seen as his book. 

He commissioned Chapman & Hall as his publishers and then chose the look of his new book. He wanted a handsome red cloth binding and a gold design on the cover while the gilt-edged pages would include four black-and-white woodcuts set within the text itself and four full-colour etchings by the artist John Leech.

A Christmas Carol was published on 19^th December 1843, reasonably priced at five shillings, and became the most popular book of the season.  By Christmas Eve, every one of the six thousand copies had been sold.  Dickens must have been delighted.

      

The novella quickly became a “national benefit”, according to Thackeray and, with its outspoken attack upon those who ignore the poorest in society, was seen as a piece of radical literature. Yet, at the same time, the story also celebrates family and food and fun alongside the Christian themes of mercy and love.

The story certainly feels haunted, in more ways than one. Even before their appearance in his story, Dickens recognised those two awful children, Ignorance and Want. He had become a friend of Miss Burdett-Coutts, a rich philanthropist with a deep purse, and so had been visiting Ragged Schools - schools set up by Evangelicals to save souls - so he could make practical suggestions to guide her charitable work.

However, when Dickens visited the Field Lane Ragged School, he had to walk through Saffron Hill, an area of London which had haunted him since his childhood: he had used it for some of the scenes with Fagin in Oliver Twist.

Once inside the school, Dickens found “a sickening atmosphere, in the midst of taint and dirt and pestilence, with all the deadly sins let loose and howling at the doors”. His companion left hastily while the unruly children, for their part, mocked Dickens stylish white trousers and bright boots.

Just as awful was the knowledge that Field Lane school was close to where he, as a boy, worked in a blacking factory. Dickens had been sent there by his bankrupt father, while his sister was sent to music lessons. The young Dickens was utterly ashamed of his fall from respectability, especially when he was placed in public view in the window, a disgrace that he felt so deeply that he kept it secret until almost the end of his life.

Revisiting the area, witnessing again all the filth, disease and vice of that “doomed childhood”, and the hopeless sense of destitution must surely have fed into the darkness of his Christmas Carol.

Dickens brought jollity to the story, of course. He was someone who loved parties and celebrations and surprises and plays and conjuring tricks and the playful side of his character is very much there in the joyful scenes and resolution of A Christmas Carol.

Yet even the plenty is ambiguous. Dickens, the self-made man, knew that it was his pen that brought in the good things that he and his extended family enjoyed and the money they spent.

Yet, a little like Scrooge, Dickens was a man for whom money and time were almost everything. He was cautious about his household expenditure, and spent phenomenal time and energy visiting or lecturing or going on long night-walks where he plotted his stories. Dickens, like many who have known poverty, was haunted by the fact that he had to be successful.

Furthermore, his worries were increasing: his wife was about to have another baby, another child that he had to keep fed and clothed and out of the gutter. Dickens enjoyed being with children, although very noticeably on his own terms, but he was worried about the cost of them. At the same time, he was growing far less fond of his poor, low-spirited wife Catherine and rather more sentimental about pretty young ladies that reminded him of his youth.

Scrooge’s memories of his own childhood echo those of his creator: does his miser draw on the ambivalence and shadow within Dickens?

Sadly, within two weeks of publication, Dickens had reason to feel even more ungenerous and suspicious. A simplified version of A Christmas Carol was issued by a pirate publisher and though Dickens immediately sued and won the case, the publisher also immediately declared bankruptcy and Dickens was forced to pay the court costs himself and felt he had been almost ruined by the whole venture. Moreover, errors in production costs meant that Dickens made hardly any money from that first beautiful edition. God Bless Us Everyone indeed!

Six years afterwards, however, in 1849, Dickens started to give public readings of A Christmas Carol. These proved so richly popular and rewarding that Dickens kept telling his strange, enigmatic Christmas ghost story until his own death, performing at the Bradford Alhambra, in 1870.

And, probably, if you look around locally, someone will be continuing that same tradition, and reading Dickens Christmas Carol this winter too – a tale that’s still, sadly, just as apt for our own age.

A Happy Christmas to you all.

Penny Dolan

Note: In this post, I’ve drawn on my own reading of Peter Ackroyd’s impressive biography of DICKENS, first published in 1990.

'He Loves You like Salt' by Karen Maitland

What do a Medieval dove cote, a Regency rolling pin and the Victorian novelist Charles Dickens have in common? The answer is salt.

Medieval Dove Cote, Llantwit Manor, 

Belonged to the Abbey of Tewkesbury

Photographer: Peter Wasp

Let’s start with the dove cote. My latest medieval thriller is set in 1316, during the time of the great famine which ravaged Europe from Russia down to southern Italy from 1315 to 1317. Extreme cold, wet weather caused widespread crop failure and outbreaks of ergot poisoning due to mouldy grain. Thousands of people died. The death of livestock due to starvation and cold was particular catastrophic for families, because the weather conditions had caused an extreme shortage of another vital commodity in Medieval society – salt.

If the animals died or had to be slaughtered because they were starving, the precious meat which might have saved human lives couldn’t be preserved without salt. As the French proverb wisely says - 'Don't slaughter more pigs than you can salt.' But they had little choice. 

First there was the problem of producing the salt itself. The salt pans along the coast were filled with rain or washed away by floods and even where they were intact, in order to produce salt, sea-sand and silt had to be washed and the resultant brine boiled in lead pans over peat fires to allow the salt crystalize out. But the peat used to boil the brine required weeks of sun to dry before it could be burned, as did wood. The lack of salt also badly affected leather tanning and cloth-dying, both vital industries in producing everyday goods. Many lost their jobs.

Laos. Boiling brine to make salt in the medieval tradition.

Photographer: BigBrotherMouse

Even the wealthy households and monasteries began to run out of the precious commodity, which soon cost a king’s ransom. They are tales of people trying to recover the salt from the most unsavoury sources, such as animal salt licks in the byres and salt cats from pigeon or dove cotes. 

Salt cats for dove cotes were made in the salt-works, using brine-soaked clay mixed with salt and a little saltpetre. After it had baked hard in the sun or near a fire, the cat was placed in the dove cote on short blocks to raise it off the damp floor for the birds to peck. Even though they were covered in bird dung, those dove cotes that still had them were raided by those desperate to try an extract the salt from the cats for preserving food or simply because they needed salt which is so necessary in the diet. It is believed that one of reasons so many of Napoleon’s troops died on the retreat from Moscow was a salt deficiency which made them more susceptible to diseases and wound inflictions.

American Salt Box circa 1850.

Gift of Mrs Robert W. Forest, 1933

Metropolitan Museum of Art

But the three years of wet weather did more than limit the product of salt, it also meant that what salt you had in store might simply dissolve and trickle away. If you own a salt candle today or even have salt in a cardboard packet in a cupboard you know how easily it turns to liquid even in a mildly damp atmosphere. So, a wooden or clay salt box has been a very important little item in most homes for generations. The salt box was hung against a warm chimney breast or on a wall near a stove to keep the salt dry in the damp winter chill. Earthenware salt pigs did the same job, with the unglazed interior absorbing the moisture.

Salt hung in the house, often alongside phials of holy water or charms, was also considered to purify and protect the house from evil, and a salt box hung near the chimney would ensure witches and evil spirits couldn’t enter the home that way. It was also handy in case anyone unwittingly said or did anything that might bring a curse on house or any family member. A pinch of salt quickly dashed onto the fire would hopeful negate the curse before any harm could be done.

Glass Rolling Pin. 1820-1837

Auckland War Memorial Museum 

One very attractive way of keeping salt dry was the glass rolling pin. Towards the end of the 18th century, glass blowers in Britain began to make hollow glass rolling pins, which were cheap to produce and were made in works centred around ports where there was a ready supply of coal for the glass furnaces. They became popular among sailors as gifts for mothers, wives and girlfriends, and they would personalise them by painting them with images of their ships, flowers, messages and names. Then they would fill the rolling pin with things they had bought in foreign ports such as spices, cocoa or salt. Salt was heavily taxed in England at this time which made it expensive for poorer families, and this was a good way of smuggling in cheap salt as gifts for family or friends, in the same spirit that some people today try to sneak in duty-free cigarettes for their mates. Cords were attached to the knobs of the rolling pin at either end so that it could be hung in a warm spot in the kitchen to keep the salt dry. In time the idea spread inland and glass rolling pins filled with salt became a popular and ‘lucky’ wedding present to give the bride.

English Salt Box

Auckland War Memorial Museum

As salt was valuable, having salt in a box on the wall or hung in a rolling pin, where a guest might help themselves was regarded as sign of hospitality and in ‘Master Humphries Clock’ (1840-41) Charles Dickens used a description of a house where the salt box was kept locked as a way of showing misery of the home and the meanness of the owner.


Karen Maitland's latest medieval thriller 'A Gathering of Ghosts' is published by Headline.

Out and About: Reading history in buildings, by Leslie Wilson

It began with this building, when I was in Reading doing some shopping. It was such a truly elaborate example of hideous Victoriana that I had to record it. When I was a kid, I was taught to despise Victorian buildings and the heavy over-ornamentation of this example reminds me why. You may admire it; who knows? It's listed, and I've seen it described online as a very fine building indeed.  If you zoom in you can see that it is the W.I. Palmer memorial building, and I think, though I may be wrong, that it was originally a temperance hall set up by the originally Quaker Palmers, of Huntley and Palmer biscuit factory fame. Huntley and Palmers, long since subsumed into multi-national capital, were the producers of award-winning biscuits sold all over the world, and major employers in Reading; their factory empire sprawled between the Kennet and the railway, both of which were used to bring in supplies. Reading's prosperity originally grew from its site on the two rivers, the Kennet and the Thames, and there were many depots on the Kennet docks, which stored the grain from medieval times onwards.

Here is one of the corn stores, just opposite where I catch my bus home.

 This pub is a good deal older than it looks at first glance, and for once the side gate was open so I was able to look down and see the old courtyard. It's not a posting inn, I think (we'll come to that later), but an example of how buildings can reveal themselves if you can look round a corner. It's in St Mary's Butts, where once the citizens of Reading came for their archery practice, and the site of the eponymous Minster Church, built in the local brick-flint style. Clay and flint are an essential part of the soil round here, along with chalk. Our immediate neighbours have an old clay pit in the bottom of their garden. However, the Minster Church is partly built with stones from Reading Abbey, post-Dissolution.

Detail of the wall of St Mary's

The Minster Church

Queen Victoria Jubilee Fountain  in St Mary's Butts. 'A typical Victorian amalgam of forms and conceits' says Historic England.

 Pavlov's Dog, where my daughters used to go in their teens, is a nice piece of Victorian mock-Tudor.

 Here are some more genuinely ancient buildings in St Mary's Butts. County Delicacies, a lovely deli with a beautiful cheese counter and a wonderful range of Italian pasta among many other delights, is sadly no longer to be found in the stripy building.

 This is St Mary's old Vicarage, I think, now a pub.

 Waterstones occupies the site of the old Broad Street Independent Chapel; a temple to reading, nowadays, in Reading.

 I have always really enjoyed these Venetian-style buildings on the street that leads from Broad Street to the butter market; appropriately, the left hand one used to be occupied by Nino's Italian restaurant, but this is, alas, no longer the case. They represent to me the positive side of Victoriana.

 Here is the negative side of modernity; a building whose perpetrators actually dared to name after the architect Sir John Soane. The reason for this is that opposite the building is a monument contributed to Reading by Soane, in the Butter Market. I think Soane would have turned in his grave both at the naming of the building (which looks as if it had been badly glued together and might collapse at any moment) and its proximity to his graceful pillar. However, I'm ashamed to say that at one stage, Reading actually plopped a very smelly public toilet slap right against the monument. I am in favour of having public conveniences, but they need to be properly sited.

 Here is Soane's monument, now happily freed from the smelly anklet of public 'convenience.'

 This is one of the ancient buildings in the Butter Market, near St Laurence's church, which is one of the three ancient churches of Reading, along with St Mary's and St Giles's. The half-timbered building used to house a martial arts shop, but it has been grubby and neglected for as long as I can remember, and I've lived her for 33 years. It's a great pity, as it is a piece of Reading's heritage.

 The George, however, where Dickens stayed, I believe, is well maintained. It dates from 1506. I was going over the country looking for examples of old posting inns, then met a friend in the coffee shop at the George and realised that there was a wonderful example right under my nose. Below you can see where the coaches used to draw in, and Mine Host would come bustling out to welcome the occupants of post-chaises and private carriages.

 The Victorian Town Hall is rather fine, I think, but often looks like a suitable location for some Gothic horror narrative. This part of it was designed by Alfred Waterhouse, who also designed the Natural History Museum in London. We have a Pugin building in Reading, too, but I shall talk about that one in a later blog. There's a link to more info about the Town Hall at the bottom, which is worth clicking on. There was once an extension with an onion spire on it, which clashed a bit with the rest, but I for one am rather sad that it was demolished, as I'm rather fond of onion spires.

 According to local legend, Queen Victoria insisted her statue face the station, so that she could imagine herself leaving Reading rather than arriving there. I would take this with a pinch of salt.

 This is a rather splendid piece of eighteenth century building in the Netherlands style, which I always look at with enormous pleasure.

 This is an ancient building in London Street, where the coaches used to drive on their way to the capital. It's at the corner of Church Street, which leads to the Quaker Meeting House, where I worship. You can see the false front which fails to hide the original, older building. In Church Street you can see many buildings which are much older inside than they look from the outside, and some of them have convenient side alleys where you can look at the half-timbering.

 It's a pity that the local graffiti artists have demonstrated their lack of talent here, but you can see what I mean. This is the side of what was once the London Street bookshop, and if I remember right, Reading's first lending library (commercial, not public)

Here is one of the timbers, close up.

This is the front of the building, which nowadays houses Reading International Support Centre. You can see how the later facade has masked the half-timbered original building, but the meeting rooms and offices inside show their ancient provenance in half-timbering and rather irregular floors. There is still a bookshop inside RISC, which has a good selection of international authors, and it's well worth visiting. Below is another example of an ancient house wrapped up in a more recent (though hardly modern) facade. Also the Great Expectations, once a meeting hall, and before that, on the same site, there was the old Quaker Meeting House where William Penn once worshipped. There is a plaque commemorating this inside the RISC centre next door. Dickens gave readings in this building, hence the 'Great Expectations' of the title.

 I'll be guiding you round Reading again; the Abbey is the next stop, and I hope to go into more detail. Reading may be less glamorous than Oxford, where I once lived, but it has had huge significance in national history, and Jane Austen went to school here...
http://www.berkshirehistory.com/businesses/huntley_palmer.htmlhttp://www.berkshirehistory.com/businesses/huntley_palmer.html

https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1113571 

https://www.readingtownhall.co.uk/explore-reading-history/our-building-history

The Perambulator in the Hall: Writing with Children Before CBeebies - by Anna Mazzola

I love my children, and know how lucky I am to have them. But I also love writing, and writing and young children are not necessarily compatible. Hence summer holidays pose a challenge.

There has been much discussion in recent years about how modern writers deal with the so-called ‘pram in the hall’, but I began to wonder how writers occupied their children in the days before Peppa Pig. And how did families and writing intersect?

The gender divide

Asked recently how she had had produced so much work with two children, author Lauren Groff replied: ‘I understand that this is a question of vital importance to many people, particularly to other mothers who are artists trying to get their work done, and know that I feel for everyone in the struggle. But until I see a male writer asked this question, I’m going to respectfully decline to answer it.’

It’s true, of course, that women are still asked this question far more than men, but go back a century or two and no would even have considered asking a male author about his work/life balance. The time-honoured way of writing with children was to have a dutiful wife to look after them, and ideally a hoard of servants. Charles Dickens had ten children. Tolstoy had thirteen. I don’t believe anyone ever asked them about their childcare arrangements.

Mark Twain’s children weren’t allowed anywhere near his study and would ‘blow a horn if they needed him’. Thomas Mann angrily removed any child who disturbed his work. However, E.B White said he often wrote in his living room 'despite the carnival that is going on all around me.' George Orwell’s adopted son remembers him as a ‘hands on’ father who looked after him following his mother's death. After JG Ballard lost his wife to pneumonia in 1964 he brought up their children alone while continuing with his writing, and his children remember him as a kind and dedicated father. These were still, however, the exceptions.

From kitchen tables to different contintents 

For women, historically the primary caregivers, the situation varied greatly. During 19th century, some female writers had wealth that enabled them to pay for nursemaids or governesses to occupy their children while they wrote. However, that was not always the case. Elizabeth Gaskell often wrote at the kitchen table, with her children around her. Frances Trollope, who began writing at age of 53 to support her sick husband and six children, sat down at her desk each day at 4 a.m. and completed her writing in time to serve breakfast.

Some writers left their children with others for long stretches in order to write. Daphne Du Maurier left her young daughters with a nanny and their grandmothers for many months so that she could finish Rebecca. She once wrote, ‘I am not one of those mothers who live for having their brats with them all the time.’

Enid Blyton, though she wrote of idyllic childhoods, seems to have had little time for her own children. In her memoir, A Childhood At Green Hedges, Enid Blyton’s youngest daughter recalls that, ‘Most of my mother’s visits to the nursery were hasty, angry ones, rather than benevolent. The nursery was a lonely place.’

Some took it a step further. Doris Lessing, in her autobiography, Under My Skin, writes of ‘committing the unforgivable’ and leaving her ten-year-old son, John, and six-year-old daughter, Jean, to grow up with their father in Rhodesia. But, as ever, the full story is more complex. The woman who once claimed ‘No one can write with a child around’ in fact kept her young son Peter with her and continued to care for him throughout his life.

Similarly, though Muriel Spark acquired a reputation as un-motherly for leaving her son with his mentally ill father in order to pursue her writing career, the reality seems to have been far more complicated and painful.

The prize for deserting ones children in order to write in fact goes to a man: Jean-Jacques Rousseau abandoned all five of his children at foundling hospitals. And then of course wrote Emile, a novel lauded for its insights into the nature of children.

Carving out space

Most writers, however, did what we all do, which is to try to carve out writing time from our daily lives.

Some wrote at night. Ursula Le Guin said, ‘I would go up to the attic, and work 9:00 to midnight. If I was tired, it was a little tough. But I was kind of gung-ho to do it. I like to write. It’s exciting, something I’m really happy doing.’ Toni Morrison began writing as a single mother to two young children. 'Writing was something for me to do in the evenings, after the children were asleep.'

Others, like Trollope, woke ridiculously early in the morning. Sylvia Plath rose at 5am when the sedatives wore up and wrote until her children woke up. Within two months she had produced nearly all the poems that comprised Ariel.

Adapting writing 

Many writers had to alter their working practices or style in order to fit around family life.

When, in the 1780s, Hester Thrale was criticised for having written Anecdotes of Dr Johnson rather than a full biography, she countered that 'if one is to listen all Eveng and write all Morning what one has heard; where will be the time for... having one's children about one?'

Others used the constraints of family life in order to create. Celia Fremlin's brilliant Hours Before Dawn came from her sleep-deprivation following her second baby. Alice Munro has said that she began writing short stories because as a young mother she had no time to write novels: ‘When you are responsible for running a house and taking care of small children, particularly in the days before disposable diapers or ubiquitous automatic washing machines, it’s hard to arrange for large chunks of time.’

Shirley Jackson told herself stories while doing the laundry. ‘All the time that I am making beds and doing dishes and driving to town for dancing shoes, I am telling myself stories,’ she said in one of her lectures. According to Jackson’s biographer, ‘The idea for “The Lottery” came to her while she was grocery shopping with her daughter Joanne, then age 2. After they came home, she put away the groceries, put the child in her playpen, and wrote the story.’ One can only assume she didn’t much like the other shoppers.

Now it’s not just the women who have to adapt their writing to family life. Michael Chabon and his wife, Ayelet Waldman, have four children and share the childcare so that they can both write. Karl Ove Knausgaard has said, 'When I started to write I thought I had to be isolated. I went to lighthouses in the sea, and uninhabited islands. But then I had children and I realised I had to do it at home. I’ve never written as well as I have since having children.'  In a recent interview, Robert Harris also dismissed the notion that you had to write somewhere remote, saying, ‘You really need domestic routine and life going on around you, I think.’

I question, however, whether their domestic routines involve small children regularly coming up to their desks demanding that they locate small plastic toys or separate a fight. Perhaps I should do as another (unnamed) writer does: hang a sign on the door saying, 'Only knock in the event of blood.'



__________________________________________________________

Anna Mazzola is a writer of historical crime fiction. And a mum.

https://annamazzola.com
https://twitter.com/Anna_Mazz

Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World by Simon Callow. Reflection by Penny Dolan..

The book stood on the shelf at the local library, with both famous names printed equally large across the cover: 

 

 Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World by Simon Callow.

I was having a fresh look at a half-written historical fantasy novel for older children. Much of the research is in place, the plot is plotted and the characters, though neglected, are still “alive” and so, as my book set within the Victorian theatre world, a brisk trip back in time with Simon Callow was an easy attraction as well as a distraction.

This neat volume was published in 2012, just as Claire Tomalin’s book on Dickens was attracting attention. Callow acknowledges her work, as well as Peter Ackroyd’s wide and weighty biography and many other sources including John Forster, Dicken’s friend and original biographer.

The value of this book is that Callow, as an actor has lived very close to Dickens. He has acted the role of Charles Dickens, performing a long run of the author’s famed Reading Tours, as well as studying Dickens work and letters deeply beforehand. 

As Callow says, borrowing a quote for his introduction: “I’ve been ‘im!”

Callow’s energetic prose offers Dickens as the showman, the “Sparkler” who had loved performing and the theatre since infancy. The young Dickens was a child entertainer in Portsmouth, constantly encouraged and admired within his wide family for his lively recitations and play-acting and his inherited art of mimicry. At one of his many childhood lodgings, the boy would fall asleep each night to the sounds from the adjoining theatre coming through his bedroom wall.  Later, this childhood idyll was shattered by poverty and a wretched change in his situation, leaving scars that were hidden until after the successful writers death.

Throughout his life, Dickens cultivated a sense of performance. He acted out his characters as he wrote, read dialogues and long idiosyncratic character passages out to friends, revelling in the range of voices he’d captured on his pages.  Moreover, Dickens novels did not appear in single volumes. They came as cleverly-paced serials, creating an audience eager for the next act of his dramatic plot, ready to read his words aloud within their own family circles, his voice becoming part of the national voice.

Ever a night-walker, Dickens worked out his plots as he paced the streets, often walking for miles. Did he speak his ideas aloud as he walked, I wonder, or recite his scenes? Alternatively, by day, Dickens paced noticeably about town in flamboyant, brightly-coloured clothes, being the "Inimitable" Dickens.

This restless night-walking also underpinned his reputation as an eloquent public speaker: as Dickens paced, he thought and worked out the topics in his argument, each point imagined as a spoke on a wheel. Giving a speech, Dickens imagined moving his way around that wheel, silently knocking away each spoke as he made that particular point. One observer even noticed that Dickens made a small flicking-away gesture as he shared each point of his apparently off-the-cuff, note-less speech with his audience.

The Dickens that Simon Callow describes is almost constantly involved with theatrical ventures of one sort or another. He often toyed with the idea of being an actor or running a company. He relished playing dramatic games with his children and at one time appeared as a fully dressed oriental conjuror, demonstrating a range of impressive tricks.

As Dickens wealth and fame grew, the various plays he directed and acted in for his family and circle of friends became expansive celebrations, staged with almost professional crafts-people and with a cast filled with distinguished writers and notable friends along with his ever-growing family. Dickens even met his “invisible woman”, Ellen Ternan, when she took a minor role in one of his productions, The Frozen Deep.

The popularity of Dickens work brought other theatrical consequences: not only were his works published by other publishers, the stories were often dramatised, sometimes appearing on stage before the writer’s own conclusion had been printed. This must have been one of the irritations that made Dickens a champion for the rights of writers to receive more than small, one-off fees.

Callow’s book gives a sense of the relentless, manic, mecurial drive of Dickens, highlighting his determination and ability and the pace at which he worked and lived his life. He felt a burning need to communicate and share his condemnation of Victorian society with the working men of Britain.

Dickens love of performance culminated in the physically demanding Reading Tours of his later years. He toiled hard, preparing several best-loved scenes and characters from his books, as well as re-writing, adapting and adding in his own performance notes. He made them into demonstrations of his own theatrical skill, interpretation and artistry and adoring crowds were eager to see and hear Dickens wherever he travelled.

As Callow explains, these Reading Tours were reassuring triumphs for Dickens but gradually their number, duration and emotional intensity wrecked his health. By the age of 58, Charles Dickens' own great show was over.

However, as Callow writes, ending this engaging biography “As long as men and women want to hear stories, Charles Dickens remains and will always be a leading player on the stage of our imagination.” Meanwhile I, now Callow’s book has been read, must try and get back into my own.

Penny Dolan