Who Was Miss Havisham?

Last week I talked about adapting Mr Dickens is Coming to include a passage relating to the character of Miss Havisham from Great Expectations because the venue in the North East of England believes that Charles Dickens may have been inspired by a local story.  This week therefore it is time to investigate that story and possibly to introduce you to the real Miss Havisham.

Charles travelled extensively throughout his career and wherever he stayed he would work, that is why so many old coaching inns have notices boasting that ‘Charles Dickens wrote such-and-such here’.  Working for Charles involved not only sitting at a desk writing, but also observing and researching.  Everywhere he went Dickens insisted on being shown prisons, hospitals, mills, factories, police forces, docks, workhouses and institutions of every description, and from these observations came the squalor or Oliver’s London, the detail of William Dorrit’s imprisonment, the tragedy of Dotheboys Hall and the World of inspector Bucket.

Then there were the characters: The eye that never sleeps was the slogan for the Pinkerton Detective Agency but may equally be used to describe Charles Dickens, for nothing or nobody, escaped his gaze.

When the reading tours began in 1858 Dickens performed in Sunderland and Newcastle and again in the latter city the following year and maybe it was on one of these visits that he stayed with his old friend George Cooper Apps at Cleadon House.  Apps was a member of the Literary and Philosophical Society in Newcastle (I now perform annually at the Lit & Phil which makes the connection even more interesting to me), so must have enjoyed many stimulating discussions with the great author.  Cleadon House was a large red-bricked building although in appearance was less like Satis House in Great Expectations but more like Gad’s Hill Place, Charles’ Kentish home that he admired since childhood and had recently purchased , so maybe that attracted him there too.

It seems on one occasion, let’s say as the two gentleman sat down in front of a roaring fire and sipped a glass of brandy or port, George decided to tell Charles of a family legend which may interest him:

A relative, a male relative, had been preparing for his wedding day and everything was laid out in readiness.  The dining room was still as it had been the night before when the couple had shared a celebratory meal.  Our un-named relative was ready to leave for the church when he received notice that his bride was abandoning him at the alter.  Seized with grief and passion our jilted hero rushed through the house stopping all of the clocks and forever consigning the dining room to the state it had been during their last dinner together (WHAT did he say to her over their oysters?)

I wonder if George noticed a faraway look in Charles’s eye as he recited his story and I wonder if Dickens took in the ramshackle nature of the house in which he sat, with papers and books piled high everywhere and the hugely overgrown garden outside the windows.

If I were researching this more completely I would trawl through Dickens’ letters in search of references, I would travel to Newcastle and search through parish records to find out where bans had been read with no marital result.  I would be able to gradually build a picture of the life of a man who became a recluse and whose clocks were stopped as they looked over the remnants of the last happy meal of his life.

Sadly I am not able to undertake such research at the moment and these details come from the work of Newcastle historian John Joe Cox who sadly passed away in 2010.  Cox’s work on the history of Cleadon was taken up by Michael Bute who lectured on the subject.  Bute is also dead and for now the subject lies dormant, but the coincidences of circumstance and timing make it easy to believe that in the North East of England Charles Dickens heard a story that led him to create one of his most famous characters.

Unless he heard it on The Isle of Wight.

A couple of weeks ago I was visiting my brother and as we drove past the little town of Bonchurch our conversation turned to our great great grandfather, for he had stayed in the town during the summer of 1849.  Almost as a postscript to our chat Ian said ‘did you know that Charles might have based Miss Havisham on a lady who lived on the island?’

‘I’m sorry, what did you say?’ I replied,  and Ian proceeded to tell me that a mutual friend of ours had suggested that a close read of Richard Hutchings ‘Dickens on an Island’ would throw new light on the subject.

I am fortunate to be the temporary custodian of that little volume (generously lent to me a year ago by my friend David Hawes , and woefully overdue for return for which I apologise), and as soon as I returned home speed read until I found the relevant chapter.

The story ran thus:

In the town of Ventnor, close to Bonchurch, is a house called Madeira Hall which was purchased by a Mr AG Burt in 1848.  Understandably interested in the history of his new house Mr Burt started to do some research and uncovered an article published in ‘The Idler’ in 1902 by John Eyre and titled ‘Ventnor as a Health and Pleasure Resort’.  Burt must have felt a sense of excitement when he saw the name of his new cottage mentioned:

‘Madeira Hall is worthy of notice, as it is described in Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, and its then proprietor was Miss Dick, who is supposed to be the Miss Havisham in that work.’

According to the two ladies who had sold the house to Mr Burt Miss Dick had been jilted on her wedding day (this in turn recounted to them by Miss Dick’s doctor).  Distraught, she left her wedding feast untouched and drawing the shutters never again let the daylight into her house until her death in 1879. She was only 52.

However in 1849, when Dickens stayed at Winterbourne House in Bonchurch Miss Dick had yet to move into Madeira Hall and would not in fact take ownership until 1860 so Charles could not have heard of the story during his holiday, and according to his friend  John Forster never returned to the island so would have been unlikely to discover this little gem.

However Mr Hutchings, the author of Dickens on an Island, did a little more digging and discovered that a Mr and Mrs Dickens actually visited Ventnor for a few days in November 1860.  The details of that visit are intriguingly shrouded in mystery, thanks to the fact that ‘Mr and Mrs Dickens’ had separated two years before, but there are enough ‘what ifs’ and ‘maybes’ to make it possible that Dickens heard the story of Miss Dick and thought ‘how perfect for my next novel!’

If I were researching this more completely I would trawl through Dickens’ letters in search of references, I would travel to Ventnor and search through parish records to find out where bans had been read with no marital result. I would find the copy of ‘The Idler’ and I would be able to gradually build a picture of the life of a woman who lived in Madeira Cottage and became a recluse and whose shutters were closed for the rest of her life as the remnants of her wedding feast remained untouched.

Sadly I am not able to undertake such research at the moment but it is easy to believe that Charles Dickens heard a story on the Isle of Wight that led him to create one of his most famous characters.

Unless he heard it from Sydney.

Eliza Donnithorne arrived in Sydney in 1846 to join her elderly father Judge James Donnithorne who had retired there heartbroken following the death of his wife and other daughters in the 1832 cholera outbreak in Calcutta, where he had been stationed with the East India Company.

The judge died in 1852 and the bulk of his estate was left to Eliza who instantly became quite a catch.  Four years later Eliza was betrothed to George Cuthbertson and the wedding was to be held at St Stephen’s Church, just across the street from Camperdown Lodge, Eliza’s home.  One would imagine that the wedding of such a woman would draw quite a crowd so there must have been widespread shock and scandal when Mr Cuthberston failed to arrive.

Eliza waited and the clock ticked on, and on, and on.  The guests became more restless and indeed hungry until a few decided to make a start on the lavish wedding breakfast laying in wait across the street.  With the realisation that her fiancé had stood her up Eliza ran back to Camperdown Lodge and threw the gluttonous guests out.  Eliza’s staff were forbidden to clear away what remained of the feast and it was left on the table in case George should return.  It has also been recorded that Eliza remained in her white wedding attire which gradually became rotten and threadbare.  Children would run past the house terrified of the ghostly woman in white (maybe Wilkie Collins was also inspired by this particular tale?) within.

A local clergyman recalled visiting Eliza in her later years and noticing how decrepit everything was.  He remarked:

‘There wasn’t a decent bit of furniture in it. Everything had gone to wrack and ruin; even the tablecloths were rotting and falling to pieces….’

That certainly sounds like Satis House.

How would Charles Dickens have heard about this particular legend,  after all unlike Newcastle and Ventor he never visited Australia.  The most likely answer is from the Australian Social advocate Caroline Chisolm who’s husband was also attached to the East India Company at the same time as Judge Donnithorne.  Both families left India and headed to New South Wales within two years of each other so it is more than likely that they would have become friendly.

Dickens met with Caroline Chisolm in 1850 when she had returned to London for a short spell, and he was astounded by her non-existent housekeeping and the dirty faces of her many children.  It seemed that Caroline was so busy being an activist on behalf of emigrants that she neglected her own family.  A year after Dickens met her he created the character of Mrs Jelleby in Bleak House.

Dickens was always a champion of social activists and would have remained in contact with Chisolm, despite his literary lampooning of her.   If the case of Eliza Donnithorne was as scandalous as I imagine it must have been there can be no doubt that she would have passed the news gleefully on.

If I were researching this more completely I would trawl through Dickens’ letters in search of his correspondence with Caroline Chisolm.  I would travel to Sydney and delve into the archives of newspapers to find contemporary accounts of the scandal until I found full details of that fateful wedding day.  I would try to find out more about Miss Donnithorne’s mysterious maid Sarah Bailey who guarded her mistress’s secret to the end of her days.

Sadly I am not able to undertake such research at the moment and all that I have written is thanks to a blog posted by Pauline Connolly  to whom I apologise for what borders on plagiarism.  But it is easy to believe that Charles Dickens was told a story from Sydney that led him to create one of his most famous characters.

I have outlined three very plausible stories, any one of which could have influenced Dickens, but I am sure that the truth lies in all of them.  The nameless Apps ancestor stopped his clocks.   Miss Dick shut out the daylight.  Miss Donnithorne remained in her wedding gown.  Miss Havisham did all three.

I don’t know the figures, but I can make an assumption that in an era when divorce was so much more difficult and scandalous than it is today the instances of people getting cold feet on the morning of a wedding must have been more common place, leaving a whole list of potential Miss Havishams around the globe.

If I were able to research this more completely it would make a fascinating book and if anyone would like to fund that research, I am ready to go!

 

 

I am indebted to the following:

Geoff Woodward for his information on the Newcastle connection

Richard J Huthchings for his work on Miss Dick on the Isle of Wight

Pauline Connolly for her research into Eliza Donnithorne

 

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Revisiting Old Friends

With no shows for a couple of weeks my attentions turn back to preparations for the year ahead.  On one hand this means trying to fill my diary up and I have meetings with various new venues, as well as shoring up dates with some old friends.  On the Wirral Lynne Hamilton is working hard to book events on the run up to Christmas whilst in the south I am busy talking to the folks at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, Highgate Cemetary and the Ffestiniog & West Highland Railway about returning to their respective venues.

Another conversation is with representatives of various venues on the Isle of Wight (also the home of my brother Ian ), with a view to spending a couple of days in September performing there.

Apart from filling my diary I am also revisiting a couple of my oldest scripts with a view to modifying them for the specific needs of two bookings that are fast approaching.

In May I will be visiting The Word, The Museum of the Written Word in Jarrow and have been asked to perform Mr Dickens is Coming, but with a new section added referencing Great Expectations.  The changes have been requested because the museum is launching a special exhibition telling the story of a possible local inspiration for the character of Miss Havisham (more of which to come in a future post), and wanted to link the show to that particular novel, which will pose an interesting and welcome challenge for me.

My first performance in 1993 was, as you know, A Christmas Carol and the following year I was invited to give a reading from Nicholas Nickleby, for which I used the version that Charles Dickens had edited for his own tours (Nicholas at the Yorkshire School), but I very soon realised that I needed a one man show that got away from being a ‘literary reading’ which held all the wrong connotations in my mind.  My fascination with my great great grandfather lay in his love of the theatre and I realised that this was a shared passion that I could utilise.  By creating a show that described Dickens’ various theatrical exploits I could include some of his most extraordinary characters.  I sat down to write.

The script included the writhing, ugly, conniving, contorted Uriah Heep from David Copperfied, as well as Mr and Mrs Micawber from the same novel (Mr M being a rather cruel portrait of John Dickens, Charles’ improvident father).

As a running gag I continually returned to my great great grandfather’s numerous refusals to meet Queen Victoria (on one occasion informing her that he did not perform for ‘individuals’ a quote to which I rather cheekily added the word ‘mere’ to increase the sense of impropriety).

As well as the well-known characters that are performed in every Dickens one man show you will ever see I wanted to include some more obscure passages and to this end I dug up ‘The Tale of the Bagman’s Uncle’ from The Pickwick Papers.  The tale is told by a bagman to the members of The Pickwick Club as they rest at an inn (one of those moments in Dickens’ early career when he needed extra pages to complete his monthly commitment, you can spot them a mile off: ‘gather round and I shall tell you a tale……’  The stories have nothing to do with the plot itself but fill a few extra pages).

The bagman’s uncle is a swashbuckling fellow who rescues a beautiful young lady by fighting off two villains who are attempting to abduct her.  The story has everything that a good adventure story should and culminates in a fight of flying furniture and flashing foils (oh, I do like a bit of alliteration!).  Whilst our hero is struggling with one rival, so the beautiful and resourceful girl takes care of the other by driving a sword ‘through him and the panelling right up to the hilt’ Eventually the bagman’s uncle emerges victorious by making  ‘his adversary retreat in the same direction, and plunging the old rapier into the very centre of a large red flower in the pattern of his waistcoat, nailed him beside his friend;’ and the conflict is done.

As I first read these words I realised that I was reading a James Bond adventure, albeit one written 100 years before Ian Fleming ever sat at his Imperial typewriter.  Having brought the fight to an end the central character even delivers a light hearted quip, as if to camera, noting that this is the surest way he knows of killing an enemy, although he objects to it on the grounds of cost as it necessitates the loss of a sword for each enemy!  Roger Moore would have raised an eyebrow and straightened his tie at this moment.

I used the Bagman’s Uncle to imagine how Dickens may have written if he had been working in the 20th century, embracing the film industry as he surely would have done.

I had to find a away to open the show and the solution came from a desire to show the audience that it would be OK to laugh and that I wouldn’t be lecturing them, as well as a wish to prove how knowledgeable I was. At that time most of my readings were for the Rochester and Chatham branch of the Dickens Fellowship (I am very proud to be the President of that branch now), the chair of which was a lady of supreme Dickensian knowledge Thelma Grove.  Thelma knew everything about every novel – every character, every scene, every quotation and so I decided that I wanted to start with the show with a passage that she didn’t know, which of course was an impossibility.  The only answer was to make up my own quote to catch her out.

I would walk onto the stage, solemnly greet the audience and then say these words:

Good Evening Ladies and Gentlemen. It is such a privilege and honour to be standing here in this wonderful theatre and to be talking to you about the life of my great great grandfather, Charles Dickens. And there is no better place to tell you his story, as the theatre was his first love, he never felt happier than standing on a stage and before I begin tonight’s programme I’d like, if I may, to read to you the words of Charles Dickens:

I then picked up a small volume (GK Chesterton’s biography of Dickens) and read
‘Throughout my lifetime, as boy, youth and man I have derived a love of the stage. Today I am fortunate to stand upon the stages of the great theatres of the world and read from my own works. I pray, that when my lifetime is done, my characters may still live on these same stages. This, then, is my legacy to my family; The audience would be quite, listening intently, sitting up.  I continued: ‘…those members known to me today and those descendants whom I shall never meet.   The atmosphere would now be electric, for this was a letter written directly to me from my great great grandfather.  ‘May they take the pleasures that I have taken from the institution of the theatre.’

I wood slowly close the book, wipe a tear of emotion from my eye and let the full significance of the words settle in the auditorium.  Then would add:

As I said, those were the words of Charles John Huffham Dickens….unfortunately for me, he never actually used them in that order, but they were all his words at some stage or another!

At the first performance Thelma was in the audience and the effect was everything I had wanted it to be.  As I started she sat up looking confused, then curious, then suspicious and as I delivered the final line she looked me in the eye and burst out laughing!

I had my opening.

The script came together very well with a nice mixture of original text mixed with humour and anecdote, and it took the audience from Charles’ childhood, through his early forays into the world of theatre and on to his hugely successful reading tours.  But over the years I just couldn’t find a satisfactory way of bridging the gap between the start of the touring life and Dickens’ death on 9 June 1870.

At first I described his American adventures using the pithy criticisms from American Notes which, although funny, was written during his 1842 trip and therefore had no connection to his performing career which, after all, was the theme of the show.  Next I tried performing the charming story ‘A Child’s Journey With Dickens’ which at least took place during his 2nd tour to America, but somehow the tone didn’t fit in with the rest of the script.

My next choice was to perform the most famous of Dickens’ readings, the brutal murder of Nancy from Oliver Twist.  When Charles performed it he judged the success of an evening purely on the amount of women who fainted as he bludgeoned the poor teenage prostitute to death.  In this version of the show I actually performed the end of the reading, but although it was dramatic it made the act too long and ponderous.

The current version of the script retains my description of Sikes and Nancy without the actual performance and it is has remained in that state for a couple of years now.

So the final quarter of the script is perfect for change and if it so happens that a venue wants something specific then there is the natural place to include it and so it will be for The Word in Jarrow.  Miss Havisham is a wonderfully theatrical character and the scenes in which she is described could be from a stage play, so the scene should slot in to the script with the greatest of ease, and the fact that Dickens may have been inspired by a local character will add anecdotal interest.

I don’t think that Miss Havisham will take up permanent residence in my show, but I rather like the idea that she can make a guest appearance now and again.

The other script which needs a little work is The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby which I originally performed as a one act show at around the same time as I wrote Mr Dickens is Coming.  The script follows Nicholas’s adventures to Yorkshire where he meets not only the villainous Wackford Squeers but also the pathetic Smike.  Having given Squeers a heroic beating Nicholas and Smike return to London, before heading to Portsmouth where they encounter the larger than life Mr Vincent Crummles and his theatrical troupe.

The script was written as a whistle-stop tribute to the RSC’s 8 hour epic from 1980, but now I want to extend it so that it stands on its own two feet as a 2 act play.  I am due to perform it at the Market Theatre in Hitchin later this summer, so work needs to start now.

The problem with extending a Dickens novel is that by including one scene it inevitably means returning to those characters later in the plot and that gets unwieldy, so I need a few stand alone scenes to introduce.

One that springs to mind is when Nicholas, seeking employment, goes to the politician Mr Gregsbury.  Having ascertained that Nicholas is not a rival or from the press Gregsbury outlines a secretary’s duties which involve doing everything!  Nicholas would be required to write speeches, listen to debates, table questions, scour the newspapers for stories about which a caring member of parliament can pass comment (such comments written of course by Nicholas).  In addition Nicholas would be expected to lounge anonymously around in the lobby and talk in a  loud voice about how marvellous Mr Gregsbury was and point him out to those who may not have noticed him.  All of this for 15 shillings a week.  Nicholas not surprisingly declines and goes on his way.

It is a short self contained scene and is a delicious satire on the world of politics which in our current climate is under greater scrutiny than ever before, and doesn’t seem to have moved on an awful lot!

Mr Gregsbury is one scene that can be used, and one of the other changes I want to make involves the ultimate fate of Mr Squeers who at the moment just disappears from the story without comment.  The conclusion of the Squeers story more difficult to achieve because in the book he becomes involved with a fraudulent plan initiated by Ralph Nickleby, to discredit Nicholas.  Unfortunately the plot is very complicated and involves a whole new cast of characters which would be incredibly confusing for an audience, so I need to sit, think and experiment with that section for a while before actually writing anything new

It’s just as well I have time on my hands!  I will you keep you posted with progress over the coming months.

Next week I shall return to Great Expectations and try to find an answer to the question ‘who was Miss Havisham?’  It is a question that will take me around the world.

 

 

World Book Day

Dickens and Dahl

Thursday March 8 was designated as this year’s World Book Day, on which it is traditional for school pupils to dress up as their favourite book characters for the day.  The idea is to think about books and possibly do some research into the actual character although the reality is often that children sport a costume based on a film adaptation.

One of our local primary schools decided to be more specific in their advice and suggested that the students should chose a costume from their favourite Roald Dahl story, which still gave them plenty of opportunity to raid their dressing-up boxes.  As the school day started there were plenty of Matildas, Miss Trunchbulls, Willy Wonkas, Oompa Loompas and Fantastic Mr Foxes. Danny and George were there, as were a few Twits and Witches.  Also there were the normal children: Charlie, Sophie and James, for many of Dahl’s protagonists are so splendidly ordinary that the reader can believe that the amazing adventures could actually happen to them.

As I watched this parade of imagination fill the pavements it set me thinking about the many connections between Roald Dahl and Charles Dickens and the influence each had on their readership.  Dahl was once asked in an interview why so many of his central characters had lost one or both parents, and in his answer he compared himself to Dickens, saying that he had ‘used a trick to get the reader’s sympathy’  In his list of favourite authors, and those which influenced him in his writings Dahl always named Charles Dickens first, so it is no surprise that great great grandad pops up again and again in the Dahl canon.

When the BFG wanted to learn English it was a copy of ‘Nicholas Nickleby’  that he borrowed from a bedside table,  ‘by Dahl’s Chickens’ he proudly tells Sophie.  What an interesting use of spelling and the apostrophe too.  Dahl doesn’t directly spoonerise the name as Darles Chickens but instead uses his own name to make the sound of the name  – the apostrophe almost gives him ownership.

Like the BFG when a 4 year old Matilda asks the kindly librarian Mrs Phelps for advice as to which grown up book she should try the answer is:

‘Try this’, she aid at last.  ‘It’s very famous and very good.  If it’s too long for you, just let me know and I’ll find something shorter and a bit easier.’

‘Great Expectations,’ Matilda read, ‘by Charles Dickens.  I’d love to try it.’

Matilda devours the story of Pip, Estella and Miss Havisham in just a week and returns to the library:

‘I loved it,’ she said to Mrs Phelps.  ‘Has Mr Dickens written any others?’

‘A great number,’ said the astounded Mrs Phelps.  ‘Shall I chose you another?’

And so Matilda embarks on Nicholas Nickleby and Oliver Twist before surfing a wave of literature that includes works by Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Mary Webb, Rudyard Kipling, HG Wells, Ernest Hemmingway, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, JB Priestly, Graham Greene and George Orwell.

Later in the book Matilda enrols at the local primary school and again the influence of Dickens is evident, although not in such a positive persona.  The  nightmarish headmistress Miss Trunchbull is teaching the class of the delightful Miss Honey and is barking at pupils and teacher alike:

‘Oh, do shut up, Miss Honey!  You’re as wet as any of them.  If you can’t cope in here then you can go and find a job in some cotton-wool private school for rich brats.  When you have been teaching for as long as I have you’ll realise that its no good at all being kind to children.  Read Nicholas Nickleby, Miss Honey, by Mr Dickens.  Read about Mr Wackford Squeers, the admirable headmaster of Dotheboys Hall.  He knew how to handle the little brutes, didn’t he!  He knew how to use the birch, didn’t he!  He kept their backsides so warm you could fry eggs and bacon on them!’

Miss Trunchbull is the perfect embodiment of her hero; the two schools both boast suitably foreboding names: Dickens uses Dotheboys (Do the Boys) Hall, whereas Dahl places The Truchbull at  Cruncham Primary.  Both headteachers regularly bully and abuse their charges to an extent that they are in mortal danger (starvation and beating in Nickleby, hurling high by into the air by pigtails and force feeding chocolate cake in Matilda.)

In Nicholas Nickleby our hero is employed as a young teacher and encounters the pathetic character of Smike whom he befriends as Miss Honey befriends Matilda. At the conclusion of both novels the teachers effectively adopt the children as their own.

A more obscure work of Charles Dickens is ‘The Tale of Captain Murderer’ which is one The Nurses Tales published in All the Year Round, and which is based on Charles’ own infant memories of a drunken nurse would try to terrify him to sleep.  Captain Murder is a splendidly gruesome story of piratical cannibalism culminating in our villain being poisoned from within by one of his victims – the effect on him is bizarre, terrifying and, to students of Roald Dahl, surprisingly familiar:

‘…and Captain Murderer had hardly picked her last bone, when he began to swell, and to turn blue, and to be all over spots, and to scream. And he went on swelling and turning bluer, and being more all over spots and screaming, until he reached from floor to ceiling and from wall to wall; and then, at one o’clock in the morning, he blew up with a loud explosion.’

Step forward and take a bow Violet Beauregarde!

I am sure there are many more Dickensian references in Dahl’s work and if anyone knows of them I would be fascinated to hear them.

 

King Alfred School

My own World Book Day took me to the King Alfred School in North London to perform The Signalman to the Key Stage 3 group who have been studying the gothic novel in their English lessons.

I had visited the school last year and then I had driven through heavy snow falls to get there.  This year it was rain and strong squally winds that accompanied me; maybe one year I will motor down in warm sunshine and a soft breeze.

I arrived at the school with 45 minutes to spare before I was due to perform and was given a parking space right outside the hall meaning that I could get all of my ‘set’ unloaded with a minimum of fuss.

The school is a well-to-do and artistic sort of a place with many of the students being children to well-known singers and actors.  It is surprising therefore that King Alfred’s does not boast a state of the art performance space, but the show was to be on the stage in the ‘main hall’ which at the time  of my arrival was doubling as the lunch hall.  As I lugged the clerk’s desk, chair and table onto the stage so the school staff packed away tables and swept up bits of potato, cabbage and sponge pudding which are the staple of the British school luncheon.

Having changed into costume I found myself alone in the hall and thought that I would do a little rehearsing before the audience arrived.  When I performed The Signalman in Henley I had got a little tangled up with a few of the lines towards the end, so I wanted to run them through.  As I rehearsed so the wind outside battered the building, rattling the old windows and generally adding a very authentic feel to the words.

At 2.50 the first students arrived in a trickle, which turned into a stream and then a flood so that by 3.00 the hall was full.  English teacher Alex made a short introduction and I was welcomed to the stage with a loud round of applause.

By way of introduction I talked about the Staplehurst Rail disaster, as is my wont, describing in detail the dying souls that Dickens came across in the wreckage: the man with ‘the moon-shaped gash across his head’ and the beautiful young woman in the unmarked dress who sat against a tree.  I pointed out how the press relished the story of the crash because it involved a celebrity- a celebrity, what’s more, who just happened to be travelling with the ‘wrong’ woman.

And then I started.

I got the first line wrong!  All of that rehearsal concentrating on the tricky middle section and I buggered up the easiest and most memorable line of the script.  Hey, ho.  Actually it was fine and I got back on track quickly.  In fact the performance became more and more intense as I went on and by the time I got to the part that had given me difficulties at The Kenton Theatre I was in full flow and really enjoying myself.  It was an energetic, physical and ultimately good performance.

When I finished I returned to the aftermath of the Staplehurst crash and told the students (who had been remarkably attentive throughout the hour) about the coincidence of Dickens’ death on the 5th anniversary of the accident – 9th June 1870.

And then it was question time: quite a few hands went up and there some very good enquiries, mainly about the train crash: was the lady in the untouched dress who died in Dickens’ arms the model for the lady who died instantaneously in the story?   (Almost certainly) Does the rail line outside Staplehurst go through a steep cutting and is there a signalbox there?  (No, the line it Staplehurst is over very flat countryside and in fact the bridge where the crash happened carries the line over marshland, rather than any sort of ravine.  However near Dickens’ home at Gad’s Hill Place there was a deep rocky cutting with a dark tunnel and this was his inspiration for the claustrophobic setting for the story).  What did everyone at your school think of you?  (Goodness, how do I answer that?!  Actually my school was not strong academically and nobody really cared less whether I had a famous forbear or not, apart from the moment when we started to study Oliver Twist and my English teacher helpfully pointed my ancestry out to the class.  At that point I think sheer hatred rained upon my head.).

Of course there was interest in ‘the other woman’ and I honestly told the group that Charles was travelling home from France in the company of Ellen Ternan and her mother.  Dickens has separated from his wife Catherine seven years before and had been involved with Ellen for a long time, but to protect his wholesome image the affair was kept secret, even though London was rife with rumour.  Image the joy of today’s press if a major incident occurred and it involved an uber, mega, superstar and he just happened to be in the company of someone with whom he had long been suspected of having an affair – the same was true in 1865.

At 4 o’clock so our session drew to a close and I received another, even louder, round of applause as I left the stage.  As the students left a few came up and asked other questions and one young man informed me that all of the depressing events I had talked about occurred on his birthday – June 9th.  I apologised but he airily replied ‘Oh that’s all right, it’s hardly your fault!’ With a firm shake of the hand and a cheery ‘goodbye’ he left with the rest of his classmates.

The English department helped me pack away the set into my car and I drove back onto the streets of North London still in costume.  Now it was my turn to celebrate World Book Day and I started to play a recording of a book that encouraged me to read when I was young and which shaped my childhood:  A Bear Called Paddington.

I drove home with a big smile on my face!

 

 

 

February: A Theatre, Two Schools and Forward Planning

I have made a decision and it is this:

Throughout the year I would like to write a much more regular blog, as well as the Christmas tour’s daily diary.  Of course every day is not made up of interest-filled journeys, sell-out shows or mouth watering repasts, but there is usually something or other going on either in my mind, or on stage, which hopefully will be of interest to you and may pass a quiet 20 minutes or so of a morning.

So, here goes:

February is always a quiet month in the Dickens calendar, despite it including Charles’s birthday on the 7th, so usually it is a time where I look at the coming year and make my plans.

This year the evening of the birthday itself was spent in The Kenton Theatre in Henley-on-Thames performing a double bill of Mr Dickens is Coming and The Signalman, which is a combination that I do not usually use.

I was working on a box office split with the theatre so it was in my interest to sell the show well, and I embraced Twitter as never before, with each Tweet liked and retweeted by a growing number of people.  I arranged interviews for both BBC Oxford (which resulted in the intriguing possibility of narrating a special radio version of The Carol utilising the talents of the presenters as the cast) and BBC Berkshire.  The theatre PR team organised a wonderful double page feature article in the local newspaper, and as the day came closer so the audience numbers crept up.

The evening was great fun and it was great to back on stage for the first time this year.   An enthusiastic audience enjoyed the show and asked some great questions in a short Q&A after the final curtain.

Mind you the evening wasn’t all plain sailing for the get-out wasn’t an easy, or enjoyable experience.   The theatre has no off-street parking and I had to leave my car double parked in the main road whilst I carried all of the furniture down a long narrow alley from stage to street.  On a number of occasions I emerged from the alley, struggling with some awkward load or other, only to discover a bus or a lorry unable to get past my car and a queue of increasingly irate drivers forming behind it.  At such times all I could do was get in the car and drive round the long one-way system in Henley before returning to the theatre and getting the next load.  I got home rather late that night.

On the following day I drove down to my home county of Kent to talk in two schools, one in Canterbury and one in Sandwich, about Charles Dickens and specifically A Christmas Carol which the students are studying for their GCSE exams.  My first appointment was at The Spires Academy in Canterbury which is a very new purpose-built school.  My performance space was in the open plan reception area surrounded by giant video screens showing a slide show of memorable events on that day in history.  I asked if the screens could be turned off, as they would not only be distracting to the pupils, but to me also – they were fascinating!

The pupils at The Spires were most respectful and attentive and asked good questions afterwards, but I couldn’t stay long as I had to get on the road to my second venue at The Sandwich Technology School some twenty minutes away.  I had performed at the school before and was greeted by the English staff like an old friend.  The performance space in the school gymnasium was somewhat gladiatorial as a small stage had been surrounded  on all four sides by over 200 seats waiting for 200 year 10 students to fill them: there would be no hope of escape.

The larger audience was more difficult to deal with than the morning’s smaller group, and it was with a great deal of noise that the students poured in.  As I worked my way the show the show there was a degree of shuffling, sniggering and chatting but members of staff from all departments (including a rather terrifying sports teacher) were spread through the room and moved in to keep order if a particular individual stepped out of line.

In both schools I performed an hour long version of the show (which is about long enough, but frustrating as there is so much that has to be cut), and at the end of my show I got a long and loud round of applause which I didn’t quite expect.

Once again there was plenty of time for questions, one of which was ‘Did all of that actually happen to Scrooge, or was it in his imagination?  Did he dream it all?’

Discuss!

Looking forward into the year I have some exciting new venues coming up, including the Museum of the Written Word in the North East of England, which looks to be an amazing site, and where I will be performing the same double bill as in Henley.  Another very exciting addition is that of the Severn Valley Railway in August where I will, of course, be performing The Signalman.  The historic setting will be exciting enough but of even greater interest to me is the fact that part of the BBC’s classic 1976 adaptation of the story starring Denholm Elliott was filmed on the line.

What else does did February hold?  Planning for Christmas, of course.  Due to the difficulty of getting a USA Visa the process of booking my tour has to start early in the year and as soon as we decide on dates then all of the UK venues start to fall into place too.  I have spent the last week with my diary starting to work out where in the country I would like to be.  Liverpool has already come online, as well as venues in Newcastle, Kent and Dorset.  There are plenty of others to talk to and it will be good to have the whole tour fully sorted so early in the year.

I will keep you in touch with progress through as well as anything else that I think may be of interest as the months roll on.