Well, That Was Quite A Birthday! Part 3: A Home From Home

Tags

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, Mr Dickens is Coming!, Mr Micawber, The Charles Dickens Museum, The Pickwick Papers

My week celebrating the 210th birthday of Charles Dickens continued on Sunday 6th February in two homes – his and mine.

On Sunday evening a specially filmed version of my old show Mr Dickens is Coming was due to be streamed by The Charles Dickens Museum, which is based at 48 Doughty Street, the home that a young Charles moved into having enjoyed instant success with The Pickwick Papers.

Cindy Sughrue, the director of the museum, had approached me last year with the idea of my developing a version of the show that would utilise many of the rooms in the museum, meaning that I would have a wonderful backdrop for my performance whilst the museum could be shown in its best light. The original idea had been to film it before Christmas, but various issues with my tour, obtaining visas and some family concerns at the time meant that we decided to delay the project until early in the year, using the birthday as a suitable time to screen.

Monday 17th January was selected as a filming day, with the 18th being held as an extra. The advantage of these particular days being that the museum is closed on a Monday and Tuesday, thereby giving us full rein to use whichever rooms we needed, whenever we wanted without disturbing the paying public.

I arrived at around 10.30am, and was met by Jordan Evans who is the Marketing and Events manager at the House who was responsible for co-ordinating the entire project. We would be working with videographer Alex Hyndman who has filmed in the museum often, most particularly with actor Dominic Gerard who performs his brilliant A Christmas Carol from the house in December, and as I arrived Alex was setting up cameras and lights in readiness for the first takes.

I quickly changed into costume, which included one of my oldest waistcoats – a black one with shining golden embellishments, and bright patches of colour. I saw it back in the 1990’s hanging on a bargain rail outside a charity shop in the pouring rain. I had been looking for a garish waistcoat for the show, and this one seemed to be calling out to me: ‘buy me! buy me!’ And I did.

I had re-written my old script whilst taking the virtual tour of the museum, which is available on the Carles Dickens Museum website, and had tried to feature each room in a way appropriate to the part of the story I was telling. My opening shot would see me striding down the centre of Doughty Street towards the camera and then entering the famous red door to begin, and this, Jordan decided, would be the first scene to film. The best laid plans of mice and men oft go astray, as Rabbie Burns wrote, and on the morning of filming we discovered that it was bin collection day, so the elegant street was lined with piles of rubbish and recycling rendering our idea for the long view of Doughty Street impossible to capture. The three of us stood in the street pondering our next move and I realised that I was holding my hand up to shade my eyes against the low-in-the-sky sun shining along the street (which apparently runs East-West). ‘Guys,’ I said, ‘why don’t we use my shadow on the pavement?’ and so the show opens with a panning shot of a top-hatted shadow striding along, until the camera pans up to show me walking up to the door.

For the rest of the day we moved from room to room, planning how to shoot each scene and taking care not to touch the historic furniture and artefacts as we did. In the nursery on the top floor I performed the passage about John Dickens next to his bust, and then Alex was able to swing the camera round as I walked behind the original prison bars from The Marshalsea Prison, where the family had been sent for debt. At the end of the scene I moved out of shot, revealing a picture of Mr Micawber on the wall behind me.

We managed to get the whole show filmed in the single day, wrapping with a final shot in the little courtyard garden, and I drove home again, leaving Alex to cast his editing magic wand over the whole thing.

During the intervening weeks Jordan made sure that social media was covered with information about the screening, and Alex had made a short trailer for the film too, which meant by the 6 February we had a goodly number of viewers signed up. I would be watching the film, and then taking questions afterwards, from our new garden office, which we have yet to paint, so it would look rather as if I were sitting in a sauna. During the afternoon, after I had driven back from Sharnbrook, I went up into our loft and grabbed a large picture of Charles Dickens as a young man, one of Henry Fielding Dickens, my great grandfather, and one of me on stage, and hung them in such a way as if to suggest I was in a picture-lined study (I am sure that I didn’t fool anyone!).

I was scared watching, for I knew that many viewers would have highly academic backgrounds, and Mr Dickens is Coming was never written with that in mind: it was always a light-hearted script designed to entertain primarily and doesn’t really bear serious analysis, but Alex had done a great job with the editing, and it came across pretty well, I thought. We had viewers from Australia, Japan, America, Georgia, Malta and many other countries, such is the international influence of Charles Dickens.

When the final shot in the garden faded to black, Cindy Sughrue’s camera flicked into life, which was my cue to switch mine on as well. The comments in the chat room scrolled quickly as various viewers from around the globe congratulated me and asked many questions, which Cindy put to me to answer on screen. We spent around 30 minutes chatting until Cindy would the session up, and having said farewell, I logged off, leaving Charles Dickens’ home behind me and walked back down the dark garden towards the warm, welcoming glow of my own house.

A Christmas Carol at The Old Vic

Tags

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, Ebenezer Scrooge, FareShare Charity, London, Stephen Mangan, The Old Vic Theatre, The Royal Academy of Music

Call it a busman’s holiday, but when Liz asked me last year if I would like to go to theatre to see a production of A Christmas Carol as one of my Christmas presents, I leaped at the chance. I never tire of the story and any opportunity to see someone else’s vision of it is a privilege, and is also useful for the ongoing development of my own show as I always notices different ways of presenting a scene, or even just an alternative method of delivering a line.

The production that Liz had chosen was at The Old Vic Theatre which is situated near to the Waterloo railway station just south of the River Thames. The Old Vic is not in the heart of the West End theatre district, but has a reputation for imaginative and innovative programming. I remember being taken to the venue on a school trip to see the British actor Timothy West play Shylock in a production of The Merchant of Venice, which we were studying, and realising that seeing a play in its natural setting rather than grinding through it in an academic environment can teach a student so much.

Saturday January 8 was our performance day, and having dropped the girls off at a friend’s house, we drove to London in thick fog and heavy rain, it was a foul day to be travelling and a slightly tight timescale meant that we couldn’t dawdle. Our matinee was due to commence at 1pm, but we had to present ourselves at the theatre between 12 and 12.30 – in these days of Covid restrictions the management were trying to get blocks of audience seated at different times, to avoid everyone rolling up together at 12.45.

The traffic was heavy and fast moving, although the visibility was low, and the opportunities for catastrophe was high. Inevitably we were soon rolling to a standstill behind a long queue of stationary traffic, and away in the distance the thick cloud was pierced by flashing blue and red lights as a police car blocked the road, presumably to allow for an accident to be cleared. We sat and sat and sat, and the idea of making our time slot became more and more unlikely. Eventually the flashing lights were extinguished and we drove on once more.

We made good time for the rest of the journey and we wound around Buckingham Palace before crossing the river Thames and finding our parking space close to the the theatre (in the absence of any parking garages in the vicinity we had found a parking space available for rent on someone’s driveway and booked a four hour slot).

The rain was still falling as we walked to the theatre and joined the long line waiting to be admitted. In an attempt to expedite the process, one of the front of house staff made her way along the line scanning tickets, so that by the time we got to the door we could walk straight in….or so we thought.

The producers of the show had sent a detailed email the day before entitled ‘Everything You Need to Know About Your Visit’, and we had followed the instructions to the letter, however one may have supposed that in an email with such a title, they might have mentioned the need to take a Lateral Flow Test for Covid on the day of the show, rather than putting that instruction in a second email with the title ‘We Are Looking Forward to Your Visit’, which sat, unread, alongside many other similarly titled emails most of which were purely of a promotional nature.

So, when a second box office member walked the line asking to check on everyone’s LFT status Liz and I exchanged a look of horror, for we had no idea! The young man was sympathetic, but unmovable, there would be no entry to the theatre without proof of a negative test in the past few hours. However, he did offer to call his manager who may be able to explain. So we were asked to leave the queue and stand aside until the aforesaid manager appeared. He was equally sympathetic and equally intransigent until he produced a pair of test kits, as if they were Class A drugs, and secretively handed them over to us, suggesting that we find somewhere nearby to carry out a test (‘don’t do it in front of the others, ok?)

We looked helplessly around us, until I noticed a tiny little tent in the square outside the main theatre entrance, which bore the legend: ‘NHS Mobile Testing Centre’ well, that seemed as good a place as any other, so we poked our heads in and asked if we could do our LFTs in the dry, ‘We don’t do Lateral Flow, only PCRs’ we were told, so we had to explain that we had the kits, we didn’t need to be given any, but just required a dry space and as they had no one in their tent at the present, could we huddle under the dripping canvas? They agreed, and we both undertook the least clinical and probably least hygienic tests imaginable. As we waited for the tell-tale line to appear, some more people arrived from the theatre queue, making the same request, but they were turned away. We were lucky.

Fortunately both tests were negative and soon we were back in line and were finally admitted to the theatre with 8 minutes to spare, rather than the 30 that we should have had. Liz had booked amazing tickets in the stalls and we were nestled close to the action, as a temporary circular stage had been built in the centre of the auditorium, meaning that the whole show was performed in the round, with extra seating having been installed on the traditional stage looking out through the proscenium arch and into the auditorium. As the audience gathered, so the cast (with the exception of Mr Scrooge) mingled on the stage, greeting us all with smiles and waves – they were all dressed in long black coats and top hats, but were in no way ‘in character’, they were simply welcoming us to their club, encouraging us to join them. Earlier on in the process they had been handing out mince pies and satsuma oranges, but at that time we had been taking our secret Covid tests, so missed out on the tasty treats. Bah, Humbug!

In the text of A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens goes out of his way to make the reader feel as if they have company throughout the story, for example when Scrooge first encounters the Ghost of Christmas Past Dickens says: ‘The curtains of his bed were drawn aside; and Scrooge, starting up into a half-recumbent attitude, found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them: as close to it as I am now to you, and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow’. There is the storyteller, close at hand, looking after us.

As an audience we weren’t allowed to feel that the cast were one group and the audience another, in fact we were encouraged to believe that we were ‘really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.’ and that would be a central theme to the entire performance.

At the centre of the stage a trio of musicians played country folk tunes on a fiddle, an accordion and a whistle, and then suddenly, imperceptibly, the story began, the music became louder, the audience began to clap in time and the cast began to sing, just like that: no announcement, no lowering of house lights, but we were off an running. During the first musical number the entire cast provided accompaniment on hand bells, which sounded sublime.

I wont give a detailed review of the show, for there are many available online, but I want to share our feelings of the adaptation and the performance: it was beautiful, it was intensely moving and it was very very clever. The set and staging was very simple, with little more than four doorframes (one at each compass-point of the stage) which rose up when Scrooge was in the reality of his office or home, but which tilted backwards and laid flat, recessed in the stage, when he was on his supernatural journeys.

Much of the narrative and dialogue was lifted directly from the original, but the writer Jack Thorne had not shrunk away from including his own changes and way of telling the story (for example the three spirits in no way resemble those written by Dickens, but were extremely effective nonetheless). Some scenes were moved around within the plot but settled into their new homes with ease, and the whole journey of Ebenezer was utterly believable and so moving. Much of Scrooge’s torment was shown to arise from his childhood fear of debt, and in these scenes there was a sense of Dickens’ own personality (when Charles was only 12 years old his father had been imprisoned for debt leaving a scar on the great man’s personality that would never heal).

There was a lovely moment when the young Scrooge was seen chatting to his little sister, Fan. Ebenezer had just been released from the lonely torment of his school but was now faced with the anger and abuse of their debt-ridden father. As Fan skipped onto the stage she held a violin in her hand and happily told her brother that she had been told she had talent and if she practiced hard she would become even better. In Dickens’ own childhood he had been sent to work in the squalor of a shoe blacking factory, whilst his little sister was sent to The Royal Academy of Music, where she had won a scholarship. The young Dickens never begrudged her successes and loved her dearly: her name was Fanny, or Fan.

And what of Mr Scrooge himself? The role was played by the very popular actor Stephen Mangan who in recent years has enjoyed a stellar career as a television ‘personality’. Apart from his roles in both comedy and drama series he has also found a niche as a presenter, winning prime-time audiences over with his flashing smile and easy wit. When such personalities are cast in a leading theatrical role it is often to satiate the marketing department, and the performance is little more than an extension of their television persona, but Mangan is so much better than that. We were fortunate to have seen him in a previous theatrical role, and had been super impressed by his performance as Sidney Stratton in ‘The Man in the White Suit’, but his performance as Ebenezer Scrooge moved the bar up many levels. He played Scrooge as an angry man, tormented by his background and his fears. I have said before that I do not like versions of A Christmas Carol in which Scrooge is angry throughout and refuses to listen to the ghosts, and to some extent Mangan’s performance took this route, but you could tell that beneath the apparent rage the new Scrooge (or, more to the point, the old Scrooge) was struggling to burst forth. And when it DID burst forth, OH! What JOY! The tears of sheer elation poured down our cheeks and I am sure many others too. Suddenly the entire audience became part of the celebrations. The young boy who is sent to fetch the turkey from the poulterer’s shop became three young boys selected from the audience being sent to the bakers, from where hey nervously and proudly carried the largest, wobbliest, fruit jelly you have ever seen onto the stage and received a rousing round of applause and a cheer (we were all cheering and applauding everything by this time!) We all joined Fred’s party and took the feast to the Cratchit’s house where old Ebenezer and Tiny Tim connected in the most moving way imaginable. And it snowed! Throughout the auditorium it snowed on us all.

Among this finale of celebration there were moving scenes too, as Scrooge tried to make his peace with those he had wronged, and the meeting of him with Belle at her house door was a particularly effective moment. There was also a reminder from the three spirits that this was not a magical overnight conversion, but one that had to be continually worked at.

As the show ended, Liz and I were on our feet clapping and cheering loudly, and the entire cast looked deeply moved by the reception. Their emotions would have been heightened by the fact that this was the final day of their run and they now had only one more opportunity to present A Christmas Carol. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas

OK, I promised not to review it. Too late!

The performance, the experience, stayed with us during the walk back to the car, throughout the journey home and on into the evening. We both felt moved, uplifted and improved by being part of it and it will stay with us for a long time to come

It was a spectacular afternoon of live theatre and I thank the entire ensemble and production team for bringing it to us.

At the end of the show Mr Mangan made a short speech pointing out that Dickens was writing about the huge poverty gap in the 1840s and the sad fact is that the problem still exists, we were encouraged to donate to the FareShare charity, who raise money and campaign to bring food poverty and food waste to an end. It is a superb and appropriate cause and if you are able to support it then please visit the website and give what you can.

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Two Nights at Highclere

Tags

A Christmas Carol, A Christmas Carol film, Charles Dickens, Downton Abbey, Highclere Castle, The Café Royal

My final week of performing continued on Monday, just a week after returning from America, with the first of two performances at the magnificent Highclere Castle.

I had left my hotel in York at around 9am and with a decent drive I managed to get home for some lunch and time with with the family (the latter having been a rarity over the previous month), but at 2.15 it was time to get back into the car and head to the beautifully castellated and be-towered cuboid home that in real life is the home of Lord and Lady Carnarvon, and in fiction is the ancestral home of the Crawley family in the guise of Downton Abbey.

I first performed at Highclere two years ago, and the event had been a great success, but sadly one that we couldn’t repeat in ’20, for obvious reasons, but in 2021 Lady Carnarvon was anxious to celebrate Christmas well in the old house and booked me for a double stint, with shows on both Monday and Tuesday.

As the sun lowered in the sky I turned into the long driveway and was delighted when a security guard flagged me down and cheerily said ‘Hello Mr Dickens, just follow the road up to the front door where you can unload!’ so I swept into the large gravel area in front of the house and pulled up outside the great front door (such a spacious area deserves a good ‘sweep’). As I opened the car door I was cheerily greeted by John, the Castle Manager, who opened the large front door for me, and helped me load my things in to the Saloon, the great space, dominated by a huge Christmas tree, which forms the heart of the house and where I would be performing.

Two years ago a decent sized stage had been erected in front of the huge stone fireplace, and that had been surrounded by around 80 seats. This year numbers had been reduced to 50, to allow guests to distance as they required, and about a metre had been lost from the stage, to allow more room between me and the front row. Once I had my furniture placed I could see that the performances this year were not destined to be terribly active ones, as I wasn’t going to have much room to move.

I chatted to John, and Charlotte, the events manager with whom I have been corresponding during the year, and ran through the running plan for the event (start at 5, interval at 5.45, 30-minute interval, second act at 6.15, finish at 7 and then join the guests for supper). I also ran through the sound queues with Charlotte, and then took myself off to one of the ‘back stage’ private rooms where I laid out my costumes and changed into costume.

As I sat waiting waiting for 5 pm to tick around an email came in from The Café Royal in the heart of London, where I was due to be performing on Wednesday evening, saying that it was with great reluctance that they had been forced to cancel the event, due to the fact that many of the guests had decided that they didn’t want to be with groups of people in the middle of London, where the Omicrom Variant of Covid had been spreading rapidly through the previous week. I had fully expected to loose some shows as the national situation worsened and there was always the possibility that the government would introduce tighter restrictions on events, and scupper the lot. If the Café Royal event was to be the only victim, then I would be relieved.

At 5 o’clock I made my way through the various corridors and met with John, who would be introducing me to the stage. All of the guests had arrived, had been given a welcoming glass of champagne and were now sat in the Saloon ready for the show. I made my way to the top of the staircase, and John walked onto the stage where he said a few words and then welcomed me. Charlotte brought the music cue in perfectly and I walked down the stairs, through the audience and up onto my little stage. To my left sat Liz and our good friends Nikki and Martin. Highclere generously offer me the opportunity of bringing guests to the show, and it was so nice to see ‘my team’ among the audience (this would be the first time that Liz has actually seen the show for two years, and the first time that Nikki and Martin had ever seen it, although Martin worked closely with me on the creation of the video version, which is once again available to rent – details at the end of the post).

Despite the lack of space to move, indeed maybe as a result of it, the show was a very good one, concentrating more on the storytelling aspect, rather than the brash theatricality. I could tell that the little pieces of knock-about business wouldn’t play well with this group, so I didn’t bother with encouraging them to gasp at Mrs Cratchit’s goose, or to sigh in delight when the pudding was produced, I just told the story, and the show was the better for it.

The interval came and went, and I was soon calling to the young boy from Scrooge’s window. When I finally wished everyone a ‘Happy Christmas’ (remembering that I was now in England), and left the stage, the applause echoed loudly around the old walls, and I returned to take my bows to all sides, indeed I was called back once more for a second round of bowing. It was a lovely and rewarding experience.

I hurried back to my dressing room where I changed into a jacket and tie, so that I could join Liz, Nikki and Martin in the festive marquee which had been erected in the courtyard at the rear of the house and where tables had been prepared for each individual bubble of audience members. The menu featured salmon and beetroot, delicious Scotch Eggs with golden yolks, a demitasse of mushroom soup, all finished up with a mince pie and a chocolate caramel cup. Glasses of champagne were regularly refilled, although with a drive ahead of us all, we had to decline further top-ups. This was a rather different dining experience to the various meals delivered to me by Uber Eats over the last few weeks!

It had been a lovely evening, made so much more special by having Liz and our friends there.

The following evening I was back at Highclere for the second show and this time as I drove up to the house there was a beautiful golden setting sun behind creating an image that would have had the film crews of Downton Abbey running for their cameras to capture.

I made my way back to the dressing room and discovered that the staff had brought in a hat stand and hung all of my costumes up for me, as well as laying my shoes neatly out. It was as if the butler had come in, which was rather grand.

The preparations for the show, and the show itself followed the same routine as the day before, although the audience were a little more restrained. On stage it is very difficult to judge how people are reacting when most of their faces are hidden behind masks, but it seemed as if everyone was having fun, and the enthusiastic applause at the end certainly backed up that supposition.

After I had taken my bows I changed and packed my things up, and returned to the Saloon. I was not joining the guests for dinner tonight, so once I had retrieved the car and brought it to the front door, I could load up and return home by 8 0’clock, where I could have a supper at home with Liz – a rare treat!

Highclere Castle is a truly wonderful venue to perform A Christmas Carol in and I am delighted that it has become a fixture on my UK tour.

For any of you who haven’t been able to see the show this year, or who need an extra fix, remember that my film version is available to rent, and you can access it through the following link

TO RENT GERALD DICKENS’ A CHRISTMAS CAROL: https://tinyurl.com/ychp7t3r

Don’t Break a Leg!

Tags

A Christmas Carol, Applebbe's, Beechwood Hotel, Best Western, Byers'Choice, Charles Dickens, Courtyard by Marriott, Ebenezer Scrooge, Lenox, London, McDonalds, Pleasant Valley Nature Reserve, The Country Cupboard

Monday was all mine to do as I liked in. So, long as by the end of it I ended up in Lewisburg Pennsylvania, I had no timetable or agenda.

Throughout the tour so far, the weather has been clear, bright, cold and beautiful and when I pulled opened the curtains, I fully expected to be greeted by the same sight that Ebenezer Scrooge saw on Christmas day: ‘No fog. No mist, but clear, bright, shining, golden sunlight’, unfortunately, it was the opposite to that, for there was a low, misty cloud hanging low over the mountains and the ground glistened wet from a light, but steady rainfall. But I was not going to let a little rain upset my morning. I am from Britain – we ‘do’ rain there.

I went down to the lobby and once again ordered the yoghurt, granola and fruit bowl. Due to staffing issues all hotels are struggling to provide the full service and at The Courtyard in Lenox there was only a very limited breakfast menu. It is the same with housekeeping services, every hotel that I have stayed in has informed me on check-in that there is no housekeeping service available, and if there is anything specifically that I need, I should ask at the front desk.

I took my breakfast to a table and removed my mask as I ate, and as I sat another man arrived and went through the process of ordering his. Once he had made his selection, the lady behind the counter asked if he would like it on a tray or in a bag. He asked her to repeat what she had said, so she replied, ‘would you like it in a bag?’ ‘What?’ he barked back at her. ‘A BAG!’ she repeated. ‘Madam, if you insist on not removing your mask, I cannot hear what you say!’ At which he grabbed his breakfast items and stomped off to a table where he angrily consumed his morning feast. It all seemed a trifle unnecessary.

Back in my room I had a fair amount of admin to do, not only sorting out details for forthcoming shows, but also liaising with Bob Byers about booking the Covid test that I am going to need before flying home in a week’s time. He had managed to find a testing station that will tie in with my various events towards the end of the week and booked an appointment for me at a convenient time.

Work finished, I packed up my cases and at 10.00 left the room. It was still drizzling outside, but I wanted my morning of fresh air and exercise, so I followed the road signs that I had noticed the day before to the Pleasant Valley Nature Reserve. The narrow road took me through woodland, where there were wonderful remote houses hiding away, and then slowly rose uphill. The surface looked muddy, but soon I realised that it was quite hard-packed ice, and the wheels were slipping and spinning: AT LAST! I could engage the All-Wheel Drive system which had thus far been redundant.

I reached the entrance to the reserve and as the office was closed on a Monday, I just took myself in and began to explore. There was a large map displayed and it showed that there were various trails, of different lengths, winding through the woodland and up onto the mountain side, so I just followed the signs and plunged into the undergrowth. It was still damp and the mist hang low over the trees, creating some mysterious and menacing views.

Some of the trails were closed due to storm damage, so I simply followed where I could. Eventually I started to climb, over rocks and branches and streams, and as I got higher, so the ice and piles of hardened snow covered more of the ground. Although this was a nature reserve, I didn’t see any animals or birds, although there was an occasional screech from far away.

As I climbed higher, and began to slip on some of the rocks, I began to think that maybe I had pushed my luck too far, for if I slipped and fell, breaking a leg, I would be alone on the side of a mountain, with no help for miles around. It was time to return to the car, and I very cautiously clambered back down until I saw a gleam of deep red through the trees.

And now it was time to drive. The journey to Lewisburg would take 4 and a half hours, and it was now 12pm. I set the SatNav unit, and left Lenox for another year. The route took me along some beautiful roads, which skirted the mountain, giving me some incredible views, despite the low cloud. I was very surprised after not long driving to discover myself crossing the state line into New York, I had no idea that it was so close, and soon I was joining the New York Throughway, a road that runs straight down the middle of the state. There were signs to Albany, Buffalo (I thought of the lovely elderly couple in The Beechwood Hotel in Worcester), Syracuse and even, at one intersection, Montreal.

After a while I pulled into a rest center and feasted on a McDonalds, before filling my little rouge Rogue up with fuel and continuing southwards passed through The Catskills and later on, when I had made it to Pennsylvania, over The Poconos.

For company I was still listening to the various podcasts about the forthcoming Ashes series, but eventually my phone lost any signal and instead I started playing my Christmas playlist, which actually I haven’t listened to much on this trip. There were all my old friends, Nat King Cole, Johnny Mathis, Bing, Lucy Rose, The Beach Boys, The Peanuts (via Vince Guaraldi) and the rest, who accompanied me across The Susquehanna River and to the very familiar Best Western hotel at The Country Cupboard store.

I checked in (being told that there was no housekeeping service) and made my way through seemingly endless corridors to the room that they always give me here, a large room with a whirlpool bath! As soon as I was settled, I ran the taps and let it fill, which took a long time (in fact it took a very long time, because I hadn’t closed the plug properly, and when I came to check the water was barely covering the bottom of the bath). Eventually it filled and I luxuriated in a bubbling, frothing tub!

Later in the evening I took myself to a nearby Applebee’s restaurant and dined on a Cajun Salmon dish (although the ‘Cajun’ aspect seemed somewhat lacking) and finished off with a very rich chocolate pud. The restaurant was filled with lots of rowdy locals, and I sat quietly at my corner table, minding my own business, watching, observing. Three guys sat at the bar, two had baseball caps on back to front, whereas the other wore his the right way round, and I wondered if there were any hierarchy involved, or if the one guy didn’t want to conform the stereotype of the other two. Actually, of course, it was just three guys wearing hats, but the musings passed a little time!

When I returned to the hotel it was windy and there was a little rain whipping about in the air, but soon I was inside and and settled down for the night, ready to perform twice at The Country Cupboard store on Tuesday.

An afterthought: when I arrived at the hotel I was chatting to Liz online, and she asked me to tell her a joke. Not able to think of anything on the spur of the moment, I quickly searched online and, among a few others, I found this: Q: What did Charles Dickens keep in his spice rack? A: It was the best of thymes and it was tye worst of thymes!

Escalate or Elevate

Tags

A Christmas Carol, Beechwood Hotel, Boston, British Airways, Charles Dickens, Disney, Ebenezer Scrooge, Hertz Car Rental, Hetahrow Airport, Nissan, Vaillancourt Folk Art

After two shows at opposite ends of Great Britain, and less than a day at home, Friday saw me resume my United States tour as I prepared to fly from London to Boston.

My alarm was set for 6am, but I woke an hour earlier than that remembering that I hadn’t packed or updated my SatNav unit. Of course, such a trifling matter was completely unimportant – I could pack it before I was due to leave at 8, and even if I didn’t, I would have my phone to assist me along the way, but in those dark, early hours, everything takes on levels of global importance.  As soon as I got up I found the small, and rather old, unit in a drawer and packed it into my case, the updating would have to be done at the airport.

Goodbyes are always difficult and this one was no different albeit wrapped up and foreshortened by the complications of getting the children dressed and out of the door ready for school. My taxi arrived on the stroke of 8 and soon I was on the way to Heathrow airport, as I had been 3 weeks previously – this was almost turning into a commute. 

The journey was flawless which was perhaps surprising during a Friday morning rush hour, and I checked in and cleared security at Heathrow Airport with very little delay, leaving me with over an hour to check the navigation unit. I logged on and sure enough the American map needed updating. Having purchased the upgrade and set the download to begin I discovered that apparently the USA has grown in the last 2 years for the new map was too large to fit onto the little device. I was given the option to select a portion of the country, and as this trip is going to focus entirely on the North East corridor, that suited me just fine.  As the updated content downloaded so my flight flashed up on the screens confirming that it would departing from gate B36, and I should make my way there.  The B gates at Heathrow Terminal 5 are separated from the main building, and to get to them you have to descend the longest escalator you have ever seen, board a shuttle train and then rise to ground level once more.  The train was extremely busy and as the crowd was disgorged, we all made for the escalator that would take us up again. There were lifts available, but everyone avoided them, presumably not wanting to be squashed into such a confined space in these Covid days, meaning that instead we were all squashed together on the escalator whilst the elevators remained empty, and therefore much safer: the apparently more risky alternative had proved itself to be the sensible option: to escalate or elevate?

At the gate I took a seat and waited for the boarding to begin, and sure enough soon a recorded female voice informed us that she invited Group 1 to board. A few expensive suits with their brief cases ambled through the priority lane but the bulk of the crowd remain unmoved, until the same voice came over the PA for a second time and told us that Group 6 was now being invited.  This was a surprise but a large bunch of us stood, gathered our bags and made for the gate, until we realised that the same voice recording was being used for the Chicago flight at the next gate, in fact the flight that I had taken a few weeks before, so we all sat sheepishly down again.

While I was preparing to board I had a message from Liz at home that will appeal to all who laugh at Mrs Cratchit’s panic-stricken antics with her Christmas pudding. Last year Liz made two puddings, one of which we steamed and ate as part of our Chritsmas lunch whilst the other remained sealed in the cool dark cupboard, where it had been ever since Liz mad made the mixture sometime in the autumn of 2020. Yesterday Liz decided to investigate to see if we would be able to eat it on Christmas day this year and to her dismay found that the entire thing had grown an outer fur of blue mould – ‘Supposin’…..supposin’…..’

Back at the gate Groups 2, 3, 4 and 5 were called and at last when ‘our’ group 6 was called I could take my rightful seat on the starboard side of the plane. 

On the last flight from Heathrow I calculated that we flew pretty well over the top of my home town, but I had been in the wrong side to get a view, so this time I had selected seat K instead of A to see if my hunch was correct.  Although there had been heavy rain and low cloud through the morning, by the time we took off the sky had cleared and I tracked our progress with interest:  There was Windsor Castle (easy to spot), the M4 and Reading. The Thames meandered around beneath us: was that the bridge at Marlowe that was the subject of a painting that used to hang in my parents’ bedroom? And then I could see the Wittenham Clumps, a favourite walking spot for us, the site of the old Didcot Power Station and then yes, there was Abingdon with the river running through it.  I could clearly see the all-weather sports stadium where my daughter goes for her football training, and the ring road around the town. There was the new housing development, and the roundabout at which the ring road intersects The Oxford Road. From there it was easy to see my own neighbourhood and I waved to Liz and the girls, as I had promised that I would.

We soared ever higher into the sky, leaving Oxfordshire behind us, and headed towards Boston. To while away the time, as the British Airways flight attendants diligently served me with a lunch of Lemon Thyme Chicken, I watched Bohemian Rhapsody again and as on the previous two occasions a tear came to my eye during the Live Aid sequence.  Following that I selected Joker, the extremely bleak prequel to the Batman franchise, and after that the joyful Disney film Moana – just to cheer me up a bit, although in fact it sent me to sleep for a while.  When I woke we had just under two hours to go and were making ‘landfall’ over the Gulf of St Lawrence. We began our long slow descent into Boston and as the cloud was very low by the time I could see the land below us we were skimming over the many little islands that lie just off the Massachusetts coast. A little bump, a skip and we were taxiing to our gate, ready to set foot on American soil once more.

For once the lines in the immigration hall were minimal and apart from trying to explain how I alone do 30 different characters in my show, the interview with the agent was not difficult and in no time I was walking towards the carousel to await the arrival of my large blue case, and in one of those rare moments of triumph as I arrived so did my case – perfect timing!

To collect a rental car at Boston airport you have to get on a shuttle bus so before I braved the cold windy and wet weather, I popped into a rest room, before dragging my cases to the curb side and waiting for a bus on route 33. Eventually once arrived and a large group piled in, loading our luggage onto the various racks, and just as we pulled away I discovered that I didn’t have my phone with me – in a horrible moment of clarity I realised that I had left it in the rest room, on a small shelf.

There was nothing to do than to stay on the bus and do the whole lap of the airport again, until I was back at Terminal E, with no great hope of being united with my phone. However the arrivals lounge was very empty, obviously with no other flights having landed since mine, and I hurried back to the rest room, looked at the metal shelf and had my faith in human nature restored, for there lay my phone.

I once more waited for bus 33 and once more was taken to the rental car center, where I was due to pick up a vehicle from Hertz. At the desk I asked for a four wheel drive car, as I will be using this vehicle throughout the trip and there maybe snow and ice along the way. After a little while of computer tapping, the Hertz agent said that she had an All Wheel Drive car, if that was ok? She said it rather apologetically as if she was truly sorry that she didn’t have a 4-wheel drive, only an all wheel drive one, and I confirmed that it would be fine, mentally chastising myself for the lapse in my conversational American language skills.

The paperwork completed I made my way into the garage to discover who would be my friend, protector and companion for the next three weeks and found a rather smart deep metallic red Nissan Rogue. I loaded my cases, set the satnav unit which came to life instantly and informed me that the journey to Worcester would take just under an hour. I sped through the subterranean road system of Boston and then passed Fenway Park on my left before leaving the city behind me. The drive seemed reassuringly familiar and certainly not as if it had been two years before I last made it. The newly downloaded map still requested that I turn the wrong way at the intersection where the hotel sat, and as I have done for so many years, I ignored it and drove to the car park of the Beechwood Hotel.

Having checked in I had a little time to unpack and hang my costumes so that the worst of the travelling wrinkles would be gone by Saturday’s performances, and then had a short rest before meeting up with Gary and Judi Vaillancourt for a ‘welcome home’ dinner. It was lovely to be with my old friends again, and once more it hardly seemed as if it had been two years since last we gathered.

Outside the windows snow began to fall, and it really seemed as if Christmas was coming back to life.

Pleading my Case

Tags

A Christmas Carol, Buckingham Palace, Byers'Choice, Charles Dickens, James Bond, London, Mid Continent Public Library, US Embassy

Throughout the last few weeks there has been a great sense of uncertainty about the possibility of me returning to America for the first time in two years. There was a moment of relief and excitement when an announcement was made by the US government stating that the travel ban to visitors from the UK would be lifted and fully vaccinated passengers would be allowed to disembark onto American soil once more. The devil, however, is in the detail and it soon became apparent to me, the Byers family and Stacey, our brilliant immigration attorney in PA, that in all likelihood the lifting of restrictions would not encompass my first scheduled trip due to begin on 4 November. We had to return to plan A, which would involve me pleading.

Under the terms of the ban, the only individuals who would be admitted into the country were those who could prove that they deserved an NIE, or a National Interest Exemption. This ‘loophole’ for want of a better word, was included so that those such as scientists, doctors, charity and aid workers etc could offer their expertise to help America through the worst of the pandemic, but as restrictions began to lift it became apparent that travelling in the National Interest could embrace so much more, including bringing live entertainment to communities starved of it for almost two years, To be granted an NIE an individual has to submit a 500 word letter explaining the reasons for the request, and then present themselves at the US Embassy (in my case in London) to be interviewed, at which point they would be invited to plead their case. Not only did the national interest have to be proven but in the case of a theatrical production there had to be no doubt that it couldn’t happen without the applicant being present (this last point was fairly self-evident in my case, it being one man theatre.) The decision would be at the whim of a particular agent and could not be challenged, or a further plea made – it was a one shot deal.

In America Bob and Pam Byers encouraged all of the venues where I was due to travel to submit their own letters of support, focussing on the economic benefit of me travelling – this not only being for their individual businesses but also for the local communities which will benefit from people journeying from other states and therefore using hotels, restaurants and retail outlets. The other thing we focussed on was joy! I have been touring the USA since 1995 and most of the venues on the 2021 schedule have hosted me for many years (in the case of The Mid Continent Public Library in Missouri, every year), and there is a huge sense of tradition: many attendees say that ‘It is not Christmas until we’ve seen Gerald’. In Missouri there are mothers who bring their babies to my shows, having been bought by their own parents as babies 25 years ago! That is tradition, and although unquantifiable it is definitely tangible.

So, early on the morning of October 13th I drove into London, not wishing to jostle with others on public transport, and at 8am I presented myself at the first checkpoint, on the pavement outside the impressive cube-like structure that is the new Embassy at Nine Elms on the south bank of the River Thames. Behind the anonymity of our masks all the hopefuls there shuffled forward until out paperwork and passports had been checked and we were permitted into the building. I was glad not to have made the mistake of the man in front of me who had turned up a full twenty four hours early for HIS appointment and was sent away. Inside the building there were airport-style security checks, as well as further document checks (at which point I was issued number N33), and we were herded into a large elevator (we were on US soil, so I shall use the native language), and disgorged into to the first floor room where everyone took a chair and stared at screens waiting for their number to ping up.

Unbeknown to me in the same room sat Liz’s cousin, who works for one of the major airlines, and who was also applying for a visa, Our appointments were at exactly the same time but thanks to being masked, we didn’t see or recognise each other as we waited.

PING. N 17. PING. N23. PING. N 30. Each time the screen added a new number everyone looked anxiously at their ticket, as if the number that they had memorised had somehow changed and they were in danger of missing their slot. Eventually N 33 was shown and I presented myself to window number 7 where a serious young agent looked at all my papers. I began to plea: ‘I believe that I need to apply for a National Interest Exem…’ but I was cut short with, ‘that’s all we are doing here, Sir.’ Ohhhh Kayyyy then. I resumed silence. Having satisfied himself that I was who I said I was and that the documents that I had given him belonged to me: ‘mask down!’ He told me to take another seat and wait for my number to be called once more. The next interview would give me my chance to plead.

I sat and I looked at other applicants as well as trying to eavesdrop on their interviews, not in a suspicious or creepy way, but to gauge the tone of the conversation in case there was anything useful I could learn. It seemed to me that everyone was quite cheerful and nobody seemed to be sloping away in deep disappointment.

Eventually N 33 was called again and I went to window 17 where a cheery young lady greeted me with a ‘good morning, how are you doing today?’ This was getting off to a good start. ‘Now sir, Have you had a visa from us before?’

‘I have.’

‘Thats great! let’s have a look,’ and she tapped away at her keyboard. ‘Oh, my, you have had a LOT of visas! What is it that you do?’ I explained about my show and the venues that I have visited over the years. She seemed terribly impressed and added lots of ‘that’s amazing!’s and ‘wow, so interesting!’s into the conversation.

I was now definitely ready to plead my case and to convince her how vital I was to the American economy, and to the celebration of Christmas in the USA in general, when she rather disarmed me by saying ‘OK, you’re all set!’ She checked that the words ‘National Interest’ were on her screen and sent me on my way.

I left the embassy at 9.20am (later, chatting to my cousin-in-law on Facebook, I discovered that she had left at 9.14! Both of us having sent messages to our respective other halves to tell them our news).

It was a beautiful morning in London and I decided to walk along the river, past Westminster Abbey (where I gave a little nod of respect to Charles Dickens who is buried there, across Horse Guard’s Parade, over the Mall, around Piccadilly Circus and to Hamleys toy store in Regent’s Street. The purpose of my visit was not simply to regress into childhood, although that was a pleasant biproduct, but to buy a white fluffy toy cat. In my show Mr Dickens is Coming I dramatize a passage from the Pickwick Papers as if it were from a James Bond film (circa late 70s, early 80s) and at the conclusion of the piece produce a white cat as I hiss ‘Not so fast, Meeester Bond!’ It is a cheap gag but it has worked well over the years. Unfortunately this year our shed was overrun with mice who gnawed at everything destroying, with great irony, my old prop cat. With a performance of ‘Mr Dickens’ fast approaching I needed a replacement.

Kitty purchased I set out to return to my car and the route took me across Green Park and past Buckingham Palace where to my amazement the Changing of the Guard ceremony was taking place. For a few minutes I became a delighted tourist and watched the band of whatever regiment it was marching down The Mall and through the iron gates of the palace.

I continued on with a jaunty step (perhaps even with the hint of a march) and retrieved my car from the garage in Pimlico

My trip to London complete I drove home in the happy knowledge that my 2021 tour of the United States is on!

Questions. So Many Questions

Tags

A Christmas Carol, A Christmas Carol 2020, Bob Cratchit, Ebenezer Scrooge, Jacob Marley, Kansas City, Mid Continent Public Library, Nephew Fred, The City of London

Over the last few days I have spent quite a bit of time sitting in front of my laptop in a Christmas sweater (red with snowmen, to be precise) chatting via Zoom about my new film of A Christmas Carol. Yesterday I spent a very entertaining hour in the company of audience members from The Mid Continent Public Library Service in Kansas City who posed some fascinating questions, and I thought it may be fun to air some of them here so that the debate can move onto a larger platform. The answers to these questions are open to interpretation and derive not so much from fact but from a few clues buried deep within the text that was written so quickly in December 1843. I hope you have fun coming to your own conclusions:

Friendship: was Jacob Marley Scrooge’s only true friend?

We know that Scrooge and Marley were close in that they formed a business and ran it together for ‘I don’t know how many years’. The two men presumably shared the same opinions, morals and aspirations and the firm had the name of Scrooge and Marley. Ebenezer, we are told, never painted out Jacob’s name after his death, although that was probably less to do with friendship and more to do with the cost of paint! Scrooge was, as Dickens points out, his sole friend and his sole mourner. So, yes a friendship was certainly there, but does it go deeper?

The opening chapter of the book bears Marley’s name and it is also in the first sentence of the novel, in fact it is the very first word, so we know from the outset that Jacob Marley is important to what will unfold, but just how strong is his influence over old Ebenezer will be confirmed in the following pages. For the rest of the first chapter not a single other character is referred to by their name, even though there is plenty of traffic passing through Ebenezer’s office on Christmas Eve: apart from his faithful clerk who sits in a ‘sort of a tank’, Scrooge’s ever cheerful and faithful nephew comes to call, as do two gentlemen collecting for charity. A carol singer stoops to the keyhole in the hope of making a penny. Not only does Scrooge dismiss all of these individuals but neither he or the narrator refers to any of them by name, they are simply ‘the clerk’, ‘the nephew’ and ‘the gentlemen’. The next time a name is mentioned is when Scrooge is standing in front of his door: ‘Let it also be borne in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed one thought on Marley since his last mention of his seven years dead partner that afternoon.’ Marley again.

When the ghost eventually appears, the two men, after a bit of ill-tempered banter (‘Can you sit down?’ ‘I can!’ ‘Do it then’, ‘You don’t believe in me’, ‘I don’t!’), fall into a conversation as Marley warns his friend what lies in store and, more to the point, Scrooge listens Ebenezer doesn’t simply call him Marley, but actually uses his first name, ‘Jacob, tell me more, speak comfort to me Jacob.’ Indeed, Scrooge goes so far as to say that ”you were always a good friend to me. Thank ‘ee’.

The chains that Jacob bears belong also to Ebenezer and Dickens uses this imagery to shackle them together in genuine friendship. Unless Scrooge can change, unless he learns from the three spirits, only then will those chains be broken.

Of course Scrooge has little choice but to spend time with the ghosts and indeed he does repent and change his ways and at the end of the book he refers to Jacob just once before he rushes into the streets and visits his nephew whom he addresses as ‘Fred’ upon arrival. The next morning he surprises his clerk and wishes him ‘A Merry Christmas Bob!’ And of his old long deceased friend? ‘Scrooge had no further intercourse with the spirits….’, there is no name, Marley has now become a function, as the mortal characters were in the opening chapter, and is consigned to the skies to continue his long and weary journey – unless by helping his only true friend Jacob is also released from the shackles that bound him to Ebenezer and is allowed to leave purgatory to spend eternity at peace.

A final observation about friendship was pointed out by the questioner in Kansas City: when Fred, the nephew, is pleading with Scrooge he says ‘I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be friends?’ At that point friendship seems to be out of the question but it is obviously an important target for Fred to aim for.

Was Scrooge’s father visited by spirits too, thereby softening his attitude and bringing his son home at Christmas?

When Ebenezer is taken to see his old school by the Ghost of Christmas Past he is saddened to see ‘his poor forgotten self as he used to be’ and can only mutter ‘poor boy’ as he remembers the solitude and despondency of the Christmas holidays when he alone was left in the long bare room. Every other child had been taken home but Scrooge’s father seems not to have cared for his son. When the spirit shows Scrooge another Christmas we can assume that a number of years have passed, for the description of decay is more than might be expected in a single year: ‘Scrooge’s former self grew larger at the words and the room became a little darker and more dirty. The panels shrunk, the windows cracked; fragments of plaster fell from the ceiling and the naked laths were shown instead.’ We are certainly led to believe that every Christmas that past was the same and young Scrooge was simply abandoned. But suddenly a ray of light bursts into the scene, in the person of Scrooge’s younger sister Fan, who skips and squeals and jumps and hugs before telling Ebenezer that ‘I have come to bring you home dear brother, to bring you home, home, home! Home for good and all, home for ever and ever. Father is so much kinder than he used to be, that home’s like Heaven. He spoke so gently to me one dear night when I was going to bed, that I was not afraid to ask him again if you might come home; and he said Yes you should; and sent me in a coach to bring you. And you’re to be a man! And are never to come back here; but first we are to be together all the Christmas time long and have the merriest time in all the world!’

I have always assumed in the past that Scrooge’s father only recalled him from school because he is of an age at which he can work and earn his keep, and this is undoubtedly true, but there is more, there is a tenderness in the gesture and little Fan’s words tell a deeper story: ‘Father is so much kinder than he used to be….’, we have to ask ‘how was he before?’ Fan intimates that she used to be scared of him at her bed time, so was he violent and abusive to his children? It is plain that he is looking after the family alone for there is no mention of a mother, so perhaps he was depressed or possibly alcoholic, but now the little girl tells us that ‘home is like Heaven’: a huge change has come about somehow. If Scrooge was simply to be sent to work by a dominant, abusive patriarch it is unlikely that he and Fan would be allowed to be together all the Christmas time long having the merriest time in all the world. Something has definitely altered in the Scrooge household, and it is entirely possible that in this world of ghosts, the spirits have already been at work (later in the book, the Ghost of Christmas Present tells Ebenezer that ‘my time on this globe is very brief….’ – the word THIS suggests that he has plenty of other Christmas days to visit.

A lovely little touch is that little Fan explains to Ebenezer that father sent her in a coach to bring him home and this is mirrored at the very end of the book when he sees the prize turkey and exclaims ‘Why, it is impossible to carry that to Camden Town. You must have a cab!’

The reconciliation of Scrooge and his father is repeated in the reconciliation of Scrooge and his nephew, his only living relation and the only link to his little sister Fan.

Charles Dickens also had a sister named Fan, short for Frances, although she was two years older than he and not younger as in the book, but the difference in their childhood lifestyles was just as profound. Whilst young Charles was sent to work at Warren’s blacking factory and his education was paid scant attention to, his sister was sent to the Royal Academy of Music where she won two prizes. The gulf between the siblings never led to any open jealousy between them although Dickens would confide later in life how much it secretly hurt him. Frances had two sons, one being very sickly and weak – a certain model for Tiny Tim. But unlike the fictional child, Harry would die in 1848, shortly after his mother. They were buried together at Highgate Cemetery.

Frances Dickens

The Charity Collectors

This section is based purely on my invention and I cite little evidence from the text for my conclusions, but there is a question to be asked: who are the charity collectors?

We know that Scrooge is well known in the City of London and that his office is in a most prestigious area close to the Bank of England and the Stock Exchange During the vision of the future Ebenezer is shown other affluent merchants discussing his death as they fiddle with gold seals on their watch chains (an important detail to establish wealth and success), and we are told that Scrooge recognises them. One of the gentlemen says ‘When I come to think of it, I’m not at all sure that I wasn’t his most particular friend; for we used to stop and speak whenever we met.’ The reason for pointing all of this out is to ask why on earth the charity collectors didn’t know if Scrooge was Scrooge or if he was Marley? If they had any background in the City they would have known that soliciting Scrooge for a donation would have been futile and it would have been much better use of their time to pass by the door and head towards a more benevolent gent.

So, we must come to the conclusion that these particular collectors are new to town and I have invented a scenario in which their other more experienced and hardened colleagues have sent them into the lion’s den as a kind of prank, or possibly an initiation test. Of course they feel the full force of Scrooge’s ire even though they try to convince him with their carefully prepared statements, but leave with nothing seeing that it would be ‘useless to pursue their point’ No doubt they slouch back to the office where they are greeted with huge guffaws of laughter.

Imagine then, only a few hours later, next morning indeed, when old Ebenezer bounds up to them, wishes them a Merry Christmas and whispers that he wants to make a huge pledge to the charity, ‘a good many back payments are included in it, I assure you!’. I imagine they rush back to the office with the news and calmly tell their astounded friends ‘oh, that old Scrooge, he just needed the right approach, that’s all! Simple really, I don’t know what all of the fuss was about!’

I am sure that there are plenty of other scenes in the book which can be disassembled and explored, and I would be fascinated to know of anything that you may have spotted or questioned. The film has given me the opportunity to look at my script, and the original material, from a different perspective and it may well be that come Christmas 2021 the show might have changed a little…..

To view the film go to my website: http://www.geralddickens.com

Luxury! The Café Royal and The Williamsburg Inn

Tags

A Christmas Carol, A Christmas Carol film, Colonial Williamsburg, London, Regents Street, The Hotel Café Royal, The Queen of Englnad, The Regency Room, Williamsburg Inn

This week the British government announced new lockdown measures which place London in the very highest tier of restrictions. Many people’s work and social lives will be affected by this measure but it was absolutely necessary as the infection rates in the capital city were doubling every five days and beginning to spiral out of control. For me this has meant the cancellation of eight shows over the course of the next week which were due to be performed in one of the most prestigious locations in the city: The Hotel Café Royal on Regent’s Street. The relationship with the Café Royal is a new one for this year and together we were greatly looking forward to entertaining guests with my performance of A Christmas Carol whilst they ate a sumptuous afternoon tea in the spectacular gilded and mirrored surroundings of the Oscar Wilde Lounge.

We are very hopeful that we can reschedule, and perform early in the new year, so watch this space!

The disappointment of the loss of my opportunity to experience the luxury of the Café Royal was slightly mollified by today’s phone memory photographs, for this was the day a few years ago when I was performing at one of my favourite USA venues: The Williamsburg Inn in the heart of Colonial Williamsburg.

The Inn is a truly elegant and spectacular hotel with surroundings and service of the highest calibre. Each suite (no such thing as something so mundane as a ‘room’ there) is different and furnished with items of antique furniture, whilst soft music purrs from a Bose sound system. Coffee makers sit ready to fill tiny china cups which will sit on tiny china saucers. The bath tubs are the size of small swimming pools and the towels are soft and fluffy. I have visited Williamsburg for many many years now and have formed a great relationship with the staff, as well as with the guests who return each year to watch my shows.

Any stay at The Williamsburg Inn is special but on a few occasions I have been very fortunate to be given the suite that was used by the Queen herself when she visited in 2007. Oh what luxury! As I entered and walked from room to room I imagined the Queen doing the same: Her Majesty sat on that sofa, she wrote at that desk, she slept in that bed, and in the bathroom….no, I couldn’t allow myself to imagine her in there!

As would have happened at The Café Royal I always performed during a meal service at the Inn, either afternoon tea or dinner, and all of the events were held in the beautiful Regency Room. My ‘stage’ is on the dance floor in the centre of the room and the tables are set all around meaning that I can roam and run into the audience and even cajole individuals to become part of the story, which is always fun.

I have may close friends in Williamsburg, most especially Ryan Fletcher – a gentle giant who always made my introductions at the beginning of each performance. Ryan is an opera singer, who passes his great knowledge and skill to students at the nearby William & Mary College. Ryan and I have shared many convivial evenings discussing life on the road and on occasion we have been fortunate enough to be joined by his wife Jeannie, and also Liz who for a few years was able to fly from England to join me for the last week or so of my tours and share the luxury of The Williamsburg Inn.

A few years ago I was asked to do a photo and video shoot for the marketing team at Williamsburg, the team set me up in one of the lounges where I was surrounded by lights, flash units and reflectors. Would I mind simply reading from A Christmas Carol while they captured the footage that they needed and during that afternoon my show changed completely.

As I relaxed into an armchair I realised that the a simple telling of the story was much more effective than the overly dramatic way I was currently utilising. I used to be scared if I didn’t get emphasis from every single word, so a passage of charming dialogue was used like a sledge hammer to batter my audiences into submission: EV-ER-Y SYL-L-A-BLE WAS EMPH-A-SISED TO MAKE IT MORE DRA-MA-TIC! There was no light and shade. For that evening’s show I decided to try in a new style and the show was transformed, it became much more personal and re-captured the beautiful device that Charles Dickens used to place the narrator at the reader’s shoulder. It is for this reason that in the film version I have used lots of narrative direct to the camera.

So, my 2020 Christmas season has been culled a little further but there are still two events that have survived: in Liverpool and Henley. keep your fingers crossed!

To watch my film version of A Christmas Carol go to: http://www.geralddickens.com/films.html

Seven Dials

Tags

Beer Street, Boz, Charles Dickens, Gin Lane, London, Seven Dials, Sketches, Waren's Blacking, William Hogarth

The Seven Dials Sketch was published in September 1835 in Bells Life in London and is the first of the ‘Scenes and Characters’ series, in which Dickens presents little snapshots of London life.

Seven Dials is almost a literary recreation of the famous William Hogarth prints Beer Street and Gin Lane, and presents a vivid picture of the force of character among the poor.  This is not a campaigning piece, it is an observation.  We even get a glimpse of Boz himself in the form of ‘The shabby-genteel man…’  who is ‘…an object of some mystery, but as he leads a life of seclusion, and never was known to buy anything beyond an occasional pen, except half-pints of coffee, penny loaves, and ha’porths of ink, his fellow-lodgers very naturally suppose him to be an author; and rumours are current in the Dials, that he writes poems for Mr. Warren.’  Mr Warren had owned the factory that made shoe blacking, where a 12 year old Charles Dickens had miserably worked

 

Seven Dials

We have always been of opinion that if Tom King and the Frenchman had not immortalised Seven Dials, Seven Dials would have immortalised itself. Seven Dials! the region of song and poetry—first effusions, and last dying speeches: hallowed by the names of Catnach and of Pitts—names that will entwine themselves with costermongers, and barrel-organs, when penny magazines shall have superseded penny yards of song, and capital punishment be unknown!

 

 
Look at the construction of the place. The Gordian knot was all very well in its way: so was the maze of Hampton Court: so is the maze at the Beulah Spa: so were the ties of stiff white neckcloths, when the difficulty of getting one on, was only to be equalled by the apparent impossibility of ever getting it off again. But what involutions can compare with those of Seven Dials? Where is there such another maze of streets, courts, lanes, and alleys? Where such a pure mixture of Englishmen and Irishmen, as in this complicated part of London? We boldly aver that we doubt the veracity of the legend to which we have adverted. We can suppose a man rash enough to inquire at random—at a house with lodgers too—for a Mr. Thompson, with all but the certainty before his eyes, of finding at least two or three Thompsons in any house of moderate dimensions; but a Frenchman—a Frenchman in Seven Dials! Pooh! He was an Irishman. Tom King’s education had been neglected in his infancy, and as he couldn’t understand half the man said, he took it for granted he was talking French.

 

 
The stranger who finds himself in ‘The Dials’ for the first time, and stands Belzoni-like, at the entrance of seven obscure passages, uncertain which to take, will see enough around him to keep his curiosity and attention awake for no inconsiderable time. From the irregular square into which he has plunged, the streets and courts dart in all directions, until they are lost in the unwholesome vapour which hangs over the house-tops, and renders the dirty perspective uncertain and confined; and lounging at every corner, as if they came there to take a few gasps of such fresh air as has found its way so far, but is too much exhausted already, to be enabled to force itself into the narrow alleys around, are groups of people, whose appearance and dwellings would fill any mind but a regular Londoner’s with astonishment.

 

 
On one side, a little crowd has collected round a couple of ladies, who having imbibed the contents of various ‘three-outs’ of gin and bitters in the course of the morning, have at length differed on some point of domestic arrangement, and are on the eve of settling the quarrel satisfactorily, by an appeal to blows, greatly to the interest of other ladies who live in the same house, and tenements adjoining, and who are all partisans on one side or other.

 

 
‘Vy don’t you pitch into her, Sarah?’ exclaims one half-dressed matron, by way of encouragement. ‘Vy don’t you? if my ’usband had treated her with a drain last night, unbeknown to me, I’d tear her precious eyes out—a wixen!’

 

 
‘What’s the matter, ma’am?’ inquires another old woman, who has just bustled up to the spot.

 

 
‘Matter!’ replies the first speaker, talking at the obnoxious combatant, ‘matter! Here’s poor dear Mrs. Sulliwin, as has five blessed children of her own, can’t go out a charing for one arternoon, but what hussies must be a comin’, and ’ticing avay her oun’ ’usband, as she’s been married to twelve year come next Easter Monday, for I see the certificate ven I vas a drinkin’ a cup o’ tea vith her, only the werry last blessed Ven’sday as ever was sent. I ’appen’d to say promiscuously, “Mrs. Sulliwin,” says I—’

 

 
‘What do you mean by hussies?’ interrupts a champion of the other party, who has evinced a strong inclination throughout to get up a branch fight on her own account (‘Hooroar,’ ejaculates a pot-boy in parenthesis, ‘put the kye-bosk on her, Mary!’), ‘What do you mean by hussies?’ reiterates the champion.

 

 
‘Niver mind,’ replies the opposition expressively, ‘niver mind; you go home, and, ven you’re quite sober, mend your stockings.’

 

 
This somewhat personal allusion, not only to the lady’s habits of intemperance, but also to the state of her wardrobe, rouses her utmost ire, and she accordingly complies with the urgent request of the bystanders to ‘pitch in,’ with considerable alacrity. The scuffle became general, and terminates, in minor play-bill phraseology, with ‘arrival of the policemen, interior of the station-house, and impressive dénouement.’

 

 
In addition to the numerous groups who are idling about the gin-shops and squabbling in the centre of the road, every post in the open space has its occupant, who leans against it for hours, with listless perseverance. It is odd enough that one class of men in London appear to have no enjoyment beyond leaning against posts. We never saw a regular bricklayer’s labourer take any other recreation, fighting excepted. Pass through St. Giles’s in the evening of a week-day, there they are in their fustian dresses, spotted with brick-dust and whitewash, leaning against posts. Walk through Seven Dials on Sunday morning: there they are again, drab or light corduroy trousers, Blucher boots, blue coats, and great yellow waistcoats, leaning against posts. The idea of a man dressing himself in his best clothes, to lean against a post all day!

 

 
The peculiar character of these streets, and the close resemblance each one bears to its neighbour, by no means tends to decrease the bewilderment in which the unexperienced wayfarer through ‘the Dials’ finds himself involved. He traverses streets of dirty, straggling houses, with now and then an unexpected court composed of buildings as ill-proportioned and deformed as the half-naked children that wallow in the kennels. Here and there, a little dark chandler’s shop, with a cracked bell hung up behind the door to announce the entrance of a customer, or betray the presence of some young gentleman in whom a passion for shop tills has developed itself at an early age: others, as if for support, against some handsome lofty building, which usurps the place of a low dingy public-house; long rows of broken and patched windows expose plants that may have flourished when ‘the Dials’ were built, in vessels as dirty as ‘the Dials’ themselves; and shops for the purchase of rags, bones, old iron, and kitchen-stuff, vie in cleanliness with the bird-fanciers and rabbit-dealers, which one might fancy so many arks, but for the irresistible conviction that no bird in its proper senses, who was permitted to leave one of them, would ever come back again. Brokers’ shops, which would seem to have been established by humane individuals, as refuges for destitute bugs, interspersed with announcements of day-schools, penny theatres, petition-writers, mangles, and music for balls or routs, complete the ‘still life’ of the subject; and dirty men, filthy women, squalid children, fluttering shuttlecocks, noisy battledores, reeking pipes, bad fruit, more than doubtful oysters, attenuated cats, depressed dogs, and anatomical fowls, are its cheerful accompaniments.

 

 
If the external appearance of the houses, or a glance at their inhabitants, present but few attractions, a closer acquaintance with either is little calculated to alter one’s first impression. Every room has its separate tenant, and every tenant is, by the same mysterious dispensation which causes a country curate to ‘increase and multiply’ most marvellously, generally the head of a numerous family.

 

 
The man in the shop, perhaps, is in the baked ‘jemmy’ line, or the fire-wood and hearth-stone line, or any other line which requires a floating capital of eighteen-pence or thereabouts: and he and his family live in the shop, and the small back parlour behind it. Then there is an Irish labourer and his family in the back kitchen, and a jobbing man—carpet-beater and so forth—with his family in the front one. In the front one-pair, there’s another man with another wife and family, and in the back one-pair, there’s ‘a young ’oman as takes in tambour-work, and dresses quite genteel,’ who talks a good deal about ‘my friend,’ and can’t ‘a-bear anything low.’ The second floor front, and the rest of the lodgers, are just a second edition of the people below, except a shabby-genteel man in the back attic, who has his half-pint of coffee every morning from the coffee-shop next door but one, which boasts a little front den called a coffee-room, with a fireplace, over which is an inscription, politely requesting that, ‘to prevent mistakes,’ customers will ‘please to pay on delivery.’ The shabby-genteel man is an object of some mystery, but as he leads a life of seclusion, and never was known to buy anything beyond an occasional pen, except half-pints of coffee, penny loaves, and ha’porths of ink, his fellow-lodgers very naturally suppose him to be an author; and rumours are current in the Dials, that he writes poems for Mr. Warren.

 

 
Now anybody who passed through the Dials on a hot summer’s evening, and saw the different women of the house gossiping on the steps, would be apt to think that all was harmony among them, and that a more primitive set of people than the native Diallers could not be imagined. Alas! the man in the shop ill-treats his family; the carpet-beater extends his professional pursuits to his wife; the one-pair front has an undying feud with the two-pair front, in consequence of the two-pair front persisting in dancing over his (the one-pair front’s) head, when he and his family have retired for the night; the two-pair back will interfere with the front kitchen’s children; the Irishman comes home drunk every other night, and attacks everybody; and the one-pair back screams at everything. Animosities spring up between floor and floor; the very cellar asserts his equality. Mrs. A. ‘smacks’ Mrs. B.’s child for ‘making faces.’ Mrs. B. forthwith throws cold water over Mrs. A.’s child for ‘calling names.’ The husbands are embroiled—the quarrel becomes general—an assault is the consequence, and a police-officer the result.