Rain, Tea and 1066 – a Very British Sort of a Day

Tags

A Christmas Carol, Bayeux Tapestry, Charles Dickens, D56, Earl Grey Tea, Ebenezer Scrooge, King George III, Norman Rockwell, Ventfort Hall Mansion

Lenox in The Berkshires is a lovely place to be, a small town in beautiful scenery. I have been here when there has been thick snow on the ground, and I have been in here in clear bright sunshine in a cloudless blue sky, indeed I have been here when there have been both of those things together. Wednesday in Lenox, however, was less New England, more old England, as the skies were leaden, and the rain fell constantly.

I had an almost full day before me, as I didn’t have to be at the venue, Ventfort Hall, until 5pm, but the idea of driving into the mountains and maybe hiking a little suddenly didn’t appeal very much. I unpacked my costumes and hung them on the rail, and at around 7.45 went down to the lobby for breakfast. I took a bag of my regular day-to-day clothes to put in the laundry but was somewhat dismayed to discover that both washer and drier were full. I took the laundry bag to a table and then went to the counter where I ordered some French toast and strawberries, with orange juice and coffee. As I sat, I noticed a lady at another table, with a large plastic bottle of laundry detergent next to her and knew her to be my victorious competitor.

As I ate, another customer went to the bar and asked for some tea, to which the assistant asked, ‘just plain old Early Grey?’ This seemed rather dismissive of what is rather an elegant blend, seen by some to be traditionally drunk by the more respectable classes of society. In England if it is just a ‘plain old..’ cup, we tend to say, ‘builder’s tea’. Curious as to who Earl Grey was, I took at my phone and did a little research and discovered that the tea is probably named in honour of the 2nd Earl (although nobody seems quite sure for certain), who was born in 1764, and rose to become prime minister of Great Britain in 1830. In his early career he resigned as Foreign Secretary over a disagreement of policy by King George III, who had had his own troubles with tea in the past, most particularly in Massachusetts. It is suggested, in family lore, that the 2nd Earl (christened Charles, but not the Charles Grey who would go on to blow Blofeld in the James Bond films) had engaged a Chinese mandarin to create a perfect blend of tea to counteract the taste of the water at the family seat in Northumberland, which was rich in lime. The addition of bergamot into a black tea created the taste the Earl desired, and so was established the beverage that had just been ordered in Lenox, MA.

I finished my breakfast and, checked in at the laundry, where both machines were still spinning, so returned to my room. There was no great rush, although I did have a radio interview coming in at 10am. After a while I went back to the laundry, and found that the washing machine was now empty, although the lady from the breakfast room stood guard over the drier. We chatted for a while, and she asked me what I was doing in town, and was I here with the other Brits who were at the hotel? Apparently, there are a few of us here, maybe the others are part of a tea-checking delegation.

As 10 came around I called the number that connected me with a radio station in New Hampshire, and instantly I was talking with the morning show, hosted by Greg Kretschmar, and his team which included a gentleman by the name of Roadkill. I think I have been interviewed by a Greg before, but never by a Roadkill, I am quite sure of that!

After the interview, I pottered around for a while, finished the laundry and got everything ready for the evening’s show, and decided to get out for a little bit, despite the weather, to stave off the onset of cabin fever. In past years I have driven into the nearby town of Lee, and I decided to do the same and explore some of the antique shops there. The weather was getting worse, so a gentle stroll through the streets was not really an option. I parked right outside Finders Keepers and made the dash from road to store, without getting too wet. An antique is something that is over 100 years old, and there wasn’t a great deal in the shop that qualified, but there was some interesting stuff, nonetheless. One stall featured lots of ceramic houses made by Department 56, a company with whom, I used to work, mainly because they produced a range called Dickens Village. When I started touring in the 1990s D56 villages where the complete rage, people collected manically, and each Christmas would create whole towns, with streets and rivers and people in order to display their collections. Desirable pieces fetched huge amounts of money and the world of D56 was quite an industry, but, seeing them in the store, dusty, unloved, at bargain basement prices, told me everything about the decline of the company in recent years.

Elsewhere in the shop there was a surprising amount of other Dickensiana, including a toby jug in the shape of Sam Weller and a couple of Norman Rockwell prints, one featuring Mr and Mrs Fezziwig dancing, and another of the beaming face of Mr Pickwick. There was also a lusterware jug with a scene from the Bayeaux Tapestry (which is not a tapestry, but an embroidery, and was not made in Bayeux, but in Canterbury), the famous 70-meter-long cloth depicting the events leading up to the Battle of Hastings in 1066 – a date that every English child knows. All in all, I felt quite at home in Finders Keepers!

I walked up the street to another antique store, but the weather was really starting to close in now, so decided to get back to the car before I got completely drenched.

I drove to a large grocery store and picked up a salad for my lunch, then returned to the hotel room and sat at the little desk to eat it. Throughout this time, I was exchanging messages with Liz back home and with the girls about to have their supper, it seemed a good time to have a video call. They told me about what they had been up to at school, and about the trip on Thursday to watch a pantomime in Oxford, which they were excited about. Soon it was time for their meal, so we all sadly said our goodbyes, and clicked the little red button to close the call, which always seems very brutal.

I spent the next hour or so catching up with some admin, emailing back and forth with upcoming venues, both in America and England, as well as providing information to my publishers about my new book, which will be available during next year’s tour.

When my work was done, I switched on the TV and watched an enthralling match from the World Cup, Argentina against Poland. I have never particularly been a football fan, but with our eldest daughter playing, and loving the sport, I have become more aware of what makes a good team, and can appreciate great play, and oh my, was there some great play in that match!

Late afternoon was drawing in, and the weather was too, with heavy winds now whipping the even heavier rain around. I collected my costumes and roller bag (I had put my hat and cane in the car earlier when I went out) and made a dash across the parking lot for the Santa Fe. Even in that short run I got completely soaked.

The drive to Ventfort Hall was only a few minutes, and in no time I was turning into the little driveway which led me up to the red mansion that had been built in 1891. This was my fourth visit, but it seems as if Ventfort has been part of my tours for much longer than that, for it feels very friendly and welcoming. I rang at the door, which was opened by Haley, who has looked after me during all of my visits. The dark panelled hallway was decorated for Christmas, with green garlands and white lights abounding. I took my things up to the lady’s boudoir, which is my sumptuous dressing room, and then returned to the library which for the evening would be my theatre. There was not a lot to sort out, as I do not need to use a microphone in such a small space. Haley introduced me to Leah, who would be looking after my sound effects. We ran through the script together, and it was obvious that she knew exactly what she was doing: I would be in safe hands. I took an opportunity to just sit in the parlour for a while, soaking up the atmosphere ready for the evening ahead.

Soon, the first of the audience were arriving, so I took myself upstairs. The format of the show at Ventfort was slightly different this year. In the past I have performed my show, and then the audience had been served a lavish tea, complete with cucumber sandwiches, cakes and other fancies. This year the decision was made to serve the tea first, at 5.30, and then my performance would be at 7. In previous years the tea has doubled as a signing session, with me just drifting through the crowd, chatting to audience members, and posing for pictures and giving autographs, as requested, and Haley had the same idea this year, but of course prior to the show.

I got into costume ready to meet n greet. I currently have two black frock coats, one has Velcro strips attached to the lapels which allows me to become ‘all black’ for the arrival of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, and therefore the coat I need to wear throughout a one act performance, but which would look odd during tea, so I put my other coat on, and so as to remember to change before the show, draped my scarf over the Velcroed version.

When I was sure that there were plenty of guests gathered, I went down and circulated through all of the first-floor rooms – It was very nice to meet people, and there were plenty of audience members who had seen me before, and not necessarily in Lenox, but somehow, without having had the show, it was a bit stilted and awkward – nobody, myself included, quite knowing what to say. When I was in the hall, I was swept up by board member Mary-Frances, who took me in hand and went up to every table with the ice-breaking gambit of ‘How are the cookies, Mr Dickens has said if the cookies are not good, he won’t come back, so we are checking up!’ It was an effective ploy, and allowed everyone to engage in conversation, without the social uncertainty of how to begin a dialogue.

After I had chatted for a while, I went back upstairs to relax before the performance itself. I sat in a chair next to a fireplace and could hear the strong wind whistling and moaning down the chimney, as if Jacob Marley himself were about to appear. At around 6.45 I returned to the hall and Haley confirmed that most of the audience were in, although there was a long line for the restroom, but soon everyone was gathered and Haley welcomed them all to Ventfort Hall, and introduced me. It is still the policy at Ventfort that all visitors and guests wear a mask, so I was the only person in the building without one, which felt a bit odd, and I think also made the atmosphere a bit formal, as it had last year, but I carried on and soon there was laughter in the little parlour. This was the first one act version I have performed since I arrived back in America, so I had to concentrate hard on the script, and make sure that I didn’t go off on any tangents, thereby confusing Leah and Haley, who would not be suspecting that 70 people would want refreshment! I kept to my proper script, and by the time Mrs Cratchit was panicking about her Christmas Pudding, there was lots of laughter in that small room.

The show came to an end, and I exited through the central aisle to the back of the room, and when I returned everyone stood and applauded me, with a few be-masked shouts thrown in for good measure. I wished everyone a final ‘Merry Christmas’ and stood in the large hall and chatted and posed with and for anyone who wanted to, and there were plenty who did.

It was a round 8.45 when I changed out of costume and was able to leave everything in the Green Room, for I was due to return at 9 the next morning for an interview and photo shoot. The rain outside had eased a little, but it was still windy and very cold, Haley warning me to watch for icy roads, and I drove back to the hotel, where I had a microwaved pizza for my supper, which maybe was the least English thing of my day!

First to Thirteen

Tags

Abingdon, Brain Tumour Research, Charles Dickens, Doctor Marigold, Mr Dickens is Coming!, Oxford Half Marathon, Oxfordshire

Having returned from America last week, and having solemnly and proudly spending Monday watching the funeral of Queen Elizabeth (wearing a dark suit and black tie in respectful honour of my Monarch), it was time to turn my attentions to the two projects coming up in October.

The first is a performance of Mr Dickens is Coming and Doctor Marigold in my home town of Abingdon, to raise funds for Brain Tumour Research. My fundraising efforts began in April when Liz’s sister Sheila died from the condition and I decided to turn my hand to working on behalf of the charity. The main push to my efforts was entering the Oxford Half Marathon on October 16th, and much of my year has been spent pounding the Oxfordshire roads trying to get myself into shape to complete 13 miles. However I also decided to stage a benefit performance (which will require rather less effort than the Half), and that is due to be performed on 7th October, so my initial work was to put in place publicity for the show. I designed posters and had them printed and started sending press releases out to all and sundry. Ticket sales are looked after by Eventbrite and it was with a smile that the first email confirmations of bookings came into my inbox.

With publicity rolling, I also needed to get back to training. I had run a couple of times in America, but not with any great intensity, so I went out one afternoon to run the 6 mile ring road which surrounds Abingdon. Everything was going well and my breathing was good and the legs felt powerful….until the 3 mile mark when suddenly a searing pain came from my right calf. I immediately stopped (I had promised myself, and Liz, that if anything felt untoward I wouldn’t push on thereby risking further damage), and limped home. What I hoped might be a cramp lingered annoyingly into the evening and through the night, so I feared that I may have suffered my first running injury just as I should be in my final stages of preparations. The next day I called a sports physiotherapist, but he was unavailable, so I just went about my ordinary business without putting too much strain on my leg. The next day it felt better, and I tried a few little runs, just a few hundred yards at a time, and felt no adverse effects, so I was confident that I could get out for a proper training run again.

Today, 23 September, I dropped our children to school and then set off to do two laps of the ring road, which would mean a 12 mile run – the little loop back to home would mean that I would be completing around 13 miles, the very distance that I will need to achieve to complete the event in October. I knew that I had to prove to myself that I could complete 13 miles before arriving in Oxford, and it needed to be done sooner than later, for if I were still pounding out long distances in the week of the event I wouldn’t have any energy for the race itself, so today was the day (leg muscles allowing)

At 8.50 I started to run, and it felt good. I kept a steady pace, not wanting to go off too quickly, and soon was in the centre of the town. I passed the spot where my calf had gone a few days before and still everything was OK. On I ran, past the fire station and later the police station, then turning right opposite McDonalds and climbed gradually towards the point I’d started from.

For much of my training I have been listening to audiobooks to accompany me, but a good friend and keen runner had told me that actually he runs better with nothing playing in his ears, so today I tried this and it seemed to work. My mind, rather than concentrating on the unfolding story, just ambled around. I thought of my forthcoming show, I thought of the performances in the USA, I admired a motorcyclist’s crash helmet livery which was charmingly old fashioned, rather than the multi-coloured ones that are usually so popular. I listened to birds, looked at trees, read the names of haulage companies on the cabs of lorries, and the miles just slipped away under the soles of my feet

I still felt strong, so set off for a second 6 mile lap. I had a choice to make at this point, did I turn round and complete lap two in the reverse direction, which in hindsight would have been the sensible thing to do, or just plough on through familiar scenery? I decided to carry on. Of course it was getting harder, but I was soon in town again (where my 10 year old’s class was gathering to sing Status Quo’s ‘Rockin’ All Over the World’ in the market square for reasons I am not sure of), and on towards McDonalds again, which would be the ten mile mark. At this stage, I admit, I began to find the going tough and I slowed to a walk a few times during those final 3 miles, but I never stopped, I was moving forward the whole time, and when I reached home I checked my Strava app and saw that I had clocked up exactly 13 miles. I had done it! When I had thought about this run I reckoned I could do it in around 2 hours, 10 minutes (I run at an average pace of 9.30 minute miles, but I knew I wouldn’t keep that up over thirteen and had estimated an average of 10 minute miles), and my final time was 2 hours 9 minutes, despite the walking: I was very very proud of that!

So I am in a good place, I know that I can do it, and now can rein back the distances a little to leave me with plenty of energy for the big day – I even have a PB to aim for now, I would like to get to around 2 hours if I could on the day.

So, I think that deserves some more sponsorship donations! Thank you so much to all of those who have already contributed so generously, taking the fund up to nearly £1,000, but we need more! So please do check out the link and come with me on my 13 mile journey.

To donate go to my JustGiving page:

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/geralddickens

A Child’s Journey to Sturbridge

Tags

A Christmas Carol film, Charles Dickens, Dickens and Staplehurst. A Biogrpahy of a Rail Crash, Dickens Fellowship, Mark Twain, Old Sturbridge Village, The Signalman

Although my Friday alarm was set for 5.45 I woke before it and so it was easy to get ready and leave my room by 6.30. I had a three hour drive ahead of me and I was keen to get to Massachusetts by about 10am, therefore I decided to forego a hotel breakfast (as regulars know, this was a painful thing to do) and just grab something on the road. The traffic heading towards New York City was very heavy, even at that early hour, so it was as well that I left when I did.

I crawled and edged and trundled and inched and lumbered and crept, in fact I went so slowly that I would have had time to read a thesaurus if I’d had one to hand. Eventually I was passed New York and the heavy traffic was now filling the opposite carriageway and I could speed up and head towards New England. This is a journey I have done on many occasions, in one direction or the other, and it always brings to mind Charles Dickens’ American Notes, as I pass many of the cities that he visited and commented on.

After a while I pulled in at a service station and had a Panera Bread breakfast of oatmeal and fruit and a pastry, washed down with orange juice and coffee, before getting back into the Rogue and continuing north.

My destination was Old Sturbridge Village, a living museum near Worcester. I have heard a lot about it over the years but have never had the opportunity to visit, and on Friday I was to perform there. I made good time and pulled into the large car park a little after 10. My contact at Sturbridge was Ellen Taviano, with whom I have worked for many years at Winterthur House and Gardens in Delaware. Thanks to staff layoffs and changes during the pandemic, Ellen left Winterthur and took up a position at Sturbridge, heading up the retail operation. Having enjoyed such a close and successful relationship in the past she was keen to get me to to the museum to perform and the September tour proved to be the perfect opportunity. When I arrived, I left a voicemail on Ellen’s phone and made my way to the visitor centre, where the staff welcomed me and showed me into the empty auditorium where I was to perform. I say ‘I was to perform’, but actually I should say ‘where we were to perform’ for today I would be sharing the stage with fellow actor Jennifer Emerson, and this is the day I have been working towards and, yes, sometimes fretting over throughout the tour.

I took a look at the stage and saw that Ellen had placed a few articles of furniture for our set, but some were not quite right, so I took a look back stage and was delighted to find all sorts of bits and pieces that I could chose from Firstly, I pulled a few bits out, and brought them to the stage and as I did a lady dressed in an elegant Victorian gown entered the theatre, and this was Jennifer.

Jennifer has a long history in working at museums, interpreting characters and performing a series of her own one-person shows (including her version of A Christmas Carol). She has worked in costume and has directed and taught and is generally a very talented and committed go getter, and is also a member of the Dickens Fellowship.

When Ellen had chosen the shows for my visit she had asked for The Signalman (as she ordered plenty of my books), and A Child’s Journey With Dickens, which she had seen me perform at Winterthur. As soon as I saw that on the schedule I got in touch with Bob and suggested that we ask Jennifer to be involved. The performance is based around a speech made in 1912 by Kate Douglas Wiggin recounting the day that she met Charles Dickens on a train bound for Boston. The speech was made when Kate was 55, but the train journey had taken place in 1868, when she had been only 11, and the show features her at both ages. Now, I have performed it, with a degree of success in the past, but really? A balding, bearded Englishman trying to convince a New England audience that he is an 11 year girl from Maine is pushing it somewhat. Back in 2021 the Dickens Fellowship had asked me if I could give a Zoom performance, and I had suggested A Child’s Journey performed on the anniversary of the meeting on the train. One of the positives of the Covid pandemic was that it shrank the world, and people were suddenly communicating in ways that they had never realised possible. This extended to performance, and Id contacted Jennifer to ask her if she would like to work with me on the project. We developed a script together using purely archive material – letters, newspaper articles, memoirs, and of course Kate’s speech itself. As the story involved Dickens’ reading tour, we also featured a scathing review of one of his performances written by Mark Twain. Again the shrinking world had enabled me to ask yet another performer, Mark Dawidziak (who ‘does’ Twain), to record the piece for us – this was going to be a show performed by three actors each of whom specialised in performing on their own! The Zoom performance had been a great success and at the time I had said to Jennifer if there was ever a chance to actually perform it live, then we should grab it. Old Sturbridge Village was that chance.

We didn’t change the script very much, but had to think about how we would actually stage it. The idea was to have a lectern at one side of the stage where Jennifer would give the speech, as if addressing the guests at Delmonico’s restaurant in 1912, and on the other side would be a desk where I would sit as Dickens, writing letters about the tour, which were slipped into Kate’s dialogue at suitable moments. For example at one time Kate recalled praying fervently that Dickens didn’t suffer the pangs of seasickness as he sailed to America, and on that line I would recite two letters that he wrote from the SS Cuba as he sailed across the Atlantic detailing rough weather and sickness throughout the ship. The writing desk was angled away from where Kate stood, meaning that there was absolutely no connection between the two characters, until the key moment when the child Kate saw Dickens on the train, at which point we both sat next to one another on a small bench at centre stage, representing a seat in the railroad car.

When Jennifer arrived we continued foraging for the perfect furniture and when we were satisfied we started a rehearsal, our very first run through together. It went well, we both fumbled a few lines, but the the basic setting and idea seemed to work perfectly and we retired to the green room behind the stage in a state of great excitement

At 1 o’clock Ellen came to check that we were ready and then went to the stage and introduced us both and we emerged to applause. I welcomed everyone and made a very brief introduction to the show, and then introduced Kate as if I were chairing the meeting of the New York Dickens Fellowship in 1912. And so the show started. Oh, it went well, Jennifer had adopted two very different personas – the 55 year old Kate who had spent a life in education especially in the field of the Kindergarten movement, had a a teacher’s voice and demeanour, direct, factual but kindly, but as soon as she was on the train she became the 11 year old, excited fidgety, crossing and uncrossing her ankles, and gazing at her idol, Charles Dickens. I knew that all of this working superbly, although I could not see her performance as I was turned away, thanks to the laughter and joy coming from the audience. When it came to the moment that she precociously sat next to Dickens and he first saw her there was an instant connection between the two character. The audience responded wonderfully and laughed at all of the appropriate places (including during the Twain voiceover, saying of Dickens ‘His pictures are hardly handsome, and he, like everybody else, is less handsome than his pictures!’ Ouch.

Laughter turned to tears as Dickens asked Kate if she had wanted to go to his reading very much, and she had sobbed, ‘yes more than tongue can tell’ causing Dickens to cry also. Both Jennifer and I had tears in our eyes and we could see members of the audience wiping theirs too.

The applause at the end was wonderful and we knew that we had created a very special show which had worked just as we’d imagined it.

With all of the concentration and nerves that had surrounded the first act, it would have been easy to forget that I had The Signalman to perform in the second half and it required quite a mental re-set to get myself prepared for that. Actually I gave a very good performance of it, I think. It was dramatic and tight and the lines flowed well. The audience were hooked and applauded loudly when I had finished. During the applause I gestured to Jennifer (who had taken a seat in the auditorium to watch) and the clapping increased again as we both took more bows.

What a wonderful success.

After the show Ellen took me to the gift store for a signing session and it was wonderful to see many people who had come to see me in shows at other venues over the years. One man showed me a picture of me posing with his sons and said ‘Yes. that was seven years ago: look how young you look!’ Thanks!

When the signing was over I went to find my accommodation for the night. Sturbridge had built a small collection of cabins which were originally to be hotel accommodation for visitors to the museum, but Covid closed them and now they are used for staff, professors and visiting entertainers. My room was large and very comfortable and I slumped onto the bed and dozed a little for an hour or so, before it was time to return to the theatre and get changed ready for the second performance. After a while Jennifer appeared (she had stayed in costume, so hadn’t needed to arrive as early as I), and we chatted about the first show and how it had been received.

Soon Ellen appeared once more to check that all was well, and the evening show was under way. It was a larger audience than the afternoon, and once again they followed the story with rapt attention. I would say that at both performances it took a little while before everyone accepted the premise behind our performance, but it didn’t take long until they were fully involved and were laughing and crying. Once again our closing bows were met with a standing ovation.

The Signalman was also superbly received, and my most unsubtle plugging of the book was greeted with loud laughter, even applause. What a wonderful, and exciting day, and what a superb way to end what has been a difficult tour, not because of the schedule, or the venues, or the shows, but because I had wanted to be at home in England. I had wanted to file past the Queen’s coffin in Westminster Hall with Liz so that we could pay our respects to the only Monarch we have ever known; to be part of the national mourning. My home-made black arm band had been a token of my respect, but I had so wanted to do more.

After another signing session where many friends came to say hello, including Gary and Judi Vaillancourt, I returned to the theatre, got changed and collected all of my props, with the exception of the danger light, which would be collected by someone, sometime. Ellen had booked a restaurant for her, Jennifer, myself and her colleague Jacqui who had been helping with the lights and changing the set between shows. We had a lovely dinner, although conversation was awkward due to a singer who was performing throughout the evening. He was very good and had a wonderful set of songs, but with my tinitus it made hearing conversation extremely problematic.

The restaurant was emptying as we finished our dinner and it was clear that they wanted to close, so we said our goodbyes and headed back to our respective homes and lodges.

Saturday

On Saturday I would be flying home, but the morning was taken up to roaming around Old Sturbridge Village, and what an amazing place it is. The attraction was opened in 1946 and featured various historical New England buildings that had been dismantled and moved to the site. Now it covers 200 acres and features 59 properties. There is a blacksmith, a pottery, a cooper and various mills, all working. There are farms with cattle, sheep and pigs, there are demonstrations of 19th century cooking and crafting, and all in all it is a fascinating place to spend a day. On Saturday the sun shone, and I not only visited all of the properties, but also took the trails into woods and across pasture – I even ran a little.

After lunch it was time to head to the Logan Airport in Boston and board a 777 to fly home to a different England to the one I left 10 days before.

Golf, Hertz and East Meadow

Tags

A Christmas Carol, Byers'Choice, Charles Dickens, Dickens and Staplehurst. A Biogrpahy of a Rail Crash, Doctor Marigold, East Meadow Public Library, Long Island, The Signalman, The Verrazano Bridge

WEDNESDAY

Wednesday had promised to be another relaxing day in the cabin, possibly doing some work on the script for A Child’s Journey With Dickens, until I had received a text the day before from Bob’s son George asking me if I would like to join him for a round of golf (I had mentioned to Bob that I had brought my golf shoes just in case there was time for a round, and he had passed the message on). I readily agreed and George arrived at the cabin to pick me up at 8.45 in readiness for a 9.40 tee off. The course that he had selected was Heron Glenn Golf Club near to the town of Flemington from where I would be collecting a rental car later in the day.

We arrived at the club in good time and sorted out a set of rental clubs for me, which would provide a perfect excuse for poor play in the early holes, and made our way to the first tee, where another two players introduced themselves as Bill and Michael and told us that they would be playing with us, which turned out to be a good thing as they were able to show us the way around and warn us of hidden areas of rough. They had broad New York accents and George and I tried to guess what they had been during their working lives: we came up with either police officers, or maybe in the newspaper industry. We never did find out.

We had a wonderful time, I wont go into it hole by hole, but we all played some very good shots and we all played some woeful shots. On the whole George played more good shots than the rest of us, and if we had been competing he would have vanquished us, but we weren’t and instead we all had fun

From the golf course I had to pick up a rental car which will be with me until I arrive at Logan airport on Saturday to fly home. We were to go to a Hertz dealership in Flemington, and it took a bit of finding. In our defence the venue didn’t look like a Hertz office. In fact it was a very small car repair shop, with scattered bits of wounded automobiles lying on the ground. The only clue that the office may be part of one of the world’s leading car rental concerns was a tiny sign on the wall outside the office. I walked in and said I was due to collect a car and that my name was Dickens. ‘Ah, yes.’ said the lady in the office, its the white Nissan Rogue, here are the keys. Its got 3/4 of a tank, just drop it off with the same wherever you’re leaving it.’ And that was it! No signatures, no driving licence check, no credit cards: nothing. Easy, but I was not entirely sure that Hertz head office knew that I had their car.

I said goodbye to George, although we’d be meeting up again for dinner, and drove back to the cabin, where I took the Mustang out for one final journey to fill it up with petrol (during my drive to Burlington I’d watched the fuel gauge go down as quickly as the speed went up!) When I returned, I sorrowfully guided it into the garage and said my goodbyes.

George had booked a table for dinner in the town of New Hope, 30 minutes away, in a very smart restaurant overlooking the river. Maura, George’s girlfriend was also there and it was a great pleasure to meet her. She is going to be working with Pam on the administrative side of my tour and she was keen to find out as much as possible as to how it all works. She will be a great asset to the team, I think. We all dined well, I had a spicy Asian trout dish which was absolutely delicious, and it was a very pleasant evening with good company.

I returned to the Cabin for my final night in the woods

THURSDAY

Although I had only one show on Thursday, in the evening, I did have a little extra work to do at Byers’ Choice, for David wanted to record a few promotional videos for the forthcoming Christmas tour. Firstly I sat at a large table and, looking into the camera, cheerily invited people to come and see A Christmas Carol at Byers’ Choice. Next I cheerily asked them to come and see A Christmas Carol at their local venue (this means that sponsors can put their own captions and booking details on the screen.) Then I told people that they may like to buy my book, and finally a piece about my DVD of A Christmas Carol (Yes! It is available this year). When all those short clips had been filmed Dave and I created a mini Byers’ Choice travel show as I walked through the visitor centre pointing out things of interest, especially relating to Charles Dickens and A Christmas Carol.

When the filming was finished I said my final goodbyes to Dave, Bob and George (who returned my golf shoes that I’d left in his ca)r, and I set out on the road East, towards Long Island. The traffic wasn’t too bad until I reached the environs of New York City, at which time I inevitably hit long tailbacks – some because of accidents, some because of roadworks and some just due to heavy city congestion. I had plenty of time in hand, though, so it was not a concern.

To skirt around Manhattan my route took me across the Verrazano Bridge from Staten Island to Brooklyn, and it has to be one of the world’s most truly impressive bridges to be sure, rivalling The Forth Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Sidney Harbour Bridge, and even its near neighbour, the Brooklyn Bridge. The heavy traffic continued onto the misnamed Long Island Expressways but I arrived at the Marriott Hotel in good time. I had stayed at the same venue last Christmas so everything was familiar to me.

I had an hour or so at the hotel before I was due at the East Meadow Library where I was to perform the double bill of The Signalman and Doctor Marigold that evening. The drive to the library was only a matter of minutes and in no time I was greeting my friends from December Jude and her husband Mark, who helped me to unload my costumes and props ready to set up in the small auditorium. The first job was to reconstruct the danger light for The Signalman, using the screws and screwdriver that Dave had sent along with me. Mark used to be involved in Broadway theatre in the tech, set and props fields and as we built the light he was commenting on the construction of it, with a certain sense of admiration, but also with the inevitable ‘Ah, if I’d made this I would have……’

Soon we had the set in place and Jude suggested that we all went to get some dinner before the show, so we piled into Marks huge RAM truck and headed to a lovely Italian restaurant, where we dined alfresco, beneath huge sunshades. I had a simple chicken dish in a white wine and lemon sauce, which was delicious, but I was aware that time was pushing on towards six pm and we were due to start at seven. Mark noticed my unease and offered to drive me back to the Library so that I could finish my preparations in as relaxed way as possible.

The priority was to do a sound check with Larry, who had looked after my performance in December and who I knew to be a safe pair of hands on the faders, because of that I had also given him the wind sound effect to play during the first half. With the sound check completed and the set checked once more I left the room, so that the audience could take their seats, and went downstairs where I changed in a small staff cafeteria room.

At seven o’clock Jude came down to say we were holding for 5 minutes as guests were still arriving, but soon everything was in place to begin. Jude opened the door to the auditorium (the seating was raked, and I would be performing on the floor level), and I slipped in behind her, which elicited a round of applause form the audience, to which Jude hissed back at me in a loud pantomime-style whisper ‘you were supposed to stay outside!’ It was all good fun banter, and Jude is a natural entertainer.

With the introductions completed I started the show. The audience weren’t as responsive during the two performances as some others, there was not the same laughter at Marigold for instance, but oh my they were appreciative and applauded long and loudly afterwards. I learned long ago that audiences respond in different ways and just because there isn’t an instant response, it doesn’t mean that they are not enjoying, or appreciating the performance, and the crowd at East Meadow were a case in point. After Marigold was finished (and, yes, they gasped at the correct moment), I opened the floor up to questions and we had an enjoyable session covering lots of ground, including how do I learn lines? What is my favourite film or TV adaptation of any Dickens novel? (David Lean’s Great Expectations, or the BBC’s Bleak House), and how did I feel about the Queen? which brought the emotions that have been there all week bubbling up to the surface again. Soon it was time to wrap up and I took another round of applause before leaving the room. I loitered outside as the audience left and the questions continued until the library emptied and it was time to pack up my belongings, say my goodbyes and head back to the Marriott where I set my alarm for 5.45, as I had a three hour drive ahead of me to Massachusetts.

Aboard my Trusty Steed

Tags

A Christmas Carol, Blaenau Ffestiniog railway, Byers'Choice, Charles Dickens, Dickens and Staplehurst. A Biogrpahy of a Rail Crash, Doctor Marigold, Ford Mustang, Running, The Signalman

On Tuesday it was back to work, with two more performances of the same double bill that I performed in Georgia and at Byers’ Choice, in Burlington, New Jersey.

The two down days were spent at Bob and Pam’s cabin and enabled me to relax, follow the continuing news coverage from home, and to prepare for forthcoming shows. On Sunday the rain fell from dawn till dusk, and as Bob and Pam were at the cabin too, we all had a very lazy day, watching sport, reading, and completing a jigsaw puzzle that featured scenes and characters from the works of, guess who? Charles Dickens if course.

On Sunday evening Bob and Pam said their goodbyes and drove back to their home in town ready for the working week, leaving me in the middle of the woods alone with just a cacophony of insects in the trees to keep me company.

On Monday morning I woke early and looking out over the Delaware River valley I saw that although it was misty, the rain had abated, so I decided to go out for a training run.

At the bottom of the hill there is a canal with a towpath that runs for miles in both directions, so I set off at 6.15 and spent just over an hour running out and back, at one time being accompanied by a family of deer who bounded and skipped alongside me for a while. Unfortunately my running app on the phone refused to pick up a GPS signal, so I have no idea how far or how fast I ran, but based on previous experience it must have been about 5 or 6 miles all told including the long slow trek back up the steep driveway.

After I had showered and cooled down a little I decided to drive out to a nearby general store to pick up a few things for breakfast, and the rest of my stay, and it was now that I was introduced to my transport for the next couple of days, and what a splendid beast it was! In the garage sat a magnificent midnight blue Ford Mustang Convertible. I got into the drivers seat (the car sort of swallows you up, you sit so deep within it that you become part of it) and turned the key which opened the stable for all those horses to be freed. I assume it is a V8, it certainly sounded like one. I carefully reversed it out of the garage, and then placed my foot on the gas pedal (somehow I have to use the American terminology for this car) to propel it forward up the cinder track, and such was the power that the rear wheels simply spun on the loose surface leaving two little marks in my wake. My second attempt was much more gentle and off I went with the roof down. The lanes and roads around the river are narrow and have speed limits no greater than 45 mules per hour, so I couldn’t exploit the sheer power deep within (which was probably just as well), but to slowly cruise was wonderful. I think I love that car and may pop it into my hand luggage when I leave and steal it!

After I had shopped I returned to my woodland retreat atop the hill, had some breakfast and then settled down to various bits of work. The main focus of my morning was to work on the script for ‘A Child’s Journey With Dickens’ which I am due to perform on Friday in Massachusetts. I have performed this little tale on many occasions and know the script very well, but this week’s performance is slightly out of the ordinary. During lockdown the Charles Dickens Museum in London asked me to perform an online version of the story, and I cooperated with my friend and fellow actor Jennifer Emerson, who is based in Massachusetts. Together we reworked the script, so that she took on the role of Kate Douglas Wiggin, the author of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, whilst I enhanced the narrative with the recital of letters from Dickens, giving accounts of the planning for his American tour, his journey and his observations during his stay. It is an interesting challenge to learn, or at least re-learn, lines which have to fit within a script featuring another character. I am used to learning large chunks of text for my shows, and I have become quite adept at that over the years, but returning to the fragmented nature of dialogue, and having to make sure that another performer gets the correct cues is a much more disciplined task, so I have been spending quite a lot of time just pacing around the cabin muttering to myself.

At 10 o’clock on Monday morning I had a Zoom call with Jennifer and we went through the script together, making a few changes and discussing how we would actually stage the performance (of course last time we did it we were in different countries, so it was very much a vocal performance rather than a physical one).

When the call was over I did some more work on the lines, and then prepared myself to drive back to Byers’ Choice where 200 copies of ‘Dickens and Staplehurst. A Biography of a Rail Crash’ were waiting to be signed. Once more I settled myself deep within the Mustang and rumbled my way into Chalfont. The boxes of books were in the Conference Room, and I settled down to add my autograph to each copy, whilst listening to the BBC news coverage of events in Edinburgh as the Queen’s coffin was laid in state for the first time.

The signing didn’t take too long and when I had finished I went to find Bob to discuss another issue. The wonderful warning light that David had built for my performance of The Signalman was so impressive that I had suggested it would be great if I could take it to each of the forthcoming venues where I am due to perform the piece again. I will be driving to each, but the prop is over 6 feet tall and, especially in the case of Burlington, I would be driving in the Mustang which, for all its beauty, is not built to transport goods. I’d suggested that I keep the roof down and we had the light sticking up out of the top, maybe we could connect it to the brake pedal, so that it glowed ominously every time I slowed, but of course Dave and Bob had a more practical solution. I was taken to a workshop and witnessed the frame being sawn into two parts, with brackets to re-assemble it. Both parts would now fit in the Mustang and Dave had even installed a switch into the unit so that I could turn it off at the appropriate point of the show. I arranged to drop by in the morning, on my way to Burlington to pick up the finished article, before driving back to the cabin where I did a little more line learning, and then played myself at pool in the basement – and won!

Tuesday promised to be a busy day as I had two performances of my double bill, making it more like four performances. I gathered all of my costumes and props, loaded them into the Mustang and left the cabin at 9.15 and drove to Byers’ Choice to collect the light. As it would have to go into the back seat of the car, and as it had four metal plates to attach it again, Dave had also made some covers to avoid the metal edges damaging the upholstery, a very sensible precaution that I would never have thought about. I finished loading the car and then started the hour’s journey to Burlington, and the beautiful old United Methodist Church on Broad Street.

Burlington is one of my regular venues and I have been performing A Christmas Carol there for many years, so it was a pleasure to bring some more of my repertoire there this year. I pulled up outside the Church and went in, where I found Laura in the office preparing for the day’s events. Laura is our main contact at Broad Street and has been at the helm of the events since the very beginning, she is the centre of an active and deeply committed group of volunteers who put on amazing events. Laura told me that the audiences would be smaller than at Christmas, and we needed to decide where to stage the events. We could use the beautiful sanctuary, with its wrap around balcony and multi-level performing space, but a small audience may look rather lost in there, and also the day was hot and humid and there was no air conditioning in the hall.

The alternative was the basement room, also used for services, but much smaller and less beautiful, however it was cooler and the smaller space would suit the intimate nature of the double bill, whilst giving the impression of a larger crowd – the decision was an easy one in the end.

I unloaded the car, reconstructed the danger lamp, and then we all (me, Laura and the crew) worked on making the performance space look good. Lecterns and flags were removed, as well as large amounts of crucifixes and other religious iconology (I felt somewhat heretical, but as it was the members of the church community who were suggesting it, and doing the clearing I reckoned it was OK!). Laura asked if I wanted a large black cloth that is usually draped over the organ in the Sanctuary to be draped over the altar table, but an idea came into my head – was there any way we could hang it on the wall behind to create the great black void of the railway tunnel? Before I knew it people were clambering onto the altar, stretching up and trying to pin the cloth in place. In the end, the effect was perfect, but I am sure that I will be going to Hell for this.

The help continued as the team provided me with a very old book to represent the ‘official book’ that lies on the Signalman’s desk, and also a rather lovely miniature bell to stand on top of the signalling equipment. Both of these items looked superb on my set: along with the Mustang, my luggage promises to be bulging with nefariously purloined contraband when I leave on Saturday.

Even as we were setting up the first audience members began to arrive, so having checked that everything was in place, I retreated to my changing room, where the ever-attentive Marcia brought me my traditional pot of tea and biscuits – what a pre-show treat.

At 12.50 I made my way back downstairs in my Signalman costume, complete with black armband, and at 1 on the dot Laura welcomed the guests and handed the room to me. The audience were attentive and engaged, and the performance was intense and powerful, I enjoyed myself a great deal. The fact that I am continually performing the same repertoire on this trip means that it is becoming tighter and more effective with each show and I can relax much more. I finished the half, as I have done throughout this trip, by relating the anecdote of performing The Signalman on the Blaenau Ffestiniog railway in Wales##, where the audience had been brought up the mountain side, through the dark sombre slate hills, by train, and when I finished the show they all got back onto the (unlit) train and began the precipitous and precarious descent. Feeling that I should wave goodbye I had stood on a foot bridge across the line and waved in the manner of the spectre in the story, with one arm across my face. It is a good way to finish the act as it gets a bit of a laugh and just raises the spirits a little after the solemnity of the show itself.

At the interval I changed into my Marigold costume, with sleeves casually rolled up, thus displaying my war wounds from Jekyll, which have yet to heal fully and then returned to the room to change the set round in as anonymous a way as possible. When all was ready Laura called the room to order and Doctor M took over in his entertaining way. The audience laughed, were shocked, gasped and sobbed as the story toyed with their emotions and the applause at the end was wonderful – another group of people had become Marigold converts.

When the show was over and bows taken, we all made our way into another hall where tables are laid out, whilst tea, cakes, cookies and large slices of pumpkin pie are served. This is always a very nice informal way to conduct a meet and greet, autograph session, as everyone just watches until there is no line and ambles up to my desk to chat. On this occasion a very kind gentleman presented me with a large resin beer stein complete with characters from A Christmas Carol in relief – people are so generous. Throughout the session everyone offered sincere condolences for my country’s loss, there is a very genuine sense of grief and sorry here too.

The session drifted to its end and I returned to the hall to re-set for the evening’s performance of The Signalman, so that everything was ready. I changed and all of the Broad Street team walked to Francesco’s restaurant for a late lunch/early dinner. I enjoyed a salad with crispy chicken and honey mustard dressing, whilst the chat and banter was as entertaining as ever – these people are good people, kind people, generous and fun people.

Back to the church, and I had an hour or so to rest before the 7 o’clock show. My dressing room was in a large room used for Sunday school teaching, as well as for games and play. In the middle of the room was a pool table, so I had a few frames and once again I beat myself – I must be getting quite adept at the game as I keep winning.

Soon it was time to get back to business and I got back into costume ready for the 7 o’clock start. The evening audience was smaller, but just as attentive. My good friend Kevin from the New York branch of the Dickens Fellowship was there, which was great to see, but it meant I couldn’t get away with any incorrect facts as I spoke of Staplehurst (he knows his Dickens, does Kevin!), fortunately he was nodding a lot, which was a good sign.

Both shows went well again, although I was feeling the fatigue during Marigold, but the effect at the end was the same as in the afternoon and many a tear was surreptitiously wiped away.

At the reception I chatted with Kevin and his wife, and with many other regular fans, who have been coming to see A Christmas Carol for many years and who were delighted to see some of my other material. Soon, though, they drifted away and it was time to get changed and then start to dismantle the set, break down the light, and carefully pack everything into my mighty steed ready for an hour’s drive back to the cabin. I really felt very tired, but had the windows wide open as I drove. There were lots of deer along the way, but fortunately none ran into my path, which was a relief. At about 11pm I pulled the car into the parking space outside the house, locked it, and went inside.

Sleep came very quickly on Tuesday night.

A Long Day, Indeed.

Tags

9-11, A Christmas Carol, Adam West, Alan Napier, Batman, Byers'Choice, Charles Dickens, Dickens and Staplehurst. A Biogrpahy of a Rail Crash, Doctor Marigold, Hertz Car Rental, Jacksonville Airport, Jekyll Island Club Resort Hotel, Local Hero, Queen Elizabeth II, Scotland, The Signalman

Friday night wasn’t very long for me, but even so I managed to injure myself during it. I woke somewhere around 1am and made my way through the dark to the bathroom. It was as I returned to the bed that I tripped over my suitcase, let open ready to pack in the early hours. As I fell forward I was vaguely aware that the wooden bed was close and stuck my hands out to break my fall but in doing so I scraped my right wrist along the sharp edge of the case, leaving a nasty graze.

I got back to bed and fell asleep. The next thing I knew alarms were bleeping and chiming and it was time to get up. I made a cup of coffee and quickly showered before packing my wash bag and closing up my guillotine suitcase. I left the room at 3.30 and made my way along a series of wooden walkways and was amazed to see a couple sat at a table talking, they said a polite ‘good morning’, as if chatting to fellow guests at 3.30 in the morning was the most natural thing in the world.

The drive back to Jacksonville airport was just over an hour, so my phone’s navigation app told me, and I drove through the darkness and duly arrived at 4.30. I drove to the Hertz rental return and then walked into the terminal where I was amazed how busy it was. I joined a queue for the United airlines bag drop and then made my way through security and arrived at my gate with 15 minutes before boarding was due to commence. I grabbed a little pot of yoghurt, a bottle of orange juice and a cinnamon roll and had a very quick ‘breakfast’ before being called to board.

I also studied my injury which was looking quite livid and raw. The shape of the wound looked rather like a collection of islands in an Australasian archipelago, and was feeling a little sore, I could also feel a scrape on my shin, where first I tripped and also an ache on my upper lip, where I banged my face – not bad work for a 4-hour night!

The flight took off in darkness and I dozed a little, but when the coffee service came round I was awake for good, so opened the United Airlines app and watched Local Hero, which made me have thoughts of longing to be back in the Highlands of Scotland again.

The sun had risen during the flight and it felt as if it should be around 10 or 11 in the morning, in fact it was a little before 8am. As I waited at the carousel in baggage claim I was greeted by the cheery face and hug of Pam Byers who had driven out to pick me up. My home for the next few days would be the Byers’ cabin overlooking the Delaware river and having loaded my bags into her little white Golf GT we set off for the beautiful remote spot in the woods. We had a couple of hours during which I could just catch my breath a little, and I showered again to wake me up, before we had to set off to the Byers’ Choice headquarters where I was due to perform that afternoon. On the way Pam stopped at a WaWa petrol station and I grabbed a sandwich, some fruit and some crisps for a brief lunch, and then on to the building that is so familiar to me – my office in the USA. Whenever I come to Chalfont I feel so much apart of the Byers’ Choice team, it is a very special place to be.

As with all of the shows on this mini-tour the audience was going to be smaller than those for A Christmas Carol, so the team had taken the decision to build a more intimate theatre in the cafeteria space rather than in the cavernous manufacturing room. I said hello to David Daikeler, who looks after all of my technical requirements at Byers’ and then to Jeff and finally to Bob Byers. They had done a fantastic job in building the theatre, and the stage not only had the furniture for The Signalman’s hut, but also a magnificent red danger light built by Dave specifically for this occasion. At each side of the stage were a couple of antique carts which set the scene for Doctor Marigold. David had hung a series of theatre lights, and would be able to control the various lighting effects that I use in theatres at home.

We were also experimenting with something new – a sound effect. In The Signalman the narrative talks about the wind whistling through the deep railway cutting, indeed it almost becomes part of the haunting itself. For a few years I have thought about using sound, sparingly and subtly, and I had decided that the Byers’ Choice performance, with Dave at the rudder, would be the perfect time to try it out. Over the previous weeks I had spent many hours, becoming rather obsessed with the project, listening to various wind sound effects, some were too stormy, others too calm, some too sci-fi and others too artificial, but eventually I found one that fitted the bill. Now, it was my first chance to see how it sounded, and I began a run through of the script as Dave played around with sound levels. My suggestion had been that I wanted to audience to feel cold and uneasy without actually knowing why, so the effect should be very much used as an ambient sound, rather than being too intrusive. It sounded perfect.

Having finished our technical rehearsals I went to the large conference room that doubles as my dressing room on such occasions, and ate my lunch before signing 30 copies of ‘Dickens and Staplehurst. A Biography of a Rail Crash’, which would be sold at the performance. Back in the theatre the audience were arriving and I changed into costume ready to start the show at 3 0’clock, twelve hours after I woke up.

There was a good audience in the room and once we were sure that nobody else was going to arrive, Bob turned off the lights and we made our way towards the stage. Bob is always superb at welcoming the audience to the shows, but on this occasion he completely caught me off guard, by sombrely offering his condolences to me and my country, before calling the audience to observe a moment’s silence in memory of and in tribute to The Queen. I stood with my head bowed and had to wipe away a tear or two before stepping up to the stage. I have been amazed and deeply touched by the response of America during these days, with all flags flying at half mast, and this in a week of such commemoration and sorry in their own country as they remember the horrors of 9-11.

On the stage I thanked the audience and then, as Marigold likes to say, had to ‘thoroughly shake myself together’ to get the show going. I talked about Staplehurst, remembering to shameless plug my book (by the way, it is available on Amazon), before I was ready to place my left arm over my face and cry out ‘Halloa! Below there!’ Oh it was intense and dark and wonderful. The sound effect worked very well, and certainly added a chill to the atmosphere, whilst the various lighting effects were expertly conducted by Dave at his tech console. When I finished the show and had taken my bows I left the room to quickly change costumes, and in my wake Bob, his son George and Dave reset the stage ready for Doctor Marigold.

I returned to the theatre and when everyone was in their seats I took to the stage once more and introduced the audience to Doctor Marigold. I was beginning to feel tired by now and there were a few fumbles in lines, but the story of the cheapjack was wonderfully received by the audience, and the gasp at the end of the performance (which Dickens’s manager George Dolby remarked on in his memoir of the reading tours) was as loud and heartfelt as ever with a few hands going up to a few tear-filled eyes. 157 years after Doctor Marigold first appeared, the effect is still the same.

The applause was long and I took a number of bows, before opening the floor to questions. At most Q&A sessions I can be fairly certain of the questions that will be asked, but the first one on Saturday was definitely a first, nobody has ever asked me this before: ‘Is it true that the actor who played Alfred in Batman is related to you?’ Yes! it is! In the 1960’s series featuring Adam West as Batman and Burt Ward as Robin, the loyal butler Alfred was played by Alan Napier, an English actor who in 1944 married Aileen Hawksley a direct descendant of Charles Dickens through his son Henry, the same line as myself. I remember as a child looking at our family tree and being much more excited about having a relative (albeit through marriage) who was in Batman than I was about being related to a Victorian author!

Another question also moved me to silence but for a completely different reason, I was asked ‘how do you pack?’, the point of the question being do I travel with all of the props and furniture, and how on earth do I manage that. But in a moment of confusion I sort of thought that I was in Boston or New Hampshire and to my mind he was asking with a broad New England accent ‘how do you park?’ It seemed an odd question to ask and I floundered around for a while wondering how to answer. Eventually I realised my error and explained that individual venues provide the furniture and I travel as lightly as I could! I must blame my confusion on the 3 o’clock start to my day!

I kept on taking more questions and answering as fully as I could, until Bob came up onto the stage and rescued me from myself.

Back in the conference room I changed back into my regular clothes and when I had collected everything up Pam and Bob took me out for an early supper before heading back to the cabin where I was asleep by about 8.30 pm. It had been a long day, indeed.

Jekyll Island

Tags

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, Doctor Marigold, Jekyll Island Club Resort Hotel, Queen Elizabeth II, St Simons Island, The Signalman

Flags at Jekyll Island Club Resort Hotel

On Friday it was time to get to work. I woke early thanks equally to being in the wrong time zone, but also thanks to a tropical storm beating the roof and window panes of my room. I logged on to the BBC news coverage and watched as the news of the Queen’s death and the King’s accession still played out, eliciting the same emotions in me as the day before. I noticed that many of the correspondents wore black arm bands and decided that that was a suitable way to show my respects during the days and weeks of official mourning. The only problem with that plan was that I didn’t have a black arm band, or even any material to make one, but a quick online search showed me that there was a fabric store on St Simon’s Island, just a 30 minute drive away and as I had plenty of time on my hands I decided that I would make the journey.

I cant remember when I had last been at the Jekyll Island Club Resort, it must have been 15 or 20 years ago now, in a completely different era of touring, and readers of my blog posts will know nothing about it, for my performances there predate ‘On the Road With….’.

Having performed at The Dickens on the Strand festival in Galveston Texas in 1994 I was approached by Caroline Jackson, an entrepreneurial lady who wanted to build a tour around my show, and offered to become my US agent. At that stage I had no thoughts of touring and simply enjoyed the experience of the single trip to Texas, with a stop in Kansas City tagged on. Caroline, however, had bigger ideas, and promised great things if I signed with her, which I did, and so this amazing story began.

In her efforts to find venues for the first tours Caroline signed an agreement with The Historic Hotels of America chain, an umbrella organisation that marketed various hotels which were, naturally enough, historic, and it was through that connection that I first performed at Hershey, Williamsburg, Ojai, The Memphis Peabody and many others, including on Jekyll Island.

As I had driven towards the hotel on Thursday afternoon I had tried to remember what it had been like – I recalled the people I worked with and the sheer sense of fun, but had no real memory of the physical layout of the hotel. Vaguely in my mind I recalled the dining room being slightly awkward to perform in, I seemed to think quite long and narrow, but that was all. As I arrived I remembered the grandeur and elegance of the property – anywhere with a croquet lawn is quite special!

On Friday morning I went down to breakfast, which was served in The Grand Dining Room and it all came flooding back to me – yes the room was long, and had four rows of pillars through it, making five distinct corridors, albeit not filled in by walls.

I remembered that to perform A Christmas Carol I had to work the room, making sure I was always on the move, with no fixed area to focus the acting on. I also remembered that the banquet staff would be clearing the previous course as I performed, meaning that there were ample opportunities to include the waiting staff in the story (thinking back, I am sure that they must have hated it), and one poor guy always managed to be in the wrong, or the right, place during the Fezziwig ball and I would end up dancing a jig with him.

As I looked at the room over my eggs and bacon I dragged my mind from the past into the present and looked at the possibilities for my evening performance of The Signalman and Doctor Marigold. I knew that the evening was going to be an intimate affair and I doubted that we would need the whole dining room, so how else could we stage it? The answer was the door to the room, for as you enter there is a full width area, unencumbered by the pillars, at one side was a large bookcase (perfect as a backdrop for Marigold), and at the other a fireplace (suitable for The Signalman.) That seemed to be the perfect place to perform, I also noticed the large wooden desk with a sloping top, used to check guests in, and wondered if I could appropriate that for the desk in the Signalman’s hut.

After breakfast I immediately walked to the car and set off to St Simons Island. It was a beautiful drive, across flat wetlands where herons flew in such numbers that they reminded me of seagulls.

I drove on across various bridges and soon I was pulling up outside the fabric shop. To my dismay I realised that it actually sold fabrics for furnishing – curtains, drapes, furniture coverings etc, and didn’t have anything that would suit my purpose, but the owner did suggest the next shop which specialised in quilting, so I tried there instead. As I walked in a lady was using a huge machine, reminiscent of a Victorian cotton mill (except it was powered by electricity and had a laptop attached to it), to create a huge piece of work. She was concentrating hard, as the needles darted this way and that to create the elaborate pattern, and I thought it best just to wait quietly until she had finished that particular section, On she went, ignoring me completely, not even a quick ‘Ill be with you shortly’. Finally she stopped, looked up, saw me and jumped in the air at the same time shouting ‘JESUS CHRIST!! OH GOD!’ Such had been her concentration she had no idea I’d even entered the shop and then suddenly there was this apparent apparition standing at her counter watching her. After holding her chest and panting for a while, she calmed down and I apologised for scaring her so much. I explained what I wanted and why, and she immediately began to talk about The Queen and Charles and, inevitably, Diana and Camilla. She was very kind and she was the first actual person I had spoken to about the Queen since she died and I found myself becoming very emotional all over again. My new friend very kindly made no charge for the small amount of fabric, seeing as what it was for.

I drove back to Jekyll Island, returned to my room and fetched my sewing kit (which I travel with to patch up costumes if they suffer from the rigours of the tour), and started to hem the edges before completing a small hoop that snuggled onto my arm without slipping.

Having completed my needlework I went to the little pantry store in the hotel and bought a chicken salad, which I ate on an outside deck whilst admiring two little green lizards running to and fro.

I spent the afternoon running through my lines for the two shows and getting frustratingly tangled up in both, which was slightly worrying. The best thing would have been to gone for a walk, but yet another tropical rain storm had settled over the island and I was restricted to quarters.

Variety was provided by a meeting with the hotel staff about the evening’s event and to my delight they told me that they were indeed setting up in the wide space at the entrance to the room, and yes it would be fine to use the sloping desk for my set.

We chatted about the timetable (guests were dining at 7.30 and I would start performing after they had finished an hour later, which meant it was going to be a late evening.)

I went back to my room and did some more rehearsing, with more success this time (I actually put costume on, which helped me to concentrate more), and then settled back to wait for the start of the show. As I sat on my bed I remembered that I had a very early start in the morning, in fact I would need to set my alarm for 3am to leave the hotel at 3.30, so I began to carefully pack everything I could in my suitcase, and left it lying open on the floor at the end of the bed ready to add my costume and wash bag to it in the morning.

At 7.45 I got fully into The Signalman’s all black costume, including my black arm band which naturally didn’t show, but I knew I was wearing it, and made my way down two flights of stairs into the small bar area, which is just outside the dining room, and where quite a group was gathering and starting a rowdy evening. In the dining room a more sedate and elegant evening was progressing as the guests were served their main courses. I sat in a large leather arm chair to wait. At various stages some of the guests came out of the room to get some fresh air, or stretch their legs and chatted to me. One lady had actually been at one my previous performances here when she was a young girl, apparently I stole some asparagus from her plate during the show, and she has never forgotten it.

I received updates during the rest of dinner from the hotel’s audio visual guy, Dante, and eventually, at 8.30, I got the word that the dinner service was complete and cleared and that I could start. There was nobody to make introductory remarks or welcome me to the stage, so I simply walked into the room and began.

The lines for the Signalman flowed well and the dark eerie light that Dante had created with a couple of floor LED spotlights added to the atmosphere in the lonely signal box, and when I got to the end of the show the audience applauded warmly. I announced that I was going to disappear to perform a quick costume change and would be back in a few minutes to continue the evening, at which I made my way behind the large book case and changed costume in a sort of cupboard/passage way/storage area just a few feet from the stage itself. Soon I was in the corduroy trousers, collarless shirt with rolled up sleeves (black arm band showing clearly this time), plain waistcoat and rough laceless boots. I re-emerged with as little ceremony as I could so that I could move the furniture around and place the little flight of steps that would represent Marigold’s cart, without the audience thinking it was part of the show. When the set was ready, I waited until the guests had all returned and started once more.

Doctor Marigold went as smoothly as The Signalman, with just a couple of minor line errors, that while frustrating to me, didn’t effect the show itself. I reached the end and again received lovely applause and then stayed on the stage to do a little Q&A session, before everyone prepared to leave. I posed for some photographs and then collected all of my props and the Signalman’s costume and made my way up stairs to my room. In the bar the boisterous party was still in full fling, and at the centre of it were two British gentlemen, so I joined in with the banter for a while before retiring for the night.

I packed my costumes into the little roller case – it is amazing how much that can hold, set the bedside alarm and my phone for 3am and left the large case open ready for the morning.

A Dark and Difficult Day

Tags

Buckingham Palace, Heathrow Airport, King Charles III, Queen Elizabeth II

Having heard the news from England, I wasn’t going to write a blog post about my travels yesterday, somehow it didn’t seem right, but I have decided to go ahead, although it feels difficult to be light-hearted and entertaining today. But here is my account of Thursday, 8 September 2022:

The 2022 September tour is an extra trip and enables some of the venues that have asked me to perform something other than A Christmas Carol, to present non-seasonal events. Unfortunately some of the sponsors who had originally asked to be part of the tour have since backed out, meaning that there are a few gaps in the itinerary, but I may get time to run, possibly play some golf or be a bit of a tourist.

My day started early as I had to catch an 8am flight from Heathrow airport which meant a taxi pulling up outside our house at 5 o’clock in the morning. I had packed everything the day before, so having had a slice of toast and a cup of coffee, it was a case of saying farewell to Liz and disappearing into the darkness. The traffic at that time in the morning was very light and so I was at Heathrow in very very good time. The same was true of check-in and security and I was all cleared and ready to fly just after 6! I headed to a Pret a Manger where I had a little bowl of Bircher muesli topped with blueberries, some orange juice and a coffee, all of which passed the time until the screens showed that I should proceed to gate B31. The B gates at terminal 2 are in a separate building and getting to them means descending the longest escalator I have ever used, and about half way down I had a terrible sense of vertigo and had to cling to the rail for a moment and look anywhere but down, to control the sensations of dizziness which were making my head spin.

Continuing the theme of the day, boarding started soon after I arrived and it was calm, quick and efficient, meaning that we could push back from the gate ahead of schedule. I had a window seat with nobody next to me (thanks to continually checking the United Airlines website and switching my seat every time I noticed someone reserving the one next to mine), so I could spread out a little. I began to scroll through the huge amount of films on offer (so different now to those days when one film was shown on a single screen at the front of the cabin, as it was when I first toured). Out of a sense of nostalgia I chose Jaws, and settled back into my seat, reassured by the announcement that it was ‘highly unlikely’ that we would experience a water landing. As an early birthday present, to allow for this trip, Liz had bought me a set of noise-cancelling wireless headphones which did an amazing job of cosseting me in the world of Amity Island, and blocking out a rainy London.

It was odd to fly at that time of day, as usually I am used to lunch being brought round after an hour’s flying, but today it was breakfast – my third of the day (if I count the toast and coffee at home), and I tucked into pancakes topped with a hot fruit compote and an unnamed and unidentifiable white sauce, maybe cream or custard – I think not cheese, who knows?

A strange thing happened when the cabin attendant came to offer me beverages: I asked for an orange juice and a coffee, and she poured both and handed them to me (I grant, not too strange at the moment). Now, usually I am asked ‘cream and sugar?’ and I reply, ‘yes, thank you, one of each.’ But on this occasion she didn’t ask, so I said ‘may I have cream and coffee please?’ to whish she rather scolded me – ‘You didn’t ask for cream and sugar, so I just gave you coffee. I gave you what you asked for, I’m not a mind reader you know!’ I was slightly taken aback by this tirade, but tried to lighten the moment by replying. ‘Oh I am sure you are!’ but it was an odd moment, nonetheless .

Once Chief Brody and Matt Hooper had swum back to Amity, leaving the wreck of the Orca and the remains of Quint in the Atlantic Ocean, it was time to chose another film and this time I went for Daniel Day-Lewis’ Oscar winner performance as Abraham Lincoln. It is a long film, and I dozed bit, but it was truly a remarkable performance, and I had forgotten the quality of the supporting cast. By the time Lincoln was over I decided that rather than launching into another movie, I would investigate the TV programmes, and found a special recording of John Williams conducting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra – and so my unintended theme (the films of Spielberg as scored by Williams) was settled. It was a magnificent concert and was nice just to let the music fill my ears for an hour or so.

For the final leg of the flight, over Nova Scotia and down the New England coast towards New York City I went full out with my theme and started to watch Close Encounters of the Third Kind and got three quarters of the way through as we made our soft, smooth landing on American soil. It was now that my day changed completely.

As my phone came back to life so the news came to me that doctors had serious concerns about the health of Queen Elizabeth II, and that all of the family were making their way to the Highlands of Scotland to be with her. That fact, and the fact that there was no mention of her being taken to hospital, could only mean one thing and a great sense of emptiness and depression descended over me, for the one constant of my entire life was about to be taken away. I just wanted to be at home with Liz, I didn’t want to be in America, I didn’t want to be preparing to do shows, I didn’t want to be wearing a smile and chatting to audience members, I wanted to be back in my home country being able to mourn with everyone else.

I spent the layover at Newark listening to the news coverage and it became increasingly obvious that all of the broadcasters were starting to follow carefully prepared protocols to bring the news of the Monarch’s death to the world. I boarded by onward flight to Jacksonville, Florida, and by the time I landed the news was confirmed. Strangely the line of news that most brought the reality of the situation to me was the mention of ‘King Charles III’: the succession occurs at the very moment of death, and a new era had begun.

There is little that I can add to the huge amount of tributes to Queen Elizabeth II that are being constantly played out over the news channels, but in 2012 I and Liz were fortunate enough to meet her. I am currently writing a new book about my life touring on the road, and in it I recall our time at Buckingham Palace:

‘In 2012 the nation celebrated the 200^th anniversary of Charles Dickens’ birth and the most prestigious event was a reception at Buckingham Palace hosted by Queen Elizabeth II and The Duke of Edinburgh.  Invitations were received by famous actors who have performed in adaptations of the novels, academics who have studied and written about Charles’ life, and members of the family: Liz and I were truly fortunate to have been included on the list.

On 14 February we drove our car through the great gates in front of the palace and parked in the courtyard before walking under the famous portico, up the small flight of steps and into the Queen’s official London residence.

We ascended the grand staircase and made our way into a gilded and packed reception room, in which there seemed to be celebrities at every corner.  We were given a glass of champagne and waiters circulated with plates of hors d’oeuvre, beautifully created to allow for single-bite ease of eating.  Somehow, seamlessly, we discovered ourselves in a long line and at the head of it we were presented to the Queen and the Duke, who shook our hands and said a few words, before moving on to the next guests.   If that wasn’t enough of a thrill, the members of the family were gathered up and taken to a smaller room, where we were granted a second and more private audience with the Queen, who spent ten minutes or so chatting with us all, demonstrating a remarkable memory as she recalled meeting my Uncle Peter many years previously, wistfully remembering that he had been ‘rather dishy’.  Peter had been a Royal Naval officer

Queen Elizabeth was quite amazing, the energy she demonstrated as she worked the room, making intelligent conversation with all of these literary and artistic folk, was remarkable.  And the next evening, or later in the week, she would be talking to nuclear physicists, or footballers, or politicians, and she would share the same beaming smile with them and display the same levels of knowledge of their work and would delight them as she had delighted us.’

That occasion was a truly memorable one, but my feelings of grief are not due to that evening, but to the sense that a major part of our reality has gone. Our parents lived through multiple changes of monarch, through both death and abdication, but for the multiple generations that have been born since 1952 we have known nothing other than the leadership and care of Queen Elizabeth II

Life will go on, and our King will serve the country well, but it will never be the same again.

When I arrived at my hotel on Jekyll Island in Georgia I noticed that the flags that flew on the spacious lawns had been lowered to half mast.

I don’t want to write more about my journey or my evening, or why I am in Georgia, that can wait until tomorrow. For now just to say ‘Rest in peace, your Majesty, and God save the King’

Rochester – Jubilee or Dickens?

Tags

Charles Dickens, Festival, Jubilee 2022, Mystery of Edwin Drood, Pickwick Papers, Queen Victoria, Rochester, The Empty Chair, Wordsmithery

For as long as I have been performing, and indeed for a few years before that, the first weekend in June has meant attending the Rochester Summer Dickens Festival. The city of Rochester in Kent has long associations with Charles Dickens, as he lived nearby in both his childhood and at the end of his life. Many of his novels are set in Rochester, including his first (The Pickwick Papers) and last (The Mystery of Edwin Drood). The local residents and the council are proud of their connection with Dickens and treat him as their own, so each Summer the streets are given over to a celebration of his life and works with costumed characters mingling with the colourful crowds.

It has to be said that over the years the festival has become more of a huge party and carnival and less of a Dickens event but I have always been invited back to perform a variety of my shows, thereby maintaining a familial connection.

In 2020 and 2021 there were no festivals due to Covid, so 2022 would see all of the participants back on those ancient streets for the first time in 3 years, but this year we wouldn’t be attending a pure Dickens Festival for the first weekend in June coincided with a weekend of patriotic pride as the nation came together to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. A city such as Rochester would be amiss indeed if it didn’t honour the Monarch so the plan was to subsume the Dickens Festival into the Jubilee party.

As far as I was concerned the biggest change was that I would not be performing in the beautiful Guildhall museum, that has been my ‘home’ in recent years, but instead my show would be part of a fringe festival celebrating the spoken word, and which was organised by an organisation called Wordsmithery. From the sumptuous surroundings of the Guildhall I would be instead performing in a small tent in the shadow of the ancient castle

When I first attended the Dickens Festival there was a large programme of talks, lectures and performances, but this aspect has declined in recent years, but I need to congratulate Wordsmithery and the Medway Council for providing this opportunity. Over the two days there was a constant programme of events and I definitely think that this an opportunity to be encouraged and developed.

Saturday

Having driven to Kent on Friday night (after attending the most brilliant circus with Liz and the girls in the morning), I woke quite early on Saturday morning to be greeted with a grey windy day. I was glad of a little time for I wanted to run through my show, which was a brand new one. Usually my performances run for about 45 minutes to an hour, but to fit into the Wordsmithery timetable I had been asked to produced something that ran at 25 – 30 minutes. I had suggested ‘A Child’s Journey with Dickens’ or ‘The Signalman’ both of which are relatively short, and I had also flown the idea of creating something new, detailing the only meeting between Charles Dickens and Queen Victoria – that idea was leapt on, as it tied in so well with the Royal theme, and just a few weeks ago I had begun researching in an attempt to tell the story effectively.

I was assisted by a script that had been written many years ago by an actress in America who portrayed Victoria at various festivals and events. Anne Hamilton had worked closely with my father over a play called ‘The Queen and the Commoner’, and her script was a superb place to start. I also discovered various other accounts of the private audience – the Queen herself wrote about it in her journals, and of course Dickens wrote letters. There is a detailed account by Arthur Helps, the Clerk of the Privy Council who made the meeting possible, and Charles Dickens’ tour manager George Dolby published his memories of sharing a dinner with the author immediately after he had left Buckingham Palace.

The choice of the Queen script was made late in the day meaning that it would be impossible to write and learn it in the time available, but Barry from Wordsmithery assured me that most of the acts, including his own poetry recital, would be ‘on the book’ and it was fine to give the show as a reading.

My first writing of the new script concentrated purely on the meeting between the two great figures – covering their discussion of America (Dickens had just returned from his second tour), including a description of President Lincoln’s dream in which he had a premonition of his own death 10 days before the fateful night at Ford’s Theatre. They also spoke of the gulf between the rich and poor and the necessity of solving that issue; they discussed the price of beef and bread and the difficulty of finding good servants in England. The Queen presented Dickens with a copy of a book that she had written (which he had previously read and detested), and he offered to tell her the proposed plot of The Mystery of Edwin Drood – she declined the offer meaning that our only hope of unravelling Dickens’s final mystery was taken from us.

When I had finished the script I discovered that it was woefully short, running at around 15 minutes, so I decided to include some other incidents involving the two. In 1840 on the day of Victoria’s wedding to Albert the young Charles travelled to Windsor Castle with friends and there, beneath the window of the Royal bed chamber he flung himself to the ground professing his undying love for the Queen! This behaviour could be put down to high spirits and an excess of celebration, but in the days following he continued to write a series of letters telling all and sundry that his life was not worth living without Victoria, and that he hated his wife, his parents and his children. He wanted to run away and commit murder (the queen should have to sign the warrant for his death penalty and therefore his name would come before here eyes), or suicide. He theatrically and flamboyantly asked that his body be embalmed and placed on the arch outside Buckingham Palace when she resided in London or on the round tower at Windsor when she was there. These were the type of letters that a celebrity may rather have wished would not resurface!

In the end the script ran at half and hour and seemed quite fun.

Saturday morning in Rochester was grey and very windy. I parked my car and walked to the mote of Rochester Cathedral where Wordsmithery were based. There were two venues each in a tent – one was called The Raven (Dickens had a pet raven, Grip), and the other ‘The Empty Chair’ after the sketch made of Dickens’ study on the day of his death.

My first show was due to be at 11.30 in the smaller tent – The Raven, and as the start time came closer a steady stream of audience arrived and took every available seat with more standing outside peering through the flap. Barry announced me and I began by issuing a warning that if the wind kept up we may not be ‘in Kansas anymore!’ when we finished

The script worked very well and people laughed at appropriate moments and applauded at the end, which was a huge relief.

And now I had time to explore the rest of the festival – to celebrate the Jubilee in style, and I have to say I was somewhat disappointed. It seemed to me that the event had rather missed the target, for there were no large events to celebrate Queen Elizabeth’s reign. In the castle grounds there has traditionally been a stage and it would have been wonderful to have brass bands playing, energetic dance shows, tribute bands and the like, but there was no arena or stage this year and the area looked rather forlorn. There was a large screen which was playing a programme of Royal-themed cookery programmes, but nothing more. In previous Dickens festivals the long High Street has been filled with entertainers, and there were a few stages along the way where theatre and dance schools would do shows, while jugglers, one-man bands and storytellers gathered crowds, laughing and cheering around them. There were no entertainers in the streets and no talks, lectures or exhibitions. It all seemed a bit flat.

Fortunately there were still plenty of costumed characters to engage with the public, and these volunteers go to great lengths to make wonderful costumes and are happy to pose for photographs and chat with the visitors to the town. The centrepiece of the Dickens Festival are the two great daily parades but this year there was only to be one, at 1pm. All of the costumed characters gathered at the end of the High Street behind the pipe band, and off we set. We waved and smiled and the crowds waved back, but still there was not the same buzz, the same excitement as in previous years. When we all arrived in the Castle Grounds the Mayor made a short speech and the parade dispersed. I stayed around for a while, making myself available for photo ops, but soon my day at the festival was done.

Knowing I had an early finish I had booked a round of golf at a nearby course and I was amazed to discover that I was about the only player on it! The wind was still strong which effected my game, but most of the errors I made were down to me being very out of practice rather than the prevailing weather conditions. It is so nice to play without being held up, or indeed feeling as if you are holding up the players behind, and it was a very relaxing evening.

Sunday

My show on Sunday would not be until 3pm, so my first actual commitment would be the parade at 1pm. However I got into costume and drove to Rochester quite early in the hope that the crowds would be out in force and that the party atmosphere that was gripping the country would make this a day to remember. Throughout the nation there would be street parties and the British would do what they do best! But in Rochester that flat feeling of the day before continued, perhaps even more so. There were not large crowds and even a number of the costumed characters were mumbling and grumbling. I took the opportunity to visit the Guildhall, wondering if they had a display of the many Royal connections with the City, but there wasn’t anything going on there. ‘My’ room was empty with chairs stacked at the sides. The staff had wondered whey I was not doing a show there and indeed a few confused potential audience members had arrived during the day before asking when I would be on.

As I walked back down the High Street it was almost empty and the thought suddenly came to me that if this was to be a real Jubilee celebration then the opportunity to have a HUGE street party taking in the entire length of the thoroughfare would have been amazing! What a spectacle that would have been!

Midday on Sunday 5 June: Jubilee Day

At 1 we paraded again, and waved and smiled and posed once more until we all went our different ways in the afternoon. My show was at 3, so I made my way to the ‘Empty Chair’ yurt at 2.30 to prepare. The wind was considerably less on the Sunday, so I didn’t have that to contend with, however the bells of the Cathedral were being loudly rung on one side whilst the Pipe band, with their rat-tat-tat-ing drums, gave an impromptu concert on the other. ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more’

Again the yurt filled and again people stood outside peering in, and once more the new script was a success. It is an interesting subject and something that I will look more closely at in the future, I think.

The Empty Chair

And now my 2022 Festival was over. Jubilee Celebration or Dickens Festival? Sadly it was neither – it could and should have been a wonderful opportunity to wave the Union Flag high and proud, and I don’t think that anyone in the Dickensian community (I certainly wouldn’t) would have begrudged being gently eased aside to celebrate a remarkable time in our country’s history, but somehow, it just didn’t happen that way.

I drove away from Kent feeling a little sad.

Well, That Was Quite A Birthday! Part 1: Right Royal Rochester

Tags

Camilla, Duchess of York, Great Expectations, Miriam Margoyles, Pip, Rochester Guildhall

The 7th February was Charles Dickens’ 210th birthday and such is the enormity of his enduring legacy I have been involved in celebrating the event for an entire week. These are the accounts of the various events that I have attended

Rochester Guildhall. Wednesday 2 February

My first journey was to the county of Kent, and specifically to Rochester, on the 2nd February. Rochester is the town most closely associated with Charles Dickens and the ancient buildings feature in many of his novels, including the first (The Posthumous Papers of The Pickwick Club), and the last (The Mystery of Edwin Drood). Although he never actually lived in Rochester, his home at Gad’s Hill Place was nearby, and today the streets are a Mecca for those who love his books and revere him.

Rochester used to be a city in its own right, but lost the status a number of years ago, eventually amalgamating into the larger unitary authority of Medway, but for me and, I suspect most Dickensians, it will always be the City of Rochester. For a long time there was a Dickens visitor attraction built in Eastgate House, which also features in the first and last novels. One would walk through various rooms, each of which had a brilliantly designed and built theatrical set, with various projections, voiceovers and animatronics to bring the scenes to life, and it was an impressive venue for Dickens fans to visit, but unfortunately the historic fabric of the old house couldn’t sustain the daily tramp of visitors and the attraction had to be closed down, which left the City of Rochester with nothing to present to the fans who came from all over the world. Until last week!

At the opposite end of the High Street from Eastgate House is the Guildhall Museum, which tells the entire history of Medway, and for over two years (interrupted by the pandemic) the Council have been planning and constructing a new permanent exhibit to Charles Dickens, called ‘The Making of Dickens’ which was due to be officially opened on the 2nd February. I was contacted by the Council, thanks to the influence of my brother, Ian, with a request to read a short passage from Great Expectations to a VIP guest, who would be performing the opening ceremony. The identity of the guest was at this time unknown, but as the council had originally approached the actress Miriam Margoyles (a major VIP in her own right) to perform the reading, we guessed that the VIP must be very important indeed and soon this was confirmed when the emails began to refer to the VIP in bold type). With Miriam being out of the country, the search for a reader settled on me, and arrangements were made, and still the identity of our VIP was unknown due to security concerns, and so it became apparent that we would be in the presence of royalty. Who, though? The front runner in the ‘Guess The Royal’ stakes was Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, as she has long celebrated and championed the written and spoken word, and is a patron of various charities promoting literacy. Before Christmas she and The Prince of Wales had read passages from A Christmas Carol for a series of videos made by the Charles Dickens Museum, and the fact that a day or two before the event I had a message saying that she (yes, the council let the pronoun slip through the net) would like to share the reading, strengthened my suspicions further.

On the morning of the 2nd I dropped our girls to school and then got on the road for the 2 hour drive to Kent. I was dressed in a suit, but had my costume with me also. The team at The Guildhall had asked for me to be in Victorian attire, and the suit was merely an insurance policy in case I hit traffic and was running late.

Rochester and the Guildhall are both very familiar to me, as I have been performing there since I started my Dickens shows in 1994. Indeed the first reading I ever gave (after my initial performance of A Christmas Carol in December ’93) was in the Guildhall itself, when I read a passage of Nicholas Nickleby to the local Dickens Fellowship branch. Each Summer I return to the city for the Dickens Festival and the beautiful main chamber of the building has been my permanent venue for many years, and it was in that main chamber that I was to read with Camill…..with the VIP.

It was during my journey down that an email came in confirming that the guest was indeed the Duchess of Cornwall, and that I would be briefed on the procedures and protocol when I arrived.

At 12.30 I walked through the door and The Guildhall looked spic and span ready for it Royal visit. To be perfectly honest, it is always in an immaculate condition, and mounting the great staircase makes one feel as if you are in a palace. I was greeted by Ed Woollard who was coordinating the day’s events, and he quickly ran through the timetable with me: At 1.30 a party of thirty school children from the nearby St Margarets at Troy Town school would arrive, and would gather in the Grand Chamber, where I would be also, to await the Duchess. At 2 o’clock The Duchess of Cornwall would arrive and be greeted by costumes characters, supplied by the local Dickens Fellowship branch (of which I am proud to be president.). She would then be taken up to the new exhibit and be shown around by various Council officials and dignitaries, before making her way into the chamber at 2.30, where I and one of the teachers from the school would greet her (these Royals get greeted a lot!). I should address her as ‘Your Royal Highness’ at first and as ‘Ma’am’ subsequently. We would walk to our chairs at the front of the room and following a brief welcome by a member of the council, I would introduce our reading, setting the scene so to speak, and then invite Camilla to begin.

When all was firmly in my mind I went to change into my Victorian costume and when I returned Ed showed me around the exhibition, which is very impressive. Although built in what used to be a rather square, featureless room the designers had made remarkable use of the space by guiding the visitor past a mock up of Charles’ childhood home in Chatham, through a theatre where you can sit and watch a holographic actor portraying Dickens at his reading desk (NOT ME!), and then along a walkway where large panels cause you to stop and look up to read about his journalism, Sketches by Boz and The Pickwick Papers. At the end of the walkway you suddenly find yourself in a town square with a store front, which contains some Dickens memorabilia . This square is a good space and will be used by the educational officer at the museum to talk to students. From the square you pass through a door into a recreation of Dickens’s study at Gad’s Hill Place with his desk in the bay window. For the Royal visit Charles’ walking cane and letter opener had been laid on the desk, but these will be tucked into a display case during normal opening hours. I suggested that the chair be pulled out from the desk slightly, to recreate the famous picture of the study sketched on the day after Dickens died: The Empty Chair.

The Empty Chair

At the end of the exhibition is a map showing all of the local sites associated with Charles Dickens and encouraging visitors to explore the wider region.

I walked through the exhibit again, this time with a photographer in tow, and I posed in each of the rooms, until he had all of the shots he needed (I think he was actually slightly practicing for the Royal walk-through, making sure that light and angles were correct – In effect I was Camilla’s stunt double).

Initial duties done I returned to the Chamber and the school children duly arrived and took off their coats. Together we had an hour to wait, so my job now was to keep them entertained. The students were from Year 5, meaning that they were 9 and 10 years old, and although they were due to study Great Expectations later in the year, they hadn’t yet. Information about the visit had come very late and the teachers had spent one afternoon cramming some basic knowledge about author and text into the young brains. So, when I asked if anyone had any questions about Charles Dickens, the floodgates opened! We had a wonderful time, for the more they asked the more curious they became. After their greeting duties outside, the costumes characters from The Fellowship came into the room, and then the children had fun guessing who was which character.

The imminent arrival of The Duchess interrupted out wonderful session and I took my place at the door where Camilla was introduced to me. I said ‘good afternoon’ remembering to slightly bow my head and add ‘Your Royal Highness’. I mentioned to her that I had thoroughly enjoyed her A Christmas Carol readings, and she seemed genuinely pleased that I had not only seen them but remembered them.

We walked to the front of the room and took our seats. As I had been in the room for so long, and had performed in it so many times before, I felt incredibly at ease, as if it was my own domain and I was welcoming Camilla into it, and in the photographs taken on the day I certainly look very relaxed, while she looks slightly nervous at the prospect of reading.

The children were welcomed by the Council member who was escorting The Duchess, and then he handed over to me to introduce the reading. The passage chosen (not by me, incidentally) was one from early in Great Expectations when Pip is attending a very basic school kept my Mr Wosple’s great aunt (‘…who went to sleep between the hours of six and seven each evening, in the society of youth who payed her twoppence a week for the improving opportunity of seeing her do it’).

I am not sure if the school children fully followed what was going on but when we got to the end they applauded politely. Now it was time for questions, and four children sat in the front row clearly and confidently read theirs out. The nice thing about this was that the questions hadn’t been submitted prior to the event, so that the Duchess’s answers were completely genuine.

1: ‘What is your favourite Charles Dickens book and character?’ ‘A Tale of Two Cities and The Artful Dodger’

2: Why is it so important to read books by authors like Charles Dickens?’ ‘Because their use of language is so beautiful and authors like Dickens tell such wonderful stories. Also, we have so much to learn from the past.’

3: ‘How do you find time to read books in your busy day?’ ‘It is very difficult. Sometimes I try to read in bed, but fall asleep and cant remember what Ive read, so end up reading the same passage the next night and over and over again! I try to save up all of the books that I want to read for holidays, at Christmas or Easter, and read them when we are away.’

4: ‘Where did you get your love of reading and books?’ ‘When I was a little girl my father used to sit on the end of my bed and read stories, and I have always loved the memories of those times’

These answers are paraphrased, but the gist is correct and it was during this time that Camilla was at her happiest and most relaxed. Next on the itinerary was the unveiling of the plaque, which will eventually be on the wall of the exhibition, but for the moment was mounted on a board set on an easel. The staff were very worried that the whole affair would collapse when she pulled the little string to draw back the blue velvet curtain, and Ed was gripping tightly on to the whole structure as she performed her duty. Fortunately disaster did not ensue!

And that marked the end of the visit and with three cheers ringing in her ears, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, left the building to be driven to another venue where she would be greeted again, and shake more hands, and smile and be gracious. In the Guildhall chamber you could almost hear the gasp of relief and everyone relaxed. I said goodbye to the school children and offered to come into their school to talk more about Charles Dickens. The costumed characters and I went around the exhibition and again, until gradually we all drifted away to our homes.

On Tuesday 2 February I had driven a round trip of 4 hours and read from Great Expectations for 2 minutes, but it was a very special day for all of us present. Also it shows how large Charles Dickens still looms over our society, to attract a Royal visit to honour his memory is quite a thing.

Postcript:

Just 2 days after our event it was announced by The Queen that it was her sincere wish that Camilla be known as Queen Consort when Charles takes the throne. It seems obvious to me that The Queen felt that if Camilla could hold her own reading with a Dickens, then she had proved that she was ready for anything. To quote Abel Magwitch: ‘It was me what done it!’