A Walk Through the Charles Dickens Museum
If you find yourself in London and have any attachment whatsoever to Ebenezer Scrooge, Miss Havisham, Sydney Carton, Mrs Jellyby, Richard Swiveller, Samuel Pickwick, ET AL., you will in all probability want to trot yourself on over to the Dickens Museum at 48 Doughty Street, directions to which you can obtain from the good ladies at Persephone Books, located nearby.
48 Doughty Street was the rented home of Mr Charles Dickens from 1837 to 1839 (ages 25 to 27). It is his only surviving London house. During these years, he was working on The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, and Nicholas Nickleby.
As with all house museums that are the MOST fun, the Dickens Museum allows you to wander through at your own pace, and has placed docents throughout the house to answer questions and, presumably, to ensure you don’t make off with something like Dickens’s speaking lectern (which, yes! they have!). They will answer questions like “So his sister-in-law that he was super creepy about lived in this bedroom right next to his & his wife’s?” (look, he wanted to be buried next to her; it was weird)
Since it was a rented house, many of the pieces are of the period and not original to the Dickens family, but they have a large number of items and pieces of furniture from other Dickens homes, including his writing desk and chair, which you can stand and stare at for however long you wish.
If you cannot make it to London anytime soon, but still wish for a walk-through, look no further:
There we have it! A smattering of photos from the Dickens Museum in London. Hopefully you will go, grill the docents about Dickens’s disgusting treatment of his wife WHILE acknowledging his genius as an author, and find your own favorite part of the house. Mine? Probably the toilet chair.