The Charles Dickens Museum

The Charles Dickens Museum
48 Doughty Street WC1N 2LX

Wednesday 8 July 2015

Today was a particular pleasure for Linda and me, because we were visiting one lovely museum with the Friends of another: The Cartoon Museum;  so thanks to Jane for organising the trip. (and a reminder that their Alice in Cartoonland exhibition is about to open)

We met at 11.00 and were led to the 'Boardroom' for a brief introduction from the Curator who, we think, probably originated in New Zealand. She explained that of the two houses, only one had been the Dickens residence, but having both means that admin and shop and cafe can be in one, leaving the original feeling very much like a home. The terrace was built in 1807, and the Dickens family lived here from 1837-1839, Dickens referring to it as 'my house in town'.  This was the period when he had ceased to be a journalist, having completed the stupendously  best-selling Pickwick Papers. It was here, the Curator told us, that he wrote Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby, and also began to edit his newspaper.  The Curator also mentioned a few highlights that we should look out for, and we began our exploration of the house.  There was a treasure hunt around the place, concerning the Mystery of Edwin Drood, though this, his last work, had nothing to do with the actual house we were in.

The hallway has interesting items on its wall: maps of London at the time, letters, including one about starting work on Barnaby Rudge, and a poster for Dickens' Boxing Day sports at Gads Hill House.  Illustrations from, or about the books were everywhere, and in fact there is about to be a small exhibition about the illustrators.

(By the way, I am not putting a Wikilink to each of the novels as I am assuming either (a) that my readers have read them or (b) that they can find details for themselves.  Though, interestingly, there were many foreign visitors in the house, including a large number of Italian young people: can Dickens be on the syllabus in Italy, we wondered)


The Dining Room has atmospheric street sounds (horses, rather than cars) and dinner party conversation. The dinner service is embellished with portraits of famous contemporaries, including Thackeray and the artist, Daniel Maclise, several of whose works are on display in the house.  For example, the Morning Room has a charming picture of Catherine, by Maclise, in which you can clearly see her engagement ring, which is also displayed in the house. The Curator had told us that it is the model for Dora Spenlow's ring, with the little blue stones.

We then headed down to the basement to see the kitchen, scullery, wash-house and wine store (with suitably dusty bottles. There was at least a water supply in the kitchen, and a copper to heat water in the wash-house.  


We liked the candleholders with their long carrying handles, which we felt were safer than the type that has a small handle on the saucer.  The whole basement area provided us with the opportunity to remind ourselves why we are glad we did not live in 'the olden times', especially since we are probably of the class which would have been emptying chamber pots and using washing dollies, rather than enjoying London life. The explanations throughout the house were clear and interesting, describing fully which items had a direct Dickens link and which were simply of the period.

Back upstairs in the Drawing Room, we listened to a recording of Simon Callow (as Dickens) reading from Pickwick Papers, while we looked at the theatre posters round the wall.  Next door is the Study, with the desk and the waste paper basket as it might have been when Dickens was searching for the right phrases to include in A Christmas Carol. I mention this because it is a sample of how the house really does feel like the home of the author, despite his brief tenancy here.  Many of the novels are displayed here, as well as pictures of some of the characters, and the Robert W Bass painting 'Dicken's Dream', with his many characters coming to life around him.


Upstairs again and you come to two bedrooms and Dickens' small dressing room.  There are toilet articles here, including his razor and brushes.

Next door is Mary Hogarth's room.  Because Dickens was so affected by the unexpected death of his much-loved sister-in-law, this room contains quite a lot of objects and information about death, including his lawyer's copy of his will, with the large bequest to his mistress, Ellen Ternan)

The two rooms on the top floor are the Servant's Room, and the Nursery; as well as toys, and the stuffed raven, Grip, there is a charming sketch of the four Dickens children, and a bust of John Dickens, looking across the room at a painting of Mr Micawber, whom he so much resembled.  There is also the original grille of the Marshalsea Debtors' Prison, a part of Dickens' childhood which he never forgot, and which he depicted in Little Dorrit.  Another reference to his childhood comes in the form of some blacking bottles froom Warren's Blacking Factory, where the young Dickens was put to work in his boyhood.

We also saw a window, set in the wall, which is supposed to be the window in Chertsey which inspired Dickens to describe Bill Sykes forcing the young and innocent Oliver Twist though it to burgle the house.

The Servant's Room has been turned into a kind of scrap book of extracts from the novels, not only on the walls, but also, rather disconcertingly, on a duvet cover. I do not think I would like to sleep under the deathbed scene of Joe the crossing sweeper from Bleak House!

Back downstairs, we paused briefly in a small room with a time line and a virtual tour, as well as an animation of the Bass painting of Dickens' Dream; also quite a lot of information about his struggle to get authors protected by proper copyright laws.  We looked into the Edwin Drood room, before departing, feeling that we had a convincing insight into how the man might have lived his life in these two years in his 20s.

Sutton House

2 & 4 Homerton High Street, Hackney,

London, E9 6JQ

Thursday July 2^nd 2015

Jo & I approached this inner London National Trust property by different bits of the Overground , which was a wise choice as the trains are nicely air-conditioned on this not quite the hottest day. The house itself was also cool and we seemed to be the only visitors not from Hackney. Because of its good location and range of communal spaces it serves as a community facility for Hackney and today the older citizens were enjoying a sing song along with hand instruments in the downstairs barn extension.

The guide is indispensable (and free) if you are not to repeat yourself or miss some aspect of the house due to its very diverse pattern of owners and occupiers and its actually having been two houses for some years. We are now so used to Hackney being Inner London that you have to be reminded that it was once in the country and the site  was spacious enough for Sir Ralph Sadleir, long-serving aide to the famous/infamous/ Wolf Hall  ‘hero’ Sir Thomas Cromwell decided in 1535 to build himself a fine ‘bryk’ house in an era where most people made do with wood and wattle and daub – however it is emphatically not a grand palatial dwelling , but a large family house.

The most splendid and best preserved linen fold carving is in the downstairs parlour, which also has a brief ‘told to the children’ life of the house’s first owner, who, like many during Tudor times, fell in and out of favour. Linenfold does what it says on the tin, and here is a demonstration of how a wood carver might achieve this very pleasing and easy to maintain wall covering – easy that is provided you avoid beetles and dry rot….

Sticking with the building materials, the next stop of the suggested route is down in the cellar where there is information about bricks – it seems that in Tudor times the brickmakers worked on site next to the bricklayers, presumably moulding specially shaped bricks to order though they do take 4 weeks to dry off. This must have saved the Tudor roads of London and the countryside being clogged with huge loads of building supplies …. Sutton House are clearly proud to quote Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall, who found the different prints embedded in the bricks very evocative.

1535 was the year the original Sadleir house was built.

Back up to the first floor you run headlong into the 21^st century as this room (too damaged to restore) is now used as a community gallery whose works we enjoyed, but not enough to buy any. The staircase and landing have further ghosts of the original wall paintings. 

There follow two chambers – one small, probably originally a bedroom, and the Great Chamber by which time you are moving into a later phase of the house’s history. One of the subsequent owners after the house’s founder Ralph Sadleir, was a Captain Millward a rich silk merchant who apparently displayed his wares in this, the largest room of the house.  The 17^th century silk market was clearly volatile as the captain lost his fortune and the house became a girl’s school for almost a hundred years.

What delighted Jo and me was the clear time-lines throughout the property and explanations how the different parts of the house and different uses all fitted together, and it was repeated in various rooms so became better embedded in our minds.

Though the National Trust are careful to indicate where the Tudor parts of the building are still visible and what their original functions were, they have also ‘set-dressed’ the rooms in the context of their later use – hence the Victorian Study tucked away in the corner – by this time, because of growing population especially round Hackney (sounds familiar?), the house was divided into two vertically which is why you are guided to go up one side across the top and down the other. At one point the houses had different names and very different functions. By the time you get to the top room, feeling a bit like an attic, you are firmly in the 20^th century with the remnants of the squatters’ graffiti, also preserved for posterity. In a way they kept the building safe, though there was some damage inevitably, for the years they were here and until the Trust took over. They also ensured that the building would continue to serve as a meeting place for the local community.

This marks the halfway point and you go down to cross over into the ‘other half ‘ of the house as was, with the Georgian parlour as the main exhibition space – this is used to give us the story of the Huguenot family, refugees as many were, who lived here with their 9 surviving children of 12.  Pausing in the parlour allows the Trust to remind us of the Georgian preoccupation with tea and tea cups, and Mr Twining whose little museum was one of our first visits.

By 1891 the house was re-united and then used by the local St John’s Church in Hackney as the social and community premises for clubs for local youth for ‘the Spiritual, Mental, Social and Physical welfare of Young Men’.  In 1914 the church turned the other cellar into a chapel which was so dismal and damp we suspect it was hardly used.  

Today Sutton House continues to host activities for local groups – and we could still hear the community music session keeping some local older citizens well entertained as we got back to the ground floor. As particularly beloved of the  National Trust these days there was a recreated Tudor kitchen complete with a good display of very lifelike model food – we decided that they  (the NT) must have a central workshop that churns out ‘food’  for all they hundreds of properties, most of which have kitchens of one era or another…

It was equally agreeable to exit into the small courtyard, sunshine and landscaping to the sound of singing and the feeling that the National Trust had managed the not easy task of combining the preservation and lively presentation of a house with a very chequered history with continuing use by local people.  

The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archeology

Thursday 25 June 2015


Malet Place

WC1E 6BT

The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archeology, which Linda and I visited today, has a rather unprepossessing entrance, in amongst various bits of University College.  You go up some concrete stairs to reach the galleries, and are confronted by rows of glass cabinets containing -well - bits of Egyptian archeology.  It feels somewhat Pitt-Rivers-y; the cases are crammed and the labels typed with all sorts of catalogue details, but not much explanation.  Linda felt I was being picky when I complained about misspellings, reminding me how annoying it was to correct things in the typewriter ribbon days of old.

Some cases were displayed by digging site, so that the different periods of occupation were together; we would have found a map of the whole Nile Valley with all the sites marked rather useful. There were maps, but they seemed to assume more knowledge that we have. In some of the cases, the story began with paleolithic flint axe heads.Then again, some cases were chronological.  And some were by topic ('tools and weapons' for example).

Flinders Petrie was the grandson of Matthew Flinders, explorer of Australia, hence his unusual forename. He was mostly self taught and, when his work in Egypt began in 1880, set new standards of accuracy and detailed recording.  



His wife Hilda was also an archeologist and worked with him, wearing very appropriate clothing, as you can see. (We were not clear why the picture had been cut in two:  a designer's idea, probably).

We did see lots of interesting things: a large array of bangles made of (don't read on, Sophie!) hippopotamus ivory; a toy hippopotamus; other items made of the same ivory, including shapes thought to be for inlay work



Then there was a 'serpent' game (shake-and-move, we supposed) made out of limestone, and some stone heads, some rather amusing. some in a more familiar "Egyptian' idiom.

We saw many necklaces, made of carnelian, or faience beads.  Some of these were a beautiful colour, looking like jade or soapstone.  We admired several beautiful small glass items, including some remarkable millefiori work.  We think this came from the Roman period, but it was rather hard to be sure.  Similarly there was an astrolabe from the Ottoman period, though no date was supplied

And, of course, we saw lots and lots of pottery, some with designs painted on and some with incised patterns.




Copper items included tiny graduated pots for measuring opium, or gold dust.

The Museum has been in existence for 100 years. After a bomb and the work of the firefighters during the Second World War, it was the 1950s before the collection was resorted. A bead dress, excavated in the 1920s, by successors of Petrie in the field, had to wait till the 1990s to be put together. 

 And finally, I suppose what surprised us most was that some items had been purchased at Cairo Museum:  this is not how we imagine archeologists working!



So, what did we think?  The collection is enormous:  each case had four drawers under it, all full of more shards, shells, beads etc.  Clearly, for an avid Egyptologist, this is a place of pilgrimage (and we did share the space with a very intense French guide and her attentive group).




But for the passing trade, we felt a few more interventions might be helpful:  a map of all the sites referred to; a timeline for those of us who do not instinctively know when the 18th Dynasty began and ended; perhaps fewer items actually displayed, so that they can be seen more clearly; an explanation when a modern 'interpretation' in the form of a clay figure has been added to the already crowded case.  Maybe the problem was our lack of scholarship and knowledge: a quick nip round the Egyptian rooms at the British Museum gives an impression of the grandeur that was Egypt, while Petrie shows the hard work and OCD detail which underlies modern understanding of that world.

Tate Modern

Southwark SE1 9TG

Wednesday June 17^th 2015

Same bus, even the same bus stop, as last week for the Globe – the 63 of course to bring Mary and Linda to Tate Modern. There are lots of reasons for visiting Tate Modern even if Modern Art is not your thing….

• -       Good stopping point between the Tower of London & Westminster along the Thames Path
• -       Across the pedestrian Millennium Bridge from St Paul’s
• -       Fabulous views from the upper floors
• -       Lots of space for children to run around
• -       Very accessible – good lifts  (with priority for chairs and buggies) as well as exciting escalators
• -       Several eating places
• -       Spacious and well stocked shop
• 
  
• Now I’ve got that off my chest I can return to the museum which houses London’s collection of ‘Modern Art’ on floors 3 & 5 with special exhibitions on Level 4 and ground and upper floors for library, cafes, members’ rooms, education etc.

Our Project’s rules determine that we should focus on the substantive collection of any museum or gallery that we visit rather than the current special exhibition but we cheated somewhat today, both feeling that we have paid enough visits to the 4 ‘permanent’ galleries. For those of you not familiar with Tate Modern these are thematically arranged (I’m more a chronological person myself but there you go – it gives another perspective) with such titles as:

Poetry and Dream

Structure and Clarity

Transformed Visions

Energy and Process

Setting the Scene

Within each of these rooms there are some gems – the Rothko murals originally destined for the Four Seasons hotel in New York, the Matisse snail with works by other non-British artists.

Arguably other cities have greater collections of Modern Art but the building and space are a huge asset. The heart of the building is the Turbine Hall,  which has hosted some wonderful single or large multiple exhibitions all of them very memorable, not always for the right reasons ! 

Mary remembered crunching on the ‘Ai-Weiwei ‘ pebbles  before the public were banned from other than looking – Linda fondly recalled the Rachel Whiteread in 2004,  and of course when the whole Gallery opened in May 2000 there was Louise Bourgeois’ Giant Spider. It’s a big space and it needs some-one brave to fill it.

Today as we arrived so early it was almost empty – very unusually – and by the time we left a group of school children were camped obliquely on the ramp (a bit reminiscent, not in a good way, of the access to a roll on roll off ferry) with the sun filtering in which it  always manages to do…

Anyway, Mary & I were there chiefly to be cheered by the special exhibition, the Sonia Delaunay retrospective and cheered we were but also deeply impressed, overwhelmed and delighted in equal measure. Sonia (born Sara Stern to a Russian/Jewish family, renamed Sofia Terk by her rich adoptive aunt, but always known as Sonia) married Robert Delaunay when she arrive in Paris in 1906. When I tell you that she lived until 1979 dying at the age of 94 you will see that she lived through 2 world wars, and outlived her husband by many years, so the exhibition is prolific and extensive as she worked well into her Eighties. Twelve rooms offer you the wonderful range of her work from her early portraits – mainly of women and very arresting, and with an early fascination with colour and colour contrasts – through to her move to abstraction as she starts to work in Paris. This also coincides with the birth of her son Charles, and the asymmetric patchwork quilt she made for his cot is a star display.  Life in pre-war Paris clearly inspired her further – we both loved the tango dancers moving across the Bal Bullier ballroom. There is a tendency in art galleries, especially the more modern collections, to get embroiled in the range of ‘isms’ that permeate any writing about art – whether these are always helpful I am not sure – however  'Simultanism' seems to be the name of the game. Think colour and links with poetry and music.

The Delaunays were in Spain when the First World War broke out and stayed there and in Portugal, leaving us with a legacy of vibrant pictures of Portuguese markets, recognisable but modern.

Back in Paris in 1921 and Sonia had always had an eye for ‘commercial art – there are numerous examples of her designs for magazine covers, and once she ventured into ‘Vogue’ I guess it was inevitable she would design bespoke clothing also.  Even more desirable were her fabric designs: silk for clothes, some embroidered woollens and cotton for furniture textiles – Robert invented a mechanised display case for her work which the Tate recreate here.   It is so true that good design stands the test of time.

With the Paris Exhibition of 1937 the couple got a commission for some of the technology showrooms and these too are reproduced – though at the time it was Picasso’s  'Guernica',  which grabbed the headlines.   

Luxury goods, which was what Sonia’s firm ‘Simultane’, was producing were no longer in demand come WWII and being Jewish she kept a low profile down in the South of France thus surviving where many did not.  Post-war and by now a widow Sonia kept Robert’s work alive and in the public eye but continued to work herself into her Eighties  returning to  her first medium of paint, this time round using gouache rather than oils.

This exhibition will lift your spirits and perhaps your glass to a redoubtable woman and artist.