Though I'm finally learning about and enjoying some contemporary authors these days, I do have a penchant for 19th Century (and earlier) literature, and Dickens is definitely one of my favourites. Given how prolific he was, I feel like I've barely scratched the surface having only read 5 of the 15 novels he wrote, though one was unfinished when he died, but even in those few books, I've enjoyed each tale. While some find his writing dry, his characters and themes are raw and were often scathing commentaries on contemporary life in Victorian Britain during the Industrial Revolution. I suddenly remembered that there was a Charles Dickens Museum in London, so we decided that would be a good way to spend a Sunday afternoon.
The museum itself is located in a house where Dickens actually lived for 3 years. So, unlike many other museums, it's in a residential area. One of the homes adjacent to it was bought for the museum also so that they could add an elevator, a café, and a gift store to prevent them from using up the rooms in Dickens's actual house, allowing them to recreate several of the rooms. It was there that 2 of his children were born, where he wrote several novels, but where he ultimately decided to separate from his wife because he felt that his relationship with the public needed more of his attention--so we were told by the audio guide we purchased, narrated by Dickens's great-great-great grandson.
Through our audio guide, we learned that Dickens had been born into a somewhat well-to-do family near Portsmouth, perhaps not wealthy, but not lacking for their basic needs. However, they eventually moved to London when he was a boy, and the family fell on hard times to the point that his father ended up in debtors' prison, and Charles was forced to quit school to work and support the family, a situation he hated not only for not being able to go to school but also because the work he did was difficult and the conditions poor. Apparently he never shared his childhood experience working in a pot blacking shop with anyone except for his wife and one close friend, but as soon as you learn this information, you realise that he shared his experiences through his novels. He had the personal experience to know the challenges of the working poor and the inadequacies of the provisions set up for them, such as workhouses that often meant families would get split up because women's and children's quarters were separate from their husbands/fathers, respectively. I would encourage you to click the link I shared about the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 and the conditions of the workhouses. It makes the line, "Are there no workhouses?" from A Christmas Carol, when Scrooge refuses to donate to provide some cheer to what he thinks are the idle poor at Christmas, so much more meaningful. In a way, it is also personal for me, giving me more insight into my grandfather's experience having lived in one for a time after his father died when he was a boy. My mom always said that it seemed like a traumatic experience for my grandfather, and it's a small wonder when you find out about what these places were like. The Act wasn't changed until 1929, three years after my grandfather's family emigrated from Scotland. So it was these experiences Dickens had that made him want to use his writing skills to provide a social commentary of the times.
In terms of his critique of the negative side of the Industrial Revolution, it was that exact sentiment that caused him to be upheld as a socialist hero in a number of Soviet states, and Oliver Twist in particular seemed to capture the imaginations of the socialist revolutionaries. This is a photo of a copy of Oliver Twist from Uzbekistan in Cyrillic. It completely makes sense when you think about it; after all, he was critiquing the same economic inequalities that Marx was, but just through fiction, and not economic or philosophical treatises.
In the photos are some of the items in the house that were interesting to me. For example, the portrait of Dickens was interesting to me because he is so young there. All the depictions of him I've seen are when he's older and sporting a beard and mustache. I also was interested in the covered blue and white cake stand. It's the same colour and pattern as the teapot we were shown at Fortnum & Mason, a Wedgwood teapot that was priced at £5000 because it was handmade and could be painted in any colour you wanted. And due to its small size, it only made maybe two proper cups of tea or one mug. So I can't imagine how much a cake stand like that must be worth. But Dickens was one of those unusual types that actually went from rags to riches and enjoyed prosperity from his craft while he was alive, when so many others didn't become famous until after their deaths, meaning they only gained monetary value at that time. So he most likely could have afforded such an article in his household.
His prosperity also afforded him the ability to live in a house that had indoor plumbing. You will see hand pump faucets at the sinks, and there was corner water heater where you would put wood beneath in a brick fixture, and it would heat up the water in the basin sitting in the brick. The heated water would be used to not only wash clothing, but the servants would need to carry pails of it up at least a couple of flights of stairs for the bath! What's interesting about this ability to heat up water in this way, though, is that it was also used at Christmas time to cook the Christmas pudding.
One other photo is of a "commode chair." If you know what a commode is, you'll know what this chair was for. If you don't, it was their toilet. The seat had wood panels that would open up, and there would be a chamber pot below. I don't envy the servant whose job it was to clean that out. In any case, it may seem somewhat gross to include such a thing, but I'm actually interested in how waste was managed in history. You'll often go to castles and mansions and what not, and you wonder where people went to the bathroom. Like I wonder if they had something like an outhouse or where they went to do their business. And imagine how it would be done as a lady when you have layers of long dresses or skirts to contend with. I read somewhere that ladies' underpants were originally fashioned as two separate pieces for each leg, meaning they were not joined together in any way to facilitate a woman's ability to use the loo.
Anyway, I should probably end on a more general note than waste management topics! We enjoyed the museum and the audio guide, and we're both inspired to read more Dickens. Whenever I finally get back to teaching high school social studies, I can't wait to be able to use literature like this to help supplement history.
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