Charles Dickens in London: London #13

St George the Martyr at the junction of Long Lane, Marshalsea Road, and Tabard Street in Southwark is also called 'Little Dorrit's Church' as it was here that Dickens's creation was christened and where she married Arthur Clennam. The church bears a Little Dorrit window but unfortunately it was closed when I was in the area.

St George's Gardens are nearby and there's an interesting plaque there.

'Marshalsea Prison

Beyond this old wall is the site of the old Marshalsea Prison, closed in 1842. This sign is attached to a remnant of the prison wall. Charles Dickens, whose father had been imprisoned for debt in 1824, used that experience as the Marshalsea setting for his novel Little Dorrit.'

Angel Place is through the gates.

'ANGEL PLACE

 

This alleyway lies on the site of the Marshalsea prison where the author

Charles Dickens' father was incarcerated, and which featured strongly in his great book 'Little Dorrit'. The old prison wall still stands.

 

Thanks to an active local steering group, we now have new lighting, paving, and a new gateway to St George's Gardens.'

 

'The wall mounted artworks adapt the original illustrations of Little

Dorrit. The themes of wealth and poverty, freedom and imprisonment,

which run throughout the book, are visually explored. Children from the local St Joseph's and Cathedral Schools collaborated on the project and appear in the scenes along with their drawings.

 

This project was completed and opened on 25th September 2004, and was funded by Southwark Couuncil to make the area safer and easier to use.'

Five of the paving stones in the alley are inscribed.

'JOHN DICKENS, THE FATHER OF CHARLES DICKENS, WAS IMPRISONED HERE FOR DEBT FROM FEBRUARY TO MAY, 1824'

 

'THE HEROINE

OF DICKENS' NOVEL,

LITTLE DORRIT,

WAS ONE RESIDENT

WHO WAS

NOT A PRISONER'

 

'BUT, WHOSOEVER GOES TO MARSHALSEA PLACE ... WILL FIND HIS FEET ON THE VERY PAVING-STONES OF THE EXTINCT MARSHALSEA JAIL ... AND WILL STAND AMONG THE CROWDING GHOSTS OF MANY MISERABLE YEARS'

 

This is a quotation from Dickens's Preface to the 1957 edition of Little Dorrit, which describes his visit to the site of the prison in the same year as the publication. The full sentence reads:

'A little further on, I found the older and smaller wall, which used to enclose the pent-up inner prison where nobody was put, except for ceremony. But, whosoever goes into Marshalsea Place, turning out of Angel Court, leading to Bermondsey, will find his feet on the very paving-stones of the extinct Marshalsea jail; will see its narrow yard to the right and to the left, very little altered if at all, except that the walls were lowered when the place got free; will look upon rooms in which the debtors lived; and will stand among the crowding ghosts of many miserable years.'

'MELANCHOLY STREETS, IN A PENITENTIAL GARB OF SOOT, STEEPED THE SOULS OF THE PEOPLE WHO WERE CONDEMNED TO LOOK AT THEM OUT OF THE WINDOWS, IN DIRE DESPONDENCY'

 

This is from Chapter 3, which is a description of a Sunday evening in 'gloomy, close, and stale' London. Here is a slightly extended quotation:
 

'Maddening church bells of all degrees of dissonance, sharp and flat, cracked and clear, fast and slow, made the brick-and-mortar echoes hideous. Melancholy streets, in a penitential garb of soot, steeped the souls of the people who were condemned to look at them out of windows, in dire despondency. In every thoroughfare, up almost every alley, and down almost every turning, some doleful bell was throbbing, jerking, tolling, as if the Plague were in the city and the dead-carts were going round. Everything was bolted and barred that could by possibility furnish relief to an overworked people.'

 

'THERE WAS NOT ONE

STRAIGHT FLOOR FROM

THE FOUNDATION OF THE ROOF

THE CEILINGS WERE SO

FANTASTICALLY CLOUDED BY

SMOKE AND DUST THAT

OLD WOMEN MIGHT HAVE

TOLD FORTUNES IN THEM

BETTER THAN IN GROUTS OF TEA'

 

This is from Chapter 5, when Arthur Clenn looks through his dead father's house, and a longer reading of the paragraph gives a more graphic image:

 

'Dull and dark he found it. The gaunt rooms, deserted for years upon years, seemed to have settled down into a gloomy lethargy from which nothing could rouse them again. The furniture, at once spare and lumbering, hid in the rooms rather than furnished them, and there was no colour in all the house; such colour as had ever been there, had long ago started away on lost sunbeams—got itself absorbed, perhaps, into flowers, butterflies, plumage of birds, precious stones, what not. There was not one straight floor from the foundation to the roof; the ceilings were so fantastically clouded by smoke and dust, that old women might have told fortunes in them better than in grouts of tea; the dead-cold hearths showed no traces of having ever been warmed but in heaps of soot that had tumbled down the chimneys, and eddied about in little dusky whirlwinds when the doors were opened.'

 

Another view of the old prison wall, this time from Angel Place.

 

The presence of Dickens is all over this part of Southwark, as in Charles Dickens Primary School.

 

And the blue plaque is just about legible through the closed gates.

 

In George Inn Yard off Borough High Street:

 

'THE NATIONAL TRUST

THE GEORGE INN

It is known that the George Inn existed in

the late 16th Century although the present

building dates from 1677. Both Shakespeare

and Dickens knew the hospitality of the inn

which has continued right up to the present day.

The inn is now owned by The National Trust.'

 

The wall opposite offers more information:

 

'Records of this coaching inn date back to 1542

although the current building dates back to

1676 when it was rebuilt following a devastating fire.

During 1874 the north range was pulled down,

however, thankfully the southern range has survived

to be London's last galleried coaching inn.

William Shakespeare often frequented the inn,

as did the novelist Charles Dickens who referred to

The George in his novel Little Dorrit.'

 

Shakespeare, of course, died in 1616, and so must have used the pub which formerly stood here.

Several places in the area, such as Copperfield Street and Weller Street, bear witness to the perceived importance of Dickens in Southwark.

 

Moving away from Southwark, to Bloomsbury:

 

'1851–1860

CHARLES DICKENS

NOVELIST

Lived in Tavistock

House near this

site'

To me, stating that Charles Dickens was a novelist seems a little like saying that William Shakespeare wrote plays, but no matter. Dickens bought this from his friend the artist Frank Stone for £1500, which probably sounded like a bargain even way back then, but it needed a large amount of work doing, and the family couldn't move in until about four months later. He bought Gad's Hill near Rochester in 1956.

Dickens separated from his wife Catherine in 1858: he had become obsessed with the 18-year-old Ellen (or Nelly) Ternan, who was living here with her mother and sisters – at Park Cottage, Northampton Park, Canonbury – at the time when he met her.

This building in Portsmouth Street (and Dickens was of course born in that town), is almost certainly the oldest shop in London, and may have been an inspiration to Dicken's novel The Old Curiosity Shop (1841).

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Claire Tomalin: Charles Dickens: A Life (2011)