I've been aware for some time that Charles Dickens's ACTUAL 200th birthday happens to fall on the day when I'm blogging at The History Girls. This is, however, such a momentous occasion that I am not blogging today but instead joining together with my fellow History Girls to invite all our readers, young and old, to a virtual birthday party in the proper Dickensian style. We have the perfect venue for our party. One of our number, Michelle Lovric, lives practically IN the River Thames. Her most beautiful flat has a balcony overlooking the river
and the whole place would both enchant Charles and also remind him of many of his walks in this area. This
is a view of the building the flat is in from London bridge and he can sit on the balcony and gaze at how transformed the city is, and how unchanged also. Later on, there will be readings (some favourite bits from the novels which you are to imagine being spoken aloud to you) but we are starting off with a procession of presents. These will be listed under the name of the giver. And no party is complete without a cake. The recipe for the Dickens Birthday Cake is in the post just below this one and anyone who would like to is encouraged to make it and tell us how it turned out.
With a drumroll, then, may I present our gifts:
DIANNE HOFMEYER
One: a copy of Nigella Lawson’s How to be a Domestic Goddess to highlight the fact that cooking has come a long way since What shall we have for Dinner? was written in 1851 under the pseudonym Lady Maria Clutterbuck, ostensibly by Catherine but also, it seems, by Charles. The cookbook caused a sensation with recipes for giblet soup, lamb's head and cold custard pudding. Nigella licking chocolate spoons could give a whole new meaning to cold custard!
Two: Since I live a 2 minute walk from St Luke’s, Chelsea, I’d also send him a photograph of modern-day St Luke’s to remind him of happier times when on April 2, 1836 he married Catherine in this church. Though he might be alarmed by the uprooted gravestones that have made way for astroturf soccer fields.
PENNY DOLAN
I think my birthday gift to Dickens would be a string of modern pedicure or chiropody appointments and a pair of extremely comfortable boots. So much striding about for miles can't have improved his poor feet or therefore his temper - especially with his nearest and occasionally dearest.
EMMA DARWIN
A copy of Joyce’s Ulysses. To see what his greatest heir got up to.
IMOGEN ROBERTSON
I'd give him a bus pass and an invisibility cloak so that he can eavesdrop on modern Londoners to his heart's content.
LINDA BUCKLEY-ARCHER
My birthday present to Dickens would be a memory stick - perhaps disguised as a chunky cravat pin since he enjoyed fashion - because it might amuse him that all his novels would fit on it with room to spare.
KATIE GRANT
I'd give him the DVD of The Muppet Christmas Carol. One of the finest interpretations ever.
THERESA BRESLIN
For Charles Dickens, who is probably the main reason I am a writer, I'd like to re-gift him my very worn copy of A Tale of Two Cities which was the first 'real' book I read as a child.
This was in our local library which allocated a tiny room in a large Victorian house to the children's section and as I read my way through the collection alphabetically (I was a librarian before I became a writer) Brazil, Blyton, Buckeridge, Crompton, I came across this writer on the bottom shelf whom I felt sorry for, as his books were stuck together indicating no-one borrowed them. I picked the slimmest and went away to read the most arresting opening line I'd ever read in in my little life, and tumbled into a story that enthralled and scared the wits out of me, to finish with an equally brilliant closing line. It was unlike any other book I'd read previously and did something for me that I still can't properly explain. So I read it again, and again. And then pestered the life out of my mother to actually buy me the book which she did. As our family was almost as large as the author's own, this must have involved some kind of sacrifice. Maybe I won't actually gift him the book. I'll get him to sign it and then sneak off with it while he's opening all those other interesting presents from the History Girls.
MARY HOFFMAN
I will give him a real woman. Not a harridan or a doll, not a dolt or a caricature but a living, breathing equal partner, who is not dying or impossibly pious. And I'll also bring an amicable divorce from Catherine and a Dear John letter from Ellen, so he can enjoy her.
And I speak as one one who has read all Dickens and adores him!
EVE EDWARDS
Mary Hoffman's real woman is a much better present than what I intended to give originally: divorce papers and the PR services of Max Clifford for Mrs Dickens. So I withdraw that and instead offer Dickens a birthday Kissogramme presented by Simon Callow jumping out of an enormous cake - said cake to arrive at the high point of a banquet for his friends and admirers at the Albert Hall with Dickens as guest of honour. God bless us everyone!
KATHERINE LANGRISH
My gift for Dickens would be a computer with Google Earth so he could visit modern London via the satellite images, and explore the street-views. I think he'd be utterly fascinated.
CELIA REES
It seems rather impertinent to give the Great Man something of a personal, even intimate nature, so I would give him a digital camera to record what he sees on his nocturnal walks and I would like it to be linked to a device so that he can stream the pictures to us now.
MARY HOOPER
Let me be first to bring him an appointment at Relate.
ELEANOR UPDALE
A magic porridge pot so that there would always be more.
LESLIE WILSON
I would give him a boxed set of Cagney and Lacey to show him what women can really be like - but also a huge bouquet and thanks for transcending his sexism to be the most wonderful surrealist writer ever.
CAROLINE LAWRENCE
Boxed sets of all the BBC adaptations of his books (he'd like that!)
ADELE GERAS
A boxed set of the complete Sopranos.
HARRIET CASTOR
I would perhaps like to invite him to see the welfare state in action (while it still exists!!): take a tour with him of an NHS hospital and a state school, say. Or - with a little bit of time-travel - I would like to take him to see Trevor Nunn's original RSC production of 'Nicholas Nickleby', with Roger Rees as Nicholas & David Threlfall as Smike. It was astonishingly good and I think he might approve.
SUE PURKISS
In the same spirit as Mary Hooper, I would like to give Dickens a course of parenting classes. Although he was deeply wounded by his own experience of being sent away from his family to work in a shoe factory as a child, he packed several of his younger sons off to a boarding school in Boulogne when they were eight, not even allowing them home for Christmas. He was constantly disappointed by his children - possibly because he never really bothered to get to know them. He said himself that he had only wanted three children, and his response to having ten seems to have been to send them as far away as he could as soon as he could: one was packed off to Australia, another to India, another to China. Or on second thoughts, perhaps some instruction on contraception might be just what he always wanted!
LOUISE BERRIDGE
I’ll give him the best present any writer can ask for – a re-read of all his books. I’ll be celebrating another birthday at the same time, as my prized Dickens Centenary edition is 100 years old today…’
But I'd also like to add a big hug as a thank-you for having been the unconscious inspiration behind so many of my books. I’ve already written about this on the fabulous normblog - http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2011/10/writers-choice-324-louise-berridge.html - but it was the seminal moment when Nicholas Nickleby turned on Squeers with the words ‘I will not stand by and see it done’ that gave me the idea for the character who became Andre de Roland.’
ESSIE FOX
My gift for Dickens’ birthday would be a copy of Charles Palliser’s The Quincuncx whose narrator is John Huffam – which ‘just happens’ to be Dickens’ middle names.
The book is a wonderful homage to Dickens which gave me many sleepless nights when I simply couldn’t put it down. I think – I hope – the great man would enjoy it too.
BARBARA MITCHELHILL
Mary’s appointment with Relate is a good idea, but I would go further as I’m pretty sure he was bi-polar and would benefit from a regular prescription of Lithium. I hope I'm not being too cruel.
But if, as Mary suggested, Mr Dickens were to find himself a real woman, I feel he would appreciate a year’s supply of condoms (large size, of course, nothing average). He had never wanted a big family and he certainly would not want to add to the ten he had already co-produced. But as this is his birthday, I feel that the condoms should reflect the party spirit and so they would be in packs of seven with a different colour for each day of the week. It would please him, I think, if the packets were customised in a literary way and labelled Great Expectations.
MICHELLE LOVRIC
As I live in his old stamping ground of Borough, I’d offer him a cup of tea and a piece of cake. He’s being pretty thoroughly celebrated in Southwark Cathedral on the day, so he might like a quiet ten minutes at mine. I could also show him my etchings … of Southwark during his time. [You are indeed hosting the party, Michelle! Thank you!]
SOME FAVOURITE BITS OF DICKENS
HARRIET CASTOR
Until my mid-thirties, I am ashamed to say that I had read only two of Dickens' works: A Christmas Carol and A Tale of Two Cities. I decided, belatedly, that this simply would not do, and, being lucky enough to have in the house a set of his complete works (extra-precious, since they had once belonged to my grandpa - a grandpa who died long before I was born), I put myself on a medicinal course of Dickens' novels. What an addictive treat it was! I fell in love with them, utterly. Bleak House and Our Mutual Friend are particular favourites. The passage from Oliver Twist that leads up to Bill Sikes' death stands out as a candidate for my 'best bit'. However, to award that accolade (of no very great value, I realise, to anyone but myself) I must return to my first love, and my first experience of Dickens: A Christmas Carol. I adore the opening - the whole of 'Stave I', in fact - in which Scrooge's character is established, and he is visited by Marley's ghost. But my favourite little nugget of all - just one sentence - is a moment early in Stave II, at the arrival of the first of the three spirits:
"The curtains of his bed were drawn aside; and Scrooge, starting up into a half-recumbent attitude, found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them: as close to it as I am now to you, and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow."
It's silly, really, to love this little authorial trick so much, when there is so much that is more majestic, more artful or incisive or important in Dickens' works. But I do love it - I have always loved it.
LESLIE WILSON
I would like to send you the description of London river, from Pip's flight with Magwitch in Great Expectations, because it's such a vivid and detailed description of the port.. Chapter 54:
"Again among the tiers of shipping, in and out, avoiding rusty chain-cables frayed hempen hausers and bobbing buys, sinking for the moment floating broken baskets, scattering floating chips of wood and shaving, cleaving floating scum of coal, in and out, under the figure-head of the John of Sunderland making a speech to the winds (as is done by many Johns) and the Betsy of Yarmouth with a firm formality of bosom and her nobby eyes starting two inches out of her head, in and out, hammers going in ship-builders' yards, saws going at timber, clashing engines going at things unknown, pumps going in leaky ships, capstans going, ships going out to sea, and unintelligible sea-creatures roaring curses over the bulwarks at respondent lightermen, in and out - out at last upon the clearer river, where the ships' boys might take their fenders in, no longer fishing in troubled waters with them over the side, and where the festooned sails might fly out to the wind."
CELIA REES
My favourite Dickens passage is the opening paragraph to The Tale of Two Cities
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven,we were all going direct the other way-- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."
CAROLINE LAWRENCE
Charles Dickens on America, "We are now in the regions of slavery, spittoons & senators - all three are evil in all countries, but the spittoon is the worst." (written in Washington, D. C. on 13th March 1842)
ADELE GERAS
Finally, I'm putting up here the passage which started me off as a Dickens fan. When I was about 11, we read A Christmas Carol at school. The description of Fezziwig's party made a huge impression on me, especially this extract which seemed like a vision of heaven in a boarding-school environment. It's "there was cake" in particular that got to me every time!
"There were more dances, and there were forfeits and more dances, and there was cake, and there was negus and there was a great piece of Cold Roast, and there was a great piece of Cold Boiled, and there were mince pies and plenty of beer."
and the whole place would both enchant Charles and also remind him of many of his walks in this area. This
is a view of the building the flat is in from London bridge and he can sit on the balcony and gaze at how transformed the city is, and how unchanged also. Later on, there will be readings (some favourite bits from the novels which you are to imagine being spoken aloud to you) but we are starting off with a procession of presents. These will be listed under the name of the giver. And no party is complete without a cake. The recipe for the Dickens Birthday Cake is in the post just below this one and anyone who would like to is encouraged to make it and tell us how it turned out.
With a drumroll, then, may I present our gifts:
DIANNE HOFMEYER
One: a copy of Nigella Lawson’s How to be a Domestic Goddess to highlight the fact that cooking has come a long way since What shall we have for Dinner? was written in 1851 under the pseudonym Lady Maria Clutterbuck, ostensibly by Catherine but also, it seems, by Charles. The cookbook caused a sensation with recipes for giblet soup, lamb's head and cold custard pudding. Nigella licking chocolate spoons could give a whole new meaning to cold custard!
Two: Since I live a 2 minute walk from St Luke’s, Chelsea, I’d also send him a photograph of modern-day St Luke’s to remind him of happier times when on April 2, 1836 he married Catherine in this church. Though he might be alarmed by the uprooted gravestones that have made way for astroturf soccer fields.
PENNY DOLAN
I think my birthday gift to Dickens would be a string of modern pedicure or chiropody appointments and a pair of extremely comfortable boots. So much striding about for miles can't have improved his poor feet or therefore his temper - especially with his nearest and occasionally dearest.
EMMA DARWIN
A copy of Joyce’s Ulysses. To see what his greatest heir got up to.
IMOGEN ROBERTSON
I'd give him a bus pass and an invisibility cloak so that he can eavesdrop on modern Londoners to his heart's content.
LINDA BUCKLEY-ARCHER
My birthday present to Dickens would be a memory stick - perhaps disguised as a chunky cravat pin since he enjoyed fashion - because it might amuse him that all his novels would fit on it with room to spare.
KATIE GRANT
I'd give him the DVD of The Muppet Christmas Carol. One of the finest interpretations ever.
THERESA BRESLIN
For Charles Dickens, who is probably the main reason I am a writer, I'd like to re-gift him my very worn copy of A Tale of Two Cities which was the first 'real' book I read as a child.
This was in our local library which allocated a tiny room in a large Victorian house to the children's section and as I read my way through the collection alphabetically (I was a librarian before I became a writer) Brazil, Blyton, Buckeridge, Crompton, I came across this writer on the bottom shelf whom I felt sorry for, as his books were stuck together indicating no-one borrowed them. I picked the slimmest and went away to read the most arresting opening line I'd ever read in in my little life, and tumbled into a story that enthralled and scared the wits out of me, to finish with an equally brilliant closing line. It was unlike any other book I'd read previously and did something for me that I still can't properly explain. So I read it again, and again. And then pestered the life out of my mother to actually buy me the book which she did. As our family was almost as large as the author's own, this must have involved some kind of sacrifice. Maybe I won't actually gift him the book. I'll get him to sign it and then sneak off with it while he's opening all those other interesting presents from the History Girls.
MARY HOFFMAN
I will give him a real woman. Not a harridan or a doll, not a dolt or a caricature but a living, breathing equal partner, who is not dying or impossibly pious. And I'll also bring an amicable divorce from Catherine and a Dear John letter from Ellen, so he can enjoy her.
And I speak as one one who has read all Dickens and adores him!
EVE EDWARDS
Mary Hoffman's real woman is a much better present than what I intended to give originally: divorce papers and the PR services of Max Clifford for Mrs Dickens. So I withdraw that and instead offer Dickens a birthday Kissogramme presented by Simon Callow jumping out of an enormous cake - said cake to arrive at the high point of a banquet for his friends and admirers at the Albert Hall with Dickens as guest of honour. God bless us everyone!
KATHERINE LANGRISH
My gift for Dickens would be a computer with Google Earth so he could visit modern London via the satellite images, and explore the street-views. I think he'd be utterly fascinated.
CELIA REES
It seems rather impertinent to give the Great Man something of a personal, even intimate nature, so I would give him a digital camera to record what he sees on his nocturnal walks and I would like it to be linked to a device so that he can stream the pictures to us now.
MARY HOOPER
Let me be first to bring him an appointment at Relate.
ELEANOR UPDALE
A magic porridge pot so that there would always be more.
LESLIE WILSON
I would give him a boxed set of Cagney and Lacey to show him what women can really be like - but also a huge bouquet and thanks for transcending his sexism to be the most wonderful surrealist writer ever.
CAROLINE LAWRENCE
Boxed sets of all the BBC adaptations of his books (he'd like that!)
ADELE GERAS
A boxed set of the complete Sopranos.
HARRIET CASTOR
I would perhaps like to invite him to see the welfare state in action (while it still exists!!): take a tour with him of an NHS hospital and a state school, say. Or - with a little bit of time-travel - I would like to take him to see Trevor Nunn's original RSC production of 'Nicholas Nickleby', with Roger Rees as Nicholas & David Threlfall as Smike. It was astonishingly good and I think he might approve.
SUE PURKISS
In the same spirit as Mary Hooper, I would like to give Dickens a course of parenting classes. Although he was deeply wounded by his own experience of being sent away from his family to work in a shoe factory as a child, he packed several of his younger sons off to a boarding school in Boulogne when they were eight, not even allowing them home for Christmas. He was constantly disappointed by his children - possibly because he never really bothered to get to know them. He said himself that he had only wanted three children, and his response to having ten seems to have been to send them as far away as he could as soon as he could: one was packed off to Australia, another to India, another to China. Or on second thoughts, perhaps some instruction on contraception might be just what he always wanted!
LOUISE BERRIDGE
I’ll give him the best present any writer can ask for – a re-read of all his books. I’ll be celebrating another birthday at the same time, as my prized Dickens Centenary edition is 100 years old today…’
But I'd also like to add a big hug as a thank-you for having been the unconscious inspiration behind so many of my books. I’ve already written about this on the fabulous normblog - http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2011/10/writers-choice-324-louise-berridge.html - but it was the seminal moment when Nicholas Nickleby turned on Squeers with the words ‘I will not stand by and see it done’ that gave me the idea for the character who became Andre de Roland.’
ESSIE FOX
My gift for Dickens’ birthday would be a copy of Charles Palliser’s The Quincuncx whose narrator is John Huffam – which ‘just happens’ to be Dickens’ middle names.
The book is a wonderful homage to Dickens which gave me many sleepless nights when I simply couldn’t put it down. I think – I hope – the great man would enjoy it too. BARBARA MITCHELHILL
Mary’s appointment with Relate is a good idea, but I would go further as I’m pretty sure he was bi-polar and would benefit from a regular prescription of Lithium. I hope I'm not being too cruel.
But if, as Mary suggested, Mr Dickens were to find himself a real woman, I feel he would appreciate a year’s supply of condoms (large size, of course, nothing average). He had never wanted a big family and he certainly would not want to add to the ten he had already co-produced. But as this is his birthday, I feel that the condoms should reflect the party spirit and so they would be in packs of seven with a different colour for each day of the week. It would please him, I think, if the packets were customised in a literary way and labelled Great Expectations.
MICHELLE LOVRIC
As I live in his old stamping ground of Borough, I’d offer him a cup of tea and a piece of cake. He’s being pretty thoroughly celebrated in Southwark Cathedral on the day, so he might like a quiet ten minutes at mine. I could also show him my etchings … of Southwark during his time. [You are indeed hosting the party, Michelle! Thank you!]
SOME FAVOURITE BITS OF DICKENS
HARRIET CASTOR
Until my mid-thirties, I am ashamed to say that I had read only two of Dickens' works: A Christmas Carol and A Tale of Two Cities. I decided, belatedly, that this simply would not do, and, being lucky enough to have in the house a set of his complete works (extra-precious, since they had once belonged to my grandpa - a grandpa who died long before I was born), I put myself on a medicinal course of Dickens' novels. What an addictive treat it was! I fell in love with them, utterly. Bleak House and Our Mutual Friend are particular favourites. The passage from Oliver Twist that leads up to Bill Sikes' death stands out as a candidate for my 'best bit'. However, to award that accolade (of no very great value, I realise, to anyone but myself) I must return to my first love, and my first experience of Dickens: A Christmas Carol. I adore the opening - the whole of 'Stave I', in fact - in which Scrooge's character is established, and he is visited by Marley's ghost. But my favourite little nugget of all - just one sentence - is a moment early in Stave II, at the arrival of the first of the three spirits:
"The curtains of his bed were drawn aside; and Scrooge, starting up into a half-recumbent attitude, found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them: as close to it as I am now to you, and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow."
It's silly, really, to love this little authorial trick so much, when there is so much that is more majestic, more artful or incisive or important in Dickens' works. But I do love it - I have always loved it.
LESLIE WILSON
I would like to send you the description of London river, from Pip's flight with Magwitch in Great Expectations, because it's such a vivid and detailed description of the port.. Chapter 54:
"Again among the tiers of shipping, in and out, avoiding rusty chain-cables frayed hempen hausers and bobbing buys, sinking for the moment floating broken baskets, scattering floating chips of wood and shaving, cleaving floating scum of coal, in and out, under the figure-head of the John of Sunderland making a speech to the winds (as is done by many Johns) and the Betsy of Yarmouth with a firm formality of bosom and her nobby eyes starting two inches out of her head, in and out, hammers going in ship-builders' yards, saws going at timber, clashing engines going at things unknown, pumps going in leaky ships, capstans going, ships going out to sea, and unintelligible sea-creatures roaring curses over the bulwarks at respondent lightermen, in and out - out at last upon the clearer river, where the ships' boys might take their fenders in, no longer fishing in troubled waters with them over the side, and where the festooned sails might fly out to the wind."
CELIA REES
My favourite Dickens passage is the opening paragraph to The Tale of Two Cities
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven,we were all going direct the other way-- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."
CAROLINE LAWRENCE
Charles Dickens on America, "We are now in the regions of slavery, spittoons & senators - all three are evil in all countries, but the spittoon is the worst." (written in Washington, D. C. on 13th March 1842)
ADELE GERAS
Finally, I'm putting up here the passage which started me off as a Dickens fan. When I was about 11, we read A Christmas Carol at school. The description of Fezziwig's party made a huge impression on me, especially this extract which seemed like a vision of heaven in a boarding-school environment. It's "there was cake" in particular that got to me every time!
"There were more dances, and there were forfeits and more dances, and there was cake, and there was negus and there was a great piece of Cold Roast, and there was a great piece of Cold Boiled, and there were mince pies and plenty of beer."
