I hosted a lunch yesterday for celebrated British actress Miriam Margolyes who is touring Australia with her show “Dickens’ Women”. With her hugely varied and successful career across stage, TV and film she is one of our best loved actresses. Miriam has a lifelong passion for Charles Dickens, perhaps Britain’s greatest ever novelist, and she spoke entertainingly about the eminent author’s work.
Anyone visiting London, as I had done a few weeks ago, cannot fail to be aware of the current celebrations to mark the 200th anniversary of Dickens’ birth on 7 February. There are posters everywhere advertising many events and exhibitions in his honour. I took my daughter to the Museum of London which has an exhibition on “Dickens and London”. Tucked away in the City of London financial district, this museum is less well known than London’s great national museums, but is well worth a visit by any Australian tourist passing through. The exhibition was a fascinating introduction to the Victorian London which formed the backdrop to Dickens’ writing.
Most of us have read at least a few Dickens novels, and many more will be familiar with his work through TV and film adaptations. Dickens was the great chronicler of the huge social and economic upheavals which transformed London in the mid decades of the 19th century. It was a time of urbanisation and industrialisation which created terrible problems of overcrowding, sickness and poverty, alongside the great energy and opportunities for wealth and social advancement of the new age. Dickens was able to convey the intensity of this world through the creation of some of the best known characters in the literature of the English speaking world, like Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and Scrooge.
It is a world which is not altogether unfamiliar to a traveller in some of the cities of this region which are currently going through similar transformations in this, the Asian century. Indeed “Dickensian” is an adjective that sometimes springs to mind to describe our impressions of places teeming with vitality and opportunity alongside economic inequality.
Dickens was fascinated by Australia. He never managed to visit, as he did with America where he made two lucrative lecture tours (whilst railing against breaches of his copyright by the fledgling US publishing industry). But two of his sons emigrated here and the younger, Edward known as “Plorn”, was briefly a member of the NSW Parliament.
Dickens saw Australia as a place where hard work would be rewarded. It was an ex-convict, Magwitch, whose fortune enabled Pip to secure advancement in Great Expectations. And at the end of Oliver Twist, the Artful Dodger was transported off to Australia, no doubt to future success.
Do try to catch Miriam on tour or visit London in this great year of the Olympics and Diamond Jubilee, where you can still sip a pint in pubs which Dickens himself used to frequent.