A new exhibition at the Charles Dickens Museum in London is shedding light on the writer's holiday habits, from seaside escapes to insect-plagued travels, through his personal correspondence.
Escaping London's heat
In a letter to his brother Alfred dated 12 August 1840, Dickens wrote: "There is no news in London – everybody is hurrying out of town – the two great theatres are shut up – and all the watering places are crammed with hot people." The letter, going on public display for the first time, captures his anticipation of leaving the city for Broadstairs, Kent.
Emma Harper, deputy director at the Charles Dickens Museum, said: "While Dickens rarely slowed down, he made sure to find time for holidays and days off, packing up plenty of his belongings and heading to the Kent coast or the West Country with his family."
Holiday routines and seaside innovations
Dickens often took his work with him, sometimes bringing his favourite furniture. In 1849, while staying at a "very pretty" holiday cottage in Bonchurch on the Isle of Wight, he constructed an outdoor shower cubicle. He wrote to printer William Bradbury: "We have made all visitors in search of the picturesque, mad, by putting up an immense wooden caravan on the beach, to shut in a noble waterfall and convert it into a shower bath!"
Of an 1851 trip on the Thames with his son Charley "and three other young Eton Shavers", he promised friend Thomas Beard a "hamper from Fortnum & Mason's" and a dinner on a bank, adding: "and if you can come, you and I will console ourselves for our antiquity, after dinner, with a trifle of tobacco and champagne".
Travels abroad and energetic relaxation
Describing a trip to Italy in 1842, Dickens wrote to his biographer John Forster: "I see myself in a striped shirt, moustache, blouse, red sash, straw hat, and white trousers, sitting astride a mule, and not caring for the clock, the day of the month, or the day of the week."
Reflecting on a longer excursion, he told Beard in 1845 of "the gentlemanly vagabond I have been, for the last six or eight months – the extraordinary beds I have slept in – and the bewildering amount of fleas, mosquitoes, bugs, and other insects I have unwillingly bepastured". He added that these experiences "have hardly left me any leisure in my holiday, until within the last four or five weeks. During the whole of which time I have been employed, chiefly, in lying on my back on sofas, and leaning out of windows and over balconies, in a sort of mild intoxication."
Summer in the City with Charles Dickens runs from 26 August to 27 September at the Charles Dickens Museum in London.
