A day out at the Dickens Museum

Last week I took the boys up to London to visit the British Museum. After several hours of gawking at artefacts and marvelling at mummified cats, we decided we'd had enough. Although it wasn't nearly as busy as the Natural History Museum or the Science Museum, there were still a lot of people. Once outside, I convinced the boys (read: bribed with souvenir chocolate mummies) to take a 15 minute walk to the Charles Dickens Museum. 

Tucked away down a quiet residential street, the museum seemed a world away from touristy London. This charming Victorian terrace was Dickens' home from 1837 to 1839. Here he completed The Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist and began work on Nicholas Nickelby and Barnaby Rudge. Of course, those titles didn't mean much to my young travel companions, but the boys are big fans of A Christmas Carol (or as it's known in our house: The Muppets' Christmas Carol). 

We were delighted to find that we practically had the place to ourselves. There were a few other families, but we were rarely in the same rooms at the same time. The lovely tour guide took us around the ground floor and went out of her way to point out things that would be of interest to children. 
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Of course, the highlight had to be the study and Dickens' mahogony writing desk, which was moved here from his home in Kent, Gad's Hill Place. I had goosebumps just looking at that weathered writing surface and thinking of all the hours Dickens would have spent at this desk working on Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities. 

On the third floor, we found the servants quarters and the nursery. We were a bit surprised to find a section of jail bars from the Marshalsea prison here. Dickens’s father was sent to the infamous prison in 1824 for debts to a baker. Young Charles, who was 12 at the time, was forced to give up school and work in a factory. This event would inspire some of his best novels and undoubtedly shaped his own childhood. 
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​After we finished with the house, we came back through the gift shop. Although small, the Curiosity Shop (as they call it) was packed with Dickensian memorabilia and other literary gifts. The boys were a little disappointed with the lack of Muppet tie-in souvenirs. Had there been so much as a Kermit as Bob Crachet bookmark, they would have been the happiest of customers. Instead, they settled for tea and scones from the cafe. As we sat in the quiet courtyard, we wondered if Dickens may have taken his tea in the exact same spot. We decided that he had and that we were very lucky to be sitting there now.