A new exhibition celebrates 100 years of the Charles Dickens Museum.
Behold! Dickens with a moustache! What do we reckon?
"A hideous disfigurement," was the verdict of the author's friend and biographer John Forster. Dickens also had an unusual approach to hair care. While on a US speaking tour, he refused to get his locks shorn for fear that the barber would sell the offcuts as souvenirs.
These follicular insights are just the tip of the toupee at the Charles Dickens Museum's new show. "Dickens in Doughty Street: 100 Years of the Charles Dickens Museum" is the long but self-explanatory title of this exhibition. It's a century since the author's first family home was turned into a house museum.
With similar idiosyncratic energy to the author himself, the exhibition does not limit itself to one part of the museum but spreads itself across the various floors. Perhaps the most absorbing section is the wall of portraits charting Dickens's transformation from fresh-faced 20-something to the hirsute yarnmeister he became in his 50s. These include a chalk and pastel sketch of Dickens at the time when he was living in Doughty Street — never before displayed.
Elsewhere, we find a number of personal items from the archives: his only suit to survive into our times, a pair of binoculars and his walking stick. The latter was particularly important to the writer. "If I couldn't walk fast and far," he once said, "I should just explode and perish."
Another section looks at the Dickensian legacy. One unexpected item is a dog-eared copy of David Copperfield, taken to Antarctica on the doomed Scott expedition of 1910. The stranded crew read from the novel for 60 nights, as their sole source of entertainment. It is stained with ash and seal blubber.
The objects on show — and there are many more — are universally fascinating (at least for Dickens devotees). A bit random, though. I felt like I was browsing through bonus material, rather than following any new narrative. It's the regular museum with added highlights; a curatorial moustache on the face of an old friend. But unlike the whisker-experimenting Dickens, the place looks all the better for it.
Dickens in Doughty Street: 100 Years of the Charles Dickens Museum is on until 29 June 2025. Usual entrance fees apply. All images by Matt Brown
