In common with so many people, my primary interaction with the works of Charles Dickens had long been through the medium of film; I watched Oliver! each and every Christmas and eventually came to love the David Lean adaptations of Oliver Twist and Great Expectations. I had little reason to suspect that I would one day spend so much of my time sitting in his bedroom.
And yet, here I am. For over a decade, now, I have been Head of English at Gad’s Hill School and have had the privilege of teaching the subject in what was the great man’s final home; the one that he coveted from childhood and which he bought in 1856. It has been a long and unexpected journey.
As a child, Dickens the writer was barely on my radar. As I have said, I knew some of the movie adaptations and was vaguely aware that my grandparents owned a faded set of his works, though nobody ever opened them. In fact, I was told that he was ‘difficult’ so often that I became decidedly resistant to making his acquaintance. In the sixth form, I even recall answering an exam question on his use of humour by responding that I didn’t find the extract funny at all. Oh, the follies of youth…
It wasn’t until coming here to work at Higham [in Kent] that the situation changed. On arriving at Gad’s it seemed appropriate to incorporate one of his works into the programme of study and I selected A Christmas Carol as it had inbuilt pupil familiarity. I read it in preparation and was stunned. Could this really be the same ‘boring’ writer I had dismissed for so long?
The richness of his prose, the sheer delight he took in his word-craft had been there all along and, furthermore, the cliché was true: all humanity inhabited those pages. I, rather foolishly, had been missing out and had much catching-up to do. Today, I endeavour to read his works regularly and cherish Dickens-related events such as annually accompanying my pupils to Westminster Abbey to lay a wreath upon the anniversary of his death, or working on our rehearsals for our production, this spring, of Oliver!
I would like to think that he would approve that his home has been a place of learning for nearly ninety years, as the dreams and disappointments of children, from Pip and Jo the crossing sweeper, to Nell Trent and David Copperfield, were so central to his oeuvre.
All that is, however, about to change. As we enter his bicentennial year, my relationship with the man whose spirit has for so long pervaded my classroom is going to be altered, perhaps irrevocably. The school is to move out of this building into a purpose-built facility nearby, and a little bit of magic will be lost; the former bedroom which has been my classroom these past few years will become just another stop on the tourist trail. I shall be sad to go.