Charles Dickens

Question 1

Arrives in Whitby

Answer 1

First visited Whitby in 1836.

Question 2

Stays

Answer 2

1844, stays at the invitation of the Marquis of Normanby, ‘Liberal politician, travel writer, novelist and dandy, at Mulgrave Castle

He and dances a hornpipe, on the large lawn there he called ‘The Quarterdeck’ and on which Lord Nelson had ‘manfully strode across’.

The house and area may well have provided some characters for his future works - ‘write about what a who you know’.

He dedicated ‘Dombey and Son’ to his “esteemed friend” Maria Marchioness of Normanby, wife of the Marquis.

Question 3

Interactions in the town

Answer 3

Lunched at The White Horse and Griffen (described in Shaw Jeffrey as a ‘posting house’, and is located at Church Street, in the Market Square, good for an atmospheric Dickensian and literati dinner. He may well also have stayed thre at an earlier time, though this is not specified in any correspondence I can find.

In later years Dickens fondly remembered his trips to North Yorkshire. He wrote to his great friend, the novelist Wilkie Collins, who was at whitby in 1861, and referred to the Pickering to Whitby railway thus: “that curious rail-road on the Whitby Moor - you were balanced against a counter-weight of water and that you did it like Blondin” (Blondin being a renowned French tightrope walker of the time). But in those remote days the one Inn of Whitby was up a back yrad (there were others), and oyster-shell grottos were the only view from the best private room. Likewise, Sir, I have posted to Whitby. Pity the sorrows of a poor old man.’

Question 4

Communication with other writers

Answer 4

Encouraged Wilkie Collins, his friend on the publication ‘All the Year Round’ to visit and stay (1861).

Question 5

Possible influences on his writing - Whitby and local

Answer 5

For Whitby, no direct references, however in the surrounding and due to his friendship with a local lawyer, Charles Smithson in Malton, brings to life: -

1. Scrooge’s counting house is based on Smithson’s Chancery Lane office in Malton.
2. Sarah Gamp the drunken nurse in in Martin Chuzzlewit, is baed on a woman he came across at Smithson’s home in Malton, Easthope Hall, part of which he wrote in Malton.

He was member of The Ghost Club of London, wrote some supernatural tales e.g., The Railwayman (BBC Denholm Elliot), interested in strange phenomena e.g., spontaneous combustion of character in Bleak House ( the alcoholic Krook).