Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Swatch the Dickens
Author is a picture of health in his Technicolour transformation
CHARLES Dickens, pictured in most minds as an austere Victorian gent with a straggly beard, has been given a makeover to show him as a dapper dandy in the colourful clothes he loved to wear.
Colour has been added to original black and white photos of the great writer for an exhibition at the Charles Dickens Museum in London.
His great-great grandson Mark Dickens says: “To colour him in, and particularly some of the younger photographs, it brings him completely to life.” Mark and his cousin Gerald Dickens helped artist and photographer Oliver Clyde transform the photos for the Technicolour Dickens exhibition.
At the museum, situated in the Doughty Street house where Dickens wrote Oliver Twist, they adopted the poses the author struck to ensure the shadows and lighting were exactly as they would have been when the original photos were taken. Gerald, 56, says: “It was quite surreal. Sitting at the museum and being directed into the precise reconstruction of the original portraits.
“This was all being doubled up on a laptop and overlaying to the picture that was taken then.” Gerald, an actor, does one-man shows of his greatgreat grandfather’s works, but this project made him feel even closer to his famous relative.
He says: “I really began to feel the physical Charles Dickens.”
In one portrait, clean-shaven Dickens wears a rich green jacket, with a bright blue waistcoat. It was taken in 1852, when Dickens was 40, and is one of the earliest surviving photos of him.
Mark, 64, says: “He was a bit of a dandy. Some Victorians were quite fussy and dressed quite formally, but he loved bright colours – gaudy waistcoats and bright shirts.
With black and white photos you don’t see that.”
Dickens, who died 150 years ago last month, also has a bit of a tan in the coloured photos.
Mark says: “They’ve made him look quite tanned which I find interesting and exactly right. He was a great walker.
“He used to spend enormous amounts of his time outside and would walk for hours. He has a more rugged look, rather than the Victorian look. They all kept out of the sun as much as they possibly could – but not him.
“None of us thought about that until now, but it’s come out in the photographs.”
In Dickens classic The Old Curiosity Shop, Little Nell walks huge distances across England to escape from poverty.
The book, published in instalments in 1841, was such a success in the States it caused chaos when the ship arrived carrying the final chapters.
Mark says: “The port was swamped by thousands of people desperately trying to get their hands on the book to find out if Little Nell had died. When Dickens himself eventually landed in America the first time, in 1842, it was like The Beatles in 1964. Total mania.” Dickens had 10 children with wife Catherine and Mark shares a story about Mary Hogarth, the writer’s sister-in-law. Mark says: “Catherine’s sister came to Doughty Street to live and help Catherine with the babies. She was perfect, a charming girl, who suddenly and tragically died. They had all been to the theatre, and when they came back, she felt a bit odd. “Dickens held her, and she died in his arms.
“She was wearing a ring on her finger when she died. Dickens put it on his own finger and he wore it for the rest of his life. I own that ring now. It’s beautiful.” Mark is the family’s genealogist and has created a family tree of 240 names. Every year there is a gathering of the descendants.
Mark says: “We keep together by the magnet of this amazing person.
“He was one of the greatest social reformers, he wrote all these stories about terrible conditions because he’d experienced it himself. His father was in prison, Dickens was sent to work in a factory. He spoke from the heart.
“We’re honoured and privileged to carry a bit of his DNA with us.” Technicolour Dickens opens at the Charles Dickens Museum at 48 Doughty Street, London, this Saturday. To book tickets visit dickensmuseum.com