Revealed: A tale of many Cities and one terrifying glen
How Glencoe scared the Dickens out of novelist as he toured the world’s wonders
His classic novels may feature some of the most sinister characters in literature but it was travelling through one of Scotland’s most beautiful and desolate glens that gave Charles Dickens the heebie-jeebies.
The acclaimed author was best known for chronicling London life in enduring classics like A Tale
Of Two Cities and Oliver Twist but after becoming a best-seller he travelled to visit the marvels of the world, ancient and modern.
His touring often brought him north but, in Glencoe, he stumbled upon a place he would not rush to revisit and a new book, collecting his travel writing, reveals how he was gripped by both eeriness and awe.
He wrote: “The pass is an awful place. It is shut in on each side by enormous rocks from which great torrents come rushing down in all directions. In amongst these rocks on one side of the pass (the left as we came) there are scores of glens, high up, which form such haunts as you might imagine yourself wandering in, in the very height and madness of a fever.
“They will live in my dreams for years – I was going to say as long as I
live, and I seriously think so. The very recollection of them makes me shudder.”
Born into a working-class family and struggling alone on the streets of London in his early life, Dickens could only aspire to the travels wealthy young men in that era undertook as a rite of passage known as the Grand Tour.
When he found himself making money from his writing, however, he decided to take himself and his family on their own mini versions, penning his thoughts on destinations from Scotland to Rome, Paris and New York.
Author Lucinda Hawksley was perfectly placed to compile the collection of his work, having been a travel writer herself and a direct descendant – she is Dickens’ great-great-great-granddaughter.
“It has been amazing to discover not only how much Dickens was inspired by the world but how much the world has remained inspired by him,” she said. “Everyone thinks of him as a London author and he had such a love/hate relationship with the place but he wasn’t born there, nor did he die there.
“He’s so firmly associated with it, which is really intriguing because most of his novels centre around London but in his personal life he was often writing from other places across the world.
“Seeing the world was one of his ambitions. He’d never been able to do a Grand Tour because he was working-class, so he decided he was going to travel as much as he could.”
A chapter of the book focuses on Dickens’ visits to Scotland. His wife, Catherine Hogarth, was the daughter of Sir Walter Scott’s legal adviser and spent most of her childhood north of the border.
Dickens, who referred to his children as half-scottish, first travelled to Edinburgh in 1834 as a journalist for The Morning Chronicle and his experience of the city inspired an episode in The Pickwick Papers – the melodramatic ghost tale, The Story Of The Bagman’s Uncle. The poverty on the streets he saw also inspired parts of A Christmas Carol.
He would return to his wife’s birthplace in 1841 but this time as a well-known writer who was being awarded the Freedom of the City.
“Catherine was in her teens when they left so she wanted to go back,” said Hawksley. “She also loved the food of Scotland and their kitchen was full of Scottish cuisine.
“Travelling up to Edinburgh in 1841 was a dream and they went on a fantastic trip around Scotland with their friend Angus Fletcher, an interesting chap who was a sculptor from the Highlands.
“When they visited the Adelphi Theatre, the band struck up the song Charlie Is My Darling. People were really welcoming to them.”
Glencoe was also among the destinations on the trip. Hawksley herself visited before reading her ancestor’s letters back south to friend and eventual biographer John Forster about what he called a “perfectly terrible...awful place”.
She said: “I was really struck by just how much atmosphere there is there and how frightening it is. And that’s really what Dickens is getting across. He did exactly the same with the Colosseum in Rome. He was really affected by atmosphere and the idea of the supernatural. He hated the Colosseum and yet was drawn to it every day he walked past it when he was in Rome. It’s a similar feeling he had about Glencoe, that there’s been so much death there and you can almost feel the cries of agony.
“Obviously, he would have known about the history of Glencoe but it struck him in a very visceral way.”
There is also a tale of Dickens’ carriage getting caught in a flood near Dalmally. They escaped, but the driver and horses were in jeopardy until the arrival of a “wild Highlander in a great plaid”.
“It was the landlord of their inn,” said Hawksley. “He just went in and helped them get the carriage out of the flood. Dickens was really impressed by the bravery and the stoicism behind Highlanders – though he wasn’t impressed with their sanitary habits. Most people
knew about the Highlands of Walter Scott. Hearing about the day-to-day living and how they travelled around, it was such a different way of life compared to those in the south.”
Hawksley’s research into her ancestor has helped her gain a greater sense of the man he was, and elements of his character she had previously been unaware of. This includes his great bravery, from having to become street smart in a dangerous London to the precarious encounters on his travels.
As a child, when his parents were in debtors’ prison, he was living by himself, skirting the most dangerous slums in what was the biggest city in the world. “The reports of violence are shocking,” Hawksley said. “People used to wear spiked collars under their cravat because people would try to strangle you on your way home. London was a very dangerous city when the 12-year-old Dickens was living there on his own.”
She also found letters from his trip to Italy, where he described the areas he and French guide Louis Roche were travelling through as bandit country.
“He writes at one point how he wished he had a pair of pistols because it’s so dangerous, and a constant fear of being robbed when they’re travelling around,” she said.
“The first trip on a steamship, too, sounds absolutely terrifying. Dickens writes home and says that never again would he trust himself and his wife to a steamship, because it’s so frightening.
“It’s either far too heavily laden with coal at the beginning, or frighteningly unladen at the end. He also talks about the fact the chimneys belching out fire are so unstable that if you got caught in a storm, and they were knocked over, the whole ship would go up in flames.
“All these Victorian travellers were so brave. Today, no matter how much we think we’re intrepid, it’s nothing compared to putting yourself in these terrifying vessels and heading out to places unknown.”
Hawksley also found Dickens had a deep admiration for migrants who had packed up their lives in order to find a new start. “He looks at the ships coming in and the people, usually the poorest of the poor, from Britain and Ireland after the famine,” she said. “He writes about couples who have put their trust in each other and used every bit of money they have to go to somewhere like America, Australia or Canada with no idea what they’re going to find when they get there.”