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Our mutual friend
Charles Dickens is one of our most famous Fellows, but an examination of archival documents shows just how much the work of the Society influenced the daily life of this lion of English literature
Summary
From his election as a Fellow in 1847, Charles Dickens had deep connections with the Royal Society of Arts. Drawing on archival records, former RSA Curator/Archivist Susan Bennett, HonFRSA traces links between Dickens’ family, illustrators, reform interests and the Society’s work, revealing how the RSA’s Victorian civic ambitions intersected with the life and imagination of one of England’s most celebrated writers. With special commentary from Dickens’ great great great granddaughter Lucinda Dickens Hawksley, FRSA.
Main image: Portrait of Charles Dickens by Jeremiah Gurney, circa 1867–1868
Before his election to the Society’s membership on 28 November 1847, Charles Dickens would already have been aware of the institution’s activities, so integral was the Society of those days in the dominant cultural discourse of the time.
Five years before his birth, his own mother was awarded a silver medal by the Society for one of her drawings, and the earliest known miniature of Dickens was painted when he was 18 years old by another winner of a ‘polite arts’ premium, Janet Ross, who had married his uncle Edward Barrow – and is believed to be the inspiration for the landlady Miss La Creevy in Nicholas Nickleby. Yet another prize winner, Rose Emma Drummond, was commissioned by Dickens to paint his miniature on ivory as an engagement present for his fiancée Catherine Hogarth, and Hablot Knight Browne, himself a recipient of silver medals from the Society in 1832 and 1833, illustrated 10 of Dickens’ novels under the pseudonym ‘Phiz’.
The environs of RSA House and the activities and ethos of Society members appear in some of Dickens’ novels. Like Dickens himself, David Copperfield’s titular character lodged in Buckingham Street and was “fond of wandering about the Adelphi, because it was a mysterious place with dark arches”. An entire episode of Pickwick Papers takes place in the Adelphi Tavern, when Mr Snodgrass is accidentally (and hilariously) confined to Wardle’s bedroom there. William Osborn had opened his tavern and coffee house in a building on the corner of John Adam Street, formerly known as John Street, which the RSA acquired to add to its original headquarters, before moving the main premises to the other side of the street. The organisation of the Pickwick Club, with corresponding members, perpetual members, chairmen, vice presidents and published Transactions, was very similar to the Society of Arts at the time.
Dickens praised his friend, Joseph Paxton, another prize winner, for his daring scheme to build a ‘Palace of Glass’ and was one of the first to visit the Great Exhibition when it opened on 1 May 1851. Overwhelmed by the displays, Dickens remarked on his second visit, “there’s too much”.
A member of the Society’s committee to amend the patent act, in 1850 Dickens wrote to the Society’s Henry Cole (who had secured royal support for and was instrumental in bringing the Great Exhibition to life) that he had been inspired by his paper advocating a reform of the patent laws to write “A Poor Man’s Tale of a Patent” for Household Words, an article which helped to raise awareness around the issue; the Patent Amendment Act, for many years known as the Society’s Act, was passed in 1852. Dickens also immortalised Cole as the overzealous school inspector Thomas Gradgrind in Hard Times, published in 1854.
In 1852, Dickens replied to an invitation from the Society’s Secretary George Grove, saying that he had read with great satisfaction the excellent project to establish Drawing Schools for Artisans and had “the utmost pleasure” in both joining that committee, and the invitation to be on the committee to send artisans to view the 1867 Paris Exhibition, but only on the understanding that he would not be able to attend any meetings for three months due to a full programme of engagements in England and Scotland. On 4 May 1853 Dickens responded to the Society’s enquiry on the impact of paper duty saying that he suffered from the imposition of this tax in the case of Household Words, but he still made his journal the best he could.
Like many others, Dickens saw what is now the Royal Society of Arts as a vehicle to provide better opportunities for the poor to raise themselves out of poverty by promoting its educational and social activities. As part of their programme to commemorate eminent people in the arts, manufactures and commerce, the Society erected one of their memorial tablets to Dickens in 1886 on the wall of Furnival’s Inn (then located at 13–15 High Holborn) where he lived between 1834 and 1837.
My ancestor and the RSA
When I became a Fellow of the RSA some years ago, I didn’t realise that my great great great grandfather had so many connections with it. So I was fascinated to read Susan Bennett’s article. The portrait she references, painted by his aunt, Janet Barrow, of an 18-year-old Charles Dickens, can be viewed today at the Charles Dickens Museum in London. As a patron of the museum, I am often there, and I always find this painting particularly moving, showing as it does a rather nervous looking teenager, with so much hope for his future, but no idea of quite how famous he would become. At that age, Dickens had little idea of being a novelist. He was only just embarking on his career as a freelance journalist, with dreams of becoming another Shakespeare (one of his great heroes). His plan was to write plays, act in them and, hopefully, tour as widely as possible.
By the time he was elected to the Fellowship in 1847, Dickens had become astonishingly famous, not only in the UK but all over the world. The huge success of A Christmas Carol (published in 1843) ensured him the financial security he had long craved, and he had also managed to achieve his dream of travelling overseas: making his first trip to the USA, and to Canada, in 1842; spending a year living with his family in Italy in 1844–45; and then several months living in Switzerland and France in 1846. In 1851, when the word ‘celebrity’ entered the Oxford English Dictionary, Dickens was one of the first people to whom it was applied.
His aims were aligned very well with those of the Royal Society of Arts, and I feel sure he would appreciate the values the organisation still espouses in an exceedingly challenging world.
Lucinda Dickens Hawksley, FRSA is an author, art historian and the great great great granddaughter of Dickens.
More about Dickens
The RSA archives welcome researchers
To book an appointment, please email [email protected] or view the catalogue
Susan Bennett, HonFRSA is a researcher, historian and a former Curator/Archivist of the RSA Archive. Since 2004 she has served as Honorary Secretary of the William Shipley Group for RSA History.
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