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The whimsical miniature Swiss chalet where Charles Dickens penned portions of his later works, including A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, and his unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood (which he was working on in the chalet in the hours before his death) is in desperate need of restoration. The chalet, which once stood on the grounds of Charles Dickens’s home in Kent (see picture below), was a present to the writer from French actor Charles Fechter. It arrived at the railway station in 1864 in 58 separate boxes. Dickens loved its whimsy and often chose to spend the summer months writing in the chalet, which was accessed via a specially made tunnel linking it with his house.
The chalet now stands in the gardens of Eastgate House, Rochester, though it is currently sufferi
ng from dry rot and is unsafe to enter. The local tourism council, along with the Rochester and Chatham Dickens Fellowship, hope to raise £100,000 to complete the work prior to 2012, the bicentenary of Dickens’s birth. After restoration, the chalet will be opened for special events and appointments. A video of the chalet can be viewed on the BBC website and if you want to contribute to the restoration fund, you can send checks payable to the Rochester and Chatham Dickens Fellowship (Chalet Fund) to 27 Amethyst Avenue, Chatham, Kent ME5 9TX.
2010 is the year of Mark Twain. April 21 marks the centennial of the writer’s death and November 30 the 175th anniversary of his birth. To commemorate the occasions, festivities are taking place at several sites in the U.S. related to the novelist, humorist, and travel writer. If you join in the literary revelry, be sure to enjoy yourself. Twain wasn’t fond of commemorative occasions, but he also declared that “a good and wholesome thing is a little harmless fun in this world.”
HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT
The Mark Twain House & Museum — an atmospheric Victorian Gothic mansion where the writer put down roots for 16 years — is going all out to celebrate Twain this year. Their line-up of events includes “The Mark Twain Séance” on April 21, with a recreation of a Victorian-era séance and a tour of the house led by a ghost investigator. Running through January 2011 is the exhibit “Legacy,” which traces Twain’s influence on America and the world. It explores how Twain has been perceived by the public over the years and features letters from celebrities expressing their thoughts about the writer—like humorist Roy Blount, Jr., who summed it up in three words: “He’s still funny!” marktwainhouse.org
HANNIBAL, MISSOURI
Twain described Hannibal as “a boy’s paradise,” and he immortalized the Mississippi River town as St. Petersburg in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Among the 2010 events at the Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum is a film festival; on the first Friday of each month a film version of one of Twain’s works is screened. At noon on April 21 is the “Time Capsule Ceremony.” Museum staffers will be joined by the characters Tom and Becky as they bury a time capsule filled with items related to the raconteur. marktwainmuseum.org
ELMIRA, NEW YORK
On display at the Center for Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College is Twain’s octagon-shaped writing studio (John Steinbeck was later inspired to create a similar workspace at his Long Island home). Special happenings in Elmira, where Twain spent summers for nearly two decades, include a reading of his correspondence on April 15, a reenactment of his burial at the town’s Woodlawn Cemetery on April 24, and “Dine Like Twain Dinners” featuring his family’s recipes April 21-23. marktwaincountry.com
Other places to tap into Twain’s legacy: The Mark Twain Birthplace State Historic Site in Florida, Missouri (temporarily closed for repairs), and the Mark Twain Museum at the Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City, Nevada, a silver mining town where he began using his famous pseudonym while working as a newspaper reporter.
For a calendar listing of Twain events, visit twain2010.org.
[Photos ©Mark Twain House & Museum, Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum, and Center for Mark Twain Studies/Elmira College]
“Alice in Wonderland,” directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, topped the box office this weekend but for a more authentic view of the real Alice (originally entitled “Alice’s Adventures Under Ground”), readers can virtually turn the pages of the original manuscript on the British Library’s website. The manuscript, written and illustrated by Lewis Carroll, (the pen name of Charles Dodgson), is one of the library’s best-loved treasures and is currently on display in their rare treasures gallery, along with Lewis Carroll’s diaries, the ‘Wonderland’ Postage Stamp-Case designed by him, illustrations of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Salvador Dalí and some of the original costume designs for the new film.
Lewis Carroll, an Oxford mathematician, was fond of children and became friends with Lorina, Alice and Edith Liddell, the daughters of the dean of his college. One summer day in 1862, he entertained them on a boat trip with the story of Alice’s adventures in a magical world entered by a rabbit hole. The ten-year old Alice was so entranced that she begged him to write it down for her. It took him awhile to pen the tale and complete his own set of 37 illustrations for it (the published version was illustrated by artist John Tenniel ) but Alice finally received the 90-page book, dedicated ‘to a dear child, in memory of a summer day’, in November 1864.
Many years later, Alice was forced to sell her precious manuscript at auction. It was bought by an American collector, but returned to England in 1948, when a group of American benefactors presented it to the British Library in appreciation of the British people’s role in the Second World War.
By viewing the manuscript virtually, you can see the ‘hidden’ picture of the real Alice on the last page. At the end of his manuscript, Carroll drew a pencil portrait of Alice Liddell, copied from a photograph he had taken of her aged seven. Unhappy with the illustration, he pasted a photograph of Alice over it. The hidden drawing was only uncovered in 1977.
[image of "Alice Grows Taller" from the manuscript by Lewis Carroll courtesy of the British Library.]
