When we arrived, a small smattering of tourists was already waiting outside the house for the guide to get there. After a few minutes, an older man with a thick gray mustache, wearing a classic tweed three-piece suit, and twirling a wooden walking stick came up to meet the group.
“Where’d they find this guy? Central casting?” Gabe whispered to me.
The man cleared his throat and announced, in a surprisingly booming voice for a person of his slight stature, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, for those who are not here on time, because they will be left behind.” He chortled (yes, actually chortled!) and clicked his cane against the pavement.
“Come, come,” he said, and moved a bit farther down the street so as to not block the pathway inside. “In a few moments, we will enter Dickens’s house, where he lived from 1837 to 1839. It is the only one of Dickens’s homes left standing and is where he wrote the classics Nicholas Nickleby and Oliver Twist. I’ll be your guide on this literary journey today. My name is Reginald, you may call me Reginald.” He laughed at himself again. “Except you,” he said, pointing his cane in my direction, “you can call me whatever you like, just don’t call me late for dinner!” He erupted into another fit of giggles and turned to address the rest of the group again.
Gabe leaned over to me and said, “Um . . . what is happening right now?”
“I’m not sure, but you better behave, mister, ’cause it seems I have cheeky Reginald here waiting in the wings, ready to step in if you get out of line.” I gestured toward Reginald with my thumbs and winked playfully at Gabe.
“I’ll be sure to be on my best behavior.”
Reginald continued briefing our group about the former home of the beloved English author and outlined a few other stops we’d be checking out before the tour was through.
“We start here at the Dickens Museum, and then we will make our way to an inn where Pip first lodged when he arrived in London in Great Expectations. We’ll then head to a prefire building Dickens visited as a boy and thusly set part of his novel David Copperfield in as a result. We’ll also pop into an old pub featured in A Tale of Two Cities—I do accept tips in the form of pints, in case you were wondering—and we’ll end the tour at the Cratchit House, known to be a quintessential setting in Dickens’s most notable and most often performed work, A Christmas Carol.”
“Ooh, speaking of,” he continued, “have any of you had a chance to see the new adaptation Marley Is Dead here on the West End? Splendid, truly splendid, it is.”
Gabe nudged me jovially and smiled at the reference.
Reginald handed us our admission tickets to the house, now turned into a museum, and continued, “You will have the next hour to explore the five floors of Charles Dickens’s former residence. The museum, which spans from the basement all the way up to the servants’ quarters, is all open and houses over a hundred thousand artifacts from Dickens’s personal life. I will remain in the lobby if you have any questions, but if you’re ready then let’s step back in time and begin our adventure!” He waved his hand flamboyantly.
Entering the house was like entering a time machine to the Victorian age, everything perfectly preserved—from the dark-red and brown leather-bound books that lined the study walls to the mahogany desk with curved legs Dickens used to write at.
“Do you smell that?” I asked Gabe.
He took a few sniffs around the room. “It kinda smells like my grandmother’s apartment in the Bronx.”
I swatted him with my museum pamphlet. “No, it’s the paraffin wax that would be used in lanterns to make the light last longer. Oliver Twist is what? Like eight hundred pages? Written by hand? That’s a lot of wax.”
“You could not possibly still smell two-hundred-year-old wax,” Gabe ribbed.
“This room is incredible. This day is incredible. Thank you,” I said, kissing him squarely on the lips.
Gabe leaned down and whispered in my ear, “And it’s only just beginning.” He stood up straight and clapped his hands together. “Come now, chop chop, lots to see. Must move along, Hurry now,” he said in his worst Dick Van Dyke from Mary Poppins British accent.
We finished walking through the house and then went outside where most of the tour group was already gathered and waiting for us. Spotting me, Reginald extended his arms and said, “The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.”
“Great Expectations?” I guessed.
“Nicholas Nickleby,” he corrected. “Okay, everyone, as Dickens once said, ‘It is required of every man, that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellowmen, and travel far and wide . . .’ so off we go to travel just a bit wider.”
I scrunched up my nose. “David Copperfield?”
“My dear, it’s so obviously A Christmas Carol,” he remarked with a twirl of his cane as he led the way down the steep cobblestone street.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Over the next few hours, we strolled through streets of the city that, we were told, had hardly changed since the days Dickens roamed them, mostly at night, chasing an elusive muse. Amid old brick buildings with angled gables and curved archways that led to narrow corridors, the sense of being transported back in time was a strange comfort after the last few days touring around Paris at warp speed. London, though busy, felt more like a comforting escape, and I couldn’t help but absorb the city’s charm into my skin, breathing in the sights and smells of what I imagined the city emitted in the 1800s.
My favorite part so far, aside from exploring the nooks and crannies of Dickens’s home, was our stop at a pub named The Boot, which had been standing on-site since 1724. Reginald explained it was often included in many Dickens walking tours and pub crawls since it was mentioned as a “house of interesting repute” in Barnaby Rudge.
As members of our group continued to tip Reginald in pints of amber ale, his stories became more exaggerated, his cane gesturing wildly, knocking over empty glasses and “accidentally” whacking into inattentive bystanders. Reginald regaled the crowd with stories of Dickens the showman, much like himself, and explained that his works had always been meant to be read aloud, which is exactly what Dickens did in many pubs around the city.
I listened attentively and tried to embody the character of Marley as I listened. Would Dickens be delighted or offended by the modern adaptation of Marley Is Dead? I really wasn’t sure, but I did take comfort in knowing that in both his original tale and in the West End’s newest version, the moral of the story remained true—the protagonist was ultimately changed for the better through righting their mistakes of the past.
Gabe drained the last of his Guinness and licked the foam from his top lip. He leaned in close and asked, “I’m going to get another. Do you want one?”