"Literary Links" - Dickens and Fagin

"Literary Links" is a series of posts celebrating Britain's wonderful links with great authors, dramatists and poets.

Charles Dickens

The current Southwark Bridge was opened in 1921 and replaced a Georgian bridge from 1819.  When Charles Dickens was still a boy he regularly crossed this first bridge on his way to visit his father in Marshalsea Prison – a debtor’s prison located half a mile south of this point.  Young Charles was put to work in a blacking factory near to where Charing Cross station is.  One day a work colleague started walking home with him.  Dickens recalled:

“I was too proud to let him know about the prison; and after making several efforts to get rid of him, to all of which Bob Fagin in his goodness was deaf, shook hands with him on the steps of a house near Southwark Bridge on the Surrey side, making believe that I lived there.  As a finishing piece of reality in case of his looking back, I knocked at the door, I recollect, and asked, when the woman opened it, if that was Mr Robert Fagin’s house.”

His colleague is forever immortalised as the lovable rogue of Fagin in Oliver Twist.

This is an excerpt from the tour London River Walks - South Bank which explores the southern bank of the River Thames.  The full tour is found on  www.obelisktours.co.uk

"On the Road..." - Coaching Inns

"On the road..." is a series of posts about our Discovery of Britain's highways and byways.  Whether it be some family fun, a surprising connection or just a beautiful spot we want to share our love for this country with you.  

Today we visit New Inn, Gloucester

 When you arrived in town these coaching inns wanted to attend to your every need – a one stop service station:  bootblacks to clean your shoes, scullions and cooks to take care of your clothes and meals, rooms for you to lay your weary head.  Stables and blacksmiths for your horses, and at posting inns you could hire a post-chaise – a closed, four-wheeled, horse-drawn carriage - in which to continue your journey.  These were the car hire depots or taxi service of their day.   One Gloucester Inn, the Black Spread-Eagle, boasted “Stabling for above an hundred horses...very fine Hay in the stables…and fine grazing grounds.”

Inns were vital hubs in the whole transport network and Gloucester was in a great spot to be sending and receiving coaches from all directions - from London, Cheltenham and Oxford in the east, Wales and Hereford to the west, Bath and Bristol to the south, and Birmingham and Liverpool to the north. 

The inn network provided the ability to change horses at regular intervals allowing you to travel at a fair speed.  Goods wagons would slowly trundle along taking a good four days to reach London – some 105 miles away.  A coach from Gloucester at a gentle pace would reach London in a couple of days.    At a quicker pace in the lighter coaches and a changing of horses every six or so miles you could leave at six in the morning and be in London by eight that evening – a 14 hour trip.    A certain Mr Jones, for a bet of 650 guineas, left The Bell Inn at Gloucester at four in the morning and raced to London in nine hours having changed his horses eight times on route (1802).

The Post Office made arrangements with coaching inns to carry mail along certain routes.  The Post Office provided a coach and an armed guard.  The inns provided the driver and horses.  The fares for the four passengers were an extra bonus in the pocket of the inn keeper. 

Inns like this were important social centres.  They were the best place to get the latest news and gossip as mail coaches and travellers from afar arrived with tall tales, loose tongues and eager ears to soak it all in.  Balls, cockfights, plays, lectures, political debates all found a home in or around these community centres. 

An Innkeeper just outside of the City was proud to declare that she had been “dipping man and beast… in the salt-water” for the past 30 years (1754-1784).  Such dipping revitalized the skin and relaxed those aches and pains and provided another reason to stay in her inn. 

With all of these streams of revenue Landlords were often some of the wealthiest citizens in town. 

By 1455 there were at least 10 inns on the main streets of Gloucester, and by the 1820s around 100 coaches would pass through Gloucester every day. 

In 1854 the final mail coach passed through Gloucester signalling the displacement of these ancient coaching inns to the almighty railways.  This shifted the whole status of these inns from an essential service to an optional place to stay should you fancy lingering in town.   Their heyday was gone.   Most disappeared, but New Inn survived as a wonderful reminder of a time when the horse drawn coach was king of the road. 

This is an excerpt from the tour Gloucester City Tour - Part Two which explores the streets around the Cathedral.  The full tour is found on  www.obelisktours.co.uk

"Literary Links" - Pirates and Peter Pan.

 "Literary Links" is a series of posts celebrating Britain's wonderful links with great authors, dramatists and poets.

William Ernest Henley (1849-1903) was born in Westgate, and educated at the Crypt School, Gloucester.  At the young age of 19 his left leg was amputated below the knee.  His friend, Lloyd Osbourne, described him as “a great, glowing, massive-shouldered fellow with a big red beard and a crutch; jovial, astoundingly clever, and with a laugh that rolled like music; he had an unimaginable fire and vitality…” 

Now compare that description with this fictional man:

“As I was waiting, a man came out of a side room, ... His left leg was cut off close by the hip, and under the left shoulder he carried a crutch, which he managed with wonderful dexterity, hopping about upon it like a bird. He was very tall and strong, with a face as big as a ham—plain and pale, but intelligent and smiling. Indeed, he seemed in the most cheerful spirits, whistling as he moved about among the tables, with a merry word or a slap on the shoulder for the more favoured of his guests…. And falling on a bench, he laughed until the tears ran down his cheeks. I could not help joining, and we laughed together, peal after peal, until the tavern rang again.”

If you have not guessed already this is describing Long John Silver – one of the main characters in Treasure Island.  Lloyd Osbourne was Robert Louis Stevenson’s (1850-1894) stepson.  After the novel was published in 1883 Stevenson wrote to Henley "I will now make a confession: It was the sight of your maimed strength and masterfulness that begot Long John Silver ... the idea of the maimed man, ruling and dreaded by the sound, was entirely taken from you."

Besides inspiring good pirate material Henley was a respected journalist, poet and editor.  His most famous poem is Invictus the last stanza of which reads:

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Nelson Mandela (1918-2013) used to share this poem with other prisoners as they waited out the apartheid years in Robben Island.

William Henley’s  family went on to inspire yet another fictional character.  A family friend was James Matthew Barrie (1860-1937) who loved Henley’s young Daughter Margaret (1888-1894).   Young Margaret, who died when just six years old, had trouble pronouncing her ‘R’s so when she called Barrie her “Friendy” it became  “Fwendy”.  A few years after Margaret’s death “Fwendy” became ‘Wendy’ in the adventures of ‘Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up’ (1904).   

This is an excerpt from the tour Gloucester City Tour - Part One which explores the streets around the Cathedral.  The full tour is found on  www.obelisktours.co.uk

"Literary Links" - Harry Potter in Oxford Part 2

"Literary Links" is a series of posts celebrating Britain's wonderful links with great authors, dramatists and poets.

The Harry Potter movies also used Oxford locations in the Divinity School and in New College.

The Divinity School is another of Oxford's great medieval masterpieces with its impressive vaulted roof built between 1427 – 1483.  Beneath this roof is where students once debated with their masters to earn their degrees.   

Harry Potter fans will recognise the Divinity School as both the Hogwarts Hospital and the dance hall where Professor McGonagall attempts to teach the students how to dance.  The ancient library above is used by Harry, Ron and Hermione to find out details about Nicholas Flamel and Polyjuice Potion.  

The cloisters of New College, with the huge tree in the middle, served as the setting for a number of Harry Potter scenes.  It was here that Mad Eye Moody turned Malfoy into a ferret, where pupils wear ‘Potter stinks’ badges, where Harry shares the secret with Cedric Diggory that their first challenge was dragons, and where Harry calls Ron a ‘git’.

This is an excerpt from the self guided tours of Oxford’s Noble and Great Ones.  

The Divinity School is found in Tour Three.

New College is found in Tour Two

The full tours are found on www.obelisktours.co.uk

"literary Links" - Harry Potter in Oxford

"Literary Links" is a series of posts celebrating Britain's wonderful links with great authors, dramatists and poets.

A number of Christ Church College locations were used for filming the Harry Potter movies.  

The old cloisters provided the backdrop to Harry being shown his father’s Quidditch trophy.   

The stairway up to the Dining Hall was used as the entrance to Hogwarts where Professor McGonagall informs the new students they are about to be sorted into their houses.  Christ Church decided to not use the Sorting Hat for the selection of their students.  Two other scenes were filmed on this staircase: when Filch, the caretaker, catches Harry and Ron arriving late, and when Harry has a flashback of Dumbledore talking to Tom Riddle.

Even though the Dining Hall was not used for filming it was the inspiration for the Hogwarts’s main hall.  You can easily imagine floating candles, moving pictures, flying owls and hurrying ghosts. 

More Harry Potter, Oxford locations in our next post...

This is an excerpt from the tour Oxford’s Noble and Great Ones - Part 1  which explores around the southern part of Oxford.  The full tour is found on  www.obelisktours.co.uk

"On the Road" - Florence Nightingale Museum

"On the road..." is a series of posts about our Discovery of Britain's highways and byways.  Whether it be some family fun, a surprising connection or just a beautiful spot we want to share our love for this country with you.  

Today we visit the Florence Nightingale Museum in London

Opposite the Houses of Parliament stands St Thomas' Hospital

St Thomas' Hospital

St Thomas’ was named after the martyr Thomas Becket (1118-1170), and was founded around 1173 – although it might have just been a rebranding of an older hospital from 1106.  The original hospital was located further down river and stood near the entrance to London Bridge.    Until the English Reformation (1539) the hospital was run by monks and nuns.

St Thomas' Hospital

In 1855 Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) in the midst of her life changing experiences in the Crimea - resolved to reform the way nurses were trained.  Her popularity as the “Lady with the Lamp” resulted in impressive fund raising allowing her to found the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing at St Thomas’ in 1860.  

In 1862 the expanding railway network around London Bridge meant the whole hospital needed to move and relocated here.  The foundation stone for the new hospital was laid by Queen Victoria in 1868.    The modern 1975 buildings tend to blot out the more aesthetically pleasing Victorian buildings behind.   

The 1868 portion of St Thomas'

A museum honouring Florence's life and contribution to modern nursing is located just near the main entrance to the current hospital.    The museum contains books and artefacts relating to Florence and nursing including 'Athena' - Florence's bad tempered pet owl who she had stuffed on its death.  

Florence Nightingale

Florence felt her calling to nurse was the divine mission of her life.   She said,

"On February 7 1837 God spake to me and called me to His service."

Other notable quotes of hers include:

"I craved for something worth doing instead of frittering time away on useless trifles."

"When I am no longer even a memory, just a name, I hope my voice may perpetuate the great work of my life.  God bless my dear old comrades of Balaclava and bring them safe to shore."

"It  may seem a strange principle to enunciate as a first requirement in a hospital that it should do the sick no harm."

The area around the museum is explored in our self guided tour of River Walk - Lambeth.  The full tour is found on www.obelisktours.co.uk