Among the many subjects in the books of Charles Dickens, the weather often takes on a character of its own. Fog in particular fascinated Dickens especially London’s famous ‘pea souper’ which grew more dense during Dickens’s living years as the city’s population grew and the Industrial Revolution began to add its toxic waste and smoke to the fog.

A new exhibition at Charles Dickens’s London home explores the London fog to find the inspiration provided by the London phenomenon. A Great and Dirty City: Dickens and the London Fog runs from 29 March – 22 October 2023 at the Charles Dickens Museum at 48 Doughty Street, Holborn, the home of Dickens and his family in the late 1830s.

The exhibition is located around the Museum and features a number of editions of Dickens most famous works which include reference to the ‘pea souper’.

From the opening of Bleak House with ‘Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes’ to David Copperfield’s early glimpses of London (‘From the windows of my room I saw all London lying in the distance like a great vapour, with here and there some lights twinkling through it’) to the ‘blinking, wheezing, and choking’ of Our Mutual Friend, the ‘London ivy’ works its way into Dickens’s writing throughout his life.

When Dickens and his young family moved into 48 Doughty Street, now the Museum, London’s population was rocketing and the city’s smog would never have been thicker, as increasing numbers of households warmed themselves before coal fires and worked in fossil fuel-powered factories.

The exhibition explores the fog, how it affected Dickens’s work, his family’s and his own health, and how London has attempted and invariably failed to tackle the problem of pollution over the past 200 years.

The Dickens family’s like many others contributed to the problem using coal to heat the house. The exhibition will include Dickens’s own fire poker from the dining room at Gad’s Hill Place, his home from 1856 until his death in 1870.

Among the items on display, including original first edition parts of Dickens’s Bleak House, is an original pen and wash illustration by Frederick Barnard, who was employed by Dickens’s publisher, Chapman & Hall, to illustrate the ‘Household Edition’ of nine of Dickens’s works (1871-1879). The drawing shows Martin Chuzzlewit, Mary Graham, and Mark Tapley and relates to this passage from the novel: ‘Seeing that there was no one near, and that Mark was still intent upon the fog, he not only looked at her lips, but kissed them in the bargain.’

Fog often added to the drama of the novels providing a veil behind all sorts of nefarious events could be taking place. The exhibition also features a letter from Dickens to his sister-in-law Helen Dickens on 16 July 1860, in which he writes about his brother Alfred’s current illness: an impaired state of health – especially after pleurisy – so often leads to inflammation in the region of the lungs… a better or kinder nurse I know he could not have anywhere; Alfred died eleven days later.

This fascinating exhibition provides evidence that the debate about polluting the atmosphere began in earnest in Victorian times when the effects of the Industrial Revolution were beginning to be felt especially in the dark crowded cities. Dickens was fully aware that technological progress had unpleasant side effects and often campaigned for reforms. The exhibition illustrates that some of these concerns have not gone away and the importance of dealing with these issues.

A Great and Dirty City: Dickens and the London Fog
The Charles Dickens Museum, 48-49 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LX
Dates: 29 March – 22 October 2023.
Opening hours: 10am to 5pm, Wednesday – Sunday (closed Mondays and Tuesdays)

For more information or to book tickets, visit the Charles Dickens Museum website here

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