‘If due to magic or – as some scientists today would say, to a quantum paradox – I could walk through the streets of London at the end of the 19th century, I know for sure that I would give vent to a series of sensations and emotions that have always accompanied me. Emotions that – in my many business and non-business trips – I have tried to nourish with passion every time, retracing those alleys and savoring those atmospheres, imagining myself sitting in a pub with writers like Edgar Allan Poe or Arthur Conan Doyle to talk about the new automaton in vogue in the West End or making assumptions about Jack the Ripper” 📚 Extract from: Steam, Gears and Mechanical Dreams, Steampunk and the New Victorians, Nero Press 2018, I talk about the book here.
lower left, the sign of the Writers’ Museum in Edinburgh, Royal Mile. In the center is the Ye Old Cheshire Cheese Pub, in Fleet Street – Strand, London. Bottom right is the sign of the Sherlock Holmes Museum in Baker Street.
When we talk about the great British writers and the era in which they lived, the 19th century, we must not lose sight of the historical-social conditions that led to the creation of their masterpieces, and not even the psychological ones: the transition from gas lamps to electric lights, the sudden visibility and liveability in the streets even in the evening, the inventions and the great minds who produced them. Alternating current with Tesla for example, but also Watt’s steam engine, make us understand how technology and the industrial revolution have influenced and improved lifestyle; but the incredible speed with which this progress occurred also led to an emotional turmoil, to a large gap between wealth and poverty, to the birth of orphanages and the social novel with Dickens and the historical one with Walter Scott, to professional murderers, Burk and Hare who traded in the bodies of homeless people that were resold to hospitals for medical-scientific experiments. To Doctor Bell’s investigations that become the stories of Sherlock Holmes. To the discomfort and anxieties nourished by a society that, day after day, was deforming itself. All this, in literature, will be called Oliver Twist, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hide and, in the United States, will be told by Poe and his literary doubles; but if Dickens denounced poverty, orphanages and delinquency, Mary Shelley with Frankenstein created a monster whose body was built with parts of other bodies; alive yes, but without any more awareness of good and evil, and without a will of its own, and totally manoeuvrable.
STRAND, PRINT PAPER AND DICKENS. Returning to our itineraries, if we want to continue to combine culture, divertissement and a bit of history, we could start from the museum dedicated to Charles Dickens – The Dickens House Museum in 48 Doughty Street -, it is the house where he moved shortly after getting married and where two of his children were born; structured on four floors, in addition to the author’s original manuscripts present in some of the rooms, it has, as often happens, an adjoining shop where both his books and merchandising are sold. Leaving this extremely evocative house-museum, we could pass through Russell Square Gardens – if we are also fans of the Sherlock TV series, we will see it later -, to continue (by metro) towards the Strand, kingdom of the British Press (until a few decades ago), and home to the Royal Court of Justice, and walk along Fleet Street (it’s about twenty minutes on foot from the museum and a little less by tube). We catch our breath enjoying a beer at Ye Old Cheshire Cheese – rebuilt following a fire – where Dickens, Chesterton (author of Father Brown), and Conan Doyle often went, at 145 Fleet St, London. Once refreshed we could go to Charing Cross, the historic street dedicated to new and second hand bookshops (I highly recommend it) and end the evening in Piccadilly, where we could have fun at the M&Ms store or the Lego store (it’s about ten minutes walk feet), and where you have multiple choices if you want to eat. The Strand today is a very elegant neighborhood but as 📚 Lee Jackson reminds us in Walking Dickens’ London 📚, to understand the appearance of the city in Dickens’ time, we must think of a low-profile metropolis where the tallest building is the Cathedral (he refers to Whitechapel) dominating supreme, although blackened by the soot of the thousands of chimneys of time; where brewery and factory chimneys line the south bank of the Thames. We have to think of steamboats and coal barges and a different quiet, the shouts of street vendors and the ringing of bells.
And if we have just left the degradation of Whitechapel and its “court of miracles”, a favorite destination for immigrants from all over, given the proximity to the docklands and the port, with Dickens we retrace Cornhill, on the right side of the Exchange, towards St Michael’s Alley (as the crow flies with London Bridge), one of the large merchant streets that housed the offices of the lawyers Dodson and Fogg in 📚The Pickwick Papers or those of Nicholas Nickleby or of Scrooge himself in 📚🎬 A Christmas Carol, not far from the rolling water and the smell of the river. The newsboy on the street corner, the children chasing each other shouting, streets where life took place in a dimension that would remain in some respects timeless, while growing industrialization led the City to incredible overcrowding and relative collapse , going from one to around six million inhabitants in a short time. Overpopulation which in turn led to a major hygienic-sanitary collapse, which saw epidemics of typhoid, cholera and smallpox as protagonists. An interesting exursus is made at the Kew steam museum.
🎞️🎞️If you like to watch a TV series dedicated to Dickens, I recommend Dickensian while, to get closer to the Steampunk period, Victorian London and Inventions, I suggest you two animated masterpieces, Steamboy and Howl’s Moving Castle, but also films like The Prestige, The Illusionist and Hugo Cabret 🎞️ 🎞️
ELEMENTARY WATSON!
Who hasn’t said this phrase at least once, raise your hand… If the adventures of Sherlock Holmes are your passion, London is truly the ideal place then; but, be careful, the true adventure of its extraordinary author begins in Edinburgh where he was born and began his medical studies at the city hospital together with another exceptional companion: the writer Robert Louis Stevenson, author of the aforementioned Jekyll and Hyde , but also of Treasure Island.
📽️🎞️🎬🎥 There are many films and series dedicated to Sherlock Holmes, just to mention those of recent years, here are the names of Elementary, The Irregulars of Baker Street and, of course, Sherlock; but let’s start in order.
If the Baker Street detective is your idol, the first place you need to go is definitely the museum dedicated to him. Located in Marylebone, the visit takes place on several floors and through furnishing objects, wax statues as well as elements linked to the figure of the investigator – such as vials, flasks, a violin and the iconic hat -, you can breathe the atmosphere of which they are steeped in the original stories, and from the Victorian era. The 🎟️tickets can be purchased in the adjoining shop, it is possible to visit it from 9.30 to 18 but please go early because there is always a rather long queue 😉
Metro 🚋🚆 : Baker Street Station, linee: Circle, Bakerloo, Jubilee and more. You will like it!
If Sherlock, the series broadcast on the BBC since 2010 and created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, is one of your favorites – and you like to retrace some of its locations -, walking around Southbank (Waterloo) it is certainly possible to recognize the park where Sherlock and Watson went to look for a person who could help them understand some symbols (second episode of the first season), while at 187 North Gower Street, there is the place where they filmed many scenes and which can be seen next to the entrance to the house them: 🥪🍔 Speedy’s. Inside the atmosphere is friendly, the food is excellent and the staff is used to seeing tourists photographing the images hanging on the walls and in any case, you also have to eat 🤗😀😊 If we want art, the National Gallery is for us; located in the splendid Trafalgar square, you will immediately recognize it also in the series while, leaving it behind us and going to the left, a few minutes on foot, there is the 🍺 Pub The Sherlock Holmes, at 10 Northumberland Street. Extremely suggestive, inside it presents a series of objects linked to the figure of this iconic character. Remember that the kitchen in pubs always closes quite early; but this adventure, we were saying, begins in Edinburgh, and it is at number 11 Picardy Place that it is possible to read the plaque dedicated to the birthplace of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, while, practically opposite, in a couple of minutes on foot you can reach at The Conan Doyle in 71-73 York Place, Edinburgh, pub 🍺 dedicated to him.
Small digression, if you want to visit Edinburgh in that area there is accommodation for university students whose rooms are often rented out in the summer; the rooms are clean with a private bathroom and a shared space for breakfast, attached to the structure there is an affordable cafe and a supermarket just across the road. There are many bus stops to go to the city center.
P.S. in Russel Square (see the box on the Dickens house – museum above), one of the initial scenes of the series was filmed in which Watson – Martin Freeman meets an ex-army companion of his who will put him in contact with Sherlock in order to share the rent starting their adventure 😊
Therefore, a probable itinerary could see your day start with the Baker Street museum, then rest and eat something at Speedy’s (it’s about twenty minutes on foot) and continue towards Southbank in search of the Skate Park; if you feel like it you can get to Scotland Yard by tube for a photo and from there, in less than five minutes on foot, continue to Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery and then enjoy your dinner at the Pub dedicated to Sherlock Holmes, just a few steps away from you! If after dinner you still have some strength left for an evening walk, looking at the Gallery in front of you, on your left you will see the avenues leading to Buckingham Palace, St. James Park and Green Park, but this is another story 😊
I remind you that some of the information and/or quotes on Victorian London present in these pages are taken from my 📚 book Steampunk and the New Victorians where, should you like, the topic is extensively addressed. Inside this site, in the books section, you will find the book trailer, interviews, photos and some content, if you would like to find out more click here
In general, the itineraries, images and contents present in this blog are published in my books or are part of web, radio and/or television programs of which I am the author, therefore they are subject to copyright, thank you.