Very soon in Kent a new theme park is opening. The Charles Dickens Experience. It promises the sights, sounds and indeed smells of Victorian London and the world in which Mr Dickens lived. Do you know what.? I love the sound of that. Short of having a time machine and travelling back to the early 19th century, maybe this will be my only chance that I will ever get to experience a taste of what life was like in the industrialising world.
As you may have read when I spoke about the Rookery a few posts ago, I am fascinated by “How We Used To Live” (for those of you as old as me you may recall a school’s television programme running under the same name). Back in my later school days I picked up a love of empathising the thoughts and feelings of people in different cultures and at differing periods of the past, which certainly helped when I had to write a report on a trip to “The Big Pit” in Blaenafon, Wales and I was ill, so missing the trip entirely.
But just imagine you were there. That it was you back in 1820 in London, living in a middle class town house, a couple of liveried servants on the go and a maid to make your bed for you.? Picture it…
Stepping from your bed into the cool morning air, no heat of course, heavy flax bed sheets and a couple of woolen blankets keep your cotton clad body warm at night. On your dresser a bowl and jug stand and you quickly wash in the cold water before dressing at top speed to keep warm and head downstairs for breakfast. The food isn’t bad, in fact probably better than today unless you were one of the poor who ended up with sausages filled with sawdust and fat bacon which had no lean. All this brought to you by your servants and no washing up to do either.
Taking a stroll outside, so very different, no cars, no combustion engines, but a heavy smog, courtesy of a million domestic coal fires, steam trains, power stations, industry. As late as the 1960’s the London smogs killed the young and infirm, but mix that with low medical technology and a hearty amount of tuberculosis and maybe the modern world of car pollution and diesel fumes doesn’t seem quite so bad. At least nowadays the roads aren’t covered with horse dung, small children collecting the stuff in buckets to sell as well as picking up dog faeces to sell to leather tanners who used it to cure the hides. Back in the Gin houses of the 19th century kids as young as five or six would be out until all hours drunk on gin and stealing to keep up their habit.
Could you cope in a world with no internet, no TV, no mobile phone.? I certainly couldn’t, but that is the world I know. Back in 1820 entertainment was military parades, freak shows, circuses and theatre for the rich. Wouldn’t you just love to spend one day back then. Or maybe one day in the wild west drinking in a saloon, watching a gun fight break out. Perhaps an afternoon watching the Egyptians creating the Sphinx or the Great Pyramid.? How about standing at Nuremburg and hearing Hitler preaching his destructive madness to a simply massive crowd of facists.? Or spending the afternoon with an Aztec tribe in South America fighting off the Spanish and sacrificing virgins.?
All these things I would love to do… every single one makes my heart jump a little when I imagine taking part in it. But there is one thing I would love to see more than all of this.
I would love to stand in Cairo, at the height of the Egyptian empire, marvelling at the sights and sounds erupting around me. Taking in the Nile flowing swiftly towards the delta as it enters the sea. Evocative thoughts. I can’t be there but I can imagine. I can create an image of what it could have been like and I can do it whenever I want.
Where would you like to be today.?