In Chapter 22 of Nicholas Nickleby (1839) by Charles Dickens, Nicholas and Smike join Vincent Crummles theatre company and visit the site of their forthcoming performance at Portsmouth Theatre, which is likely to have been modelled on the Old Theatre Royal, High St, which Dickens visited in 1838 during his research for the novel. The theatre was demolished in 1856 and is now occupied by part of the Portsmouth Grammar School site. This extract from Nicholas Nickleby offers a rich depiction of the city and its theatrical life in the 1830s:

Nicholas was thus left at leisure to entertain himself with his own thoughts, until they arrived at the drawbridge at Portsmouth, when Mr Crummles pulled up.

‘We’ll get down here,’ said the manager, ‘and the boys will take him round to the stable, and call at my lodgings with the luggage. You had better let yours be taken there, for the present.’

Thanking Mr Vincent Crummles for his obliging offer, Nicholas jumped out, and, giving Smike his arm, accompanied the manager up High Street on their way to the theatre; feeling nervous and uncomfortable enough at the prospect of an immediate introduction to a scene so new to him.

They passed a great many bills, pasted against the walls and displayed in windows, wherein the names of Mr Vincent Crummles, Mrs Vincent Crummles, Master Crummles, Master P. Crummles, and Miss Crummles, were printed in very large letters, and everything else in very small ones; and, turning at length into an entry, in which was a strong smell of orange-peel and lamp-oil, with an under-current of sawdust, groped their way through a dark passage, and, descending a step or two, threaded a little maze of canvas screens and paint pots, and emerged upon the stage of the Portsmouth Theatre.

‘Here we are,’ said Mr Crummles.

It was not very light, but Nicholas found himself close to the first entrance on the prompt side, among bare walls, dusty scenes, mildewed clouds, heavily daubed draperies, and dirty floors. He looked about him; ceiling, pit, boxes, gallery, orchestra, fittings, and decorations of every kind,--all looked coarse, cold, gloomy, and wretched.

‘Is this a theatre?’ whispered Smike, in amazement; ‘I thought it was a blaze of light and finery.’

‘Why, so it is,’ replied Nicholas, hardly less surprised; ‘but not by day, Smike--not by day.’

In Chapter 29 we learn the outcome of their theatrical activities:

The unexpected success and favour with which his experiment at Portsmouth had been received, induced Mr Crummles to prolong his stay in that town for a fortnight beyond the period he had originally assigned for the duration of his visit, during which time Nicholas personated a vast variety of characters with undiminished success, and attracted so many people to the theatre who had never been seen there before, that a benefit was considered by the manager a very promising speculation. Nicholas assenting to the terms proposed, the benefit was had, and by it he realised no less a sum than twenty pounds.

Charles Dickens (b. 7 Feb. 1812; d. 9 Jun..1870) was the most popular British novelist of all time. His works are widely read and are frequently adapted as films and TV series. Dickens published 15 novels, 5 novellas, and numerous short stories during his lifetime, as well as a host of journalistic pieces. His first short stories were published in The Morning Chronicle from 1833, and due to their popularity were published as Sketches by Boz (1836). The enormous success of the serialisation of his first novel, Pickwick Papers (1836-7) cemented Dickens’s fame. His other works include Oliver Twist (1839), A Christmas Carol (1843), David Copperfield (1850), Bleak House (1853), Little Dorrit (1857), Great Expectations (1861), and Our Mutual Friend (1865). He worked as a reporter for the Morning Chronicle in the early 1830s, and was editor of [Bentley’s Miscellany] (http://www.victorianweb.org/periodicals/bentley.html), Daily News, Household Words, and All The Year Round.

Achieving a level of literary celebrity not seen since Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron, Dickens’s works were eagerly-awaited and widely-read, and his reading tours attracted enormous audiences. Stylistically his works are unique and powerful, his love of drama and the influence of the macabre stories he heard in early childhood being evident in the psychologically-heightened theatricality of which he was capable. He is nonetheless also one of the key figures in nineteenth-century realism, his work marked by a commitment to the belief in the possibility of conveying complex representations of the social life of his era. Alongside other major writers of the period, such as George Eliot, W. M. Thackeray, and Anthony Trollope, Dickens was capable of forging extended multiple plots, and wide casts of characters from across the social classes. His work probes the human condition and often turned a critical eye on the major social issues of the day, particularly education, crime, sanitation, disease, and poverty, but rarely engage in sustained political analyses. Instead, his social vision often turns on individuals and on a sentimental appeal to readers’ emotions. Dickens remains the most prominent figure in modern Victorian Studies within English Literature scholarship.

Dickens was strongly involved in a range of charitable causes and in 1847, with Angela Burdett-Coutts, founded the Urania Cottage home for ‘fallen women’. Dickens was involved in theatrical productions, often alongside his friend and writing colleague, Wilkie Collins, and it was during a production of The Frozen Deep (1857) that he began a relationship with the actress Ellen (Nellie) Ternan, (1839–1914) who became his mistress, and who is buried in Highland Cemetery, Portsmouth. Dickens’s relationship with his wife, Catherine Dickens (1815–79), and some of his eight children was strained and difficult. Dickens died on 09 June 1870 at Higham, Kent, leaving his final work, The Mystery of Edwin Drood unfinished.

Dickens’s Portsmouth connections are primarily related to his earliest years, during which he lived at three addresses in the city before his family left for the capital in 1815. From 1809 to 1815, Dickens’ father was a clerk in the Royal Navy pay office, Portsmouth. After leaving Portsmouth Dickens lived in London, Sheerness, Chatham, and Gad’s Hill. Dickens visited Portsmouth in 1838, 1858, and 1866, but appears to have had little affection for it, as a letter to a correspondent suggests:

‘I was born at Portsmouth, an English seaport town principally remarkable for mud, Jews, and Sailors, on the 7th of February 1812. My father holding in those days a situation under Government in the Navy Pay Office, which called him in the discharge of his duties to different places, I came to London, a child of two years old’ (The letters of Charles Dickens, Pilgrim edition, Vol. 1: 1820-1839, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965. p. 465).

University of Portsmouth staff who specialise in Dickens or who have worked on Dickens projects include Dr Chris Pittard and Dr Mark Frost (English Literature), Dr Alison Habens (Creative Writing), and Professor Brad Beaven (History).

ENTRY: Dr Mark Frost, Department of English Literature, University of Portsmouth.
If you have any comments or suggestions please email: mark.frost@port.ac.uk