Playing Nephew Fred at Dickens Fair in 2013 with Dennis Parks as Scrooge. If someone know who took this photo, please let me know!
but I did stumble upon a new detail recently that called to mind how Locust Grove (the ca. 1792 historic house museum where I work in Louisville, KY), Charles Dickens, and Queen Victoria (who you may also meet at the fair!)...
Amy as Queen Victoria in 2012. Again- someone let me know who took this so I can mention them
...all circle around the same incident in 1842. I have finally gotten around to reading Charles Dickens' American Notes, which I was especially interested to read since George Croghan of Locust Grove...
Lt. Col. George Croghan, ca. 1816. Collection of Historic Locust Grove. Read more about Col. Croghan here.
...mentioned in his journal 7 April 1842, “…Dickens arrived at the Galt House during the night but departed for St. Louis very soon after breakfast.” This was during the American tour that Dickens wrote American Notes about. Dickens mentioned little about Louisville other than how impressed he was with the Galt House.
Dickens was on his way West. He made it to St. Louis and ultimately to see the prairie, which he was very unimpressed by, then traveled back through Louisville (seeking out the same excellent hotel) and Cincinnati on his way to Sandusky in Ohio.
On the way, he stopped at a hotel, apparently somewhere around Columbus, OH, where at dinner there was, “…a droning gentleman who talks arithmetically and statistically on all subjects, from poetry downwards; and who always speaks in the same key, with exactly the same emphasis, and with very grave deliberation.”
I was half asleep, making my way through morning coffee, when I read this and almost glanced over it but something told me that it was crucial and worth comprehending. Dickens went on to say:
"He came outside just now, and told me how that the uncle of a certain young lady who had been spirited away and married by a certain captain, lived in these parts; and how this uncle was so valiant and ferocious that he shouldn’t wonder if he were to follow that said captain to England, ‘and shoot him down in the street wherever he found him;’ in the feasibility of which strong measure I, being for the moment rather prone to contradiction, from feeling half asleep and very tired, declined to acquiesce: assuring him that if the uncle did resort to it, or gratified any other little whim of the like nature, he would find himself one morning prematurely throttled at the Old Bailey: and that he would do well to make his will before he went, as he would certainly want it before he had been in Britain very long."
Earlier that year, George Croghan's fourteen year old niece, Mary:
daughter and only surviving child of George's younger brother, William Croghan, Jr.:
had eloped with English Napoleonic War veteran, Edward Schenley, who was nearly thirty years older than she was:
This caused a major transatlantic scandal and, in fact, George Croghan had written to his cousin John O'Fallon on February 16, 1842, "[William] is half distracted. Let him rouse himself and pursue to the rescue of his child, even though to effect it he have to blow the vile robber's brains out. I write in haste and in great distress." Supposedly, the ire of Queen Victoria, herself, was raised by the incident.
Queen Victorian in 1843 by Franz Xaver Winterhalter - Royal Collection RCIN 406010
So, there you have it- whether at Locust Grove in Louisville or the Dickens Fair in San Francisco, we are really telling the same story! Break a leg out there, Victorian Londoners, and to find out more about the Croghan-Schenley scandal, visit this article on the official Locust Grove blog.
Your's & c.,
The Victorian Man
