Unseen Sketches of Charles Dickens in Play Rehearsals Go On Display For First Time
Charles Dickens Museum
Charles Dickens (centre) during rehearsals for his own play, Mr Nightingale’s Diary performed at Tavistock House in 1855. On the left is Mark Lemon, editor of Punch magazine, on the right is either Wilkie Collins or illustrator Frank Stone.
An unpublished set of pen, ink, and watercolour sketches showing Charles Dickens and his theatre company in the midst of acting rehearsals has gone on show for the first time at the Charles Dickens Museum in London.
Newly acquired by the Museum, the sketches show Dickens and fellow members of the theatre company made up of his friends and family during rehearsals for stage productions including Dickens’s Mr Nightingale's Diary and The Frozen Deep.
The informal, on-the-spot sketches were made in 1855 and 1857 by Nathaniel Powell, Dickens’s next door neighbour at his home at Tavistock Square, also in Bloomsbury, London. Also depicted are his friend Mark Lemon, editor of Punch magazine and his eldest daughter Mamie Dickens. His friend and fellow novelist Wilkie Collins also acted in the theatre company, having collaborated with Dickens to write The Frozen Deep.
The unseen sketches were acquired by the museum at a Bonhams auction earlier this year, thanks to the support of Art Fund, Arts Council England/V&A Purchase Grant Fund, and the Wilkie Collins Society. They are on display until 21 September.
“Far removed from the many polished images of Dickens in performance, these are the only known immediate ‘snapshots’ of Dickens in rehearsal," said Frankie Kubicki, Director of the Charles Dickens Museum, "capturing moments of staging, costuming and performing unrecorded elsewhere. This is a window on to one of the enduring passions of Charles Dickens’s life – performing. These vivid sketches give us an enticing and intimate glimpse of the productions staged by Dickens and the friends and family within his theatre group. They are full of the frenetic energy for which Dickens was renowned and bring Dickens’s world and character to life in a way that we haven’t quite seen before."
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Charles Dickens Museum
Charles Dickens and his daughter Mamie as Richard Wardour and Clara Burnham at the dramatic end of The Frozen Deep, Tavistock House, 1857.
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Charles Dickens Museum
Charles Dickens Museum Patron Miriam Margolyes examines a sketch of Dickens performing.
Dr Pete Orford, Associate Professor of English at the University of Buckingham, expert on Dickens’s plays and Charles Dickens Museum Academic Advisor, added: “Drawn during rehearsals, these images show an intimate and dynamic side to the dramatic productions of Dickens and his friends. They offer an immediate glimpse into the mechanics of Dickens's dramatic productions."
Recalling the occasion when he went next door and made the sketches, Nathaniel Powell wrote:
“We were invited by Mr. and Mrs. Dickens to attend theatrical performances at their house. They were intensely interesting on account of the cast, the staging and the audiences. The most important piece was "The Frozen Deep" in which Dickens, Wilkie Collins and Mark Lemon took parts. You will find rough sketches of the characters in my 1857 sketchbook...”
Dickens and his family moved into Tavistock House, Bloomsbury in September 1851 and lived there for nine years. Both rehearsals and the final performances of the plays took place at the house in 1855, the year Powell moved in next door. In 1854, Dickens wrote a play for his children, which they rehearsed and performed at Christmas in the old schoolroom they had transformed into a theatre, known by the family as ‘The Smallest Theatre in the World’.
The museum's current Showtime! exhibition running until January 2026 reveals the love of performing which took hold of Charles Dickens from childhood, exploring the adaptations which made Dickens famous in his lifetime and 200 years of productions of his stories for theatre, film, television, radio and podcast.
