Telling tales of ordinary and extraordinary women

Embroidered mantel pelmet made by Catherine Dickens, 1853 © Charles Dickens Museum

It's well known that Charles Dickens lived here at 48 Doughty Street between 1837-1839 and wrote some of his most famous stories here, including Oliver Twist. But there were other people who lived and worked here and whose stories we'd like to tell. Women like Dickens's wife, Catherine. Their daughters Mamie and Katey, who were both born here. And servants who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to make sure the household ran smoothly.

These creative pieces have been inspired by stories and objects on this theme from the Charles Dickens Museum collection. They have been written by Rosa Chalfen and local community groups - Mosaic LGBT Young Person’s Trust and St Luke’s Community Centre. This project has been funded by the University of Hertfordshire Coproduction Award.

Two Portraits

I

This piece is inspired by a portrait of the Dickenses second daughter Katey, hanging in the Morning Room, and her first marriage to Charles Collins. Katey Perugini was a famous artist in her day, exhibiting at the Royal Academy, but her reputation is lost to us today. She married twice and both her husbands were also artists.

There is no heartbeat. Her hand is pressed against his chest but the cavity is hollow.

A muscle in her cheek jerks. There is a razor ache in the tendons of her right arm from holding the doorknob. She tries to empty her mind, to think only of the scene. She is losing her love to a doomed battle. She is using the force of her body to hold him back and knowing, even in the movement, that it is hopeless.

But now she is thinking of Charlie in the grove, the violent bruised shadows under his eyes. There were sprays of blossom on the ground and, every time he moved, the flowers released a deathly perfume.

His whole body was wired with tension. He was saying, do you understand, Katey, and holding tightly the tender place between her thumb and forefinger. How could she explain that she was the only one who could understand, that she was happy to be used by him, because she was using him in turn.

There is a thick silence in the room. The only sounds are the stroke of the painter’s brush, or the old lady’s occasional dry cough. Sometimes they break into casual chatter. She stays silent. She likes to hear the painter talk. His strange tufty hair moves above the canvas like fungi sprouting.

A yawning feeling of dread is in her now, for the painting is almost finished, and she never wants to leave the studio. To leave means going home, to the poisoned house and the empty space where her mother should be. To the splayed silk carcass of her wedding dress, and the white corset like a network of fish bones on the bed. If only they would leave her here, in the room as it darkens, lying on the breast of her wooden love.

By Rosa Chalfen

Two Portraits

II

This piece is inspired by a portrait of the Dickenses second daughter Katey, hanging in the Morning Room, and her second marriage to Carlo Perugini. Katey Perugini was a famous artist in her day, exhibiting at the Royal Academy, but her reputation is lost to us today. She married twice and both her husbands were also artists.

Her eyes are fixed on the edge of the brocade curtain where brown light trickles in. Now she understands stillness, how to relax into it, how to spread it to each corner of her body.

There is the faint rustle of crepe when she moves. She can feel the soft touch of it on her back and arms. The dress is a chrysalis. She is shedding now the skin of death, and her new body is visible through the dark gossamer.

He has been buried almost a year. Still she cannot forget the dank sour smell of his sweat, the emaciated press of his hipbone under the skin’s surface, like the black shadow of a tadpole moving underwater. The mess of their bedroom-turned-sanitorium. She remembers seeing her own blurred reflection in the mirror and not knowing the wan face that looked back at her.

Then those strange days afterwards when the world opened up, and she felt its raw touch again. She rediscovered the pleasure of colour, the deep texture of oil paint. She felt rooted in her body, whereas for months it had felt like a distant object, floating somewhere across the room.

She was still in mourning when V came to the house. He was so familiar to her—his sallow artist’s face, clenched red hair, the pale stocky body that recalled the smell of turpentine in his attic studio. But standing there, amongst the terrible relics of Charlie’s illness, he seemed suddenly like a stranger. He stammered the words out as if some force compelled him. She turned him down, as she would turn down the others, and the shock that slid over his face was almost comic.

Then Carlo.

Carlo who was a painter’s dream, all mouth and eyes. Carlo with his strange pictures, so precise that they might have been stills from real life. She wanted to take off the backs of the canvases and examine their mechanics.

They have been secretly married these many months.

Now she cranes over her shoulder to look at the painter. He meets her gaze and smiles. They have known each other for a long time. When she came to the studio weeks ago, she told him not to paint her as he did last time, like a doll. She wanted something dark, with stained cheeks and scrappy hair, with the soft sag of skin. She wanted it strange and real.

By Rosa Chalfen

Elizabeth is missing

From the groggy mornings, rubbing her eyes till they could focus with warm sunrise, to the calm and serene afternoons – selecting the most beautiful flowers to press between forgotten books. To evenings with soft shadows, hair still dripping with a scent of soap, fruit peeled and cut in glass bowls till the day when the sun wasn’t invited in that morning. Where the hum of life froze still, disappeared. The pillow risen high from the lack of weight it no longer cushions at night.
Elizabeth is missing.

By Lilly Dolen

The Lost Letter

This piece is inspired by the process of collecting and preserving women's history, as told from the perspective of Katey, whose own life is represented at our Museum.

Dear Reader,

I have given you the name Hayley because Hayley is the name that came to mind when I tried to imagine the woman who at some future point would become the keeper of Daddy's old stuff: his letters, the absurd number of razors he owned, his stupid desk, his dusty sofas and pointless household fixtures. And of course the reputations of the women in his life. Hayley, I imagine, knows the granularities of these things. She knows where all the secret doors into Daddy’s life are. She has an intimate acquaintance with all the skeletons in his cupboards. And Heaven knows there is no end of available cupboards!

I have called you Hayley also because Hayley was the name of my ginger cat, my all-seeing devoted companion until Daddy snuffed out her life with one of his gruesome shaving tools. It was during one of his fabled “dark moments”, which everyone seems to think were as natural as the weather. I just try not to think about them at all. He did it right in front of me: razor, throat, psycho gaze, the look of serene acceptance on Hayley’s face as she met her end. It wouldn't surprise me one iota if running through Daddy's mind at the time was the possibility of disemboweling the cat and using its gut to make violin strings to sell to his boring arty chums.

Anyway Hayley, I am writing to you principally to put the record straight on those portraits of me you have in Daddy's collection of old stuff. Much has already been said about these paintings, but not by me. Daddy first insisted that my family portrait be painted by his pal Wilkie’s little brother Charlie, who was besotted with me at the time. But he was one of those creepy Pre-Raphs who made all their redheads look miserable, yielding and thoroughly penetrated by male fantasy, so later on when my new hubby Carlo said he'd like to try painting something different, something a bit weird, I said yes. I knew Daddy would be irritated. Carlo’s portrait of me is still quite romantic in a prim way, but nevertheless makes me look fresh of face, more vivacious and quite the Lucifer Box I felt myself to be at the time, despite that dreadful wrappy collar thing Mamie told me to wear.

Carlo actually painted several portraits of me and the one in your collection is the “official” one. Some of the others were quite bizarre, but I love all of them far more than the dull one you have inherited. Look hard enough around the crevices of that living mausoleum Hayley and you might find some of those outré portraits by Carlo. I’m so glad Daddy never got to see them. He would likely have taken his razor to Carlo’s throat if he had.

Sorry this letter is so short, Hayley. I didn't want to spin everything out like Daddy does in his books. And in this short note I have said all I really wanted to say. I just needed to put something out there, as a kind of balm, for me more than anything else. Daddy's fans will no doubt dismiss me as b*****t crazy, but I honestly don't care. He did love me, I know that, and I loved him, sort of. Maybe I will write again one day and tell you all about that.

Best wishes

Kate

By Billy Mann