The Author and The Preacher

One of the pleasures of travel in England is the opportunity to visit the homes of persons whose lives I have heretofore followed from afar. For more than a week I have been carrying the memory of two such places that I visited in London. For several years now, I have voluntarily allowed a monthly deduction from my checking account to support, among other charities and organizations, Channel 13 and National Public Radio. I am, thus, a self-acknowledged geek, so it should come as no surprise that I have also been a member of the Dickens Fellowship. Members are mostly people whose level of boredom is such that they devote their spare time to reading and discussing the works and life of Charles Dickens. In the Fellowship (not to be confused with J.R.R. Tolkien's Fellowship), we habitually refer to Dickens simply and reverently as "The Author." At the February meeting each year, the customary final toast is always made to the memory of The Author. Little wonder, then, that I took the opportunity when I was still in London to visit 48 Doughty Street--Dickens' first residence which he shared with his wife, Catherine, and a place where they lived for about three years. The home has been a museum owned and operated by the Dickens Fellowship since 1925, and it houses an impressive collection of Dickens' manuscripts and memorabilia. In the lower level, a kitchen during Dickens' stay, the Fellowship has gathered the most complete library of editions of Dickens' works in the world. In fact, the remainder of the home is filled with artifacts that Dickens described in his novels, personal items, proof pages from his novels, and original personal letters. In the study on the second floor, Dickens completed "The Pickwick Papers" and "Oliver Twist," and he began work on "Nicholas Nichleby." In a bedroom on the third floor, his wife's sister, Mary, died in Dickens' arms; she was stricken by heart disease at the age of seventeeni and became the inspiration for the character of Little Nell in "Old Curiosity Shop." I walked the streets surrounding the house, passing the law courts, Grey's Inn and Lincoln's Inn, and walking through Lincoln Park to the Chancery Court. These places figured in three of Dickens' novels. The next morning, I visited a home and a chapel less than a mile away from Dickens' residence. Beginning in 1779 and for the final eleven years of his life, John Wesley lived in a small Georgian home at 49 City Road, London. He had built the chapel according to his own design in 1778, and he and his wife moved into the home on the same lot the following year. Almost all of the furniture and all of the books in the home belonged to the couple. Wesley's writing desk, his favorite chair (a gift from a convert who had been a slave auctioneer), his clothing chest and a robe in which he preached, and his small prayer table at which he spent an hour each morning were all in the building. His last portrait was painted in the second-floor sitting room; he died in his bedroom on the third floor. The chapel at the center of the courtyard was constructed of honey-colored limestone, and still has the original doors and windows. Wesley intended the sanctuary to be a classroom for the training of his circuit preachers; he placed the pulpit in the middle of the horseshoe-shaped structure so that the practicing preachers could be evaluated by their peers. Wesley himself delivered sermons from the elevated box, and he served communion from the rail that he designed against the back wall. The building also housed the small organ at which John's brother, Charles, composed over 600 hymns. A small museum beneath the sanctuary held a number of artifacts including the first list of circuit preachers, their destinations and dates along their respective routes were inscribed by hand. There was a pen with which Wesley wrote one of his sermons, and a bonnet owned by his mother, Susanna, along with one of her own manuscripts concerning childhood education. I never encountered any ghosts on my walks through London, nor did I ever sense strange fluctuations of temperature or an eerie breath that might indicate the presence of anyone long dead. But I did gain a clearer understanding of the day-to-day lives of individuals--and perhaps a keener sense of why one under-paid legal clerk became a famous novelist, and how a child plucked from the window of a burning house was destined to light the fires of faith.