On the second floor, Mr Monkey looked at a stylised representation of one of Dickens's readings. The Dickens doing the reading is a fake, but the museum does have his portable reading desk. Then Mr Monkey looked at the back bedroom. This is probably the room in which Mary Hogarth (the younger sister of Catherine, Dickens's wife) died, a death which influenced much of Dickens's writing. The bedroom has exhibits about Dickens's relationships with women, from the morning suit he bought to meet Queen Victoria in to a playbill for an amateur performance of Wilkie Collins play The Frozen Deep which starred Dickens and Collins and had Ellen Ternan, Dickens's actress 'friend', in a supporting role.
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Copyright Rik Shepherd and Mr Monkey. This page last modified 30 March 2007