Footnotes

EYE-WITNESS SKETCHES BY AN ATTENDEE AT THE PRIVATE THEATRICALS PUT ON AND PERFORMED BY CHARLES DICKENS AND HIS FRIENDS AT TAVISTOCK HOUSE. Dickens lived from 1851 to 1860 at Tavistock House, where he wrote several of his most celebrated novels including Bleak House, Hard Times, Little Dorrit and A Tale of Two Cities, but also converted the house's large schoolroom into a small theatre in which to present theatricals performed by himself, family and friends including fellow novelist Wilkie Collins (who also wrote several of the productions, including The Lighthouse and The Frozen Deep), Punch editor Mark Lemon, and the artist Frank Stone.

Nathaniel Powell, who made the sketches, recorded that he moved to Bedford House, Tavistock Square, London in 1855, stating "Bedford House was one of three houses standing within an iron gates in a separate enclosure adjoining Tavistock Square. Our house was in the centre, Frank Stone, father of Marcus Stone, R.A., lived on our right, and Charles Dickens on our left. 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..." (quoted in Powell's Memoir of Middle Class Life 1813-1873, a section of the typescript of which is included with the lot).

In a letter (dated 1984, included with the archive) Kathleen Tillotson, editor of the Pilgrim Edition of The Letters of Charles Dickens, suggests that the illustration of a scene from Charles Dickens' Mr. Nightingale's Diary "has Dickens in the middle (as Gabblewig) but I think the man on the right is not Wilkie Collins [as had been posited by Leslie C. Staples in The Dickensian] but Frank Stone (as Mr. Nightingale). He was the other neighbour in Tavistock House". She also makes a good case that one of the illustrations identified as "Tavistock House. Frozen Deep" is not from that play, but actually a scene from Wilkie Collins' The Lighthouse, depicting Charles Dickens in the role of the lighthouse keeper (Aaron Gurnock) confronting a female "ghost come to accuse him" of being an accessory to her murder. Both the Lighthouse and Mr Nightingale's Diary were performed at Tavistock House in 1855, the year Powell moved to Tavistock Square. Of the images of Frozen Deep (written by Collins) she agrees that "Dickens is certainly the bearded one in the second sketch [published in The Dickensian] and the dialogue at this point shows him feeling for his knife", but is less sure that Dickens is one of the characters shown in the image [also published in The Dickensian] showing the interior of the hut in the Arctic.

Provenance: The artist, Nathaniel Powell (1813-1873, Carey Street Wine Merchant, and later co-proprietor of the Flint Glass Works, Whitefriars); his son Harry Powell (1853-1922, director of J. Powell & Sons, Whitefriars Glassworks. There are two letters from Dickens to Powell recorded in The Letters); by descent to his grand-daughter Audrey Baker (1908-2011) and thence to the present owner.

Literature: The Dickensian. Edited by Leslie C. Staples, vol. LVI, Part III. No.3332, pp.158-159 ('Tavistock House Theatricals', illustrating 3 of the images), September, 1960; Times Literary Supplement, 24 Nov, 2023, illustrating the fifth drawing in our lot, depicting "we think... [Charles Dickens] in the role of Mr. Gabblewig of the Middle Temple, in a farce of his own making, Mr. Nightingale's Diary...".

Exhibited: 'Charles Dickens Entertains at Rockingham', Rockingham Castle, April-October 1987.