Dickens in Broadstairs

Last week Pat and I spent a lovely few days in Kent – the garden of England as it is often called - visiting friends and relations and generally enjoying that part of the world.

The house that was Dickens' inspiration for the
home of Miss Betsy Trotwood in David Copperfield

On Saturday we meandered along the Kentish coastline stopping off at the various seaside resorts for a walk around and a bit of fresh air. It was very fresh, a bright day but with a blustery and chilly wind blowing! At lunchtime we found ourselves at Broadstairs - a place that I had never visited before and which was a joy. A traditional resort with spectacular views across the town and the sea and a very pleasant atmosphere. We parked the car on the Esplanade overlooking the sea and walked back into the town centre to look for lunch.

Outside the Royal Albion Hotel

The short walk back to the town was pleasant, indeed, and as we made our way we were reminded of Broadstairs’ past and its links with the great English writer Charles Dickens. Dickens first visited Broadstairs when he was about twenty five – he was already famous having written ‘The Pickwick Papers’ – and over the remainder of his life spent extensive periods in the town. As we walked we passed a house, now a museum, which, we were informed had been the inspiration for the house of Miss Betsy Trotwood in Dickens’ “David Copperfield” – the first book by Dickens that I ever read. As we stood outside the house words from my teenage reading of Copperfield leapt out at me: “Barkis is willing” the famous message that Barkis gives to David to pass on to Peggotty, the maid of David’s mother. It took me back to reading the book a life time ago. And, then, a few minutes later we were standing outside the Royal Albion Hotel looking at the lunchtime menu. At the side of the door was a plaque informing us that the Royal Albion had been a favourite spot for Dickens – he had visited it many times on his visits and indeed had written part of the great novel “Nicholas Nickleby” whilst

there.

As we sat in the hotel enjoying our warming bowl of soup and tasty sandwich it had clearly changed much from Dickens’ day. I’m sure that he would found it very strange but he would, too, have recognised the range of people all enjoying the atmosphere, the drink and the food. No doubt he could have penned some penetrating words that got to the very essence of the place and the people frequenting it!

As we sat in the hotel bar enjoying our lunch I looked around me. Here we were in a place once frequented by one of the world’s very great writers and who had sat, perhaps, in the very spot where I was sitting, as he enjoyed a drink or a meal and perhaps wrote a few words of one of the works that would define the English language and the nation. As I gazed at the walls there were posters decorating them – not about Dickens - but humble Southern Railway advertisements from a past era and they perversely reminded me of  something Pat that had read out to me at breakfast time. It was an item from her newspaper about the university town of Cambridge – one of the world’s great academic centres. 

The poster that caught my eye

Apparently there has been considerable dispute in the town because the town council has, in its infinite wisdom, decided to abandon the use of apostrophes in street names and places. So, for example, St Paul’s Court will be in future known as St Pauls Court or Christ’s College on Christ’s Lane will henceforth be known as Christs College on Christs Lane. The move has rightly been branded “deplorable” and condemned as “pandering to the lowest denominator”, by many in the ancient city. The reason and justification given by the council is that they are following government directives and that the use of apostrophes can be confusing and potentially dangerous in this age of technology. I assume by that they mean that a misplaced apostrophe might cause (say) and emergency services vehicle to go to the wrong place. Mmmmm?

And another - not only advertising
 but teaching a bit of history

I thought about this dumbing down as I read one of the Southern Rail posters in the bar. We were implored in the poster to use the train to come to “Sunny Broadstairs”. And how was the place described on this humble advert from yesteryear? Broadstairs, we were delightfully advised, was “The Children’s Elysium”. Oh, how Dickens would have enjoyed that – maybe he wrote it! I can almost hear Dickens saying it as he described a journey to Broadstairs......... “we travelled through the Kentish fields to that children’s Elysium, Broadstairs.....”  “Elysium” – a place of perfect happiness and contentment, the Elysian Fields of Greek mythology. “Elysium”- a place where the righteous and the heroic can live a blessed and happy life indulging in whatever they enjoy! And the poster showed that, too, with groups of children all happily digging in the seaside sand, doing what children do on  a beach. What a wonderful use of language, what pictures it conjures up – the language of Dickens and Shakespeare all combined into one simple railway advert.

What hope for children's spelling?
Companies spend billions advertising
 their products. It clearly sells beans -
but it also sells poor spelling and a
lack of respect for words to
young minds.

But it all begs a question. Would we ever see a word like “Elysium” used on a poster today? When was the last time that you heard or saw that word, or similar, used on the latest TV commercial? Do we need any further evidence that our language has been dumbed down? The poster (and others) that I peered at as I sipped my soup reminded me of the assassination of the English language that has been carried out throughout the UK in recent years. Basic punctuation such as apostrophes are banned or simply forgotten, companies are allowed to incorrectly spell words as part of their advertising (think  Vodafone or the truly awful ToysRus with the R reversed) or a personal anathema - computer driven mail that is composed in such a way that all the conventions of letter writing are abandoned. I can’t count the number of times that I have contacted companies who have sent me letters addressed to Dear Mr Tony Beale to explain why this is incorrect and is there no-one at their company aware of the conventions of letter writing? The really worrying thing is that they appear incapable of understanding my point. All in the name of progress, technology or increasing company profits! Of course, companies like Heinz will assert that when they spell beans as beanz they are using the creative nature of language and that they are encouraging people to interact with language. They will tell you that their advertising is not powerful enough to influence people in how they spell and use words. This is arrant nonsense - "creativity" has absolutely nothing to do the quality and correctness of an item, skill or idea. And,  having spent forty plus years in a classroom it is easy to spot how children (and indeed adults) are influenced by what they see around them. From the earliest days children and later adults model themselves upon the norms of the day - they wear the clothes that are in fashion, pick up on the gestures, modes of speech, outlooks of the pop star or the film icon. In a school they reflect the mores, organisations and outlooks of that school, indeed, of the individual classroom or teacher. It is easy to spot, for example the children who are in the class of a "noisy" teacher, or a disorganised teacher, or a quiet teacher or an aggressive teacher - the class will all too often develop those same characteristics. It is just the same with language - set a good example and the rest will largely follow. If society doesn't care about punctuation or the quality of language then we should not be at all surprised that we increasingly turn out generations who are less bothered about it. An epidemic of ignorance is fast developing in the UK - and, I suspect, in the USA too - all because we are increasingly uncaring or dismissive of the value of correct prose, punctuation, vocabulary or speech.

"Dyslexia rules K.O!"
Don't blame teachers for poor literacy skills in
children - blame society's couldn't care less attitude
 and the philistine approach of  big business towards
the written and spoken word.

I reflected on the situation in Cambridge. Two of the great addresses in Cambridge, indeed the world, are those that relate to two of the very great colleges King’s and Queens’ Both have an possessive apostrophe, but placed differently and for good purpose. King’s College was that college founded by King Henry VI in 1441 and so is singular since there was only one king involved - it was his college.  Queens’, on the other hand, was founded by Henry’s wife Margaret of Anjou in 1448 and was re-founded in 1465 by Elizabeth Woodville the wife of Edward IV. Thus, two Queens were involved and so Queens’ is plural - two queens have "ownership" of it and the possessive apostrophe is placed differently. Some may say this is unimportant or pedantic – presumably the local council in Cambridge would take this line – but it is crucial. The correctly placed apostrophe is critical to the history of the establishment and it is upon such details of punctuation that great and precise language is based. Dickens would have recognised that. To reject the apostrophe in the manner that Cambridge Council have done demeans the history and the language of the nation. We and Cambridge City Council should be ashamed as we allow our language and indeed our cultural/historical heritage to be trivialised and butchered in this way.

The Fort House - Dickens' favourite, his "airy nest"

And, having had lunch we meandered back along the Esplanade to find our car. Looking out over the sea. I stopped to take a photograph of the town and in the distance standing above the other houses was a distinctive property – Fort House. Dickens spent many holidays at Fort House and it was there, above the harbour, in that "airy nest", as he called it, that he wrote David Copperfield. The house was owned by a captain of one of the two coastal forts guarding Broadstairs and has for many years been called Bleak House – many suggest that it gave Dickens the idea for “Bleak House” in his great novel of the same name. That may not be true but what can be certain is that the house held a special attraction for him and was the residence he "most desired" in Broadstairs, his “most favourite” of watering places". Our little trip to Broadstairs had left us with very much the same feeling.

Looking back over Broadstairs - the Fort house
on the distant headland

Finally, as we drove out of Broadstairs we spied something else which left me a little sad and, I believe, says much about our modern world and our values. We passed a large school, a secondary school and the name of the school? - "The Charles Dickens School". It is surely right that the local school is named after the great man. But then we noticed something else. In common with most secondary schools in the UK it has developed  specialisms. In the case of the Charles Dickens School, the specialisms that it has developed, worked towards and promotes are maths and computing! How sad and perverse that in the town so much loved, visited and used by Dickens that English is not the developed specialism. I would have thought it almost an imperative to recognise and sponsor this in the local school. Maybe it's a reflection of the age in which we live where computing and the needs of the gradgrind, number crunching accountant take preference over the literary and cultural life and education of the nation. It's perhaps not inappropriate to reflect that  Dickens named the notorious headmaster in "Hard Times" Thomas Gradgrind - a fierce man and the ultimate utilitarian with no time for things of beauty or culture and who dedicated his life to the pursuit of profitable enterprise. Clearly, Thomas Gradgrind is a metaphor for modern Britain where we are constantly told that we need schools today that specialise in the real world - maths and computing and the like - not airy-fairy places that encourage literature, music or art and where children are taught and encouraged  to use words such as "Elysium"!