Well yes, I made my marathon journey to London and I will never, ever do it again this way!
First and foremost I want to say that the event I traveled for, the annual Dickens Day gathering at the University of London, was everything I could have hoped it to be. Largely a group of “locals”, i.e., folks from within the U.K., there were also a couple of Asians, one other American, who currently teaches over there, and one Brit who has lived in Hungary for several years, so technically a local, but not really!
I only got to chat with a few of the other 100-odd attendees, so all my impressions are pretty selective. Everyone was extremely welcoming and interested in my work, and likewise the other speakers had some very interesting and surprising topics and visuals. The theme of the event this year was “Dickens and Art”, and the topic embraced quite a range of subjects.
Flying from Tulsa on Thursday afternoon, I arrived in London on Friday morning and got a taxi to my hotel. I had a short nap (the last time I slept at all until Monday!) and planned on joining some of the other speakers at a night-before gathering on Friday evening at a quaint pub called The Cittie of Yorke selected by Jeremy Parrott, the visitor from Hungary.
Well for the first couple of hours it was just the two of us knocking back beers, until Youse Aku from China wandered in with her luggage still in tow! So it was a small but friendly gathering, and Jeremy, a longtime Dickens scholar, had some amazing stories about his hunting down various Dickens ephemera online, and the stunning success he’s had in his searches.
The Easter Egg came when we were about to leave and Jeremy, looking through my portfolio of BLEAK HOUSE illustrations, mentioned that the very building I’d made a centerpiece of my cover illustration, was just a block away. Well of course we had to stroll by…
…and by golly he was right!
When I’m traveling in unfamiliar territory I generally leave enough time to get lost or turned around, find my way, and, with luck, arrive early. The Maps app on my iPhone was invaluable. The venue for Dickens Day, the Senate House at the University of London, was a short walk from my hotel and I was perfectly happy to be the first arrival, and found a lecture room with the appropriate label taped on the door, so though it was still deserted I knew I was in the right place. As other folks trickled in, the mood quickly became convivial. A cursory head count showed about 100 attendees.
There were fifteen speakers scheduled, too many to accommodate in one day, so the audience chose which groups of speakers they wanted to see; each speaker had an audience of about 50. Without exception, everyone I spoke to was excited to be there, and the audience I had was completely engrossed and enthusiastic.
Since my return to the U.S., a few friends of course asked about the food and the weather! I was there for two days, so I am not about to pass judgement on the food, and the weather, honestly, was about what I would have left behind in Tulsa, if Tulsa’s weather had been seasonal: cool, pleasant and overcast.
The day of the event we were on our own for lunch, so I tagged along with a couple of other attendees and we ended up at a busy and bustling Italian cafe in a pretty little park just outside the campus gates, where I had a fantastic pepper and sausage sandwich. Honestly I would go back just to have that sandwich again!
So all was well with the Dickens Day event and all it entailed. In all other respects, my travel plans were ill-considered. As you may know, my sweet wife Vicki has not been well and has been on hospice care for several months. Traveling to London for anything more than the absolute minimum required was not an option, and likewise, not attending at all was frankly unimaginable. I knew Dickens Day would be a high point of my career.
I arranged for some home health aides to come in a couple of hours each day to fix her breakfast and dinner. Once I arrived in London I immediately started having problems with my phone and was not able to make long-distance calls. Amazingly, both home health aides knew how to make video calls over Facebook which was truly a miracle, so Vicki and I had a video chat every day I was away.
My travel plans were seriously misjudged, flying in on Friday morning and returning to the U.S. on Sunday afternoon. I’m tougher than I look, but my limits were pushed. I was jet lagged for several days on my return, picked up a bug on the return flight, and promptly passed it on to Vicki, so we spent several days recovering. I’m happy to say we’re both fine and I think I’m done traveling for the foreseeable future.
I would like to thank the organizers, Pete Orford, Claire Wood, Christine Corton and Emma Curry, and I’d also like to thank Jeremy Parrott and Warren Weiss for some nice video of my presentation. Jeremy handled the Facebook live-streaming, and Warren also shot some video. I cut them together for this clip of my presentation and I’m extremely thankful and feel pretty lucky to have had these videos to work with.
Thanks so much for stopping by! You can leave a comment below, or drop me a line at dickens@mooneyart.com
