![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/CD.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Visiting\u00a0Charles Dickens: Man of Science<\/a>, at the Charles Dickens Museum, London for New Scientist, 16 June 2018<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n EVEN as he became the most celebrated and prolific author, the most energetic editor and the most influential political and social campaigner of his day, Charles Dickens was well aware of the science around him. Indeed, he took inspiration from it, and was even engaged in promoting and explaining it.<\/p>\n The trouble is, in an effort to build a show around this notion, the Charles Dickens Museum has fixated almost entirely on its hero\u2019s friendships. Because Dickens knew everybody, the show struggles to find its focus. Even with a following wind, it is hard to feel much excitement on learning that Ada Lovelace had Dickens read her a passage from\u00a0Dombey and Son<\/i>\u00a0on her deathbed.<\/p>\n But several other personal connections \u2013 reflected in an impressive display of books, autographs and prints \u2013 carry more weight. Dickens was also pals with Jane Marcet, author of the monstrously successful (and in the US, even more monstrously plagiarised)\u00a0Conversations on Chemistry<\/i>. A book mostly about Humphry Davy\u2019s work,\u00a0Conversations<\/i>\u00a0may be considered the first popular science book \u2013 never mind the first written by a woman. It inspired Michael Faraday to take up work that eventually led to his Christmas lectures, entitled\u00a0The Chemical History of a Candle<\/i>, which Dickens promptly serialised as short stories in his magazine\u00a0Household Words<\/i>.<\/p>\n Other investigations of energy were less orthodox, like Dickens\u2019s discussion of the medical cures that might be obtained from \u201cmesmeric fluids\u201d. And it drove Dickens\u2019s friend George Henry Lewes spare that the man responsible for serious scientific essays in\u00a0Household Words<\/i>\u00a0was the same man who let characters in his novels burst spontaneously into flame, as with the illiterate rag-and-bone man Krook (who holds the key to the legal battle at the heart of\u00a0Bleak House<\/i>).<\/p>\n Writing about that notorious spontaneous human combustion scene, Lewes accused Dickens of cheap sensationalism and \u201cof giving currency to a vulgar error\u201d, perpetuating it \u201cin spite of the labours of a thousand philosophers\u201d. But he was on a losing wicket: contemporaries Mark Twain, Herman Melville and Washington Irving all had characters incandesce.<\/p>\n It is not accuracy we expect of Dickens, though, it is vision. It may be interesting that\u00a0Our Mutual Friend<\/i>\u00a0uses the word \u201cenergy\u201d in its new scientific sense. But what really thrills the heart is to follow Krook\u2019s visitors up the stairs as they are about to find his body.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018See here, on my arm! See again, on the table here! Confound the stuff, it won\u2019t blow off \u2013 smears like black fat!\u2019\u2026 A thick, yellow liquor defiles them\u2026 A stagnant, sickening oil with some natural repulsion in it that makes them both shudder\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n Come and be horrified.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Visiting\u00a0Charles Dickens: Man of Science, at the Charles Dickens Museum, London for New Scientist, 16 June 2018 EVEN as he became the most celebrated and prolific author, the most energetic editor and the most influential political and social campaigner of … Continue reading