“Bring Dickens on a trip to Greenwich, in southeast London, and the quiet hamlet springs alive. The scene sounds less antiquated than you’d expect; the annual Greenwich fair was as rowdy as a college festival, ‘a three day’s fever, which cools the blood for six months afterwards.’ There were stalls selling toys, cigars and oysters; games, clowns, dwarfs, bands and bad skits; and noisy, spirited women playing penny trumpets and dancing in men’s hats. In the park, couples would race down the hill from the observatory, ‘greatly to the derangement of [the women’s] curls and bonnet caps.’ ”
From: “How Charles Dickens Saw London” by Rebecca Dalzell in Smithsonian
Read: While my fiancée, in a neighboring room of our house, neared the end of Great Expectations for the first time.
