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 The novelist Charles Dickens was the
“rock star” of his day. Legions of fans awaited the publication of
his books and stood in long lines to get tickets for his public
appearances. Almost every literate person in nineteenth-century
England read at least one of his books.
Judge David Davis was connected to an important event in Dickens’s
life and especially to A Christmas Carol. To tell this charming
story, the David Davis Mansion will be exhibiting “A Dickens
Christmas” during the holiday season. Visitors will see the home
decorated in its late-Victorian splendor, but they will also
discover what A Christmas Carol meant to Davis and his family.
Charles Dickens visited the United States twice—once in 1842 and
again in 1867-68. On his first trip, he journeyed around the east
coast before visiting St. Louis and a town in southern Illinois
about 150 miles from David Davis’s home. Partly inspired by American
stories of an old-fashioned English Christmas, Dickens returned to
England and began writing A Christmas Carol. He finished the novella
in six weeks, whereupon one reviewer called it “the greatest little
book in the world.”
Twenty-five years later, Dickens began a highly successful celebrity
tour of America, performing a series of dramatic readings of his
most famous novels. Ill health restricted his travels to cities,
such as Boston, New York, and Washington D.C., but the trip revived
Dickens’s fortunes and energized America’s charitable feelings.
Judge Davis heard Dickens give dramatic readings of A Christmas
Carol and other novels in early February 1868 in the nation’s
capital. The judge’s description of the enthusiastic audiences
provides a sense of what it must have been like to see and hear the
“great man.” What Davis enjoyed most was the animated way in which
Dickens brought to life the characters in A Christmas Carol.
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Christmas celebrations probably wouldn’t be the same today
without Dickens’s holiday tale. It popularized what he believed was the true
meaning of Christmas—charity, family togetherness, benevolence, happiness, and
homecoming. He helped to popularize the phrase “Merry Christmas.”
As visitors tour the David Davis Mansion during the holiday season, they will
enjoy the decorative features that are part of “A Dickens Christmas” - blazing
fireplaces, “roasting” chestnuts, Christmas dances, parlor games, holly sprigs
and mistletoe, plum puddings, roasted turkey, Raphael Tuck Christmas postcards,
toys-for-tots, and Christmas baskets for the poor.
Bathed in the simulated gaslight of the Victorian era, the Davis
Mansion will also be festooned with boughs of evergreens, glittering ornaments,
antique toys, and Christmas trees in almost every room. Exhibits of wax angels,
scrap paper dolls, lead-weighted candleholders, authentic village scenes (the
putz), and a rare collection of German-made ornaments will complete the scene.
Children visiting the mansion will especially enjoy seeing the collections of
antique toys and teddy bears, as well as a room filled with vintage dolls.
Visitors will also have a chance to touch, taste, and smell a variety of
Victorian Christmas treats.
Davis Mansion tour hours for the holiday season (November 23-December 29) are 9
a.m.-4 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday. The site will be closed Sundays through
Tuesdays, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day.
[Jeff Saulsbery
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