麻豆传媒

: Man of Science, Charles Dickens Museum, London, to 11 November

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.

The trouble is, in an effort to build a show around this notion, the Charles Dickens Museum has fixated almost entirely on its hero鈥檚 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 Dombey and Son on her deathbed.

But several other personal connections 鈥� reflected in an impressive display of books, autographs and prints 鈥� carry more weight. Dickens was also pals with Jane Marcet, author of the monstrously successful (and in the US, even more monstrously plagiarised) Conversations on Chemistry. A book mostly about Humphry Davy鈥檚 work, Conversations may be considered the first popular science book 鈥� never mind the first written by a woman. It inspired Michael Faraday to take up work that eventually led to his Christmas lectures, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle, which Dickens promptly serialised as short stories in his magazine Household Words.

鈥淎da Lovelace had Dickens read her a passage from Dombey and Son on her deathbed鈥�

This publication, founded in 1850, and its successor All the Year Round are the real stars of the show. Aimed at a general audience, each issue had a blend of fiction, social campaigning and science. As such, they reflected their editor鈥檚 growing interest in, and knowledge of, the new fields of energy and thermodynamics, inspiring his writing on both fields 鈥� and on chemistry.

Other investigations of energy were less orthodox, like Dickens鈥檚 discussion of the medical cures that might be obtained from 鈥渕esmeric fluids鈥�. And it drove Dickens鈥檚 friend George Henry Lewes spare that the man responsible for serious scientific essays in Household Words was 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 Bleak House).

Writing about that notorious spontaneous human combustion scene, Lewes accused Dickens of cheap sensationalism and 鈥渙f giving currency to a vulgar error鈥�, perpetuating it 鈥渋n spite of the labours of a thousand philosophers鈥�. But he was on a losing wicket: contemporaries Mark Twain, Herman Melville and Washington Irving all had characters incandesce.

It is not accuracy we expect of Dickens, though, it is vision. It may be interesting that Our Mutual Friend uses the word 鈥渆nergy鈥� in its new scientific sense. But what really thrills the heart is to follow Krook鈥檚 visitors up the stairs as they are about to find his body.

鈥溾�楽ee here, on my arm! See again, on the table here! Confound the stuff, it won鈥檛 blow off 鈥� smears like black fat!鈥欌�� A thick, yellow liquor defiles them鈥� A stagnant, sickening oil with some natural repulsion in it that makes them both shudder鈥︹��

Come and be horrified.

This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淣ew expectations鈥�