"...and Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to."

I have only been to London once, and only literally, not really.  This was in June of 2014, and I was returning to the United States after spending four years in Thailand.  my family was kind enough to buy the plane ticket for me, along with an overnight stay at a hotel at Heathrow.  So technically I was in London, sort of, once, for a period of less than 24 hours.  But really, I saw nothing of it.  I wasn't even there long enough to eat anything with brown sauce.

The images on this blog are from my current body of work, a series of illustrations for Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol".  I hope this blog will generate interest in the project (I am now looking for a publisher), and provide something enjoyable and informative to anyone who casually happens across it.  Kind of like Dickens, as he wrote in his own preface.

There have been numerous adaptions of the book, including illustrated versions as well as films.  Most of them are quite good, and I am not familiar with all of them.  In fact, I am trying to avoid looking at other interpretations of "A Christmas Carol" because I don't want to take any ideas from them.  So I am doing something a little different.  I am trying to keep as close to the exact wording of the text as I can, and I am researching images from the period (c. 1830s - 1843) as source material.  Many of my drawings contain elements that I deliberately derived from specific artworks of that period and earlier.  This allows me to avoid accidentally plagiarizing works that are currently under copyright.  It also allows me to create a connection with the way people in the 1830s and 1840s viewed themselves and their world.

The image above shows the main entrance to the Second Royal Exchange, on Cornhill.  Initially, I got most of my information from Wikipedia (here is a link to the page : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Exchange,_London ).  This building burned down in 1838, five years before Dickens wrote "A Christmas Carol", and the Third Royal Exchange wasn't opened until 1844.  So this is the building that Scrooge would have known, and to which he would have gone after Jacob Marley's death ("And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.").

Here are the links to the images and texts I used as source material for this illustration.  Please note that one of the source images, the statue of King Charles II, is used under a creative commons license.  The part of my drawing, showing a statue of Charles II in the same pose, by the same sculptor, may therefore be used under the same license.  The sculpture itself is in the public domain.  Out of respect for the photographer (Michael Reeve, whom I do not know personally or professionally), I feel it is appropriate to offer use of that part of my drawing under a similar license.  The other parts of my image should be considered to be under my copyright, as it is my drawing.  All other source material for the image is in the public domain.  The Wikipedia article is also where I found the links to the texts on archive.org.  The work of Wikipedia's staff and contributors has been a really valuable resource for this project.  If any of you are reading this, THANK YOU.

Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Exchange,_London


Source images of the Second Royal Exchange : 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ONL_(1887)_1.499_-_The_second_Royal_Exchange,_Cornhill.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Royal_Exchange,_1779.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Image-RoyalExchangeThomasBowles1751_2.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Microcosm_of_London_Plate_067_-_Royal_Exchange_(tone_and_colour).jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Royal_Exchange_1760.jpg

https://archive.org/stream/royalexchangenot00masoiala#page/34/mode/2up

https://archive.org/stream/royalexchangenot00masoiala#page/n51/mode/2up


Source photo of a statue of King Charles II, taken by Michael Reeve : 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rhc-charles2.jpg

I believe this statue was cast from the same original as the statue that was in the Second Royal Exchange.  Both were by Grinling Gibbons, and the pose in this photograph seems very similar, even from the slightly different angle, as the pose in the low-resolution pen-and-ink elevation-and-plan drawing of 1779 (see link above).  The 1779 drawing shows very little detail of it, but A.E.W. Mason's description of it fits the statue photographed by Reeve (See Mason's "The Royal Exchange: a note on the occasion of the bicentenary of the Royal Exchange Assurance", pages 36-37, at https://archive.org/stream/royalexchangenot00masoiala#page/36/mode/2up ).

For the text on the statue's pedestal, see W.H. Pyne's "Microcosm of London (volume 3)", page 22 ( https://archive.org/stream/microcosmoflondo03pyneuoft#page/26/mode/2up ).  I simply drew lines roughly proportional to the text.


Source image for the statue of King James I, above the north entrance in the background : 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portrait_of_King_James_I_%26_VI_(1618-1620).jpg

I chose James I for this niche based also on the text, page 22, of "Microcosm of London", but I could find no image that showed that specific part of the building.  So I looked at paintings of King James I, and decided upon this one.  I just liked the black-and-gold of the outfit, and I can't really say if this is what the actual statue looked like.


Text sources (via the Wikipedia article) :

https://archive.org/details/oldnewlondonnarr01thor

https://archive.org/details/microcosmoflondo03pyneuoft

https://archive.org/details/royalexchangenot00masoiala


As you can see, I did some research on this.  Not the kind of intensive research that an academic would do, but I think enough to provide a reasonably accurate view of the building as Scrooge would have known it.  After all, the reason for the research was to make the drawing, which in and of itself took some time.  The total time to produce this drawing was just over 28 1/2 hours.  Was it worth it?  Do leave a comment, or find me on Facebook (V.A. Kenyon).