A Great and Dirty City: Dickens and the London Fog
New Exhibition at the Charles Dickens Museum at Doughty Street, London Scene from Dickens's novel Martin Chuzzlewit depicting two characters kissing in the fog, sepia wash illustration by Fred Barnard © Charles Dickens Museum, London and reproduced with their kind permission. Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close