ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 1, 1996 TAG: 9612020083
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-11 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: WYTHEVILLE
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
When the great-great grandson of Charles Dickens learned that Wytheville boasted a Scrooge's Restaurant, he just had to have a meal there.
Gerald Charles Dickens (``All the males in the Dickens family have Charles' middle name," he said) is a 33-year-old actor touring the United States with a one-man show based on characters created by his famous forebear. Scrooge's manager, Ike, presented him with some Scrooge's menus, coffee mugs and a sweatshirt - all bearing an artist's caricature of Ebenezer Scrooge from Dickens' beloved classic, "A Christmas Carol."
Gerald Dickens describes the one-man show he wrote as "about Charles Dickens, the man, the actor my interpretation of the characters, my observations of his career."
He also received prints of some of the artwork by Roni Pattiford, which decorates the restaurant's dining rooms and hallway, showing more caricatures of Scrooge and other "Christmas Carol" characters. The dinners-only restaurant opened about six years ago and is near Exit 70 off Interstate 81 next to the Wytheville Comfort Inn.
Darrell Crowe, a Wytheville Community College student who works at Scrooge's, served the meals to Gerald Dickens and his tour representative, Caroline Jackson of the Arlington-based Jackson Enterprises Inc. It was also a treat for Crowe, who had played "Tiny Tim" in a stage version of "Christmas Carol" during his school days in Greenville, S.C.
Gerald Dickens said he has known that he wanted to be an actor for a long time.
"Way, way back at the age of 5, in a Nativity play at school, I learned the art of stealing the scene and being the center of attention," he recalled. The play was from the viewpoint of the stable animals in Bethlehem, and his father had created a rather intimidating rooster costume for the fledgling actor, resulting in "the cows and the asses and everyone else cowering in terror from this gigantic rooster."
After that, he acted in everything he could. "And, yeah, I've never stopped since."
Charles Dickens himself had wanted to be an actor, not an author. "He actually took acting lessons as a young man, and was actually granted an audition at the Covent Garden Theatre," Gerald Dickens said. It was one of the most prominent English theaters of its time. "But on the day of the audition, he was ill one of those quirks of fate."
So he worked instead as a law clerk, then went into journalism and covered the House of Commons. When Parliament adjourned for the summer, he stayed busy writing about things he saw and people he met on the streets of London. The articles became so popular that he published a collection of them, under a pseudonym.
"And that's where it started," Gerald Dickens said. "He was an author almost by accident. Drifted into it."
In much the same way, Gerald Dickens drifted around 1993 into combining his acting with his ancestor's career. He had been invited to a Dickens festival in Texas, where he found more enthusiasm than he expected and came to realize the importance of his ancestor in this country. "I suddenly became an ambassador for him and for England," he said.
"My parents and none of the family have forced Dickens on us. But if we wanted the information, it was there," he said. Until then, he had not been all that interested in it.
In England, he explained, Dickens is merely one of a long line of celebrated writers from Chaucer to Shakespeare and on up to the present. "You have to understand Dickens isn't held in quite the same reverence as he is here," he said. "Now, in America, Dickens, for whatever reason, has really left an impression upon the country."
It has only been three years, he admitted, since he finished reading Dickens' "Oliver Twist," which he was supposed to have read in high school.
At that time, he confessed, "I didn't read the whole book." Instead, before he took the exam on it, he viewed the movie "Oliver!" a musical version of the novel. "I have the feeling that I even quoted from one of the songs in my paper," he said.
Dickens visited America twice, in 1841 and 1867. He arrived the first time with great expectations, only to be disillusioned by such institutions as slavery, and didn't hesitate at criticizing them. He and America took a mutual dislike to one another. In a story he was writing in serial form, "Martin Chuzzlewit," Dickens even sent his characters to America for a couple of installments to satirize it.
On his return to England, he wrote "A Christmas Carol," Ebenezer Scrooge's story. "And that changed the relationship between Dickens and America to this day," Gerald Dickens said.
By that second visit, the Civil War was over, slavery was abolished, and Dickens himself had matured. "He found a totally different country and America found a totally different Dickens," Gerald Dickens said. "He'd grown up."
Dickens subsequently added a chapter to future editions of "Martin Chuzzlewit," more or less apologizing about his treatment of America in it. Gerald Dickens found an early edition on display in the bar at Scrooge's, so early that the apologetic afterword was missing.
When it was pointed out to him that 1993 was the 150th anniversary of the publication of "A Christmas Carol," Gerald Dickens recalled, "I thought, 'OK, we've got to do something with it.' So that's when I wrote the show 'Mr. Dickens Is Coming' and started performing it."
Early in 1997, he will be a guest at a Dickens Festival in Riverside, Calif., celebrating the author's 185th birthday. In fact, he and Jackson plan 185 tour appearances next year to match the occasion.
He had starred in such plays as "Oklahoma!" (in England) and "The Merchant of Venice" before developing his one-man show. Other family members are involved in various aspects of Dickens. His father is president of the world-wide Dickens Fellowship. But, Gerald Dickens said, "I'm the only actor."
Charles Dickens returned to his first love of acting late in his career, doing one-man shows of his own stories and characters. Today, Gerald Dickens is doing much the same thing. In four generations, Dickens has come full circle.
LENGTH: Long : 110 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: PAUL DELLINGER\Staff. Gerald Charles Dickens duringby CNBvisit to Scrooge's Restaurant in Wytheville.