ON the third floor of the Free Library on Logan Circle, Philadelphia, US in the Rare Book department featuring a display devoted to the American poet Edgar Allan Poe, the centrepiece exhibit is a case containing a stuffed and mounted raven. A very special raven, of course: the preserved presence of Grip, the beloved companion of Charles Dickens, who appeared as a knowing character in Barnaby Rudge. Grip died in 1841, the year in which the novel was published. ‘On the clock striking twelve he appeared slightly agitated, but he soon recovered, walked twice or thrice along the coach house, stopped to bark, staggered, exclaimed “Halloa Old Girl!”—his favourite expression —and died,’ wrote Dickens in a letter.
Although he would go on to have two more pet ravens of the same name, the author passed the corpse to a taxidermist, probably John Willis of Seven Dials, and an inanimate Grip rejoined his household. After Dickens’s death in 1870, the relic was bought for £126, as a result. The preserved Grip was, therefore, a fine addition to Gimbel’s memorabilia.
