Dickens, like most others who have written of London life, has made
liberal use of it in "Barnaby Rudge," in "The Tale of Two Cities," and in
many other of his novels.
Staple Inn, at "Holborn Bars," is perhaps the most quaint and unmodern of
any considerable structure in all London. Mr. Grewgious and Mr. Tartar
lived here; also Landless, who occupied "some attic rooms in a corner,"
and here Mr. Snagsby was wont to ramble in this old-world retreat.
The "little hall," with "a little lantern in its roof," and its
weathercock, is still there, and the stroller down that most businesslike
thoroughfare, known in its various continuations as "High Holborn,"
"Holborn Bars," and "Holborn Viaduct," will find it difficult to resist
the allurements of the crazy old timbered frontage of Staple Inn, with its
wooden gateway and tiny shops, looking for all the world like a picture
from out of an old book.
In Bishop's Court, leading from Chancery Lane, was Crook's rag and bottle
shop, where its owner met so ghastly a death. A court to the back of this
shop, known as "Chichester Rents," harboured a public house called by
Dickens "Sol's Arms." To-day it exists as the "Old Ship," if supposedly
authoritative opinion has not erred.
Took's Court is to-day unchanged. Dickens was pleased to call it "Cook's
Court." By some it has been called dirty and dingy; it is hardly that, but
it may well have been a more sordid looking place in days gone by. At any
rate, it was a suitable enough environment for Snagsby, identified to-day
as the stationer's shop next the Imperial Chambers.
As vivid a reminiscence as any is that of the old debtors' prison of
Marshalsea. The institution was a court of law and a prison as well, and
was first established in 1376 for the determination of causes and
differences among the king's menials; and was under the control of the
knight marshal, hence its name. Later this court had particular cognizance
of murders and other offences committed within the king's court; and here
also were committed persons guilty of piracies.
In 1381 the Kentish rebels "broke down the houses of the Marshalsea and
the King's Bench in Southwark," and in 1593 "a dangerous insurrection
arose in Southwark, owing to the attempt of one of the knight marshal's
men to serve a warrant upon a feltmaker's apprentice."
At this time the inhabitants of Southwark complained that "the Knight
Marshal's men were very unneighbourly and disdainful among them," with
every indication that a prolonged insurrection would endure. However, the
matter was brought to the attention of the lord chamberlain, and such
edict went forth as assured the inhabitants of the borough freedom from
further annoyance. The old gaol building was purchased in 1811 by the
government, and at that time refitted as a prison for debtors.
"The entrance gate fronts the High Street near St. George's Church, and a
small area leads to the keeper's house. Behind it is a brick building, the
ground floor of which contains fourteen rooms in a double row, and three
upper stories, each with the same number. They are about ten and a half
feet square by eight and a half feet high, and are with boarded floors, a
glazed window, and fireplace in each, for male debtors. Nearly adjoining
to this is a detached building called the 'Tap,' which has on the ground
floor a wine and beer room. The upper story has three rooms for female
debtors, similar to those for men. At the extremity of this prison is a
small courtyard and building for admiralty prisoners, and a chapel."
The above description, taken from Allen's "History and Antiquities of
Southwark," must synchronize with the appearance of the Marshalsea at the
time of which Dickens wrote concerning it in "Little Dorrit," based, of
course, upon his personal knowledge of the buildings and their functions
when the elder Dickens was imprisoned therein in 1822, and the family were
living in mean quarters in near-by Lant Street, whither they had removed
from Gower Street, North, in order to be near the prison.
Until quite recently it is possible that certain portions of the old
Marshalsea were still standing, though as a prison it was abolished in
1841, but, with the opening of one of those municipal pleasure
grounds,--one cannot call them gardens, being merely a flagged
courtyard,--the last vestiges are supposed to have disappeared from
general view. Indeed, it appears that Dickens himself was not aware of any
visible portions of the old building still remaining. This assertion is
based on the following lines taken from the preface of "Little Dorrit:"
"I found the outer front courtyard metamorphosed into a butter-shop; and
then I almost gave up every brick for lost.... I then came to Marshalsea
Place; ... and whoever goes here will find his feet on the very
paving-stones of the extinct Marshalsea Gaol,--will see its narrow yard to
the right and to the left but very little altered, if at all, except that
the walls were lowered when the place got free."
When the elder Dickens was carried to prison, like Mr. Dorrit, he was
lodged in the top story but one, in the chamber afterward occupied by the
Dorrits, when Charles, it was said, went often (before the family removed
across the river) to visit him, crossing presumably the old picturesque
London Bridge. In "David Copperfield," it is evidently the same edifice
which is disguised as the "King's Bench Prison."
In the immediate neighbourhood of the Marshalsea was St. George's Vestry,
where, on the cushions, with the church register for a pillow, slept
Little Dorrit on the night on which she was shut out of the prison.
Opposite, on High Street, stood until recently the little pie-shop, where
Flora read out her lecture to Little Dorrit. Near by, also, was Mr.
Cripple's dancing academy. (Deliciously Dickenesque--that name.)
Guy's--reminiscent of Bob Sawyer--is but a stone's throw away, as also
Lant Street, where he had his lodgings. Said Sawyer, as he handed his card
to Mr. Pickwick: "There's my lodgings; it's near Guy's, and handy for me,
you know,--a little distance after you've passed St. George's Church;
turns out of High Street on right-hand side the way." Supposedly the same
humble rooms--which looked out upon a pleasant prospect of a
timber-yard--in which lived the Dickens family during the elder Dickens'
imprisonment.
In Horsemonger Lane, which runs out of the High Street, was the
tobacco-shop of Mrs. Chivery. In the High Street, too, was the old "White
Hart" of Sam Weller and even Jack Cade. "The George," "The Spur," "The
Queen's Head," and "The King's Head"--all reminiscent of Dickens--were
also here in the immediate neighbourhood.
Crossing the river northward, one may retrace their steps toward St.
Paul's, near which, a quarter of a century back, might have been seen the
arcaded entrance to Doctors' Commons, an institution described by Sam
Weller, and which, among other functions, formerly kept guard of all the
wills probated in London. The building has since disappeared, and the
erstwhile valuable documents removed to Somerset House.
Beyond the "Bank" is Leadenhall Street, where in St. Mary Axe, Dickens had
located Pubsey and Co. The firm was domiciled in an "old, yellow,
overhanging, plaster-fronted house," and, if it ever existed out of
Dickens' imagination, has given way to a more modern and substantial
structure.
Fenchurch Street and Mincing Lane are not far away. In the latter was
"Chicksey, Veneering, and Stobbles" Counting-House, and still further on
Trinity House and Tower Hill to remind one of the locale of certain scenes
in "Our Mutual Friend."
In the Minories, leading from Tower Hill, was until recently the "Little
Wooden Midshipman" of "Dombey and Son," standing over the door at Messrs.
Norie and Wilson's, the nautical publishers. From Tower Hill, whither
would one go but through the Ratcliffe Highway, now St. George's Street,
whereby is suggested the nocturnal wanderings of "The Uncommercial
Traveller." Wapping, Shadwell, and Stepney, with its famous waterside
church, are all redolent of the odours of the sea and reminiscence of
Dickens' characters.
Somewhere between here and Limehouse Hole was Brig Place, not discoverable
to-day, where lived the genial one-armed "Cuttle."
Limehouse, with its "Reach" and "foul and furtive boats," is closely
connected with the personality of Dickens himself, having been the
residence of his godfather, one Huffam, a rigger employed in a waterside
shipyard. What wonder then that the fascination of riverside London fell
early upon the writer of novels?
At the gate of Limehouse Church, Rokesmith lay in wait, on murder intent,
and all Limehouse is odorous with memories of riverside crime and such
nefarious deeds as were instigated by Hexham and Riderhood, an incident
suggested, it is said by Dickens' biographer Forster, by the novelist
having seen, in one of his walks in the neighbourhood, a placard on the
hoardings announcing that a body of a person had been
FOUND DROWNED.
A neighbouring public house, "The Two Brewers," is supposed to be the
original of that referred to by Dickens as "The Six Jolly Fellowship
Porters," "a dropsical old house," as he called it, like so many old-world
houses, all but falling down, if judged by appearances, but actually not
in the least danger of it.
One topic crops up in the notes and queries columns of the literary papers
every once and again, viz., the location of the "filthy graveyard" of
"Bleak House." It has been variously placed in the churchyard of St.
Dunstan's-in-the-West, St. Bartholomew-the-Less, and again in Drury Lane
Court, now disappeared. Most likely it was the latter, if any of these
neighbourhoods, though it is all hearsay now, though formerly one of the
"stock sights" of the "Lady Guide Association," who undertook to gratify
any reasonable whim of the inquisitive American.
A recent foregathering of members of the "Boz Club" at Rochester, which
celebrated the thirty-first anniversary of the novelist's death on June 9,
1870, occurred in the homely "Bull Inn." This little band of devoted
"Dickensians" contained among them Mr. Henry Dickens, K. C., the son of
the novelist; Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, who had the honour of being intimately
associated with Dickens on _Household Words_; Mr. Luke Fildes, R. A.,
among whose many famous paintings is that pathetic story-telling canvas,
"The Empty Chair," being a reproduction of that portion of Dickens' study
at Gad's Hill, wherein stood the writer's desk and chair.
On such a day as that on which the immortal Pickwick "bent over the
balustrades of Rochester Bridge contemplating nature and waiting for
breakfast," the club (in June, 1903) had journeyed to Rochester to do
homage to the fame of their master. The mediæval, cramped High Street,
"full of gables, with old beams and timbers carved into strange faces,"
seems to bask and grow sleepier than ever in the glaring sunlight. It is
all practically just as Dickens saw it for the last time three days before
his death, as he stood against the wooden palings near the Restoration
House contemplating the old Manor House--just the same even to "the queer
old clock that projects over the pavement out of a grave red-brick
building, as if Time carried on business there, and hung out his sign."
Those of the visitors so "dispoged" had lunch in the coffee-room of the
"Bull," unchanged since the days of the original Pickwickians, but it is
only in fancy and framed presentments that one now sees the "G. C. M. P.
C." and his disciples, Messrs. Tupman, Snodgrass, Winkle, and Jingle. So
closely, however, do we follow in the footsteps of Mr. Pickwick (wrote a
member of the party) that we look through the selfsame coffee-room blinds
at the passengers in the High Street, in which entertaining occupation we
were disturbed, as was Mr. Pickwick, by the coming of the waiter (perhaps
one should say a waiter, not _the_ waiter) to announce that the carriages
are ready--"an announcement which the vehicles themselves confirm by
forthwith appearing before the coffee-room blinds aforesaid."
"'Bless my soul!' said Mr. Pickwick, as they stood upon the pavement
while the coats were being put in. 'Bless my soul! who's to drive? I
never thought of that.'
"'Oh! you, of course,' said Mr. Tupman.
"'I!' exclaimed Mr. Pickwick.
"'Not the slightest fear, sir,' interposed the hostler.
"'He don't shy, does he?' inquired Mr. Pickwick.
"'Shy, sir?--He wouldn't shy if he was to meet a vaggin-load of
monkeys with their tails burnt off.'"
The ruined castle and the cathedral are visited, the castle looking more
than ever "as if the rooks and daws had picked its eyes out." Before the
cathedral, as Mr. Grewgious did before us, we stand for a contemplative
five minutes at the great west door of the gray and venerable pile.
"'Dear me,' said Mr. Grewgious, peeping in, 'it's like looking down
the throat of Old Time.'
"Old Time heaved a mouldy sigh from tomb and arch and vault; and
gloomy shadows began to deepen in corners; and damps began to rise
from green patches of stone; and jewels, cast upon the pavement of
the nave from stained-glass by the declining sun, began to perish."
Or, to quote the more genial Jingle:
"Old Cathedral, too--earthly smell--pilgrims' feet worn away the old
steps--little Saxon doors--confessionals like money takers' boxes at
theatres--queer customers those monks--Popes, and Lord Treasurers,
and all sorts of old fellows, with great red faces, and broken noses,
turning up every day--buff jerkins,
too--matchlocks--sarcophagus--fine place--old legends too--strange
stories, too; capital."
DISAPPEARING LONDON
Place names are always of interesting origin, in fact, all proper names
have a fascination for the historian and litterateur alike. Dickens
himself was fond enough of the unusual, and doubtless he made good use of
those bygones of a former age, which seemed best to suit his purpose. On
the other hand, where would one find in reality such names as Quilp,
Cheeryble, Twist, Swiveller, Heep, Tulkinghorn, or Snodgrass? Where
indeed! except in the Boston (U. S. A.) Directory? Here will be found
Snodgrass and Twist and even a Heep, though he spells it Heap. It would be
still further interesting to know the derivation of the names of these
individuals; but inasmuch as it would probably throw no additional light
on Dickens' own personality, it is passed by without further comment. It
is not that these names are any more unusual than many that really do
exist, and possibly they all may have had a real entity outside of the
author's brain; still it does represent a deal of thought that each and
every character throughout all of Dickens' works should seem so singularly
appropriate and in keeping with their names.
With place names Dickens took another line. Occasionally he played upon a
word, though often he did not disguise it greatly; nor did he intend to.
In many more instances, he presented no counterfeit whatever. For
picturesqueness and appropriateness, in conjunction with the lives of the
individuals of which his novels abound, one could hardly improve on many
actual places of which he wrote.
London street names, in general, may be divided into two classes: those
named for distinguished, or, for that matter, notorious persons, as Duke
Street, Wellington Street, George Street, Berkeley, Grosvenor, or
Bridgewater Squares; or secondly, those named for topographical or
architectural features, both classes of which, in the earlier times or
immediately following the "Great Fire," underwent no inconsiderable
evolution.
In a later day this will perhaps not prove equally true; remodelling and
rearranging of streets and squares not only changes the topography,
but--aside from the main arteries--names as well are often changed or
suppressed altogether. Since Dickens' time many spots, which must have
been dearly known and beloved of him, have disappeared, and the process is
going on apace, until, with the advent of another century, it will
doubtless be difficult to recognize any of the localities of a hundred or
more years before.
Some remarkable corruptions have been recorded from time to time, such as
Candlewick Street into Cannon Street, Cannon Row to Channel Row, and Snore
Hill to Snow Hill, all of which are easily enough followed. Strype's Court
(after the historian's family) to Tripe Court, or Duck Lane into Duke
Street, are not so easy.
Tavern signs, too, are supposed to have undergone similar perversions, not
always with euphonious success, as witness the following: "The Bachnals"
into "Bag of Nails," "The God Encompasseth Us" into "Goat and Compasses;"
both of the former existed in Victorian days, as does the latter at the
present time. Many of these old tavern signs are to be seen to-day in the
museum at the Guild Hall.
The actual changes of street names are equally curious, when one attempts
to follow the connection, which, for a fact, mostly cannot be done. Thus
they stand in their modified form, either as an improvement or debasement.
Hog Lane, St. Giles, is now Crown Street; Grub Street is now gloriously
named Milton Street, and Shoreditch Lane becomes Worship Street.
The matter of street lighting is ever one which appeals to the visitor to
a strange city. Curious customs there be, even to-day, in the city of
London, which have come down from the age which knew not the gas-jet or
the electric globe.
In Dickens' time, it is confident to say that the "linkman" was not the
_rara avis_ that he is to-day, though evidences are still to be noted in
residential Mayfair and Belgravia, and even elsewhere, of the
appurtenances of his trade, referring to the torch-extinguishers which
were attached outside the doorways of the more pretentious houses.
As an established trade, link-carrying has been extinct for nearly a
century, but the many extinguishers still to be seen indicate that the
custom died but slowly from the days when the sturdy Briton,--
_"Round as a globe and liquored every chink,_
_Goodly and great, sailed behind his link."_
--_Dryden._
The first street lighted with gas was Pall Mall, in 1807, and oil was
solely used in many streets and squares as late as 1860.
The old London watchman--the progenitor of the modern policeman--used to
cry out, "Light! Light! hang out your light." Later came enclosed glass
lamps or globes, replacing the candles of a former day. These endured
variously, as is noted, until very near the time when electric refulgence
was beginning to make itself known. On the whole, until recently, London
could not have been an exceedingly well-lighted metropolis, and even now
there is many a dark court and alley, which would form in itself a fitting
haunt for many a lower-class ruffian of the type Dickens was wont to
depict.
The mortality among the old inns of Holborn has been very high of late,
and still they vanish. "The Black Bull," known well to Dickens, is the
last to come under sentence. Its sign, a veritable bull of Bashan,
sculptured in black and gold, has been familiar to all who go down to the
City in omnibuses. Until recently the old courtyard of the inn might still
have been seen, though the galleried buildings which surrounded it were
modern. Before Holborn Viaduct was built, the "Black Bull" stood just at
the top of Holborn Hill, that difficult ascent which good citizens found
too long, and bad ones too short. "Sirrah, you'll be hanged; I shall live
to see you go up Holborn Hill," says Sir Sampson Legend to his thriftless
son in Congreve's "Love for Love."
But the "Black Bull" has nearer associations for us. It was here that Mrs.
Gamp and Betsy Prig nursed Mr. Lewsome through his fever at the expense of
John Westlock. When Mrs. Gamp relieved Betsy in the sick-room, the
following dialogue occurred: "'Anything to tell afore you goes, my dear?'
asked Mrs. Gamp, setting her bundle down inside the door, and looking
affectionately at her partner. 'The pickled salmon,' Mrs. Prig replied,
'is quite delicious. I can partick'ler recommend it. Don't have nothink to
say to the cold meat, for it tastes of the stable. The drinks is all
good.'" To-day the cold meat is represented by the noble animal on the
façade of the inn, and it will probably adorn the Guildhall collection of
old shop and tavern signs, where the hideous "Bull and Mouth" and "Goose
and Gridiron" still look down on the curious.
Of the matter-of-fact realities of London, which, though still existent,
have changed since Dickens' day, London Bridge is undergoing widening and
rebuilding, which will somewhat change its general aspect, though its
environment remains much the same.
Furnival's Inn, where Dickens lived, has disappeared, and Clifford's Inn
has just been sold (1903) in the public auction mart, to be removed, with
some hideous and unquiet modern office building doubtless destined to
take its place.
New transportation schemes, almost without number, are announced. Electric
trams, "tubes," and underground subways are being projected in every
direction. These perhaps do not change the surface aspect of things very
much, but they are working a marvellous change in the life of the times.
The old underground "District" and "Metropolitan" Railways are being
"electrified" by the magnanimity (_sic_) of American capital, and St.
Paul's Cathedral has been supplied with a costly electric-light plant at
the expense of an American multi-millionaire.
The American invasion of typewriters, roll-top desks, and book printing
and binding machinery, are marking an era of change and progress in the
production of the printed word, and Continental-made motors and
automobiles are driving the humble cart-horse from the city streets in no
small way.
It now only remains for the development of the project which is to
supplant the ungainly though convenient omnibus with an up-to-date service
of motor stages, when, in truth, London will have taken on very much of a
new aspect.
One of the most recent disappearances is old Holywell Street, of unsavoury
reputation, the whilom Booksellers' Row of Dickens' day, a "narrow, dirty
lane" which ran parallel with the Strand from St. Clement's-Danes to St.
Mary-le-Strand, and was occupied chiefly by vendors of books of doubtful
morality. Wych Street, too, in company with Holywell Street, has gone the
same way, in favour of the new thoroughfare which is to connect Holborn
and the Strand, an enterprise which also has made way with the Clare
Market between Lincoln's Inn Fields and the Strand, a locality well known
to, and made use of by, Dickens in "The Old Curiosity Shop."
The identical building referred to therein may be in doubt; probably it
is, in that Dickens himself repudiated or at least passed a qualifying
observation upon the "waste paper store," which popular tradition has ever
connected therewith. But one critic--be he expert or not--has connected it
somewhat closely with the literary life of the day, as being formerly
occupied by one Tessyman, a bookbinder, who was well acquainted with
Dickens, Thackeray, and Cruikshank. The literary pilgrim will give up this
most sentimental Dickens _relique_ with something of the serious pang that
one feels when his favourite idol is shattered, when the little
overhanging corner building is finally demolished, as it soon will be,
if "improvement" goes on at the pace of the last few years hereabouts.
[Illustration: THE (REPUTED) "OLD CURIOSITY SHOP."]
A drawing of this revered building has been included in the present
volume, as suggestive of its recorded literary associations.
There is no question but what it is _the relique_ of the first rank
usually associated with Dickens' London, as witness the fact that there
appears always to be some numbers of persons gazing fondly at its crazy
old walls.