U. U. Club.
I believe Mr. Dickens's sketch, in the _Bleak House_, of the woman who
haunts the various Inns of Court, to be a clever combination of
different real characters. It is principally taken from a stout painted
old woman, long since dead, and who I believe was really ruined by some
suit in Chancery, and went mad in consequence, and used to linger about
the Courts, expecting some judgment to be given in her favour. Mr.
Dickens seems to have combined this woman's painful history with the
person and appearance of the diminutive creature mentioned by MR. ALFRED
GATTY. This latter personage is the daughter of a man for many years
bedmaker in one of the Inns of Court (I think Gray's Inn), and much of
her eccentricity is assumed, as, when begging from the few lawyers who
are old enough to remember her father as their bedmaker, no one is more
rational and collected. Though this little woman is well known from her
singular appearance and demeanour, there is no romance about her
history, and her craziness (if it really exists) is not to be attributed
to the Court of Chancery,--at which, as it is in the position of the
dying lion in the fable, every donkey (I mean no disrespect to Mr.
Dickens) must have its fling.
If any correspondent really feels an interest in this little creature's
history, I can undertake, with very little trouble, to supply the
fullest particulars.