WALKING DICKENSߣ LONDON

I ADMIRE THE DICKENSIAN IDEA that one comes to ‘know the moves’ of London. It implies a shifting, evasive opponent, which somehow must be wrestled into submission – a city that will attempt to fox and confuse the casual stranger. The implication is almost that London can never be truly ‘known’. Nonetheless, this guide presents eight walks through the heart of Dickens’ London, which will, at the very least, put you in a similar position to Mr Wemmick. The book is intended to be both compact and specific. All the walks, with one exception, take place entirely within central London; and I have included various references to Dickens’ life, characters in his novels, and pieces of his journalism. As well as famous locations, historic pubs and quirky museums, this guide will direct you to obscure landmarks that are not part of the standard tourist trail; it will set you wandering through neglected courtyards and alleys, from the West End to the City of London, and along the river Thames. Moreover, while I will point out where particular buildings once stood, you should also discover many aspects of the Victorian metropolis surviving in modern London.

DICKENS COMES TO LONDON

Charles Dickens, the son of John Dickens, an assistant clerk in the Navy Pay Office, was born in Portsmouth on 7 February 1812. John’s employers periodically moved him from one location to another, and Charles’ early childhood was spent in Portsmouth, London, Sheerness and Chatham. The family returned to London in 1822, when John was recalled to Somerset House on the Strand. This was the young author’s proper introduction to the ‘great metropolis’ and it was a difficult time. For a short period the family lived on the borders of respectability in Bayham Street, Camden, a lower-middle class district. John, however, struggled with mounting debts and was committed to the Marshalsea debtors’ prison in 1824. The young Charles, meanwhile, was obliged to leave his schooling and go to work, labelling pots of boot-black at Warren’s blacking factory. Both of these episodes left a profound mark on the author.

John Dickens left prison after only three months, helped by a fortuitous legacy, and Charles was eventually returned to education. Yet the fortunes of the Dickens family were hardly settled, and as a result of another financial crisis in 1827 Charles again had to find employment. He began work as a solicitor’s clerk in Gray’s Inn and found the job profoundly unsatisfying. Consequently, the following year, he embarked on a career as a journalist, teaching himself shorthand – an early sign of his determination and restless ambition – and began working as a freelance reporter in the law courts of Doctors’ Commons. He then moved on to reporting on parliamentary affairs. His first piece of published fiction was in the Monthly Magazine in 1833, but he continued working as a journalist and even toyed with the idea of becoming either a barrister or an actor. While at the Morning Chronicle newspaper in 1834 he began writing a series of pieces on London life, many in a humorous vein, which would be collected together in 1836 as Sketches by Boz. He then created the character of Mr Pickwick, after a commission from the newly founded publishers Chapman & Hall. The story’s first number was published in March 1836. The Pickwick Papers was an immediate and roaring success. Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby followed in swift succession. By the end of the 1830s Dickens was already an established star of the nineteenth-century literary firmament and would remain in that exalted position until his death in 1870.

THE CHARACTER OF DICKENS’ LONDON

This book takes you on eight tours of the streets that Dickens himself walked and shows you some of the buildings and sights that featured in his life and work. Nevertheless, as you walk through the city, you will have to use your imagination and make several adjustments if you wish to picture it in its early Victorian heyday.

Dickens’ London was, above all, a gloomier city. Fog, heavy with pollution from domestic coal fires and the factory chimneys of the South Bank, could shroud the whole capital in darkness. At night link-boys carried flaming torches, hoping for a tip of a few pennies, to guide the wealthy back to their homes. Gas was introduced in the 1810s, but not universally taken up. While London’s shops competed over ever increasing displays of plate glass, illuminated by dozens of gas jets, the proprietor of the Haymarket Theatre (‘in consequence of some absurd prejudice’) ignored his rivals and stuck to oil lamps until 1853. The brightness of electric lighting did not begin to supersede the flickering yellow glow of gas until the last decades of the century.

Fog was not merely a visual phenomenon. It ‘smutted’ the clothing and left the throat sore, inflaming lung complaints. When the winter fogs subsided, there were other hazards: dried horse dung filled the streets in the summer and turned into a noxious airborne dust. Parishes sent round water-carts to spray the main thoroughfares, and crossing-sweepers would clear a path from one side of a road to the other, but the roads were generally rather foul and messy. Cobbles were being replaced by other forms of paving, but the principal method was using ‘macadam’ – small chunks of stone pummelled down into a flat layer – which was often loosened and dug out by the passage of carriage wheels, adding to the filth on the streets.

Although we perhaps have an idea of a typical ‘Victorian’ street, the buildings of Dickens’ London were not of one homogenous style. Among carefully planned Georgian squares and terraces, and newer developments, there were still many survivals from previous eras, and also many slum dwellings. These were generally old houses in varying states of decay rather than purpose-built shanties, although both could be found. Likewise, when we think of Victorian public buildings, we tend to picture the dramatic Victorian Gothic that flourished from the mid-century, for example the Midland Grand Hotel, built in the late 1860s. Most public buildings of Dickens’ time, however, were neo-classical or Italianate in style. We shall see both types of architecture in our walks.

What this book can never show you is the people: wealthy men in stove-pipe hats and silk suits; the more dandified ‘fast’ sorts with colourful waistcoats and jewelled tie-pins; poorer men dressed in coarse cotton fustian; well-to-do women in various sizes of crinoline, according to the year and the fashion; working-class girls parading a handful of feathers or ribbons, or a particular kind of bonnet, to compete in style. These are the people whom you will meet only in Dickens’ writing. You may, at least, use this guide to stroll in their footsteps.

CHOOSE YOUR WALK

This book contains eight walks through central London, all of which can be finished within one or two hours (see each walk for further guidance as to timings). The first is through St James’s and Mayfair, the most aristocratic part of the Victorian capital – the district of the gentlemen’s club and the palatial town-house. Next is Soho and Covent Garden, incorporating the slum-ridden ‘rookery’ of Seven Dials and the bustle of Covent Garden market. The Strand and Fleet Street walk leads you along the principal route between Westminster and the City to the spot that marks the commencement of the author’s career. The Bloomsbury and King’s Cross walk begins with one of Dickens’ earliest homes in the capital, often overlooked, and proceeds on a grand tour of the district that he twice made his home. The Holborn walk incorporates much of legal London, known to Dickens as a young clerk. The Clerkenwell walk takes you from the slums of Field Lane to a hanging at Newgate. The St Paul’s and Borough walk begins with the great cathedral and crosses the river to the coaching inns of Borough High Street and the ruins of the Marshalsea prison. Finally, the City and Riverside walk commences in the heart of the City of London and winds along the banks of the Thames, through the maritime heart of the Victorian docks.

Whether you take one or all of these strolls through London’s past, I hope each contains something novel and informative. I increasingly find myself spotting pieces of Dickens’ London lurking amid the clutter of modern life, whether it is the glimpse of an old gaslight or a fading street-sign. The art of the dedicated time-traveller is to start putting them together – and these walks are one way to begin.

WALK 1: ST JAMES’S AND MAYFAIR

Starting location: Horse Guards Parade, SW1A 2AX.

Nearest tube station: Westminster or St James’s Park.

Walking time: 1¼ to 1½ hours.

Opening hours and alternative routes:

• ST JAMES’S CHURCH, Piccadilly: daily, 8 a.m. to 6.30 p.m. (although may not be accessible during events such as concerts or weddings). If the church is closed, there is a path immediately adjoining (called Church Place) which will take you from Jermyn Street to Piccadilly.

• BURLINGTON ARCADE: Monday to Wednesday, 8 a.m. to 6.30 p.m.; Thursday, 8 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Friday, 8 a.m. to 6.30 p.m.; Saturday, 9 a.m. to 6.30 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. If the Arcade is shut, use Old Bond Street, which runs parallel to the Arcade, and turn right into Burlington Gardens.

• WALLACE COLLECTION: daily, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

N.B. Opening hours may vary during public holidays.

HORSE GUARDS PARADE and the Palladian architecture of the Horse Guards building (built 1750–8), the official gateway to both St James’s and Buckingham Palace, provide a grand location from which to commence our first walk, through the wealthiest part of Dickens’ London.

Guardsmen have stood sentry on this spot since the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Yet the average Victorian would have crossed the Parade not only to admire these worthy defenders of the throne (Peggotty takes Mr Dick to see them in David Copperfield) but for another purpose: to find the correct time. The Horse Guards clock, atop the building, was famous as the most accurate in London, until the erection in 1859 of Parliament’s ‘Big Ben’. Mark Tapley attends to its chimes in Martin Chuzzlewit and Dickens refers to ‘Half past five, p.m., Horse Guards’ time’ in Bleak House. Off-duty guardsmen would often stroll in nearby St James’s Park, beset by admirers, particularly the nursemaids who took their young charges to enjoy the park’s salubrious open spaces. As you walk up Horse Guards Road towards the Duke of York’s column, try to picture the corner of the park filled with refreshment stands catering for its youthful visitors: gingerbread stalls, purveyors of curds and whey, and half a dozen cows providing fresh milk – precursors of the ‘freshly squeezed’ drinks available today.

Walk up the steps to Carlton House Terrace (built by Nash, 1827–32), presided over by the statue of the ‘Grand Old Duke of York’ (Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, 1763–1827, brother of George IV). The Duke surmounts what one contemporary critic described as ‘a bad imitation of Trajan’s Column, very mean and poor in appearance’. Note the modestly sized wooden door in the column’s base, facing the park. For sixpence, you might ascend the narrow spiral staircase inside the column, consisting of 168 steps, to obtain a panoramic view of the West End. Such viewings were, however, limited to ‘12 to 4pm, from May to Sept. 24th, during which period alone the atmosphere of London is clear enough to allow the view to be seen’.

From Carlton House Terrace, walk down Waterloo Place. You are approaching Pall Mall – the heart of ‘Clubland’. Nineteenth-century gentlemen’s clubs had particular criteria for membership: some were party political; others had different requirements. The Travellers’ Club (106 Pall Mall, built 1832), for example, catered for foreigners and diplomats, stipulating that members ‘must have travelled at least 500 miles from London’. All boasted sumptuous facilities: libraries, smoking rooms, dining rooms, overnight accommodation, in a style fit for an English gentleman.

Before you turn left on to Pall Mall, you will pass Dickens’ own club, the Athenaeum. Built in 1829–30 in the Greek style, the club has an extravagant frieze, copied from the Panathenaic procession of the Parthenon, and a golden Pallas Athene atop the entrance. To set foot inside its marbled halls, a man had to be known for scientific, literary or artistic attainment, and membership was, therefore, a badge of honour (although ‘noblemen and gentlemen distinguished as liberal patrons of science, literature, and the arts’ were also eligible). Despite this, it seems Dickens was not entirely comfortable in Clubland and reportedly ‘seldom spoke to anyone unless previously addressed’. His only mention of a ‘clubbable’ character in his novels is the not very sympathetic Mr Twemlow in Our Mutual Friend, who goes to his club, ‘promptly secures a large window, writing materials, and all the newspapers, and establishes himself; immoveable, to be respectfully contemplated by Pall Mall’.

Pall Mall itself, it might be argued, presents the Victorian ideal of a public thoroughfare: wide and flanked by impressive classical architecture. Certainly, grand carriages of the upper classes, phaetons and landaus, bearing a family crest, would trundle along its broad expanse, whether to levees at St James’s Palace or simply dropping silk-suited gentlemen at the portico of their club. In 1807, Pall Mall became the first street in London to be lit by gas, attested by a plaque at No. 100, and several buildings still possess distinctive vintage gaslights. It was a thoroughly respectable street – and hence it becomes the home of conman Montague Tigg in Martin Chuzzlewit, as he affects the trappings of gentility.

There is a marvellous counterpoint to the grandeur of Pall Mall, as one turns right into St James’s Street: one of the few London alleys that still leads to a Dickensian ‘court’ (an enclosed courtyard of houses or tenements). Beside the wine merchants Berry Bros & Rudd (who have been situated on St James’s Street since 1698) lies Pickering Place. A plaque here marks a peculiar piece of history – it was home to the legation of the briefly independent Republic of Texas in the 1840s – and the courtyard contains a bust of Lord Palmerston (Prime Minister 1855–8 and 1859–65), who also resided in the vicinity. Despite such impressive inhabitants, the secluded yard had a mixed reputation: it was home to several notorious ‘gaminghouses’ in the 1830s and 1840s, beloved by the more louche members of the upper classes.

Continue down St James’s Street and you will notice Lock & Co (‘Ladies and Gentlemen’s Caps and Hats’, founded in 1676), which retains a typically Georgian shop front. A little further along, turn right down Jermyn Street, to compare Lock & Co with the more grandiose nineteenth-century exterior of Paxton & Whitfield, cheesemongers to Queen Victoria. You are now looking at a shop front that was ‘modern’ in the Victorian period: large plate-glass windows, stucco decoration, gilding, a window that would have been lit nightly with countless jets of gas. Both these shops are rare survivals. The loss of such establishments, especially purveyors of food, is one of the most significant changes between the past and present. A street directory from the 1850s, for example, shows that Jermyn Street – although a thoroughly aristocratic area – still boasted a grocer, fruiterer, three butchers, two cheesemongers, a baker and a fishmonger.

Opposite the cheesemonger’s is St James’s Church. Step inside and you will find a beautiful interior, designed by Christopher Wren, consecrated in 1684, but damaged in the Blitz and later restored. The reredos and organ case, carved by Grinling Gibbons, are some of the sculptor’s best work. The church is the setting for the wedding of the scheming Mr Lammle in Our Mutual Friend, resident of nearby Sackville Street.

Walk through the church and you will find yourself in Piccadilly (see Opening Hours and Alternative Routes above, if closed). Opposite you once stood a row of imposing aristocratic mansions, most of which have long since vanished. There are, however, two notable survivals. Cross the road, turn left, and, after you have passed Sackville Street, you will see the Albany, an odd courtyard rather hidden from the main road. This was originally a private residence for the first Viscount Melbourne, converted into ‘bachelor chambers’ in 1802. Inhabited by many famous Victorians (including Palmerston, Gladstone and Bulwer-Lytton), this peculiar aristocratic close is also home to Our Mutual Friend’s supercilious Fledgeby, who covertly profits as a moneylender in the City. After the Albany comes the other old property, Burlington House, now the home of the Royal Academy. The building dates back to 1664–5, although much enlarged and altered. It was acquired in 1854 by the government, who used it to house various learned societies.

Leave Piccadilly by turning right, through the Burlington Arcade, a Regency creation (1819). Its façade was altered in the twentieth century but the interior retains its original features, and one can also spot that rare survival, the ‘Burlington Arcade beadle’, a top-hatted security guard, retained by the Arcade’s management to maintain decency and order. Originally the beadles of the Arcade wore a more ornate costume and sat in easy chairs by the entrances, ‘to strike awe into the souls of vagrant boys’. They did little, however, to keep out the superior class of West End prostitute, for whom the Arcade was a notorious haunt. The higher class of London demi-mondaine bribed the beadles to let them walk here unmolested. It is not hard to populate this precinct in your mind – to picture crinolined ladies of fashionable dress and dubious character attempting to catch the eye of ‘flash’ young men.

The northern entrance of the Arcade brings you to Burlington Gardens and old Mayfair. Turn right and notice the bow-windowed No. 8, which contains one of the London branches of Ede & Ravenscroft (London’s oldest tailors, established in 1689). To the left is Savile Row, internationally famous for fine tailoring. This district was, however, still largely residential in Dickens’ period, and handsome Georgian and Victorian town-houses that would have belonged to Mayfair’s elite can still be seen. Number 17 Savile Row is an interesting example where a plain Georgian front has been given a distinctly Victorian ironwork balcony and additional stucco. Note, too, the oversized gaslights on the gateposts and the link-snuffers below – taking us back to a period when link-boys carried flaming torches to illuminate one’s way home through the London fog, for the price of a penny.