A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land: Together with Personal Reminiscences of the 'Inimitable Boz' Therein Collected — John Shaqi
A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land: Together with Personal Reminiscences of the 'Inimitable Boz' Therein CollectedHughes, William R. (William Richard)
General
A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land: Together with Personal Reminiscences of the 'Inimitable Boz' Therein Collected
Hughes, William R. (William Richard)
Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870; England -- Description and travel
Walking up Euston Road from Gower Street, we see St. Pancras Church (not
the old church of "Saint Pancridge" in the Fields, by the bye, situated
in the St. Pancras Road, where Mr. Jerry Cruncher and two friends went
"fishing" on a memorable night, as recorded in _A Tale of Two Cities_,
when their proceedings, and especially those of his "honoured parent,"
were watched by young Jerry), and proceed westward along the Marylebone
Road, called the New Road in Dickens's time, past Park Crescent,
Regent's Park, and do not stop until we reach No. 1, Devonshire
Terrace. This commodious double-fronted house, in which Dickens resided
from 1839 to 1850, is entered at the side, and the front looks into the
Marylebone Road. Maclise's beautiful sketch of the house (made in 1840),
as given in Forster's _Life_, shows the windows of the lower and first
floor rooms as largely bowed, while over the top flat of one of the
former is a protective iron-work covering, thus allowing the children to
come out of their nursery on the third floor freely to enjoy the air and
watch the passers-by. In the sketch Maclise has characteristically put
in a shuttlecock just over the wall, as though the little ones were
playing in the garden. Forster calls it "a handsome house with a garden
of considerable size, shut out from the New Road by a brick wall, facing
the York Gate into Regent's Park;" and Dickens himself admitted it to be
"a house of great promise (and great premium), undeniable situation, and
excessive splendour." That he loved it well is shown by the passage in a
letter which he addressed to Forster, "in full view of Genoa's perfect
bay," when about to commence _The Chimes_ (1844); he says:--"Never did I
stagger so upon a threshold before. I seem as if I had plucked myself
out of my proper soil when I left Devonshire Terrace, and could take
root no more until I return to it. . . . Did I tell you how many
fountains we have here? No matter. If they played nectar, they wouldn't
please me half so well as the West Middlesex water-works at Devonshire
Terrace."
Mr. Jonathan Clark, who resides here, kindly shows us over the house,
which contains thirteen rooms. The polished mahogany doors in the hall,
and the chaste Italian marble mantel-pieces in the principal rooms, are
said to have been put up by the novelist. On the ground floor, the
smaller room to the eastward of the house, with window facing north and
looking into the pleasant garden where the plane trees and turf are
beautifully green, is pointed out as having been his study.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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