Charles Dickens' London: Edwin Drood

The story opens in an opium-den, and just before its, alas! unfinished close, a similar place is again referred to, where John Jasper, leaving "a hybrid hotel in a little square behind Aldersgate Street near to the General Post Office," goes forth.

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"Eastward and still eastward through the stale streets he takes his way, until he reaches his destination: a miserable court, especially miserable among many such."

This description might apply to any of the streets down amongst the docks and Ratcliffe Highway, where such holes still existed in 1900 for the delectation of the opium-smoking Lascars and Eastern sailors.

In Southampton Street, Bloomsbury Square, was the lodging-house of Mrs. Billickin, strongly recommended by Mr. Grewgious, where Miss Twinkleton and Rosa came to stay, when Mrs. Billickin studiously ignored Miss Twinkleton in the domestic arrangements, and when the latter suggested to Rosa a lamb's fry, or, failing that, a roast fowl for dinner, retorted, through Rosa, "If you was better accustomed to butcher's meat, Miss, you would not entertain the idea of a lamb's fry. Firstly, because lambs has long been sheep... As to roast fowls, Miss, why you must be quite surfeited with roast fowls, letting alone your buying, when you market for yourself, the agedest of poultry, with the scaliest of legs...Try a little inwention, Miss."

In Staple Inn we are on safe ground, the safest of all, because Dickens has gone out of his way to make Mr. Grewgious's chambers, and those of Mr. Tartar the sailor, unmistakably recognizable.

The latter's quarters were "on the top set in the house next the top set in the corner" of the Inn.

His rooms "were the neatest, the cleanest, and the best-ordered chambers ever seen under the sun, moon, or stars." . . . " No man-of-war was ever kept more spick and span from careless touch."

There he entertained Rosa Bud and Helena Landless, producing in his Admiral's Cabin, "by merely touching the spring knob of a locker and handle of a drawer, a dazzling, enchanted repast. Wonderful macaroons, glittering liqueurs, magically preserved tropical spices, and jellies of celestial tropical fruits displayed themselves profusely at an instant's notice."

The set of chambers where Mr. Grewgious lived, were "in a corner house in the little inner quadrangle of the Inn," and over its portal, we are told, was the mysterious inscription:

This inscription is still there.

Hither, Edwin Drood came whom Mr. Grewgious so hospitably entertained with a dinner ordered from "Furnival's" over the way; and to these chambers came Rosa for refuge from jasper's importunities at Cloisterham, and was looked after with fatherly care.

Next: Literary London: William Makepeace Thackeray