Charles Dickens' London: Little Dorrit

The scene in London opens with Arthur Clennam sitting at the window of a coffee-house on Ludgate Hill one dismal Sunday evening:

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"Nothing to see but streets, streets, streets. Nothing to breathe but streets, streets, streets. Nothing to change the brooding mind or raise it up."

From there he went out to visit his half-paralyzed mother who lived off Upper Thames Street, from the description, not far from Queenhithe or Dowgate, for, passing "the mouldy hall of some obsolete Worshipful Company, now the illuminated windows of a Congregational church.., passing silent warehouses and wharves," in a narrow alley leading to the river he comes upon the house, "a double house with long, narrow, heavily-framed windows. Many years ago it had had in its mind to slide down sideways; it had been propped up, however, and was leaning on some half-dozen gigantic crutches which...appeared in these latter days to be no very sure reliance."

This was also the residence of Jeremiah Flintwinch and Affery his wife, who was continually having dreams.

Hither came the scheming Blandois to transact business, and in its ruins was crushed to death when the crazy old tenement collapsed.

Close to the church of St. George's, Southwark, stood the Marshalsea Prison, so closely identified with Little Dorrit.

There she was born; there Mr. William Dorrit, the Father of the Marshalsea, gracefully received Arthur Clennam on his introduction to him; there Maggie used to meet "Little Mother"; and there young John, the too susceptible son of Mr. Chivery the turnkey, fell hopelessly in love with the "child of the Marshalsea"; from thence the Dorrits, on their accession to fortune, were at last released; and there, finally, Arthur Clennam was for a time immured, and taken ill.

At the corner of Charles Street, Hatton Garden, is a small tavern bearing the heraldic arms of a Bleeding Heart, and possibly this is the locality of Bleeding Heart Yard, so frequently mentioned in Little Dorrit.

There is a yard close by it occupied by warehouses that at one time had a very different appearance.

There Clennam set up business in partnership with Daniel Doyce; there the energetic Pancks - "steam-tug" Pancks - used to harry the poor tenants for their rent at the instigation of Mr. Casby the "patriarch"; and there Mr. Pancks at last repudiated the patriarch for ever, and with a pair of scissors snipped off the sacred locks that flowed upon his shoulders, and, catching up the patriarch's broad-brimmed hat, cut it down to a mere stew-pan, and fixed it on the old man's head.

"Before the frightful results of this desperate action, Mr. Pancks himself recoiled in consternation. A bare-polled goggle-eyed, big-headed, lumbering personage stood before him, not in the least venerable, who seemed to have started out of the earth to ask what was become of Casby."

In Harley Street was the establishment of Mr. Merdle, the great city financier, who suffered from a mysterious complaint, which after his suicide was discovered by his physician to be simply Forgery and Robbery."

In the vestry of the old church in the Borough, Little Dorrit, when accidentally locked out of the Marshalsea, was allowed by "the sexton or the beadle, or the verger, or whatever he was, of St. George's" to take refuge, and there with her head pillowed on the Burial Register she slept while Maggie snored in front of the fire.

In the same room she signed the Marriage Register after being married to Arthur Clennam in the church, her old friend the verger holding the inkstand.

"The clerk paused in taking off the good clergyman's surplice, and all the witnesses looked on with special interest."

For you see," said the verger," this young lady is one of our curiosities, and has come now to the third volume of our Registers.

Her birth is in what I call the first volume; she lay asleep on this very floor with her pretty head on what I call the second volume; and she's now a-writing her little name as a bride in what I call the third volume."

Next: Charles Dickens' London: A Tale of Two Cities