The house, after all, was not ready to receive him at the stipulated time, for it proved to be as difficult to get the workmen off the premises as to get them on, and at the end of October they were still busy in their own peculiar manner, the painters mislaying their brushes every five minutes, and chiefly whistling in the intervals, while the carpenters “continued to look sideways with one eye down pieces of wood, as if they were absorbed in the contemplation of the perspective of the Thames Tunnel, and had entirely relinquished the vanities of this transitory world.” With white lime in the kitchens, blank paper constantly spread on drawing-room walls and shred off again, men clinking at the new stair-rails, Irish labourers howling in the schoolroom (“but I don’t know why”), the gardener vigorously lopping the trees, something like pandemonium reigned supreme, and the “Inimitable” mentally blessed the day when silence and order at length succeeded, permitting him once more to settle down to his desk, and to concentrate his thoughts upon the new serial, “Bleak House,” the writing of which was begun at the end of November, 1851—on a Friday, too, regarded by him as his lucky day.
Tavistock House,[41] with Russell House and Bedford House adjoining (all the property of the Duke of Bedford and all demolished), stood at the northeast corner of the private, secluded Tavistock Square (named after the Marquis of Tavistock, father of the celebrated William, Lord Russell), a short distance south of Euston Road, about midway between Euston Square and the aristocratic Russell Square, and railed off from Upper Woburn Place.
The exterior of Tavistock House (pulled down in 1901) presented a plain brick structure of two stories in height above the ground-floor, with attics in the roof, an open portico or porch being added by a later tenant; it contained no less than eighteen rooms, including a drawing-room capable of holding more than three hundred persons. On the garden side, at the rear, the house had a bowed front somewhat resembling that at Devonshire Terrace. Hans Christian Andersen, who visited him here in 1857, has left us a delightful record of his impressions of the mansion:
“In Tavistock Square stands Tavistock House. This and the strip of garden in front are shut out from the thoroughfare (Gordon Place, on the east side) by an iron railing. A large garden, with a grass plot and high trees, stretches behind the house, and gives it a countrified look in the midst of this coal and gas-steaming London. In the passage from street to garden hung pictures and engravings. Here stood a marble bust of Dickens, so like him, so youthful and handsome; and over a bedroom door were inserted the bas-reliefs of Night and Day, after Thorwaldsen.[42] On the first floor was a rich library, with a fireplace and a writing-table, looking out on the garden.... The kitchen was underground, and at the top of the house were bedrooms. I had a snug room looking out on the garden, and over the tree-tops I saw the London towers and spires appear and disappear as the weather cleared or thickened.”
Dickens’s eldest daughter, in recalling her father’s study at Tavistock House, remembered it as being larger and more ornate than his previous sanctum, and describes it as “a fine large room, opening into the drawing-room by means of sliding doors. When the rooms were thrown together,” she adds, “they gave my father a promenade of considerable length for the constant indoor walking which formed a favourite recreation for him after a hard day’s writing.” Here were wholly or partly written some of his best stories—viz., “Bleak House,” “Hard Times,” “Little Dorrit,” “A Tale of Two Cities,” and “Great Expectations,” his labours being agreeably diversified by private theatricals.
With a view to possibilities of this kind, he caused the school-room (on the ground-floor at the back of the house) to be adapted for such entertainments by having a stage erected and a platform built outside the window for scenic purposes. His older children (the last of the family, Edward Bulwer Lytton, was born in Tavistock House, 1852) had now attained an age that justified a demand for a special form of home amusement, and this met with a ready response from an indulgent father, who, mainly, if not entirely, for their delight, arranged for a series of juvenile theatricals, which began on the first Twelfth Night there (the eldest son’s fifteenth birthday) with a performance of Fielding’s burlesque, “Tom Thumb,” with Mark Lemon and Dickens himself in the cast. Thackeray, who was present, thoroughly enjoyed the fun, rolling off his seat in a burst of laughter at the absurdity of the thing. Play-bills were printed, and every detail carried out in the orthodox style, for Dickens (who, as “Lessee and Manager,” humorously styled himself “Mr. Crummies”) entered heart and soul into the business, and as thoroughly as if his income solely depended on it—this was entirely characteristic of the man.
For the time being, the house was given up to theatrical preparations; the schoolroom became a painter’s shop; there was a gasfitters shop all over the basement; the topmost rooms were devoted to dressmaking, and the novelist’s dressing-room to tailoring, while he himself at intervals did his best to write “Little Dorrit” in corners, “like the Sultan’s groom, who was turned upside-down by the genii.”
The most remarkable performances at “The Smallest Theatre in the World”! (for so the play-bills described it) were the presentations of “The Lighthouse” and “The Frozen Deep,” plays specially written by Wilkie Collins, for which the scenes were painted by Clarkson Stanfield, R.A., one of these beautiful works of art (depicting the Eddystone Lighthouse) realizing a thousand guineas after the novelist’s death! These theatrical entertainments, continued on Twelfth Nights for many years, were witnessed and enjoyed by many notabilities of London (Carlyle among them), and created quite a public sensation.
Dickens’s cherished friend, the late Miss Mary Boyle, had vivid and pleasing recollections of Tavistock House and the master spirit who presided over it.
