[30]“Jack Straw’s Castle, also known as the Castle Hotel, which stands on elevated ground near the large pond and the flagstaff, has been somewhat modernized of late years. It has been generally supposed that the name of this hostelry is derived from the well-known peasant leader in the terrible rising of Richard II.’s time; but Professor Hales assures us there is no sufficient authority for the tradition, for the present designation is perhaps not older than the middle of the eighteenth century, the original sign being most likely The Castle, without any preceding genitive, Richardson, for example, thus referring to it in ‘Clarissa Harlowe,’ 1748. For the connection of Jack Straw with Hampstead there is apparently no historic defence.”—The Home Counties Magazine, April, 1899.
[31]Serjeant (afterwards Justice) Talfourd, to whom “Pickwick” was dedicated. He composed a sonnet “To Charles Dickens, on his ‘Oliver Twist,’” and declared that this story was the most delightful he had ever read.
[32]“Some Recollections of Mortality,” first printed in All the Year Round, May 16, 1863.
[33]This church figures prominently in Hogarth’s paintings of “The Rake’s Progress.” It was the scene also of Byron’s baptism and of the marriage of the Brownings.
Apropos, it may be mentioned that in 1843, during Dickens’s residence in the parish of St. Marylebone, he took sittings for a year or two in the Little Portland Street Unitarian Chapel, for whose officiating minister, Edward Tagart, he had a warm regard, which continued long after he had ceased to be a member of the congregation.
[34]“A Week’s Tramp in Dickens Land,” by W. R. Hughes, 1891.
[35]The Euston and Victoria Hotel no longer exists. It stood in Euston Grove, at No. 14, Euston Square (north side).
[36]No. 1, Devonshire Terrace was at one time the home of George du Maurier, the well-known Punch artist. It is now partly utilized as solicitors’ offices.
[37]The artist removed to another residence in the Square, not more than a couple of houses from that of Dickens.
[38]I.e., no workmen.