“Slipping us out of a little side gate, the old lady stopped most unexpectedly in a narrow back street, part of some courts and lanes immediately outside the wall of the inn, and said, ‘This is my lodging. Pray walk up!’”
Thus, passing at the back of the Inn, and taking the next turning on the left, we arrive at Bishop’s Court, near at hand, a narrow, dark, and old passage leading to Chancery Lane. On the left hand, nearest the Inn, was Krook’s Rag and Bottle Warehouse, probably No. 3. But during recent years, all the old houses of the court have been substituted by modern buildings, offices, and shops; so that the location only remains of the “Lord Chancellor,” and his place of business, yclept by the neighbours the “Court of Chancery.” The old shop, at one time, possessed the private door and stairway leading to Miss Flite’s lodging.
“She lived at the top of the house, in a pretty large room, from which she had a glimpse of the roof of Lincoln’s Inn Hall.”
Here, too, Captain Hawdon, otherwise Nemo, the law-writer, lived and died in a bare room on the second floor. A notice may have been observed in the old shop window, “Engrossing and Copying.” It will be remembered that this room was afterwards occupied by Mr. Tony Weevle, during whose tenancy it was decorated with a choice collection of magnificent portraits, being—
“Copper-plate impressions from that truly national work, the Divinities of Albion, or Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty; representing ladies of title and fashion, in every variety of smirk, that art, combined with capital, is capable of producing.”
Returning to the top of the court, and passing a short distance along Star Yard, we reach, at the corner of Chichester Rents, a modern warehouse (No. 7), recently erected on the site of “The Old Ship Tavern,” now non est, named in the pages of “Bleak House” The Sol’s Arms, it being the house at which the Inquest was held, following the death of Nemo, as described in chapter 11; on which occasion the proffered evidence of Poor Jo was virtuously rejected by the presiding coroner.
“Can’t exactly say; won’t do, you know. We can’t take that in a Court of Justice, gentlemen. It’s terrible depravity. Put the boy aside.”
The old tavern has given place to the exigencies of modern commerce (1897). The ghost of Little Swills may still linger in the neighbourhood, but the musical evenings of the past are silent, being now superseded by the prosaics of ordinary business.
The real Sol’s Arms still exists, No. 65 Hampstead Road, N.W., at the corner of Charles Street, once known as Sol’s Row. Its name was derived from the “Sol’s Society,” whose meetings, held therein, were of a Masonic character. It has been suggested that Dickens transferred the style and name of this house to the neighbourhood of Chancery Lane, as above.
Coming now into Chancery Lane, we may observe, nearly opposite the old gateway of Lincoln’s Inn, Cursitor Street, a thoroughfare leading eastward from the Lane. It will be noticed that the houses in this street are comparatively of recent erection, and we may now look in vain for Coavinses’ Castle, which has been swept away by the besom of modern destruction and improvement. This old sponging-house flourished (in the days of Harold Skimpole) on the left of the street, on the site now occupied by Lincoln’s Inn Chambers, No. 1.