“Rosa’s room was airy, clean, comfortable, almost gay. The Unlimited had laid in everything omitted from the very little bag (that is to say, everything she could possibly need), and Rosa tripped down the great many stairs again, to thank her guardian for his thoughtful and affectionate care of her.
“‘Not at all, my dear,’ said Mr. Grewgious, infinitely gratified; ‘it is I who thank you for your charming confidence and for your charming company. Your breakfast will be provided for you in a neat, compact, and graceful little sitting-room (appropriate to your figure), and I will come to you at ten o’clock in the morning. I hope you don’t feel very strange indeed, in this strange place.’
“‘Oh no, I feel so safe!’
“‘Yes, you may be sure that the stairs are fire-proof,’ said Mr. Grewgious, ‘and that any outbreak of the devouring element would be perceived and suppressed by the watchmen.’
“‘I did not mean that,’ Rosa replied. ‘I mean, I feel so safe from him.’
“‘There is a stout gate of iron bars to keep him out,’ said Mr. Grewgious smiling; ‘and Furnival’s is fire-proof, and specially watched and lighted, and I live over the way!’ In the stoutness of his knight-errantry, he seemed to think the last-named protection all-sufficient. In the same spirit he said to the gate-porter as he went out, ‘If some one staying in the hotel should wish to send across the road to me in the night, a crown will be ready for the messenger.’ In the same spirit, he walked up and down outside the iron gate for the best part of an hour, with some solicitude; occasionally looking in between the bars, as if he had laid a dove in a high roost in a cage of lions, and had it on his mind that she might tumble out.”
The Hotel was originally built 1818–19, and was enlarged as recently as 1884. Woods was the proprietor for fifty years.
Crossing to the other side of the street, at a short distance onwards, opposite Gray’s Inn Road, the Rambler reaches (by No. 334 High Holborn) the gateway of Staple Inn; a little nook, composed of two irregular quadrangles behind the most ancient part of Holborn, where certain gabled houses, some centuries of age, still stand looking on the public way. Staple Inn was the favourite summer promenade of the meditative Mr. Snagsby (see “Bleak House”); and in this Inn Mr. Grewgious occupied a set of chambers. The house is No. 10, in the inner quadrangle, “presenting in black and white, over its ugly portal, the mysterious inscription, ‘P. J. T., 1747.’ Perhaps John Thomas, or Perhaps Joe Tyler.” And, under certain social conditions, “for a certainty, P. J. T. was Pretty Jolly Too.” Neville Landless also had rooms in this locality; the top set in the corner (on the right), overlooking the garden “where a few smoky sparrows twitter in the smoky trees, as though they had called to each other, ‘let us play at country.’” Close to these lived Mr. Tartar, in “the neatest, the cleanest, and the best-ordered chambers ever seen under the sun, moon, and stars.” And we may recall the writer’s delicate treatment of this, the blushing “beanstalk country” of dear little Rosa Budd. For the several associations herewith connected, reference should be made to our author’s last book, “The Mystery of Edwin Drood.”—See concluding paragraphs of chapter 21:—
“Rosa wondered what the girls would say if they could see her crossing the wide street on the sailor’s arm. And she fancied that the passers-by must think her very little and very helpless, contrasted with the strong figure that could have caught her up and carried her out of any danger, miles and miles without resting.
“She was thinking further, that his far-seeing blue eyes looked as if they had been used to watch danger afar off, and to watch it without flinching, drawing nearer and nearer: when, happening to raise her own eyes, she found that he seemed to be thinking something about them.
“This a little confused Rosebud, and may account for her never afterwards quite knowing how she ascended (with his help) to his garden in the air, and seemed to get into a marvellous country that came into sudden bloom like the country on the summit of the magic bean-stalk. May it flourish for ever!”
In this connection, the reader may be interested in chapter 22; the first part of which deals most tenderly and beautifully with “love’s awaking,” in the heart of the innocent heroine.
Recrossing to the other side of High Holborn, past Gray’s Inn Road (on the north), at No. 22, we reach the gateway of Gray’s Inn. At No. 2 South Square (formerly Holborn Court) we may find the upper chambers formerly occupied by Mr. Traddles and his wife Sophy, whose domestic arrangements included accommodation for “the beauty” and the other Devonshire sisters. Copperfield says, in the chapter before referred to:—
“If I had beheld a thousand roses blowing in a top set of chambers, in that withered Gray’s Inn, they could not have brightened it half so much. The idea of those Devonshire girls, among the dry law-stationers, and the attorneys’ offices; and of the tea and toast, and children’s songs, in that grim atmosphere of pounce and parchment, red-tape, dusty wafers, ink-jars, brief and draft paper, law reports, writs, declarations, and bills of costs, seemed almost as pleasantly fanciful as if I had dreamed that the Sultan’s famous family had been admitted on the roll of attorneys, and had brought the talking-bird, the singing-tree, and the Golden water into Gray’s Inn Hall.”
The offices of Mr. Perker, the legal adviser of Mr. Pickwick, were also located in Gray’s Inn. We read that the “outer door” of these chambers was to be found “after climbing two pairs of steep and dirty stairs;” but no indication is given of their exact situation.
Proceeding westward from Gray’s Inn, and passing the stately, elegant, and commodious First Avenue Hotel, between Warwick Court and Brownlow Street, and a half-a-dozen side streets beyond, we come, on the north side, at No. 92, to the Bull and Anchor Tavern. This is the house known in the pages of “Martin Chuzzlewit” as “The Bull Inn,” then a more important hostelry than at present. It will be remembered as the inn at which Mr. Lewsome, during his illness, was professionally attended by Sairey Gamp and Betsy Prig, “turn and turn about.”