The mews aforesaid is now superseded by a factory. Mrs. Billickin has long since relinquished the cares of housekeeping and retired from public life. The present amiable landlady conducts the business on different principles, and will be at all times disposed to give her patrons satisfaction, whether they be of the scholastic persuasion or otherwise.
Southampton Street leads immediately northward into Bloomsbury Square. This place is mentioned in “Barnaby Rudge” as the locality in which Lord Mansfield’s residence was situated at the period of the Gordon Riots. In chapter 66 its destruction by the rioters is thus described:—
“They began to demolish the house with great fury; and setting fire to it in several places, involved in a common ruin the whole of the costly furniture, the plate and jewels, a beautiful gallery of pictures, the rarest collection of manuscripts ever possessed by any one private person in the world, and, worst of all, because nothing could replace the loss, the great Law Library, on almost every page of which were notes, in the judge’s own hand, of inestimable value; being the results of the study and experience of his whole life.”
The house occupied the site of No. 29, on the east side of the square. We subsequently read in the same book that two of the rioters—cripples—were hanged in this square, the execution being momentarily delayed, as they were placed facing the house they had assisted to despoil. Leaving the square at its north-east angle (right) by Bloomsbury Place, the Rambler shortly comes into Southampton Row, turning left, and proceeding for a short distance upwards to Cosmo Place on the right, a short cut which leads directly to the contiguous shades of Queen Square just beyond. It will be remembered that in this neighbourhood Richard Carstone had furnished apartments at the time when he was pursuing the experimental study of the Law under the auspices of Messrs. Kenge and Carboy (see “Bleak House,” chapter 18). There is reason to believe that the “quiet old” house intended was No. 28 Devonshire Street, leading from the south-east angle of the square.
Leaving Queen Square by Great Ormond Street (eastward), we immediately arrive, on the north side (No. 50), at The Children’s Hospital, adjacent to the Catholic Church and Convent of St. John. In 1858, February 9th, a public dinner was arranged, by way of charitable appeal, for funds necessary to carry on and develop the work. It was happily resolved to invite Charles Dickens to preside on that occasion, and he “threw himself into the service heart and soul.” His earnest, pathetic, but powerful appeal—“majestic in its own simplicity”—that night added more than £3000 to the treasury, which amount was, two months afterwards, substantially increased by the proceeds of a public reading of his “Christmas Carol.” It is pleasant to record that this institution has ever since flourished amain, thus fulfilling the prediction of Dickens when, suggesting that the enterprise could not be possibly maintained unless the Hospital were made better known, he continued as follows:—
“I limit myself to saying—better known, because I will not believe that, in a Christian community of fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters, it can fail, being better known, to be well and richly endowed.”
We may here recall the scene narrated in chapter 9 of “Our Mutual Friend,” when Johnny makes his will and arranges his affairs, leaving “a kiss for the boofer lady”—
“The family whom God had brought together were not all asleep, but were all quiet. From bed to bed, a light womanly tread and a pleasant fresh face passed in the silence of the night. A little head would lift itself into the softened light here and there, to be kissed as the face went by—for these little patients are very loving—and would then submit itself to be composed to rest again. . . . Over most of the beds, the toys were yet grouped as the children had left them when they last laid themselves down, and in their innocent grotesqueness and incongruity they might have stood for the children’s dreams.”
Proceeding eastward by Great Ormond Street and turning (left) through Lamb’s Conduit Street, to its northern end, we face the entrance of the Foundling Hospital. This beneficent institution was established by Captain Thomas Coram, about the middle of the last century, and is associated with “No Thoroughfare,” the Christmas number (and last in the series) of “All the Year Round,” 1867. Visitors attending the morning service of the Foundling Church on Sundays are admitted to the children’s Dining-Hall thereafter, and so may have an opportunity of realising the scene portrayed by Dickens, when the “veiled lady” induced a female attendant to point out Walter Wilding:—