Fagin’s House in Whitechapel and the residence of Bill Sykes cannot, with any fairness, be accurately indicated. The latter is spoken of as being in “one of a maze of mean and dirty streets, which abound in the close and densely populated quarter of Bethnal Green.”
NICHOLAS NICKLEBY.
The London Tavern, at which was held the Meeting in promotion of “The United Metropolitan Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet Baking and Punctual Delivery Company,” once (many years since) occupied the site of the Royal Bank of Scotland, 123 Bishopsgate Street Within, on the left hand entering the street from Cornhill.
Mrs. Nickleby and her daughter Kate lived, per favour of their amiable relative, in Thames Street. This business thoroughfare has undergone considerable reconstruction since the days of their tenancy, and the particular dwelling intended cannot be identified. The place is described as a “large, old dingy house, the doors and windows of which were so bespattered with mud that it would have appeared to have been uninhabited for years.”
Mr. Mortimer Knag kept a small circulating library “in a by-street off Tottenham Court Road,” where also lived his sister, Miss Knag, the presiding genius of Madame Mantalini’s establishment; and we may remember the evening when Mrs. Nickleby and Kate were graciously invited to supper at this abode of literary genius.
The General Agency Office, at which Nicholas Nickleby obtained the address of Mr. Gregsbury, M.P., Manchester Buildings, Westminster (also one of the lost localities of London), and where he first met Madeline Bray, has no specified direction in the book. There have been few such agencies existent in a central position in London.
Messrs. Cheeryble Brothers had their place of business in a small City square. “Passing along Threadneedle Street, and through some lanes and passages on the right,” we read that Nicholas was conducted by Mr. Charles Cheeryble to the place in occupation of the firm—
“The City square has no enclosure, save the lamp-post in the middle, and no grass but the weeds which spring up around its base. It is a quiet, little-frequented, retired spot, favourable to melancholy and contemplation, and appointments of long waiting. . . . In winter-time the snow will linger there long after it has melted from the busy streets and highways. The summer’s sun holds it in some respect, and while he darts his cheerful rays sparingly into the square, keeps his fiery heat and glare for noisier and less imposing precincts. It is so quiet, that you can almost hear the ticking of your own watch, when you stop to cool in its refreshing atmosphere. There is a distant hum—of coaches, not of insects—but no other sound disturbs the stillness of the square.”
The Residence of Mrs. Wititterly is referred to as having been pleasantly situated in Cadogan Place, Sloane Street—
“Cadogan Place is the one slight bond which joins two extremities; it is the connecting link between the aristocratic pavements of Belgrave Square and the barbarism of Chelsea. It is in Sloane Street, but not of it. The people of Cadogan Place look down upon Sloane Street, and think Brompton low. They affect fashion, too, and wonder where the New Road is. Not that they claim to be on precisely the same footing as the high folks of Belgrave Square and Grosvenor Place, but that they stand, in reference to them, rather in the light of those illegitimate children of the great, who are content to boast of their connexions, although their connexions disavow them.”