Tom Pinch and his sister Ruth lodged at “Merry Islington,” “in a singular little old-fashioned house, up a blind street,” where they were accommodated with two small bedrooms and a triangular parlour, the householder being the inscrutable Mr. Nadgett. In “Martin Chuzzlewit” are contained many pleasant episodes associated with these modest apartments; where, as we all know, little Ruth made her first culinary experiment, and was pleasantly surprised the next morning to find the merry present of a cookery-book awaiting her in the parlour (sent by John Westlock), with the beefsteak pudding leaf turned down and blotted out.
DOMBEY AND SON.
Polly Toodles (otherwise Richards) lived with her husband and her “apple-faced” family, at Stagg’s Gardens, Camden Town, at the time when the London and North-Western Railway was in course of construction—
“As yet the neighbourhood was shy to own the railroad. One or two bold speculators had projected streets, and one had built a little, but had stopped among the mud and ashes to consider further of it. A bran new tavern, redolent of fresh mortar and size, and fronting nothing at all, had taken for its sign the ‘Railway Arms;’ but that might be rash enterprise—and then it hoped to sell drink to the workmen. So the Excavators’ house of Call had sprung up from a beer-shop, and the old-established Ham and Beef Shop had become the Railway Eating House, with a roast leg of pork daily, through interested motives of a similar immediate and popular description.”
In a later chapter of “Dombey” we read of Stagg’s Gardens having vanished from the earth—
“Where the old rotten summer-houses once had stood, palaces now reared their heads, and granite columns of gigantic girth opened a vista to the railway world beyond. The miserable waste ground, where the refuse matter had been heaped of yore, was swallowed up and gone, and in its frowzy stead were tiers of warehouses, crammed with rich goods and costly merchandise. The old bye-streets now swarmed with passengers and vehicles of every kind: the new streets that had stopped disheartened in the mud and waggon-ruts, formed towns within themselves, originating wholesome comforts and conveniences belonging to themselves, and never tried nor thought of until they sprung into existence.”
Miss Lucretia Tox had apartments at Princess Place, an address not included in the London Directory; and Major Bagstock also had chambers in the immediate vicinity, a genteel but somewhat inconvenient neighbourhood. Miss Tox’s residence is described as
“A dark little house, that had been squeezed at some remote period of English history into a fashionable neighbourhood at the west end of the town, where it stood in the shade, like a poor relation of the great street round the corner, coldly looked down upon by mighty mansions. It was not exactly in a court, and it was not exactly in a yard, but it was in the dullest of No-Thoroughfares, rendered anxious and haggard by double knocks. . . . There is a smack of stabling in the air of Princess Place, and Miss Tox’s bedroom (which was at the back) commanded a vista of mews, where hostlers, at whatever sort of work engaged, were continually accompanying themselves with effervescent noises, and where the most domestic and confidential garments of coachmen and their wives and families usually hung like Macbeth’s banners on the outer walls.”
Mrs. MacStinger presided at No. 9 Brig Place, finding accommodation for Captain Cuttle as her first floor lodger, previous to the time of his hurried and secret removal to the quarters of The Wooden Midshipman. We read that the house was situated
“On the brink of a little canal near the India Docks, where the air was perfumed with chips, and all other trades were swallowed up in mast, oar, and block making, and boat building. Then the ground grew marshy and unsettled. Then there was nothing to be smelt but rum and sugar. Then Captain Cuttle’s lodgings, at once a first floor and a top storey, in Brig Place, were close before you.”