Mr. Twemlow, “an innocent piece of dinner furniture,” often in request in certain West-end circles of society, lodged in Duke Street, St. James’s, “over a livery stable-yard.”
The Location of the Veneering Family is described as “a bran-new house, in a bran-new quarter,” designated by the appellation of “Stucconia;” while their intimate friends The Podsnaps flourished “in a shady angle adjoining Portman Square.”
Boffin’s Bower, the home in which we are first introduced to the Golden Dustman and his wife, was to be found “about a mile and a quarter up Maiden Lane, Battle Bridge,” in the close vicinity of the Mounds of Dust for which Mr. Harman was the contractor.
The Location of Mr. R. Wilfer and family was in the northern district of Holloway, beyond Battle Bridge, divided therefrom by “a tract of suburban Sahara, where tiles and bricks were burnt, bones were boiled, carpets were beat, rubbish was shot, dogs were fought, and dust was heaped by contractors.”
The Establishment of Mr. Venus was in Clerkenwell, among
“The poorer shops of small retail traders in commodities to eat and drink and keep folks warm, and of Italian frame-makers, and of barbers, and of brokers, and of dealers in dogs and singing-birds. From these, in a narrow and a dirty street devoted to such callings, Mr. Wegg selects one dark shop-window with a tallow candle dimly burning in it, surrounded by a muddle of objects vaguely resembling pieces of leather and dry stick, but among which nothing is resolvable into anything distinct, save the candle itself in its old tin candlestick, and two preserved frogs fighting a small-sword duel.”
THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD.
In the first chapter of the tale we are introduced to “the meanest and closest of small rooms,” where, “through the ragged window-curtain, the light of early day steals in from a miserable court.” A man
“Lies dressed, across a large unseemly bed, upon a bedstead that has indeed given way under the weight upon it. Lying, also dressed, and also across the bed, not longwise, are a Chinaman, a Lascar, and a haggard woman. The two first are in a sleep or stupor; the last is blowing at a kind of pipe, to kindle it.”
This Opium Smokers’ Den had its location in an eastern district of London, probably the Shadwell neighbourhood of the London Docks, but no precise indication of its whereabouts is given in the tale. We read of John Jasper starting from his hotel in Falcon Square: “Eastward, and still eastward, through the stale streets, he takes his way, until he reaches his destination—a miserable court, specially miserable among many such.”