Dickens' London [antikvár]

Introduction 'I remember how immensely broad the streets seemed, now I was alone, how high the houses, how grand and mysterious everything.' 'London is shabby by daylight and shabbier by gaslight.' Dickens wrote both these passages in his later years, but the first begins, 'I remember', for he is recalling that unforgettable hour when as a child he had got himself lost in the Strand, and spent the rest of the day in the first of those lonely, fascinated explorings of London which were to prove so vital to his life's work: the second is the verdict of the citizen of the world returned from one of his many visits to the Continent. Even in Rome itself, he writes, 'there is nothing shabbier than Drury Lane'. Worse, far worse than merely shabby were the revolting slums, about which, in despair at the inertia of Parliament, 'the great dust-heap of Westminster', Dickens never ceased to cry out in his letters, speeches, novels, essays and journalistic writings. Nevertheless it is clear that from childhood until the year of his death he never escaped—that in his secret heart he had no real wish to escape—^from the fascination of London; even, or perhaps especially, of the slums themselves towards which he confessed he felt a strong 'attraction of repulsion'. 'What inexhaustible food for speculation do the streets of London afford!' exclaims Boz, aged twenty-four; and The Uncommercial Traveller, aged fifty-one, is still adding to his 'always-lengthening list of the wonders of the world' curious speculations about the inner lives of the people and animals in all sorts of odd comers of Westminster, the City or the suburbs. It is mainly from the work of these two explorers, Boz and The M