A DESCRIPTION OF HIS HAUNTS AND THE SCENES OF HIS NOVELS . BY WILLIAM H. RIDEING. LONDON J. W. JARVIS & SON, 28, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, W.C. BOSTON, U.S. CUPPLES, UPHAM AND CO. 1885. Copyright , 1885.  Washington , D. C. By William Henry Rideing . LONDON : S. AND J. BRAWN, PRINTERS, 13, GATE STREET, LINCOLN’S INN FIELDS The portrait is engraved from the large etching by G. B. Smith in “ENGLISH ETCHINGS,” by kind permission of the proprietor. We also have to acknowledge, with thanks

Thackeray does not give the same opportunities for the identification of his scenes as Dickens.  The elaboration with which the latter localizes his characters, and the descriptive minutiæ with which he makes their haunts no less memorable than themselves, are not to be found in the works of the author of Vanity Fair .  No faculty was stronger in Dickens, or of more service to him, than his power of word-painting.  He reproduces the objects by which the persons he describes are surrounded with a

Though his other scenes are misty, no reader of Thackeray who engages in a search for the places which he describes is likely, however, to overlook the Charterhouse, the ancient foundation to which he refers again and again, dwelling on it with many fond reminiscences.  It is the school in which he himself was educated, and he has associated three generations of his characters with it.  Thomas Newcome received instruction here, also his son Clive, with Pendennis, Osborne, and Philip of the secon

The buildings form an irregular cluster spread over a prodigal area, and isolated by a wall of brick and stone which many London fogs and long days of yellow weather have reduced to the dismalest of colors.  None of them are lofty; some of them are of granite, and others of brick, upon which age has cast a smoky mantle.  They are separated by wide courts and winding passages; and when I was there in the Easter vacation these open spaces were vacant, and the brisk twittering of the sparrows was t

On the site of the Imperial Club in Cursitor street, Chancery Lane, stood a notorious “sponging house,” to which Rawdon Crawley was taken when arrested for debt, immediately after leaving the brilliant entertainment given by the Marquis of Steyne, and from which he wrote an ill-spelled letter to his wife (who had appeared triumphantly in some charades at that entertainment), begging her to send some money for his release.  The reader remembers how the faithless little woman answered,—assuring hi

It is only a minutes’ walk from the corner of Fleet Lane, to the street of booksellers, Paternoster Row, in which the rival publishers, Bungay and Bacon lived—Bacon in an ancient low-browed building, with a few of his books displayed in the windows under a bust of my Lord Verulam; and Bungay in the house opposite, which was newly painted, and elaborately decorated in the style of the seventeenth century, “so that you might have fancied stately Mr. Evelyn passing over the threshold, or curious Mr

Though in the east end of the town and in the south, Thackeray has left few footsteps, for us to follow, in ancient and comfortable Bloomsbury, and the region to the west of it and north of Oxford street (called De Quincey’s step-mother), we find much to remind us of him.  It was in Russell Square that the Sedleys lived in the time of their prosperity, and thence, on the evening after the arrival of gentle Amelia from the boarding school at Chiswick, a messenger was sent for George Osborne, whos

Before Thackeray died, he had become as familiar a figure in the West End of London as Dr. Johnson was in Fleet street and its tributary courts and lanes.  Any one who did not know him might have supposed him to be an indolent man about town; and those who could identify him generally knew where to find him, if they wished to show the great author to a friend from the country.  He was usually present in the Park at the fashionable hour; and if the Pall Mall of his day is ever painted, his face a

Thackeray constantly mixes up real with fictitious names in his descriptions.  Some disguise was often necessary, and sometimes even compulsory.  He could not be as explicit or as literal as Dickens, because most of his characters represented a very different class.  The latter could draw in detail the house he selected as most appropriate for the occupation of Sairey Gamp, because the actual tenants were not likely to find him out, or, if they ever read his description, to quarrel with it.  But

The places with which Thackeray was personally associated are more interesting, perhaps, than the scenes of his novels.  In 1834, he lived in Albion street, near Hyde Park Gardens, and it was there that he, a young man of twenty-three, began to contribute to Fraser’s Magazine .  In 1837, then newly married, he lived in Great Coram street, close by the Foundling Hospital.  As I have stated, he had chambers at No. 10, Crown Office Row, in the Temple, and at No. 88, St. James’s street, both of whic