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WHITECHAPEL 281

DICKENS' LONDON

INTRODUCTION

This book is for the lover of Dickens and of London, alike. The former
without the memory of the latter would indeed be wanting, and likewise the
reverse would be the case.

London, its life and its stones, has ever been immortalized by authors and
artists, but more than all else, the city has been a part of the very life
and inspiration of those who have limned its virtues, its joys, and its
sorrows,--from the days of blithe Dan Chaucer to those of the latest
west-end society novelist.

London, as has been truly said, is a "mighty mingling," and no one has
breathed more than Dickens the spirit of its constantly shifting and
glimmering world of passion and poverty.

The typical Londoner of to-day--as in the early Victorian period of which
Dickens mostly wrote--is a species quite apart from the resident of any
other urban community throughout the world. Since the spell which is
recorded as first having fallen upon the ear of Whittington, the sound of
Bow Bells is the only true and harmonious ring which, to the ears of the
real cockney, recalls all that is most loved in the gamut of his
sentiments.

It is perhaps not possible to arrange the contents of a book of the
purport of this volume in true chronological, or even topographical,
order. The first, because of the necessitous moving about, hither and then
thither,--the second, because of the fact that the very aspect of the
features of the city are constantly under a more or less rapid process of
evolution, which is altering all things but the points of the compass and
the relative position of St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey. Between these
two guide-posts is a mighty maze of streets, ever changing as to its life
and topography.

Hungerford Market and Hungerford Stairs have disappeared, beside which was
the blacking factory, wherein the novelist's first bitter experiences of
London life were felt,--amid a wretchedness only too apparent, when one
reads of the miserable days which fell upon the lad at this time,--the
market itself being replaced by the huge Charing Cross Railway Station, in
itself no architectural improvement, it may be inferred, while the "crazy
old houses and wharves" which fronted the river have likewise been
dissipated by the march of improvement, which left in its wake the
glorious, though little used, Victoria Embankment, one of