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The great majority of English readers—on both sides of the Atlantic—claim personal acquaintance with “Samivel” Weller, Mark Tapley, Oliver Twist, and many more besides: the old companions of our schoolboy days. We cherish pleasant remembrance of the familiar “green leaves” of Dombey, David Copperfield, and the rest, as they first afforded us their monthly quota of interest and enjoyment; and have always maintained intimate relations with Captain Cuttle, Tom Pinch, Mr. Peggotty, and the more recent dramatis personæ of the works of Dickens. We sympathise with Florence, Agnes, and Esther as with sisters, and keep corners of our hearts sacred to the memory of Little Nell, Paul Dombey, and the child-wife Dora.

The creations of “bonnie Prince Charlie” have thus become veritable “household words”; part and parcel of our home associations, instinct with personality and life. We never think of them as the airy nothings of imaginative fiction, but regard them as familiar friends, having “a local habitation and a name” amongst us; with whose cheerful acquaintance we could ill afford to part, and who bear us kindly company on the hot and dusty highway of our daily lives.

Charles Dickens was essentially a Londoner, always having a fond regard for the highways and by-ways of this great Metropolis, and confessedly deriving his inspiration from the varied phases of Town life and Society. We accordingly find that the main incidents and characters of his novels have here their mise en scène.

In homage to the genius of his favourite Author, the writer of the following pages has endeavoured to localise many of the more familiar associations of the great Novelist with as much exactitude as may be possible; but it must be remembered that London has undergone considerable alteration and reconstruction, during the last fifty years.

Thus far reads the original Preface to this Work, as written thirteen years since; the first (and smaller) edition of which was published in 1886, under the title of Rambles in London with Charles Dickens. The author now begs to thankfully acknowledge its favourable reception, generously accorded by the Press in particular, and the reading-world in general.

The present arrangement of the book includes some important additions as well as considerable revision, the latter being rendered necessary by the disappearance of many houses and buildings in the course of intervening years, and the steady progress of Metropolitan improvements. Thus it comes to pass that only the memory of what has been remains, in regard to many of these Dickensian localities and landmarks; and it has been the object of the author (1899) to indicate the former whereabouts of these old places, as heretofore existent. Especially in the Strand and neighbourhood (Ramble I.), as well as in Chancery Lane and Holborn (Rambles II. and IV.), many alterations have taken place, and another London is springing up around a younger generation, not known to Dickens. Our Author says (in Martin Chuzzlewit), “Change begets change; nothing propagates so fast”: and the London of to-day, and the activities of our Metropolitan County Council, at the close of this nineteenth century, afford striking testimony to the truth of the aphorism, “The old order changeth, giving place to new.”

The Pall Mall Magazine, July 1896, contains a contribution by Mr. C. Dickens, junr.—“Notes on Some Dickens’ Places and People”—in which he deprecates the endeavours of those inquirers who have attempted any localisation of these places. “It is true,” says he, “that many of the places described in Charles Dickens’s books were suggested by real localities or buildings, but the more the question comes to be examined, the more clear it is that all that was done with the prototype, was to use it as a painter or a sculptor uses a sketch, and that, under the hand of the writer and in the natural process of evolution, it has grown, in almost every case, into a finished picture, with few, if any, very salient points about it to render its origin unmistakable.” He also quotes, with emphatic approval, from a review of Mr. P. Fitzgerald’s Bozland, then recently published: “Dickens, like Turner in the sister art of painting—like all real artists indeed—used nature, no doubt, but used it as being his slave and in no wise his master. He was not content simply to reproduce the places, persons, things that he had seen and known. He passed them through the crucible of his imagination, fused them, re-combined their elements, changed them into something richer and rarer, gave them forth as products of his art. Are we not doing him some disservice when we try to reverse the process?” “With these words I most cordially agree.—Charles Dickens the Younger.”

The author of this book would submit that the attempt to preserve the memory of these localities in association with their original use by “the Master,” does not “reverse the process”; but, rightly considered, may help the reader to a better comprehension of the genius and method of Dickens. The dictum of the Rev. W. J. Dawson, given a few years since in The Young Woman (referring to a previous edition of this Work), is worth consideration: “The book casts a new light upon Dickens’s methods of work, and shows us how little he left to invention, and how much he owed to exact observation.” And in this connection there may be quoted the opinion of Sir Walter Besant, who published an appreciative article in The Queen, 9th May 1896, anent these selfsame “Rambles,” which thus concludes: “With this information in your hand, you can go down the Strand and view its streets from north to south with increased intelligence and interest. I am not certain whether peopling a street with creations of the imagination is not more useful—it is certainly more interesting—than with the real figures of the stony-hearted past.”

The writer, therefore, still believes that such a Dickensian Directory as is now prepared will be found a valuable practical guide for those who may desire to visit the haunts and homes of these old friends, whose memory we cannot “willingly let die;” and to recall the many interests connected with them by the way.

Though not professing to be infallible, he begs to assure those whom it may concern that his information—gleaned from many sources—has been collected con amore with carefulness and caution; and he ventures to hope that his book may be of service to many Metropolitan visitors, as indicating (previous to the coming time when the New Zealander shall meditate over the ruins of London) some few pleasant “Rambles in Dickens’ Land.”

R. A.

London, September 20, 1899.