“In the lower windows, which were decorated with curtains of a saffron hue, dangled two or three printed cards, bearing reference to Devonshire cyder and Dantzic spruce, while a large black board, announcing in white letters to an enlightened public, that there were 500,000 barrels of double stout in the cellars of the establishment, left the mind in a state of not unpleasing doubt and uncertainty as to the precise direction in the bowels of the earth, in which this mighty cavern might be supposed to extend.”
_Dick Swiveller_ would doubtless occasionally patronise this establishment. He lodged hereabouts “in the neighbourhood of Drury Lane;” but it is difficult to indicate any particular house which Dickens may have selected for his accommodation.
Stretching eastward from this point is _Portugal Street_, famed in the same book as containing the Old Public House patronised by Mr. Tony Weller and his _confrères_ of the coach-driving persuasion. This house—opposite the Insolvent Debtors’ Court—existed until a few years since, by name, “The Horse and Groom.” It and many more besides, have now given place to a range of new offices and buildings in Elizabethan style, on the south side of the street (forming the north boundary of New Court), and the Insolvent Court has been recently appropriated to the uses of the Bankruptcy Court. It will be remembered that it was here _Mr. Samuel Weller_ got into difficulties, and was hence consigned to the Fleet Prison at the instance of his father; the professional services of the suave _Mr. Solomon Pell_ being retained on that occasion. Here also a select committee of friends assembled to assist at an oyster lunch and the proving of Mrs. Weller’s will, when Mr. Pell again conducted the business to the satisfaction of all concerned.—See “Pickwick,” chapters 43 and 55.
Returning through Portsmouth Street, we come into _Lincoln’s Inn Fields_; and, keeping on its western side—passing Sardinia Street, with its old archway, on the left—we may note Mr. John Forster’s House, No. 58. At this house resided the friend and biographer of Dickens, and here our author was, of course, a frequent visitor. On December the 2nd, 1844, Charles Dickens here first read his new Christmas book, “The Chimes,” to a select and critical audience, including Messrs. Forster, Maclise, Douglas Jerrold, Carlyle, Laman Blanchard, Fox, Stanfield, Harness, and Dyce. The house is itself described in the pages of “Bleak House” (chapter 10) as the