Re: Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens (cdickens@RMPLC.CO.UK)
Mon, 6 Jan 1997 14:39:45 -0100
My dear Miss Carrillo,
Is it not usually the case that we find in works of
fiction both real and imaginary places? If you were to
write a novel, might you not set it in New York, shall we
say? And might you not find lodgings for your heroine in
West Thirty-Third street? But might you not put her into
an apartment block in West thirty-third that does not actually
exist, at a number not attained by the buildings of West
Thirty-Third Street? If you put her into a real apartment
block at an existent number, its tenants might have something
to say to you.
Many have been the speculations about my model for Bleak
House. The hinterland of St Albans has been scoured for
buildings with which I might have been familiar. The Bleak House
of the book displays features of a number of houses I have known,
but it is in fact the house I have long dreamt of, the house
in which I should like to find myself living, but which has no
counterpart on earth.
Thavies Inn does really exist. In my day it was cul-de-sac of
tall houses, of the previous century, I surmise. They were
destroyed in one of your twentieth-century wars, but a block
of modern buildings on the site retains the name.
There has never been a London slum quarter known as Tom All
Alone's, but I had in mind, when I was writing "Bleak House," a
cluster of tenements and alleys around York Street, near Clare
Market. They were all demolished at the beginning of your
century, when the road known as Kingsway was cut south, from
High Holborn to Aldwych.
Faithfully yours,
Charles Dickens
======================
Charles Dickens
charles_dickens@rmplc.co.uk
Author