CHAPTER II

IN LANT STREET, WHERE BOB SAWYER HAD HIS LODGINGS, AND ONE OF HIS

HAUNTS "THE SHIP AND SHOVEL"

HE location of the exact house was not

THE difficult. Mr. Dickens is still as well

known and popular with the present residents of the Borough as he was in the days when, in the height of his fame, he immortalised their streets, inns, and homes. You have only to ask the barmaid at the public on the corner, or the man unloading coals, or the solicitor's clerk, or the secretary, or the Great Person himself. Any one of them will point out the very spot and indulge in all manner of reminiscences in which his aunt, or his father, or his partner's uncle played a prominent part.

The driver of the big team, seen in my sketch, was spokesman this morning.

"Where Bob Sawyer lived? Why, right in front of ye. That's the house with the roundtop door and white steps. I been living here for forty years and everybody will tell you that

Bob Sawyer's house was the wery house in which Mr. Dickens lived when a boy. It's a school now, and if you don't believe it all you got to do is to rap at the door and the lady will tell ye same as me. And there ain't been no difference in my time 'cept that about five year ago she put a new coat of white paint on the woodwork round the front door. If I don't miss my guess, there won't be another coat put on for five year more.

There was no disputing facts like these. Nor could I doubt the accuracy of the driver's identification. He was a resident and should have known possibly did know - his neighbours. Had any doubt arisen Mr. Dickens's own statement would have banished it, so dull and expressionless was the vista that stretched before

me.

"There is a repose," he says, "about Lant Street which sheds so gentle a melancholy upon the soul, that if a man wished to place himself beyond the possibility of any inducement to look out of the window, he should by all means select it as a residence."

That Mr. Bob Sawyer and his intimate friend Mr. Ben Allen had ignored these depressing possibilities, is well known to every one. Whatever of melancholy lay stranded on the

outside of their domicile none of it was ever permitted within those hospitable walls, to which personages even as distinguished as Mr. Pickwick and Mr. Tracy Tupman themselves were invited. That their welcome was bound to be cordial was indicated by a little pleasantry indulged in on the part of Mr. Sawyer when he thrust his forefinger between two of Mr. Pickwick's ribs and with native drollery inquired:

"I say, old boy, where do you hang out?' "Mr. Pickwick replied that he was at present suspended at 'The George and Vulture.'

"I wish you would come and see me,' said Bob Sawyer. 'Lant Street, Borough; it's near Guy's, and handy for me, you know. Little distance after you've passed Saint George's Church - turns out of the High Street on the right hand side the way.""

To have refused such an invitation from such a host was out of the question. Mr. Pickwick would not only come, but it would give him the greatest pleasure to come, the occasion being celebrated by a "party" made famous the world over as "Bob Sawyer's party" than which there is nothing more delightful in the whole range of modern fiction.

Great preparations we are told had been

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made for this festivity. Mr. Bob Sawyer had himself purchased the spirits at a wine vault in High Street; the punch was ready-made in a red pan in the bedroom; a little table, covered with a green baize cloth, had been borrowed from the parlour, to play at cards on; and the glasses of the establishment, together with those which had been loaned for the occasion by the public house, were all drawn up on a tray: nothing, in fact, had been omitted which could in any way add to the enjoyment of the evening. And yet, notwithstanding the highly satisfactory nature of all these arrangements, there was no question that a storm was brewing in the domestic atmosphere. This could plainly be seen in the hurried movements of several small puff clouds, one of which was slowly settling over the countenance of Mr. Bob Sawyer as he sat by his fireside awaiting the arrival of his guests. Another, equally ominous, had swept in the direction of that gentleman's landlady, while a third was slowly enveloping Bob's companion and fellow lodger, Mr. Ben Allen, who after gazing intently on the coals, had remarked in a tone of melancholy, after a long silence:

"It'll be a deuced unpleasant thing if she takes it into her head to let out, when those fellows are here, won't it?'