atorium; the Carlton the Ultratorium; and so on. We get on sure ground when we learn that Mr. Timmins once went to school in Kensington Square-that delightful old-world quadrate which, even to-day, the presence of a hideously tall block of flats and the proximity of business premises, can hardly spoil, certainly cannot make us forget the one time residence, in it, of beautiful Duchess of Mazarin and her preux chevalier, St. Evrémond, and Lady Esmond and hers. Yes, here we are in a terra cognita, but where (and it is the last question I will put) was that "magnificent shop at the corner of Parliament Place and Alycompayne Square," in whose windows were the most wonderful and delicious cakes and confections, and whither Timmins and his Rosa hied them to procure delicacies for their great repast? Could it have been Gunter's; and is Alycompayne but another name for Berkeley? "Parliament Place" gives no clue. I must leave the reader to decide for himself.

"The Bedford Row Conspiracy" is more promising, for have we not topography in the very title? We greet John Perkins, barrister of the Middle Temple, discussing a future residence with his affianced Lucy (daughter of the late Captain Gorgon, and Marianne Biggs, his wife). No. 17 Paradise Row is proposed by the infatuated young man. "I have seen a sweet place at Chelsea," he says, gardengreenhouse-fifty pounds a year-omnibus to town within a mile." Alas! where is Paradise Row now? With last year's snows; it lives only in the pages of Mr. Reginald Blunt's fascinating volume. Royal Hospital Road, as it is called, runs past the spot where the Carolean houses of the Row once, and so

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lately, stood. Paradise Walk at right angles, leading to the Embankment, alone perpetuates the name.

It was finally settled that Perkins and his young wife should live in a part of the Bedford Row house which, beyond what he could make at the bar, constituted his only fortune. To-day Bedford Row is synonymous with lawyers' offices. In earlier days so drastic a critic as Ralph could speak of it as "one of the most noble streets that London has to boast of," and even Dodsley, so late as 1761, describes it as “a very handsome, straight, and well built street, inhabited by persons of distinction." Addington, the Prime Minister, was born, and Abernethy lived, here; so did Warburton with whom Ralph Allen of Bath was wont to stay. In Thackeray's time, however, it had ceased to be inhabitated by persons of distinction, although it was not yet as entirely given over to the law as it is to-day. It was formed about 1780, in which days it looked north, over open fields away to Highgate's breezy heights. Lucy's aunt (who once kept a ladies' school) was now living in retirement in Caroline Place, Mecklenburgh Square, which enters the Square at its south-west corner; while Doughty Street, at its south-east extremity, was considered then too expensive for the young couple; although Sidney Smith, who was never very affluent, managed to dwell there "in the midst of a colony of lawyers."* Had the Perkins settled here, they would probably have had as a neighbour Dickens himself, who was living at No. 48 from 1837 to 1839, and here finished "Pickwick" and wrote the whole of "Nickleby." That awful Lady Gorgon * Hayward.

who bulks so largely in this veracious history, of course, lived in Baker Street; equally of course she came upon the lovers at the Zoological Gardens in the Regent's Park (then, by the bye, in the nature of a novelty, for they had only been opened in 1828) and carried off her niece to her abode—shocked to find her alone with her fiancé. How ancient it seems, doesn't it? However, all ended well, and although Lady Gorgon positively wished the nuptials (as she probably called the wedding) to take place from Baker Street, John and Lucy knew who were their real friends, and determined that the wedding should be at their other aunt's, in Caroline Place, Mecklenburgh Square.

"The Bedford Row Conspiracy 99 is one of Thackeray's most successful and amusing short stories, and I, here, merely mention those particular topographical points with which I am alone concerned. One hopes that even a reference, bare as this is, will draw to the tale the attention of those who do not already know it. Thackeray took the plot from one of Charles de Bernard's stories, but the inimitable touches are his own.

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FITZBOODLE PAPERS

ALTHOUGH one might have expected no small amount of information about London, from that thorough man-about town, George FitzBoodle, there is really very little, either in his "Confessions " or "Professions." His opening letter to Oliver Yorke, Esquire,

is dated May 20, 1842, from the Omnium Club, which I always like to think is the Union, started in 1822, and much affected by what James Smith, one of its members, termed " gentlemen at large." But there is not much else that can be regarded as even distantly topographical. Great Russell Street and Baker Street are mentioned, so are Pall Mall and Swallow Street, but we know already enough about them not to investigate further. There is, however, one passage in the "Professions" which interests us: it is where Thackeray suggests the profession of a dinner master or gastronomic agent, and gives a suggestive epitome of his daily rounds, thus:

"From 2 to 3 we will be in Russell Square and the neighbourhood; 3 to 32, Harley Street, Portland Place, Cavendish Square, and the environs; 3 to 41, Portman Square, Gloucester Place, Baker Street; 4 to 5, the new district about Hyde Park Terrace; 5 to 5, St. John's Wood and the Regent's Park. He will be in Grosvenor Square by 6, and in Belgrave Square, Pimlico, and its vicinity by 7." Now the majority of these places, if not exactly new at this period, and some of them were that, were about then becoming fashionable as residential centres. If we look through Shepherd's "London Improvements," a book published in the forties of the last century, we shall realise very well the London that had sprung up during the period that Thackeray was engaged in writing his earlier short stories and sketches. It is a London of which, of course, the bulk still survives, and it is therefore the easier to picture his characters in relation to their environment-we can see Fitz Boodle in Belgravia, or in Gloucester Place, so to

speak, more clearly than we can Lady Esmond in Kensington Square or even Becky Sharp in Curzon Street. For in spite of imaginative power, we cannot deny that Curzon Street is not quite as it was when the First Gentleman in Europe ruled the land, or Kensington Square unaltered since the Augustan

era.

The gastronomic agent's address was Carlton Gardens. At that time this was part of a new and splendid building developement which had arisen on the site of Carlton House. The Duke of York's monument, flanked on each side by Carlton House Terrace, marks the centre of the famous palace which was demolished in 1826. We are told that he takes a set of chambers there, which, if we are to regard the passage literally, indicates that in their first youth these fine houses were divided for such uses, and it is interesting as shewing an inversion of the usual procedure which consists in great houses becoming in their decline the home of a number of occupants on the present flat system.

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MEN'S WIVES

If the Fitz-Boodle papers were not very prolific in topographical detail, we have no need to complain of "Men's Wives" as equally lacking in this particular kind of interest. For the fact is that we are carried from Smithfield to Mayfair, and from Sadler's Wells to Brompton, in the course of those memoirs which treat of the matrimonial experiences of Mr. and Mrs.