Devonshire Terrace from a drawing by illustrator Daniel Maclise, R. A. — Book 6, chap. vi. Additional illustration employed by Fred Barnard for his 1879 edition of John Forster's Life of Charles Dickens, the twenty-second volume in The Household Edition (1879). Composite woodblock engraving by the Dalziels, 9.3 by 13.9 cm (4 ¼ by 5 ½ inches), page 274; 1872, Vol. II, 69, framed. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Passage Illustrated: Farewell to the Family Residence of December 1839 through November 1851
Shortly after the Sanitary meeting came the first Guild performances; and then Dickens left Devonshire-terrace, never to return to it. What occupied him in the interval before he took possession of his new abode, has before been told; but two letters were overlooked in describing his progress in the labour of the previous year, and brief extracts from them will naturally lead me to the subject of my next chapter. "I have been" (15th of September) "tremendously at work these two days; eight hours at a stretch yesterday, and six hours and a half to-day, with the Ham and Steerforth chapter, which has completely knocked me over — utterly defeated me!" "I am" (21st of October) "within three pages of the shore; and am strangely divided, as usual in such cases, between sorrow and joy. Oh, my dear Forster, if I were to say half of what Copperfield makes me feel to-night, how strangely, even to you, I should be turned inside out! I seem to be sending some part of myself into the Shadowy World."
The end of the second volume. [Book VI. — At The Summit. 1847-1852." Chapter VI, "Last Years in Devonshire Terrace, 1848-1851," 273]
Commentary
Now, with a family of three children, with the need for live-in servants, with occasional guests, and with an increased sense of social expansiveness, he began to look in the autumn of 1839 for a new house. By mid-November, he was "in the agonies of house-letting, house-taking, title proving and disproving, premium paying, fixture valuing, and other ills too numerous to mention." Disposing of the remaining time on the Doughty Street lease, he bought, at a cost of 800 and an annual rent of 160, the eleven years remaining on the lease of 1 Devonshire Terrace, York Gate, a handsome, sizable house near Regent's Park. [Kaplan, 106]
On Devonshire Terrace, Dickens and his family lived at No. 1, just off Marleybone Road, near Regent's Park. Here he wrote the following seven novels: Nicholas Nickleby (1838-39), The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-41), Barnaby Rudge (1841), Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-44), Nicholas Nickleby (1839), Dombey and Son (1846-48), and David Copperfield (1849-50). His lease expired, Dickens left Devonshire Terrace for Tavistock House, Bloomsbury, which would become his London residence for a decade, from November 1851 through September 1860.
For Dickens the theatrical high point of his London years occurred at the Duke of Devonshire's Piccadilly townhouse. Here, Dickens's amateur company's presented Sir Edward G. D. Bulwer-Lytton's farce Not so Bad as We Seem as a benefit performance for the Guild of Literature and Art before the Queen and Prince Albert on 16 May 1851. The Duke's London residence, Devonshire House, was far more opulent and capacious than Dickens's far more modest lease at Devonshire Terrace.
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham [You may use the image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image, and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
Kaplan, Fred. Dickens: A Biography. New York: William Morrow, 1988.
Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Checkmark Books and Facts On File, 1999.
Forster, John. The Life of Charles Dickens. The "Charles Dickens Edition." 2 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, [1872].
Forster, John. The Life of Charles Dickens. Book VI. — At The Summit. 1847-1852." Chapter VI, "Last Years in Devonshire Terrace, 1848-1851." The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1879. Vol. XXII, pp. 223-281.
Scenes and characters from the works of Charles Dickens; being eight hundred and sixty-six drawings, by Fred Barnard, Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz); J. Mahoney; Charles Green; A. B. Frost; Gordon Thomson; J. McL. Ralston; H. French; E. G. Dalziel; F. A. Fraser, and Sir Luke Fildes; printed from the original woodblocks engraved for "The Household Edition." London: Chapman and Hall, 1908.
Created 27 April 2004
Last updated 5 January 2025