London. Michaelmas term lately begun, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as in a Flanders field, and almost as little hope, at least for some. It is the greatest city in the world – quite possibly the greatest ever known – but on this dark early winter day in 1850 you might be forgiven for thinking you’ve been transported, on a sudden, to a circle of hell even the devil has given up for lost. If a single man can ever be said to stand for a city, then it is this city, in this year, and the name of that man is Charles Dickens. But if that name conjures up colour and carol singers and jolly old gentlemen, then think again. These streets are no cause for comedy, and know no tones but grim and grey. More than two million souls, and as many as a third of them sunk in a permanent and repellent destitution that will turn your stomach long before it touches your heart. Night and day London moves and sweats and bawls, as riddled with life as a corpse with maggots.
From where we stand, the air is so deadened with a greasy yellow fog that you can barely see three paces ahead, and risk stumbling in the street over milk-cans, broken bottles, and what look at first like rat-ridden heaps of rags, until they stare back at you with gin-hollowed eyes, and hold out their blackened hands for hard cash. The shops are lit two hours before their time, but the gas gutters, and the windows are sallow and unappealing, the merchandise filmed with the same sticky brindling of soot that will coat your clothes and line your lungs by the time we’re done.
But enough. This is not what you came here for. Muffle your face, if you can, against the stink of human and animal filth, and try not to look too closely at what it is that’s caking your boots, and sucking at your tread. And keep your pocketbook close as we go – this part of town is as silent with thieves as it is strident with drunks. We have a way to go yet and the day is darkening. We must find him soon, or risk losing him altogether.