How this young Newton (for such I
judge him to be) came by his information, I don't know; he was a quarter
of a century too young to know anything about it of himself. I pointed
to the window of the room where Little Dorrit was born, and where her
father lived so long, and asked him what was the name of the lodger who
tenanted that apartment at present? He said, 'Tom Pythick.' I asked him
who was Tom Pythick? and he said, 'Joe Pythick's uncle.'
A little further on, I found the older and smaller wall, which used
to enclose the pent-up inner prison where nobody was put, except for
ceremony. But, whosoever goes into Marshalsea Place, turning out of
Angel Court, leading to Bermondsey, will find his feet on the very
paving-stones of the extinct Marshalsea jail; will see its narrow yard
to the right and to the left, very little altered if at all, except that
the walls were lowered when the place got free; will look upon rooms
in which the debtors lived; and will stand among the crowding ghosts of
many miserable years.
In the Preface to Bleak House I remarked that I had never had so many
readers. In the Preface to its next successor, Little Dorrit, I have
still to repeat the same words. Deeply sensible of the affection and
confidence that have grown up between us, I add to this Preface, as I
added to that, May we meet again!
London May 1857