Staple Inn

This watercolour depicts the exterior of Staple Inn, Holborn. In Edwin Drood Chapter 11 Dickens wrote:

'Behind the most ancient part of Holborn, where certain gabled houses some centuries of age still stand looking out on the public way...is a little nook comprised of two irregular quadrants, called Staple Inn. It is one of those nooks, the turning into which out of the clashing street, imparts to the relieved pedestrian the sensation of having put cotton in his ears and velvet soles on his boots. It is one of those nooks where few smoky sparrows in smoky trees, as though they called to one other, "Let us play at country", and where a few feet of garden mould and a few yards of gravel enable them to do that refreshing violence to their tiny understandings.'

'Moreover it is one of those nooks which are legal nooks: and it contains a little Hall, with a little lantern in its roof.'

Here were the chambers of Mr. Grewgious in Edwin Drood.

Very little is known about James Lawson Stewart who exhibited watercolours in various London galleries between 1883-89. He died in c. 1918 and towards the end of life was employed to copy prints of London; the accuracy of some of the locations should therefore be questioned.

The Museum was gifted a large selection of watercolours featuring locations which appeared in Dickens's works in 1934 and a set of cigarette cards was issued by R and J Hill Ltd in 1926 and 1934 entitled Historic Places from Dickens Classics which featured watercolours by Stewart.