“... it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness”
Have you ever walked such a historically significant street or place that appears in the present day so… ordinary? That is how I felt walking along Fleet Street, one of those old London roads where the city seems to be torn into two: the old brick buildings where printing and publishing thrived and where the oldest tea company in the UK, Twinings, still stands, and the modern glass structures that envelope the relatively newly-introduced financial sector. As I was working my way through Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, I was also searching for the physical remnants of Dickens’ novel.
The Tale is as much about London as it is about Paris (hence the name). But while Paris in the novel is fiery and on the brink, Dickens’s London is shadowy and restrained — a place of quiet power and tightly held traditions. And that power, for Dickens, is often tied to institutions: law, finance, empire. So I went looking for one of them — Tellson’s Bank, the fictional financial institution that serves as a kind of anchor for the English chapters of the novel.
“It was an old-fashioned place, moreover, in the moral attribute that the partners of Tellson’s Bank were proud of its smallness, proud of its darkness, proud of its ugliness, proud of its incommodiousness”
Tellson’s is described as very small, very dark, very ugly, very uncomfortable. It’s old-fashioned to a fault, but on purpose — the kind of place that prides itself on never having changed anything, even if that means working in the dark or hiring employees who are half-dead. However, Tellson’s isn’t a one-dimensional location; it is a symbol of English stubbornness, of power preserved through dust and tradition.
It’s fictional, but based on Child & Co., one of London’s oldest private banks, which used to sit at 1 Fleet Street, right where I was standing. The original building has since been refurbished, but still holds a similar structure to the old bank. Standing on that spot, I imagined Mr. Lorry emerging from the shadows of a gloomy night with a letter tucked inside his coat, bound for Dover, for danger, for revolution.
As you can see, not much has changed with Lincoln’s Inn Court (other than the cars)
Fleet Street today is much different. It’s modern, swarming with lawyers and financiers. But the bones are still there if you know what you’re looking for. But what was really fascinating was stepping into Lincoln’s Inn Court just a block away from Fleet Street, where time seemed to stand still, where the buildings look the same as they did in the 18th century, where the bustling of modern life is replaced with the songs of birds flying through its field.
Walking through Lincoln’s Inn Court, it was interesting to see that the directories posted at the front of each building, describing the content of each edifice, were handcrafted. It was printed or pasted in glass like today’s, but was instead painted by the hand of a real person. To me, something else was written. That no matter the passage of time, some traditions are worth keeping, for they add a richness and texture that shouldn’t disappear.
Just a few steps away from Tellson’s should have been Temple Bar. In Dickens’s novel, this is where Tellson’s kept its archives — “in a horrible little back room.” The symbolism is pretty clear: England’s secrets, stored behind gates, cataloged but inaccessible. Temple Bar marked the boundary between the City of London and Westminster — between finance and government, between commerce and rule.
The arch itself became a nuisance in such a busy street, and was dismantled. Years later, it miraculously reappeared after it was purchased by Valerie Susan and Sir Henry Meux, the fabulously wealthy heir to the Meux Brewery, which was based near Tottenham Court Road, who resurrected the building in their estate: Theobald’s House (image on left). It was then returned to the city of London and placed next to St. Paul’s Church, where I ended my stroll (image on right).
Earlier that day I ate at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, a 17th-century pub tucked away on Wine Office Court, just off Fleet Street. The walls are low, the air thick with centuries of smoke and conversation. It’s the kind of place that feels like it still talks of memories of years ago, giving you hints of it through the historic images and famous texts written by its numerous visitors, which included Dickens and Winston Churchill, to name a few.
I sat in the booth where Dickens supposedly liked to sit. There’s a plaque, of course, because in England they love a good plaque. But that small brass sign had nothing on that feeling — that feeling of sitting where Dickens might have scribbled in the margins of his notes, watching the faces around him and storing them for later.
“They were even boastful of the inconvenience of Tellson’s, as if it were the only place left in the world where it was a virtue to be uncomfortable.”
In that seat, with fish and chips in front of me and A Tale of Two Cities still fresh in my mind, I could clearly see where Dickens got his inspiration from. The grimy nature of the Chesire Cheese was something he replicated in many of his novel’s locations, and also spoke to a real-life example of what we said about Tellson’s Bank. The short ceilings, dim lighting, thick air, and distinct smells of the antiquated restaurant were something that the English cherished. They prided themselves in the idea that modernizing or improving anything traditional is a moral weakness.
As I made my way out of Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese and back into the daylight, I realized how profoundly Dickens was writing about the tension between tradition and transformation — not just in France, where revolution burned in the streets, but in England too, where the revolution was quieter, slower, more hidden under powdered wigs and cobbled lanes. It struck me that A Tale of Two Cities is not only a political novel — it’s a novel about inertia. About a country that clings to its institutions not because they work, but because they’re old. Because they’re familiar.
And yet, Dickens doesn’t totally dismiss this tradition. He sat in those same pubs, he walked those same streets. He was critical, yes, but also affectionate. He knew that the grime and discomfort were part of what gave London its soul. That contradiction — the beauty in the ugliness — is at the heart of the English chapters of the novel.
By tracing Dickens’s steps through the city, I wasn’t just visiting the settings of a story. I was witnessing how some novels are inseparable from place — how a city can shape a writer, and in turn how a writer can shape how we see a city. Standing on Fleet Street, ducking into hidden courts and aging pubs, watching the light fall on old stone, I wasn’t just reading A Tale of Two Cities — I was walking in it. And I wasn’t just traveling through the streets of London — I was experiencing Dickens’ London recalled to life.