The Home of the Steerforths Many of the beautiful old-world houses in Highgate lay claim to being the home of the Stee forths, and even those who know by heart every line written about the Steerforths have many wavering doubts as to which house Dickens really meant. Probably he took different features from different houses and welded them together. But we do know the house—or one of them—where the great novelist visited, and where a small, old-fashioned room, with quaint windows and wonderful views stretching far and wide, is shown as the very place where part of "David Copperfield" was written. This house is very like the "genteel old-fashioned, very quiet orderly house," inhabited by Mrs. Steerforth, the brilliant James, and the question-asking Rosa Dartle. It has so many of the qualifications, "the dull paved court with its covered way," "none of the best rooms abutted on the road," and "there was one round staircase window at odds with all the rest." Also, it has a Terrace, very like that where Mrs. Steer-forth sat, with Rosa, dark, brooding, and resentful, leaning over her chair. The beautiful view that David remarked on his first visit—saw all London lying in the distance like a great vapour, with here and there some twinkling lights'—-applies to so many old Highgate houses that the soft love-lines of grey-green haze and blue distance and the "Lights 0" London" confer no special distinction.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.