The Mirrors
Dickens is known to have loved mirrors. He had several fitted in his last drawing room at Gad's Hill place, where they remain to this day, and no fewer than five in the writing room of his Swiss-chalet summerhouse on the grounds. At Doughty Street, he would probably have had a conventional early Victorian chimney-breast mirror in the drawing room, much like the one you see, a fairly ordinary example of 1830s manufacture. The other, hanging on the south wall, is one such as he might have bought second-hand in the 1830's for a modest price. It is a Chippendale mirror and valued quite differently today.