Buckingham Street is the London home and working base of David Copperfield, Betsey Trotwood, and Mr. Dick. Its rooms hold more than domestic routine: they become a place where Mr. Dick earns money through useful work, David trains for a profession, and Betsey’s private anxieties register in small, revealing gestures.

A Shared Domestic Base

Buckingham Street provides the setting for the household’s life together. The rooms are lived-in and practical: a table by the window can be set out for legal copying, while the bedrooms also form the length of Betsey’s measured pacing when she is deeply disturbed. The street’s significance lies less in description of its wider surroundings than in the varied activities concentrated inside this shared home.

One evening, after troubling domestic events, Betsey walks back and forth for more than two hours. Her route extends through the bedrooms, wall to wall, at an unchanging pace; David and Mr. Dick sit quietly by the fire. Later, as David writes to two older women, Betsey watches him thoughtfully. Her glass is left on the chimney-piece, and the night mixture she usually takes remains untouched. The rooms make her distress perceptible through what she does not do as much as through her restless movement.

Work and Useful Independence

The household also turns Buckingham Street into a place of practical opportunity. David and Thomas Traddles devise a way for Mr. Dick to earn money by copying a legal document concerning a right of way. They place the work on one table by the window and Mr. Dick’s unfinished Memorial on another, instructing him to copy the document in front of him and turn to the Memorial when he feels drawn to write about King Charles the First.

At first Mr. Dick divides his attention between the two tasks, but he settles into the copying and completes the work. By the following Saturday night he has earned ten shillings and ninepence. He changes the money into sixpences and arranges them on a waiter in the shape of a heart for Betsey. Buckingham Street is thus associated with paid work and pride in having contributed, while the heart-shaped offering gives that achievement a personal, affectionate meaning.

A Place of Training and Mutual Support

The same rooms become a makeshift parliamentary school for David. When his early attempts at shorthand prove too difficult, Traddles proposes dictating speeches at a pace suited to him. Night after night, after David returns from the Doctor’s, the household holds a private Parliament in Buckingham Street: Traddles delivers speeches from parliamentary orations, while Betsey and Mr. Dick take the parts of Government or Opposition and David struggles to record the words in his notebook.

The practice makes professional preparation a shared domestic undertaking. Traddles supplies instruction, David works at the skill, and Betsey and Mr. Dick help sustain the exercise through their roles in the mock debates. In this way, Buckingham Street joins intimate household life to David’s effort to establish himself through work, while its rooms also give Mr. Dick a setting in which useful employment can bring confidence and joy.