Emma’s london
Emma M. Lion arrived at St. Pancras Station on March 5th, 1883, and declared it a triumph. She had traveled from Bournemouth without incident, which, by her own account, placed it firmly in the category of victories.
This journey follows her footsteps. The neighborhood of St. Crispian’s may exist only in Beth Brower’s exquisite imagination, but Beth has confirmed its location precisely: it sits between Primrose Hill and Regent’s Park, centered on King Henry’s Road. The London Emma inhabits — its museums, its parks, its bookshops, its dressmakers, its bankers, its ballrooms — is entirely real. And entirely walkable.
Over five days, we move through the city Emma loves. We arrive as she arrived. We walk where she walked. We take tea where she took tea. We stand in the Barry Rooms of the National Gallery, which were brand new when Emma first saw them. We make our own journals, as she made hers.
Emma would approve. She had very specific standards.
AT A GLANCE
Hotel
TBA — a boutique property in the Marylebone neighborhood, within walking distance of St. Crispian’s territory.
The V&A Bookbinding Experience
A private half-day bookbinding experience drawing on the stunning Victorian bindings held in the National Art Library. Each traveler will hand-sew, bind, and take home their own journal — made in the tradition of the era Emma writes in, and entirely their own to fill.
What to Read Before You Go
The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Journals 1–8 by Beth Brower. The audiobooks are equally wonderful. Arrive knowing Emma.
Day 1: ARRIVAL
ST. PANCRAS & WORD ON THE WATER
Your journey begins exactly as Emma’s does — at St. Pancras International. Spend a few minutes simply standing inside the station and looking up. The Victorian Gothic architecture is staggering: the soaring arched ironwork, the red brick, the clock. This is where Emma’s story begins.
Afternoon: A five-minute walk from St. Pancras along the Regent’s Canal brings you to Word on the Water — a floating bookshop on a 1920s Dutch barge moored at Granary Square. It is eccentric, beautiful, and entirely impractical in the best possible way. Emma would have had opinions about the shelving system.
Transfer to the hotel to settle in. The afternoon is yours — a walk through Marylebone, a browse, a first cup of tea.
Evening: Dinner at Noble Rot, Lamb’s Conduit Street, Bloomsbury — one of London’s most celebrated wine bars and restaurants. Warm, literary, and steps from the British Museum. A perfect first night.
Day 2: EMMA’S CITY
The British Museum, DR. JOHNSON’S HOUSE & LEADENHALL STREET
Morning: Pierce is here, somewhere in the Roman galleries, photographing things that have no business being as interesting as he makes them. We follow his lead.
The British Museum is a short walk from the hotel. We begin in the Romano-British collection — Pierce’s territory — and spend the morning moving through the ancient world Emma’s circle inhabits intellectually. The great domed Reading Room is worth time on its own: one of the finest rooms in the world, built precisely for the kind of serious, slightly obsessive reading Emma practices.
Afternoon: From the British Museum, we walk south toward Fleet Street. Dr. Johnson’s House at 17 Gough Square is tucked behind Fleet Street, easy to miss and entirely worth finding.
Samuel Johnson compiled his Dictionary of the English Language in this house between 1748 and 1755. Emma acquires both volumes across the course of her journals — the first purchased with the entire K section missing, the second miraculously gifted. The dictionary is, in its way, a character in the series. Upstairs, in the garret where six copyists worked alongside Johnson, you can sit with the dictionary itself and look up words. We recommend doing exactly that.
Late Afternoon: A short walk east brings us to Leadenhall Street in the heart of the City. One of Emma’s friends works at the telephone exchange here — the London telephone exchange was installed at 101 Leadenhall Street in 1879, making it barely four years old when Emma arrived in London. The telephone was the defining technology of her moment, thrilling and slightly alarming in equal measure.
Leadenhall Market itself — designed by Sir Horace Jones and completed in 1881, just two years before Emma arrives — is one of the most beautiful covered markets in the world. Its wrought-iron and glass roof, its cobblestones, and its Victorian shopfronts are entirely intact. It was gleaming and new when Emma’s friend walked past it every morning.
Evening: Dinner at Fitz’s Brasserie, Kimpton Fitzroy London, Russell Square — a grand Victorian hotel dining room with ornate plasterwork and high ceilings. The room is worth the visit on its own.
Day 3: MAKING EMMA’S JOURNAL
the victoria & albert museum
Morning: The Victoria and Albert Museum opened in 1852 — thirty years before Emma arrives in London. By 1883 it was already part of the cultural furniture of the city, a place where the decorative arts and craft were taken seriously.
We begin in the fashion galleries, where the 1880s collection is extraordinarily rich. The silhouette of Emma’s era is precise and unmistakable — the slender profile, the elaborate satin and lace, the bustle. Standing in front of an 1883 gown and imagining Emma at her modiste on Bond Street, choosing fabric, being fitted, is one of the quiet pleasures of this morning.
We continue through the Victorian galleries — the decorative arts, the typography, the extraordinary objects of Emma’s world — before arriving at the National Art Library, which holds one of the great collections of bookbinding in the world.
Afternoon: Working with a specialist bookbinder drawing directly from the National Art Library’s Victorian collection, each traveler will spend the afternoon creating their own hand-bound journal.
The process: folding and sewing pages, adding endpapers, making a hard cover, casing in to create the finished book. You will also make your own decorative paste paper for the cover. You leave with a journal in the Victorian tradition, entirely your own — ready, like Emma’s, to be filled with whatever it is you are not entirely willing to share.
Evening: Dinner at The Coral Room, The Bloomsbury Hotel — one of the most beautifully designed dining rooms in central London. The Dalloway Terrace, weather permitting, is lovely.
Day 4: emma’s social world
bond street, mayfair, belgravia, and the national gallery
This is the day we move through Emma’s social London — the dressmaker, the banker, the ballroom, the gallery. It traces the exact geography of her life above St. Crispian’s, the world she moves through when occasion demands it.
Morning: We begin on Bond Street — in 1883 the epicenter of fashionable London shopping, lined with dressmakers, milliners, glove makers, and jewelers. Emma visits her modiste here. The street is still elegant and expensive today, lined with exactly the kind of establishments Emma would have known.
A walk through the streets just off Bond Street — Brook Street, Grosvenor Square, the quiet Mayfair mews — gives you the world of Emma’s wealthy Aunt Eugenia and the fictional Spencer Court where she lives. These streets, more than anywhere else in London, feel like the backdrop to a Victorian novel.
We stop at Hatchards on Piccadilly — London’s oldest bookshop, founded in 1797. By the time Emma arrives in London in 1883, Hatchards is already 86 years old. She would have known it. Five floors of beautifully arranged books, royal warrants on the wall, the particular atmosphere of a shop that has been selling serious books to serious readers for over two centuries.
Mid-Morning: Emma’s banker, Mr. Penury, and his wife live in Mayfair, which tells you immediately what kind of banker he is. Private, discreet, comfortably established. Emma visits at home and at his office, somewhere in the banking streets toward St. James’s. We walk through both worlds: the residential grandeur of Mayfair and the quieter, more purposeful streets where the money is actually managed.
Afternoon: Emma and her circle attend a ball in Belgravia. We walk through the neighborhood today — Belgrave Square, Eaton Square, Chester Square — the grandest residential streets in London, the territory of the aristocracy and the very wealthy. The white stucco terraces are entirely unchanged from 1883. Stand in Belgrave Square on a quiet afternoon, and it is entirely possible to imagine arriving by carriage for the evening.
Late Afternoon: The Barry Rooms at the National Gallery opened in 1876, seven years before Emma arrived in London. They were the talk of the city: palatial, gilded, designed to emulate the great museums of Italy and Germany. Emma would have come here. The grand domed room with its dark red wall-cloth, gilded lunettes, and marble columns is now fully restored to Barry’s original design. It is extraordinary.
The National Gallery sits on Trafalgar Square, a short walk from Belgravia through St. James’s Park. In Journal 2, Emma and Pierce walk to the Houses of Parliament, also in this part of the city. The afternoon moves through Westminster as they moved through it.
Evening: Emma and Arabella take tea at The Langham. The Langham opened in 1865, already a London institution by the time Emma and Arabella sit down together. We take ours in the same hotel — the same room, the same occasion, the same unhurried pleasure of two friends with somewhere to be and no intention of being there on time.
Day 5: walking emma’s world
king henry’s road, primrose hill & regent’s park
This is the day we walk. Emma walks constantly — through her neighborhood, up to Primrose Hill, through Regent’s Park. Walking is how she thinks and observes. Today we do the same.
Morning: We begin on King Henry’s Road — a real Victorian street that sits at the heart of St. Crispian’s territory. Beth Brower has confirmed that St. Crispian’s sits between Primrose Hill and Regent’s Park, and this quiet residential street is its center. The white stucco Victorian terraces, the wide pavements, the particular hush of a neighborhood that knows its own worth. This is where Emma lives.
Mid-Morning: From King Henry’s Road, we climb to the top of Primrose Hill. The view from the summit is extraordinary — the full London skyline spread out below. Stand here and look south toward Regent’s Park. Everything between these two green spaces is St. Crispian’s. This is Emma’s view.
Look down at your feet. The York stone edging carries a William Blake inscription — his own words: ‘I have conversed with the spiritual sun. I saw him on Primrose Hill.’ Blake believed he saw visions of archangels from this spot. Writers, poets, visionaries. They all came here. So did Emma.
Late Morning: We descend through Regent’s Park, following the path south through the gardens and along the canal. The park in 1883 would have looked much as it does today — the boating lake, the avenue gardens, the ordered green space that the Victorians did so well.
From the park, we move through Chalk Farm to Walden Books on Chalk Farm Road — a secondhand bookshop open since 1979, named after Thoreau, with around 10,000 books ranging from 50p to £50, specializing in literature and the visual arts. Eccentric, atmospheric, and exactly the kind of place where Emma might have found the K-less first volume of Johnson’s dictionary.
Afternoon: The last afternoon belongs to you. A final walk, a return to a favorite spot, a long lunch at the hotel before departures begin. If you are leaving by train, you depart from St. Pancras — exactly as Emma arrived.