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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42908 ***
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 42908-h.htm or 42908-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42908/42908-h/42908-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42908/42908-h.zip)
+
+
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive. See
+      https://archive.org/details/dickensianinnsta00matziala
+
+
+
+
+
+DICKENSIAN INNS AND TAVERNS
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
+
+THE INNS AND TAVERNS OF PICKWICK
+
+      With thirty-one illustrations.
+  Large Crown 8vo.      Second Edition.
+                10/6 net.
+
+"The Inns and Taverns of Pickwick" has proved one of the most successful
+books of the season. The reviewers have been unanimous in its praise, and
+in speaking of its value and qualities have used such adjectives as
+famous, friendly, entertaining, delightful, well-informed, irresistible,
+valuable, fascinating, jolly, glowing, jovial, great, favourite, charming,
+congenial, and agreed that it is the "final authority and worthy of its
+mighty subject."
+
+LONDON: CECIL PALMER
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+[Illustration: JOHN BROWDIE AND FANNY SQUEERS ARRIVE AT THE SARACEN'S HEAD
+
+_Drawn by T. Onwhyn_]
+
+
+
+DICKENSIAN INNS & TAVERNS
+
+by
+
+B. W. MATZ
+
+Editor of "The Dickensian"
+
+Author of "The Inns and Taverns of Pickwick" etc., etc.
+
+With Thirty-Nine Illustrations by T. Onwhyn, Charles G. Harper,
+L. Walker, F. G. Kitton, G. M. Brimelow and from Photographs
+and Old Engravings
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London
+Cecil Palmer
+Oakley House, Bloomsbury Street, W.C. I
+
+First Edition
+
+1922 Copyright
+
+Printed in Great Britain by Burleigh Ltd. Bristol
+
+
+
+
+TO RIDGWELL CULLUM
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  _Chapter_                                                         _Page_
+
+       PREFACE                                                          13
+
+     I DICKENS AND INNS                                                 15
+
+    II OLIVER TWIST                                                     22
+
+   III NICHOLAS NICKLEBY: THE SARACEN'S HEAD                            32
+
+    IV NICHOLAS NICKLEBY (_continued_)                                  49
+
+     V BARNABY RUDGE: THE MAYPOLE                                       72
+
+    VI BARNABY RUDGE (_continued_) AND THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP           89
+
+   VII MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT                                               105
+
+  VIII DOMBEY AND SON                                                  132
+
+    IX DAVID COPPERFIELD                                               144
+
+     X BLEAK HOUSE, LITTLE DORRIT, HARD TIMES                          169
+
+    XI A TALE OF TWO CITIES AND GREAT EXPECTATIONS                     178
+
+   XII OUR MUTUAL FRIEND                                               191
+
+  XIII EDWIN DROOD, AND THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES          217
+
+   XIV SKETCHES BY BOZ, AND THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER                 239
+
+    XV CHRISTMAS STORIES AND MINOR WRITINGS                            258
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  John Browdie and Fanny Squeers arrive at the Saracen's Head.
+  Drawn by T. Onwhyn                                        _Frontispiece_
+
+  The Red Lion, Barnet. Photo by T. W. Tyrell                   _Page_  24
+
+  The Coach and Horses, Isleworth. Drawn by C. G. Harper          "     26
+
+  The Eight Bells, Hatfield. Drawn by F. G. Kitton                "     29
+
+  The Sign of the Saracen's Head                                  "     35
+
+  The Saracen's Head, Snow Hill. From an old print                "     41
+
+  The Peacock, Islington. From an old engraving                   "     50
+
+  The George Inn, Greta Bridge. Drawn by C. G. Harper             "     57
+
+  The King's Head, Barnard Castle. Photo by T. W. Tyrrell         "     60
+
+  The Bottom Inn, near Petersfield. Drawn by C. G. Harper         "     65
+
+  The King's Head, Chigwell. Drawn by L. Walker                   "     75
+
+  The Chester Room, King's Head. Drawn by L. Walker               "     82
+
+  The Old Boot Inn, 1780. From an old engraving                   "     91
+
+  The Red Lion, Bevis Marks. Drawn by G. M. Brimelow              "     99
+
+  The George, Amesbury. Drawn by C. G. Harper                     "    111
+
+  The George Inn, Salisbury. Photo by T. W. Tyrrell               "    114
+
+  The Black Bull, Holborn. Drawn by L. Walker                     "    121
+
+  The Sign of the Black Bull. Drawn by L. Walker                  "    129
+
+  The Bedford Hotel, Brighton. From an old engraving              "    134
+
+  The Royal Hotel, Leamington. From a lithograph                  "    134
+
+  The Plough Inn, Blunderstone. Photo by T. W. Tyrrell            "    146
+
+  The Buck Inn, Yarmouth. Photo by T. W. Tyrrell                  "    146
+
+  The Duke's Head, Yarmouth. Photo by T. W. Tyrrell               "    146
+
+  The Little Inn, Canterbury. Drawn by F. G. Kitton               "    157
+
+  Jack Straw's Castle. Drawn by L. Walker                         "    163
+
+  The London Coffee House. From an old engraving                  "    172
+
+  The Old Cheshire Cheese. From a photo                           "    180
+
+  The Ship and Lobster, Gravesend. Drawn by C. G. Harper          "    187
+
+  The Grapes Inn, Limehouse. Photo by T. W. Tyrrell               "    194
+
+  Limehouse Reach. Drawn by L. Walker                             "    199
+
+  The Ship Hotel, Greenwich. Drawn by L. Walker                   "    207
+
+  The Red Lion, Hampton. Drawn by C. G. Harper                    "    213
+
+  Wood's Hotel, Furnival's Inn. Drawn by L. Walker                "    223
+
+  The King's Arms, Lancaster. Drawn by L. Walker                  "    231
+
+  The Eagle Tavern. From an old print                             "    242
+
+  The Crispin and Crispianus. Drawn by C. G. Harper               "    255
+
+  The Mitre Inn, Chatham. From an engraving                       "    259
+
+  The Lord Warden Hotel, Dover. From an engraving                 "    268
+
+  The Pavilion Hotel, Folkestone. From an engraving               "    268
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The very friendly reception given to my previous book on the Inns and
+Taverns of Pickwick has encouraged me to pursue the subject through the
+other novels and writings of Dickens, and to compile the present volume.
+
+I do not claim that it is encyclopædic in the sense that it will be found
+to supply a complete index to every inn mentioned in the novelist's books.
+Many a reader will recall, I expect, a certain inn in his favourite story
+which has been overlooked; but, while my chief aim has been to deal with
+the famous and prominent ones, I have not ignored the minor ones which, in
+many cases, are also the most alluring, and often play an important part
+in the story.
+
+The plan has been to take the long novels in something approximating to
+chronological order, followed by the shorter stories and sketches; and,
+where an inn is mentioned in more than one book, to deal with it fully in
+the chapter devoted to the story in which it was first alluded to.
+
+Inns associated with the novelist's own life find no place in this
+volume, unless they have association also with his books.
+
+In such a volume as this it is obviously necessary to quote freely from
+Dickens's books, but, when one recalls the young person's comment on
+lectures about Dickens that "she always loved them because of the
+quotations," no apology or excuse is needed here.
+
+I am greatly indebted to my friends T. W. Tyrrell and Charles G. Harper
+for much valuable advice and assistance in my task. The former has kindly
+loaned me prints from his unique collection of topographical photographs,
+and has also given me the advantage of his expert knowledge of the
+subject.
+
+How much I owe to the latter goes without saying. No one can write of old
+inns, old coaches, or old coaching roads without acknowledging
+indebtedness to the score of books standing in Mr. Harper's name, which
+are rich mines for any student of the subject quarrying for facts. He has
+not only permitted me to dig in his mines, but has allowed also the use of
+many of his charming drawings.
+
+Acknowledgment is also made to Messrs. A. & C. Black, Messrs. Methuen &
+Co., and the proprietors of the Cheshire Cheese for the use of blocks on
+pages 24, 99 and 180 respectively.
+
+B. W. MATZ.
+
+
+
+
+DICKENSIAN INNS & TAVERNS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+DICKENS AND INNS
+
+
+In these days when life is, for the most part, and for most of us, a
+wearying process of bustle and "business," it is comforting as well as
+pleasant to reflect that the old coaching inn still remains in all its
+quiet grandeur and the noble dignity which quaint customs and unbroken
+centuries of tradition have given to it. For a brief period in our recent
+history, it seemed that even so great a British institution as the old
+English inn, and its first cousin the tavern, were doomed to pass away.
+Indeed, the invention of railways, followed by the almost automatic
+suspension of the coach as a means of locomotion, did succeed actually in
+closing down many of them. But the subsequent invention of the motor-car
+reopened England's highways and by-ways so that to-day there are
+unmistakable indications that the old English inn is once more acquiring
+that atmosphere of friendly hospitality and utility with which it was
+endowed in the past, and which is so faithfully reflected in every book of
+Dickens.
+
+No one can really believe that the palatial and gilded hotels that sprang
+up in the place of scores of the old coaching inns possessed the same snug
+cheerfulness, the same appeal to the traveller, as did the old hostelries
+of the coaching era. To-day, this is being realised more and more, and
+when the time comes, as we are told is not far off, when everyone will
+have his own motor-car, mine host of every wayside inn and county town
+hostelry will once again become the prominent figure that Dickens made
+him. The real romance of the coaching era may never return. Perhaps we
+have become too matter-of-fact for that. But something approximating to
+the spirit and glamour of those days is possible still for those who are
+content to undertake a motor journey minus the feverish ambition for
+breaking speed records. In many an old-world English village stands an
+old-world English inn, and when that hour before sunset arrives that all
+travellers of the open road know--the moment when a luxurious and healthy
+weariness overcomes us--ah, well, be sure the right sort of inn awaits you
+if you deserve such good fortune, and, when the time comes to fill pipes
+and sit at ease before a blazing log-fire, what better subject for your
+dreams will you find than the glowing pages of a Dickens book?
+
+In them you get not only the romance and the glamour of the journey from
+place to place, but also descriptive pictures of the various inns, of
+their picturesque outward appearances, of their interior comfort and
+customs, of their glorious and luscious array of wholesome food and wine,
+to say nothing of the wonderful description of the happy company assembled
+there, all told with that incomparable charm and grace and good humour of
+a writer of genius.
+
+Dickens not only knew how to describe an inn and its comforts (and its
+discomforts, too, sometimes), but he seemed to revel in doing so, and
+became filled with delight when he was one of the guests within its walls.
+
+He seems to have shared Dr. Johnson's view that there was no private house
+in which people could enjoy themselves so well as at a good tavern, where
+there was general freedom from anxiety, and where you were sure of a
+welcome; and to agree with him that there is nothing as yet contrived by
+man by which so much happiness is produced as in a good tavern or inn.
+
+His books are full of the truth of this, and provide many such happy
+occasions when, after a cold coach drive, the hospitable host conducts the
+passengers to a large room made cosy with a roaring fire, and drawn
+curtains, and presenting an inviting spread of the good things of life,
+and a plentiful supply of the best wines or a bowl of steaming punch, for
+the jovial company. And the coach journey which brings one to these inns!
+Is there any described with so much exhilaration to be found elsewhere?
+Take the coach ride of Nicholas Nickleby along the Great North Road to his
+destination in Yorkshire. Here is reflected the real spirit of old-time
+travelling which brings us in touch with the old customs of the coaching
+age in a manner that no historian could possibly convey so realistically.
+Read again Tom Pinch's ride to London. We not only encounter old inns and
+old houses with their cherished memories, their old rooms, each with its
+own romantic atmosphere and a tale to tell, but we traverse picturesque
+by-ways and highways, which in themselves recall the past as well as
+reveal unchanging scenes of glorious nature; we can experience these
+feelings to-day in a way our fathers could not. The railroad, for a spell,
+made this impossible. To-day the road has come into its own again, and the
+motor-car brings back to us the glory of the road, the pleasure of the
+inn, and the enjoyment of the wonderful country which is England.
+
+There seems to have been a positive allurement about an inn or tavern for
+Dickens which he could not resist. He lingered over the most decrepit and
+lowly public-house, such as the dirty Three Cripples, the resort of Bill
+Sikes, as he did over the sumptuous Pavilion Hotel at Folkestone. A
+wayside inn was as real a joy to him in its modest way as was the chief
+coaching hotel in a country town with its studied comfort.
+
+When travelling about the country himself with his friends, some comment
+or pen-picture of the inn they stayed at creeps into his letters, as it
+would seem, by instinct. Even in his unpublished diary we see noted items
+about delightfully beautiful drives, coach offices, stage-coaches, and
+excellent inns. And, when he and Wilkie Collins went for their idle tour,
+it resolved itself into visiting the inns and coast corners in
+out-of-the-way places.
+
+His knowledge of inns was stupendous. In that Christmas story, "The Holly
+Tree," there are scores of them recalled, each recollection no doubt
+reminiscent of experiences and association.
+
+One gets a gleam of the joy he experiences at such times in the extract
+from a letter to an American friend, in 1842, after he had gone for a trip
+into Cornwall with some bright and merry companions:
+
+"If you could but have seen one gleam of the bright fires by which we sat
+at night in the big rooms of the ancient inns, or smelt but one steam of
+the hot punch which came in every evening in a huge broad china bowl!"
+
+But instances could be multiplied.
+
+Dickens saw something different in every inn, and succeeded in conveying
+it to the reader. There were no two inns alike to him. Each had its own
+tale to tell, its own individuality to reveal, its own atmosphere and fare
+to present, whatever its grade or social environment. As for an inn sign,
+it transported him into his most whimsical and pleasant of moods.
+
+In the following pages an attempt has been made to gather together the
+material from his books which shows how Dickens delighted in everything
+appertaining to inns, and how he extracted from association with them all
+that glow of sentiment and joy which permeated their atmosphere in the
+old days, leaving their pictures in glowing words for all time.
+
+There is nothing so calculated to make a place famous as mention of it in
+a classic story. It may have already had a past history by association
+with notable names and events, which gave it prominence in our annals for
+a time; but in the case of a building, when it is demolished, it soon
+passes out of memory. If, however, Dickens has drawn a pen-picture of it,
+or, in the case of an old inn, has used it for a scene in one of his
+books, it can never be forgotten; even when razed to the ground its fame
+survives, and the site becomes a Dickens landmark.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+OLIVER TWIST
+
+    THE RED LION, BARNET--THE ANGEL, ISLINGTON--THE COACH AND HORSES,
+    ISLEWORTH--THE THREE CRIPPLES--THE GEORGE INN--THE EIGHT BELLS,
+    HATFIELD
+
+
+There are not many inns that can be identified in _Oliver Twist_, and
+those that can play very little part in the enactment of the story, or
+have any notable history to relate in regard to them. The first one to
+attract attention is that at Barnet, where the Artful Dodger took Oliver
+Twist for breakfast on the morning they encountered each other on the
+latter's tramp to London.
+
+Although Dickens does not name this inn, we believe he had in mind the Red
+Lion, for it was one of those inns that was an objective when he and his
+friends went for a horse-ride out into the country. One such occasion was
+chosen when his eldest daughter, Mamie, was born, in March, 1838. He
+invited Forster to celebrate the event by a ride "for a good long spell,"
+and they rode out fifteen miles on the Great North Road. After dining at
+the Red Lion, in Barnet, on their way home, they distinguished the already
+memorable day, as Forster tells us, by bringing in both hacks dead lame.
+
+This trip along the Great North Road was a favourite one, and Dickens
+consequently became well acquainted with the highway. At the time of
+Forster's specific reference to the Red Lion, Dickens was engaged on the
+early chapters of _Oliver Twist_, and we find him describing the district
+in those pages wherein particular mention is made of Barnet.
+
+Tramping to London after leaving Mr. Sowerberry, the undertaker, Oliver,
+on the seventh morning, "limped slowly into the little town of Barnet," we
+are told. "The windows," Dickens proceeds, "were closed; the street was
+empty; not a soul was awakened to the business of the day." Oliver, with
+bleeding feet, and covered with dust, sat upon a doorstep. For some time
+he wondered "at the great number of public houses (every other house in
+Barnet was a tavern, large or small), gazing listlessly at the coaches as
+they passed through." Here he was discovered by Jack Dawkins, otherwise
+the Artful Dodger, who, taking pity on him, assisted him to rise, escorted
+him to an adjacent chandler's shop, purchased some ham and bread, and the
+two adjourned finally into a public-house tap-room, to regale themselves
+prior to continuing their journey to London. As the Red Lion was so
+familiar to Dickens, we may assume that this was the inn to which he
+referred.
+
+The inn, no doubt, was the same from which Esther Summerson, in _Bleak
+House_, hired the carriage to drive to Mr. Jarndyce's house, near St.
+Albans. Arriving at Barnet, Esther, Ada and Richard found horses waiting
+for them, "but, as they had only just been fed, we had to wait for them,
+too," she said, "and got a long fresh walk over a common and an old
+battle-field, before the carriage came up." Doubtless the posting-house
+where this change was made was the Red Lion, for Dickens had used it for
+posting his own horse many a time.
+
+It is there to-day, and drives a busy trade, more as a suburban hostelry
+than as a posting-inn.
+
+Continuing their walk to London, the Artful Dodger and Oliver gradually
+reached Islington, and entered the City together. Islington in days gone
+by was a starting point for the mail-coaches going to the north, and as
+a consequence was famous for its old inns. Perhaps the most famous,
+particularly from the antiquarian standpoint, was the old Queen's Head, a
+perfect specimen of ancient domestic architecture, which was destroyed in
+1829. Another was, of course, the Angel; but the house bearing that name
+to-day can claim none of the romance or attractiveness of its ancient
+predecessor, and has recently been modernised on the lines adopted by a
+very modern firm of caterers. But the Angel of its palmy days was
+well-known to Dickens, and, although he does not make it the scene of any
+prominent incident in his books, it has mention in _Oliver Twist_ in the
+chapter describing Oliver's trudge to London. It was nearly eleven o'clock
+when he and the Artful Dodger reached the turnpike at Islington. They then
+crossed from the Angel into St. John's Road, on their way to the house
+near Field Lane, where Oliver was dragged in and the door closed behind
+him.
+
+[Illustration: THE RED LION, BARNET
+
+_Photograph by T. W. Tyrrell_]
+
+The inn is mentioned again in the same book on the occasion when Noah
+Claypole and Charlotte traversed the same road. "Mr. Claypole," we read,
+"went on, without halting, until he arrived at the Angel, at Islington,
+where he wisely judged, from the crowd of passengers and number of
+vehicles, that London began in earnest." He, too, led the way into St.
+John's Road.
+
+The Angel has been a London landmark for over two centuries. There have
+been at least three houses of the same name, but the one Dickens knew and
+referred to was apparently that built after the destruction in 1819 of the
+original.
+
+In those days, it was the first halting-place, after leaving London, of
+coaches bound along the Holyhead and Great North Roads. The original house
+presented the usual features of a large old country inn, and "the inn
+yard, approached by a gateway in the centre, was nearly a quadrangle, with
+double galleries, supported by plain columns and carved pilasters, with
+caryatides and other figures." Now, as we have said, it is merely a very
+ordinary, everyday modern refreshment house.
+
+The low public-house in the "filthiest" part of Little Saffron Hill, in
+whose dark and gloomy den, known as the parlour, was frequently to be
+found Bill Sikes and his dog, Bull's-Eye, probably was no particular
+public-house so far as the novelist was concerned, although he gave it the
+distinguishing name of the Three Cripples. At any rate, it has not been
+identified, and must be assumed to be typical of the many with which
+this district at one time was infested. First referred to in Chapter
+XV, it is more minutely described in Chapter XXVI. "The room," we are
+told, "was illuminated by two gas-lights, the glare of which was prevented
+by the barred shutters and closely drawn curtains of faded red from being
+visible outside. The ceiling was blackened, to prevent its colour from
+being injured by the flaring lamps; and the place was so full of dense
+tobacco smoke that at first it was scarcely possible to discern anything
+more. By degrees, however, as some of it cleared away, through the open
+door, an assemblage of heads, as confused as the voices that greeted the
+ear, might be made out; and, as the eye grew more accustomed to the scene,
+the spectators gradually became aware of the presence of a numerous
+company, male and female, crowded round a long table, at the upper end of
+which sat a showman with a hammer of office in his hands, while a
+professional gentleman with a bluish nose, and his face tied up for the
+benefit of a toothache, presided at a jingling piano in a remote corner."
+That was a scene common to the "low public-house," of which the Three
+Cripples was a notorious example, and the atmosphere depicted no doubt
+applied generally to most of them.
+
+[Illustration: THE COACH AND HORSES, ISLEWORTH
+
+_Drawn by C. G. Harper_]
+
+On the other hand, the Coach and Horses, at Isleworth, where Bill Sikes
+and Oliver alighted from the cart they had "begged a lift" in, is no
+flight of Dickens's imagination and can be discovered to-day exactly where
+he located it.
+
+The tramp of the two from Spitalfields to Chertsey on the burglary
+expedition can easily be followed from Dickens's clearly indicated
+itinerary. The point on the journey where they obtained their lift in a
+cart bound for Hounslow was near Knightsbridge. Having bargained with the
+driver to put them down at Isleworth, they at length alighted a little way
+beyond "a public-house called the Coach and Horses, which stood at the
+corner of a road just beyond Isleworth leading to Hampton." They did not
+enter this public-house, but continued their journey. Mr. John Sayce Parr,
+in an article in _The Dickensian_, Vol. I, page 261, speaks of the
+topographical accuracy of Dickens in this instance: "The literary
+pilgrim," he says, "sets out to follow the route he indicates, doubtful if
+he will find the places mentioned. There is, however, not the slightest
+excuse for making mistakes, for Dickens apparently visited the scenes and
+described them with the accuracy of a guide-book. Thus, one finds the
+Coach and Horses, sure enough, at the point where Brentford ends and
+Isleworth begins, by the entrance to Sion Park, and near the spot where
+the road rambles off to the left."
+
+[Illustration: THE "EIGHT BELLS" Hatfield
+
+_Drawn by F. G. Kitton_]
+
+The Coach and Horses, the same writer says, is not a picturesque inn. It
+is a huge four-square lump of a place, and wears, indeed, rather a dour
+and forbidding aspect. It is unquestionably the house of which Dickens
+speaks, and was built certainly not later than the dawn of the nineteenth
+century.
+
+It still exists to-day, although the surroundings have altered somewhat
+by the advent of the electric tramways and other "improvements."
+
+The George Inn, mentioned in Chapter XXXIII, where Oliver took the letter
+for Mr. Losberne to be sent by "an express on horseback to Chertsey,"
+cannot be identified, as the market-town in whose market-place it stood is
+not mentioned or hinted at. Mr. Percy FitzGerald claims that the
+description applies to Chertsey, but, as the letter had to be taken to
+Chertsey, something seems wrong in his deduction.
+
+In the chapter describing the flight of Bill Sikes, we read that, on
+leaving London behind, he shaped his course for Hatfield. "It was nine
+o'clock at night when the man, quite tired out, and the dog, limping and
+lame from the unaccustomed exercise, turned down the hill by the church of
+the quiet village, and, plodding along the little street, crept into a
+small public-house whose scanty light had guided them to the spot. There
+was a fire in the tap-room, and some of the country labourers were
+drinking before it. They made room for the stranger, but he sat down in
+the farthest corner, and ate and drank alone, or rather with his dog, to
+whom he cast a morsel of food from time to time." Here he met the pedlar
+with his infallible composition for removing blood-stains. This
+particular public-house is no doubt the Eight Bells, a picturesque old
+house which still remains on the spot where Dickens accurately located it.
+It is a quaint little building with a red-tiled roof and dormer windows,
+and local tradition assigns it as that at which Bill Sikes sought refuge
+for a short time before continuing his journey to St. Albans, enabling
+Hatfield to claim it as a veritable Dickens landmark, together with that
+other, the churchyard, where Mrs. Lirriper's husband was buried.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+NICHOLAS NICKLEBY
+
+    THE SARACEN'S HEAD, SNOW HILL
+
+
+The Saracen's Head Inn, Snow Hill, long since demolished, is familiar to
+all readers of _Nicholas Nickleby_, because it was the hotel from which
+Squeers took coach with his boys for Dotheboys Hall; and, but for the
+fact, the name of Saracen's Head would recall little or nothing to the
+ordinary Londoner.
+
+It stood on Snow Hill or Snore Hill, as it was called in the very early
+days, and its exact location was two or three doors from St. Sepulchre's
+Church, down the hill, and was one of London's oldest and most historic
+inns, dating back to the 12th century. The first mention of it that we can
+find is in a volume by John Lydgate, the Benedictine monk who flourished
+in the early part of the 15th century, who is best remembered by his
+poem, "The London Lyckpenny." He tells the story of the origin of the
+name, which is interesting as fixing an early date at which the inn
+existed; even if it cannot be vouched for as correct in face of the fact
+that others have been suggested, it is at least as plausible.
+
+It would appear that, when Richard Coeur-de-Lion returned from the Third
+Crusade in 1194, he approached the city of London and entered it by the
+New Gate, on the west. Being much fatigued by his long journey, the weary
+monarch, on arriving at Snow Hill, outside the gate, stopped at an inn
+there and called loudly to a tapster for refreshment. He drank rather
+freely, "untille ye hedde of ye Kinge did swimme ryghte royallie." He then
+began laying about him right and left with a battle-axe, to the
+"astoundmente and dyscomfythure of ye courtierres." Upon which one of the
+Barons said, "I wish hys majestie hadde ye hedde of a Saracen before hym
+juste now, for I trowe he woulde play ye deuce wyth itte." Thereupon the
+King paid all the damage and gave permission that the inn should be called
+"Ye Saracen's Hedde."
+
+It is a pretty story, and, as we have suggested, may or may not be true;
+but it gives us a starting point in the history of the inn. How long
+before this incident the inn had existed and what its name was previously,
+we cannot say.
+
+Lydgate refers to the inn's name again in the following stanza of one of
+his poems:
+
+  Richarde hys sonne next by successyon,
+    Fyrst of that name--strong, hardy and abylle--
+  Was crowned Kinge, called Cuer de Lyon,
+    With Sarasenys hedde served at hys tabyelle.
+
+The inn, by virtue of its situation, was in the centre of many an historic
+event enacted in the surrounding streets, and would naturally be the
+resort of those taking part in them. If records existed, many a thrilling
+tale could be gathered from their perusal; as it is, only meagre details
+can be furnished.
+
+In 1522, Charles V of Germany, when on his visit to London, stayed at the
+inn, and his retinue occupied three hundred beds, whilst stabling for
+forty horses was needed also; evidence that it was no mean hostelry, in
+spite of the fact that Stow's record of the inn's existence in his "Survey
+of London" is confined to the following sentence:
+
+"Hard by St. Sepulchre's Church is a fayre and large inn for the receipt
+of travellers, and hath to signe the 'Saracen's Head.'"
+
+A few years later (1617) we get another reference to the hostel, in Wm.
+Fennor's "The Comptor's Commonwealth," a book describing the troubles of
+an unfortunate debtor in the hands of serjeants and gaolers. Therein is an
+allusion to a serjeant "with a phisnomy much resembling the 'Saracen's
+Head,' without Newgate," alluding, of course, to the figurehead on the
+sign-board of the inn.
+
+[Illustration: THE SIGN OF THE SARACEN'S HEAD]
+
+It goes without saying that the famous Pepys knew the house, and we have
+the following entry in his diary as confirmation: "11 Nov. 1661. To the
+wardrobe with Mr. Townsend and Mr. Moore and then to the 'Saracen's Head'
+to a barrel of oysters." How Bob Sawyer and Benjamin Allen would have
+revelled in that occasion!
+
+The inn and the church were both victims of the Great Fire in 1666, but
+both were rapidly rebuilt on the old sites. From the time the original inn
+was erected in the 12th century, until the last of its race on the same
+site was demolished in 1868, doubtless there had been more than one
+Saracen's Head, and through this long stretch of years it was a favoured
+resort of all sorts and conditions of men.
+
+In 1672, John Bunyan, after his release from Bedford Gaol, paid frequent
+visits to London by coach to the Saracen's Head, and it is recorded that
+he spent several nights within its hospitable walls; and we are told that
+Dean Swift made the inn his headquarters in 1710, on his visits to London
+from Ireland. An even more famous man, in the person of Horatio Nelson, at
+the early age of twelve years, stayed a night there prior to making his
+first voyage in a merchant ship in 1770. Many years afterwards, when he
+had become world-famous as Lord Nelson, the proprietor of the hostelry,
+in honour of the early event, named his smartest coach after the admiral.
+
+These are a few bare facts worth recording of an inn which was the most
+prominent of the coaching inns of London, as it was one of the largest and
+most flourishing. At one period of its history, coaches started from it
+for almost every large town in England and Scotland, and over 200 horses
+were kept in readiness for the purpose.
+
+During the years 1780-1868, the inn had been managed by three generations
+of the Mountain family, the most notable member of which, owing perhaps to
+the coaching era then being at its height, was Sarah Ann Mountain, who
+succeeded her husband in 1818. Innkeeping in those days was one of the
+most ancient and honourable of professions, and Mrs. Mountain was
+evidently an ornament to the calling. She was a keen competitor in the
+business of coach proprietors, and set the pace to other coach owners by
+putting on the first really fast coach to Birmingham, which did the
+journey of 109 miles in 11 hours. At that time thirty coaches left her inn
+daily, amongst them being the "Tally Ho!" the fast coach referred to,
+whose speed was, we are told, the cause of the furious racing on the St.
+Albans, Coventry and Birmingham roads up to 1838. At the rear of the inn,
+Mrs. Mountain had a busy coach factory, and sold her vehicles to other
+coach proprietors. One of her advertisements announced that "Good,
+comfortable stage-coaches, with lamps," could be purchased "at 110 to 120
+guineas."
+
+It was at this period of its prosperity that Dickens made the Saracen's
+Head a centre of interest in his novel, _Nicholas Nickleby_. Ralph
+Nickleby, being anxious to find employment for his nephew Nicholas, called
+upon him one day and produced the following advertisement in the
+newspaper:
+
+"EDUCATION.--At Mr. Wackford Squeers' Academy, Dotheboys Hall, at the
+delightful village of Dotheboys, near Greta Bridge, in Yorkshire, Youth
+are boarded, clothed, booked, furnished with pocket-money, provided with
+all necessaries, instructed in all languages living and dead, mathematics,
+orthography, geometry, astronomy, trigonometry, the use of globes,
+algebra, single stick (if required), writing, arithmetic, fortification,
+and every other branch of classical literature. Terms, twenty guineas per
+annum. No extras, no vacations, and diet unparalleled. Mr. Squeers is in
+town, and attends daily, from one till four, at the Saracen's Head, Snow
+Hill. N.B.--An able assistant wanted. Annual salary £5. A Master of Arts
+preferred."
+
+"There!" said Ralph, folding the paper again. "Let him get that situation,
+and his fortune is made."
+
+After some little discussion, Nicholas decided to try for the post, and
+the two men set forth together in quest of Mr. Squeers at the meeting
+place announced in the advertisement.
+
+Before Nicholas and his uncle met Squeers, Dickens proceeded, in one of
+his very picturesque passages, to give a description, first of Snow Hill
+and then of the Saracen's Head:
+
+"Snow Hill! What kind of place can the quiet town's-people who see the
+words emblazoned, in all the legibility of gilt letters and dark shading,
+on the north-country coaches, take Snow Hill to be? All people have some
+undefined and shadowy notion of a place whose name is frequently before
+their eyes, or often in their ears. What a vast number of random ideas
+there must be perpetually floating about regarding this same Snow Hill.
+The name is such a good one. Snow Hill--Snow Hill, too, coupled with a
+Saracen's Head: picturing to us by a double association of ideas something
+stern and rugged! A bleak, desolate tract of country, open to piercing
+blasts and fierce wintry storms--a dark, cold, gloomy heath, lonely by
+day and scarcely to be thought of by honest folks at night--a place which
+solitary wayfarers shun, and where desperate robbers congregate; this, or
+something like this, should be the prevalent notion of Snow Hill, in those
+remote and rustic parts, through which the Saracen's Head, like some grim
+apparition, rushes each day and night with mysterious and ghost-like
+punctuality; holding its swift and headlong course in all weathers, and
+seeming to bid defiance to the very elements themselves."
+
+The reality, he goes on to say, was rather different, and presents the
+true picture of it as it really was, situated in the very core of London,
+surrounded by Newgate, Smithfield, the Compter and St. Sepulchre's
+Church--
+
+"and, just on that particular part of Snow Hill where omnibus horses going
+eastward seriously think of falling down on purpose, and where horses in
+hackney cabriolets going westward not unfrequently fall by accident, is
+the coach-yard of the Saracen's Head inn; its portal guarded by two
+Saracens' heads and shoulders--there they are, frowning upon you from each
+side of the gateway. The inn itself, garnished with another Saracen's
+Head, frowns upon you from the top of the yard; while from the door of
+the hind boot of all the red coaches that are standing therein there
+glares a small Saracen's Head, with a twin expression to the large
+Saracen's Head below, so that the general appearance of the pile is
+decidedly of the Saracenic order.
+
+[Illustration: THE SARACEN'S HEAD, SNOW HILL
+
+_From an old Print_]
+
+"When you walk up this yard, you will see the booking-office on your left,
+and the tower of St. Sepulchre's Church, darting abruptly up into the
+sky, on your right, and a gallery of bedrooms on both sides. Just before
+you, you will observe a long window with the words 'coffee-room' legibly
+painted above it; and, looking out of the window, you would have seen in
+addition, if you had gone at the right time, Mr. Wackford Squeers with his
+hands in his pockets."
+
+Here, Mr. Squeers was standing "in a box by one of the coffee-room
+fire-places, fitted with one such table as is usually seen in
+coffee-rooms, and two of extraordinary shapes and dimensions made to suit
+the angles of the partition," waiting for fond parents and guardians to
+bring their little boys for his treatment. At the moment he had only
+secured one, but presently two more were added to the list, and, during
+the bargaining with their stepfather, Ralph Nickleby and his nephew
+arrived on the scene. The incident of Nicholas's engagement for the post
+will be recalled by all and need not be repeated here. As the uncle and
+nephew emerged from the Saracen's Head gateway, Ralph promised Nicholas he
+would return in the morning to see him "fairly off" by the coach.
+
+Nicholas kept his appointment by arriving at the Saracen's Head in good
+time, and went in search of Mr. Squeers in the coffee-room, where he
+discovered him breakfasting with three little boys. The sound of the coach
+horn quickly brought the frugal repast to an end, and "the little boys had
+to be got up to the top of the coach and their boxes had to be brought out
+and put in." All was animation in the coach-yard when Nicholas's mother
+and sister and his uncle arrived to bid him good-bye.
+
+"A minute's bustle, a banging of the coach doors, a swaying of the vehicle
+to one side, as the heavy coachman, and still heavier guard, climbed into
+their seats; a cry of all right, a few notes from the horn, a hasty glance
+of two sorrowful faces below and the hard features of Mr. Ralph
+Nickleby--and the coach was gone too, and rattling over the stones of
+Smithfield."
+
+And so the Saracen's Head is left behind, and is not referred to again
+until John Browdie comes to London with his newly wed wife, Tilda Price
+that was, and her friend, Fanny Squeers. Dismounting near the Post Office
+he called a hackney coach, and, placing the ladies and the luggage
+hurriedly in, commanded the driver to "Noo gang to the Sarah's Head, mun."
+
+"To the _were_?" cried the coachman.
+
+"Lawk, Mr. Browdie," interrupted Miss Squeers. "The idea! Saracen's
+Head."
+
+"Surely," said John, "I know'd it was something aboot Sarah's Son's Head.
+Dost thou know thot?"
+
+"Oh ah! I know that," replied the coachman gruffly, as he banged the door.
+
+Arriving there safely they all retired to rest, and in the morning partook
+of a substantial breakfast in "a small private room upstairs, commanding
+an uninterrupted view of the stables." Fanny Squeers made anxious
+enquiries for her father who had been in London some time seeking the lost
+Smike. She was under the impression that he made the Saracen's Head his
+headquarters, but was woefully disillusioned when she was informed that he
+"was not stopping in the house, but that he came there every day, and that
+when he arrived he should be shown upstairs." He shortly appeared, and the
+good-hearted John Browdie invited him to "pick a bit," which he promptly
+did.
+
+Mr. Squeers did not make the Saracen's Head his abiding place; he was too
+mean for that; John Browdie, who was up for a holiday, stayed there the
+whole time he was in London, and some very merry, not to say solid meals
+he enjoyed during the period--for John liked a good meal.
+
+On one such occasion, when Nicholas was a guest, the conviviality was
+sadly marred by a terrible quarrel between Fanny Squeers and her father,
+and Mrs. and John Browdie--Nicholas incidentally coming in for some of the
+abuse. Very nasty and cutting things were said on both sides, and Mr.
+Squeers was summarily dismissed with a threat from John that he would
+"pound him to flour."
+
+After the excitement had subsided and the Squeers family had withdrawn in
+a perfect hurricane of rage, John calmly ordered of the waiter another
+"Sooper--very coomfortable and plenty o' it at ten o'clock ... and ecod
+we'll begin to spend the evening in earnest."
+
+The storm had long given place to a calm the most profound, and the
+evening pretty far advanced, when there occurred in the inn another
+incident more angry still, and reached a state of ferocity which could not
+have been surpassed, we are told, if there had actually been a Saracen's
+Head then present in the establishment. Nicholas and John Browdie,
+following to where the noise came from, discovered coffee-room customers,
+coachmen and helpers congregating round the prostrate figure of a young
+man, with another young man standing in defiance over him. The latter was
+no other than Frank Cheeryble, who, overhearing disrespectful and
+insolent remarks coming from his opponent in the fray, relative to a young
+lady, had taken the part of the latter by vigorously setting about the
+traducer, who was ultimately turned out of the inn. Frank Cheeryble was
+staying the night in the house, and so the four friends adjourned upstairs
+together and spent a pleasant half-hour with great satisfaction and mutual
+entertainment.
+
+These are the chief associations the Saracen's Head had in connection with
+_Nicholas Nickleby_, except that it might be mentioned that Mrs. Nickleby,
+as she would, confused its sign with that of another notable inn, by
+referring to it as the "Saracen with two necks."
+
+There are, however, two other references to the inn in Dickens's books. In
+_Our Mutual Friend_, we read that:
+
+"Mrs. Wilfer's impressive countenance followed Bella with glaring eyes,
+presenting a combination of the once popular sign of the Saracen's Head
+with a piece of Dutch clockwork"; and again, in one of his Uncommercial
+papers, Dickens, speaking of his wanderings about London and of having
+left behind him this and that historic spot, says he "had got past the
+Saracen's Head (with an ignominious rash of posting bills disfiguring his
+swarthy countenance) and had strolled up the yard of its ancient
+neighbour," making clear that the old inn was a notable landmark to him.
+He knew it in the flourishing days of the coaching era and lived to see it
+demolished in 1868 to allow of the Metropolitan improvements in the
+neighbourhood.
+
+But its name was not to be entirely erased from London's annals, for
+another inn, although quite an unromantic one, was erected at the lower
+end of Snow Hill, only to wither in course of time into an unprofitable
+concern and to give up the ghost as a tavern. In 1912, this building was
+taken over by a firm of manufacturers of fancy leather goods and kindred
+articles of commerce, who recast the building for the purpose of their
+trade and its necessary business offices.
+
+The proprietors have retained the old sign of the Saracen's Head and have
+done much to keep up the association of the name with the most notable and
+living part of its history--that of its connection with Dickens's story of
+_Nicholas Nickleby_.
+
+Over the entrance they have placed a bust of Dickens mounted on a
+pedestal, flanked on each side by full-length figures of Nicholas and
+Squeers. Whilst on each side of the entrance porch is a bas-relief of a
+scene from _Nicholas Nickleby_: one representing Nicholas, Squeers and the
+boys preparing to leave the inn by coach, and the other, the well-known
+scene in Dotheboys Hall, depicting Nicholas thrashing Squeers.
+
+And so, from out of seven centuries of historical associations, the one
+that emerges and remains to-day is that created by Dickens.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+NICHOLAS NICKLEBY (_continued_)
+
+    THE PEACOCK, ISLINGTON--THE WHITE HORSE, ETON SLOCOMBE--THE GEORGE,
+    GRANTHAM--THE GEORGE AND NEW INN, GRETA BRIDGE--THE KING'S HEAD,
+    BARNARD CASTLE--THE UNICORN, BOWES--THE INN ON THE PORTSMOUTH
+    ROAD--THE LONDON TAVERN--AND OTHERS
+
+
+The first stop of Nicholas's coach after it had left the Saracen's Head
+was at the Peacock, at Islington, an inn of immense popularity in those
+palmy days when the north-country mail-coaches made it their headquarters.
+It stood a little further north of the Angel, and was even more famous
+than that historic inn. Besides being the starting point for certain
+coaches, it was the house of call for nearly all others going in that
+direction out of London, and the busy and exciting scenes which ensued
+outside its doors became more bewildering still by the ostlers calling out
+the name of each coach as it arrived.
+
+Such a scene, no doubt, was witnessed by Nicholas, in whose charge Squeers
+had placed the scholars, when, "between the manual exertion and the mental
+anxiety attendant upon his task, he was not a little relieved when the
+coach stopped at the Peacock, Islington. He was still more relieved when a
+hearty-looking gentleman, with a very good-humoured face and a very fresh
+colour, got up behind, and proposed to take the other corner of the seat,"
+as he thought it would be safer for the youngsters if they were sandwiched
+between Nicholas and himself.
+
+Everything and everybody being settled, off they went "amidst a loud
+flourish from the guard's horn and the calm approval of all the judges of
+coaches and coach-horses congregated at the Peacock."
+
+That was in 1838; later (in 1855) Dickens refers again to the same inn.
+But on that occasion the scene must have been one of great tranquillity
+and calm, if not a little dismal.
+
+This was when the bashful man, as related in the "first branch" of _The
+Holly Tree_, starts on his journey to the Holly Tree Inn. "There was no
+Northern Railway at that time," he says, "and in its place there were
+stage-coaches; which I occasionally find myself, in common with some other
+people, affecting to lament now, but which everybody dreaded as a very
+serious penance then. I had secured the box seat on the fastest of these,
+and my business in Fleet Street was to get into a cab with my portmanteau,
+so to make the best of my way to the Peacock at Islington, where I was to
+join this coach.... When I got to the Peacock, where I found everybody
+drinking hot purl, in self-preservation, I asked if there were an inside
+seat to spare. I then discovered that, inside or out, I was the only
+passenger. This gave me a still livelier idea of the great inclemency of
+the weather, since that coach always loaded particularly well. However, I
+took a little purl (which I found uncommonly good), and got into the
+coach. When I was seated they built me up with straw to the waist, and,
+conscious of making a rather ridiculous appearance, I began my journey. It
+was still dark when we left the Peacock."
+
+[Illustration: THE PEACOCK, ISLINGTON
+
+_From an old Engraving_]
+
+A reference to the same inn is made in "Tom Brown's Schooldays," when Tom
+and his father stayed the night there in order to catch the "Tally-Ho"
+coach for Rugby the next morning.
+
+There is still a reminder of the old Peacock at 11 High Street, where a
+sign-board announces the date of its establishment in 1564, and a relic of
+the coaching days may be seen in the form of an iron hook upon a lamp-post
+opposite, to which horses were temporarily tethered.
+
+Following Nicholas's coach on its journey north we find it passing through
+the counties of Hertford and Bedford in bitterly and intensely cold
+weather. In due course it arrived at Eton Slocombe, where a halt was made
+for a good coach dinner, of which all passengers partook, "while the five
+little boys were put to thaw by the fire, and regaled with sandwiches."
+Mr. Squeers, it may be noted in passing, had, in the interim, alighted at
+almost every stage to refresh himself, leaving his charges on the top of
+the coach to content themselves with what was left of their breakfast.
+
+Eton Slocombe is Dickens's thinly disguised name for Eaton Socon, a
+picturesque little village of one straggling street in Huntingdonshire. He
+does not mention the inn by name, but it may be rightly assumed that it
+was the White Horse, an attractive old road-side coaching-house, which, in
+those days, was the posting inn for the mail and other coaches passing
+through the county. In later years it became the favourite resort of the
+North Road Cycling Club, and witnessed the beginning and ending of many a
+road race in the "'eighties" and "'nineties," and is, no doubt, a welcome
+place of call for motorists to-day.
+
+Leaving Eton Slocombe, the coach took the turnpike road via Stilton, as
+the night and the snow came on together. In the dismal weather the coach
+rambled on through the deserted streets of Stamford until twenty miles
+further on it arrived at the George at Grantham, where "two of the front
+outside passengers, wisely availing themselves of their arrival at one of
+the best inns in England, turned in for the night." The remainder of the
+passengers, however, "wrapped themselves more closely in their coats and
+cloaks, and, leaving the light and the warmth of the town behind them,
+pillowed themselves against the luggage, and prepared, with many
+half-suppressed moans, again to encounter the piercing blast which swept
+across the open country."
+
+Grantham has the reputation of being a town of many and excellent inns, of
+which the honours seem to have been divided between the Angel and the
+George. When Dickens set out on his voyage in search of facts concerning
+the Yorkshire schools prior to writing _Nicholas Nickleby_ he took the
+same coach journey which he describes so realistically in his book,
+accompanied by his artist friend, Phiz. They slept the night at the
+George, like the two wise "front outsides" of the story; and in a letter
+to his wife Dickens said that the George was "the very best inn I have
+ever put up at," and he repeats this encomium in his book.
+
+The George was burnt down in 1780 and its beautiful mediæval structure
+replaced by a building not so picturesque, but none the less comfortable.
+It was a famous coaching inn and consequently always busy with the mail
+and stage coaches of the period. It is a square red-bricked building of
+the Georgian type, and, although its outward appearance is not so inviting
+from an antiquarian point of view as its predecessor, the testimony of
+travellers confirms its interior comfort.
+
+The coach carrying Squeers and his party was little more than a stage out
+of Grantham, "or half-way between it and Newark," to be precise, when the
+accident occurred which turned the vehicle over into the snow. After the
+bustle which ensued and after casualties had been attended to, all walked
+back to the nearest public-house, described as a "lonely place, with no
+great accommodation in the way of apartments." Here, having "washed off
+all effaceable marks of the late accident," they settled down to the
+comfort of a warm room in patient anticipation of the arrival of another
+coach from Grantham. As this entailed a two hours' wait the company amused
+themselves by listening to the narration of the story of "The Five Sisters
+of York" by the grey-haired gentleman, and of "The Baron of Grogzwig" by
+the merry-faced gentleman. Which was the "public-house" round whose fire
+these two famous stories were told, the chronicler does not say, nor has
+it been identified. At the conclusion of the last-named story the welcome
+announcement of the arrival of the new coach was made and the company
+resumed the journey. Nothing further of any note occurred until at six
+o'clock that night, when Nicholas, Squeers "and the little boys and their
+united luggage were all put down together at the George and New Inn, Greta
+Bridge." The coach having traversed the road via Retford and Bawtry,
+crossed Yorkshire, via Doncaster and Borough Bridge to this inn "in the
+midst of a dreary moor," as Dickens so described it.
+
+Although Greta Bridge was but a small and picturesque hamlet at the time
+Dickens visited and wrote of it, it nevertheless boasted at least two
+important inns doing a busy trade with the coaches and mail on the main
+coaching route to Glasgow. These were known as the George and the New Inn
+respectively, and were about half a mile apart. In his book the novelist
+combines the two names, perhaps to avoid identification; but there seems
+no doubt that the George was the inn Dickens and Phiz stayed at
+themselves, and therefore it may be assumed it was at that inn Nicholas
+and Squeers also alighted when their coach journey ended. The George
+stands near the bridge which spans the Greta river a little above its
+junction with the Tees. It is no longer an inn, having since been
+converted into a residential building known as "The Square" and let out in
+tenements. But it still shows unmistakable signs of its former calling.
+Its large square yard remains, although want of use has allowed grass to
+overgrow it; whilst its commodious stabling, empty and bare as it is,
+conjures up the busy scenes of excitement and animation the mail-coaches
+and travellers must have created in those far-off days.
+
+The inn was the coaching centre of the district, received the mail as it
+arrived and despatched it to the villages round about. Dickens was
+evidently very pleased with the hospitality he received on his arrival
+after a dreary journey, for when writing to his wife he said:
+
+[Illustration: THE GEORGE INN, GRETA BRIDGE
+
+_Drawn by C. G. Harper_]
+
+"At eleven we reached a bare place with a house standing alone in the
+midst of a dreary moor, which the guard informed me was Greta Bridge. I
+was in a perfect agony of apprehension, for it was fearfully cold, and
+there were no outward signs of anyone being up in the house; but to our
+great joy we discovered a comfortable room, with drawn curtains, and a
+most blazing fire. In half an hour they gave us a smoking supper, and a
+bottle of mulled port, in which we drank your health, and then retired to
+a couple of capital bedrooms, in each of which there was a rousing fire
+half-way up the chimney. We had for breakfast toast, cakes, a Yorkshire
+pie, a piece of beef about the size and much the shape of my portmanteau,
+tea, coffee, ham, eggs; and are now going to look about us."
+
+Dickens seems to be a little misleading in saying the inn stood on the
+heath. It was actually in the village by the side of the road. But he
+apparently got this idea that the house stood "alone in the midst of a
+dreary moor" well into his mind, for, when using the inn again as the
+original of the Holly Tree Inn in the charming Christmas story with that
+name, we find that the bashful man is made to speak of it as being on a
+bleak wild solitude of the Yorkshire moor. He describes the interior in
+many whimsical details, perhaps at times a little exaggerated, as, for
+instance, when he says his bedroom was some quarter of a mile from his
+huge sitting-room. Next day it was still snowing, and, not knowing what to
+do, he, in desperation, invited the Boots "to take a chair--and something
+in a liquid form--and talk" to him. This he did and the delightful story
+of Mr. and Mrs. Harry Walmers, junior, the chief incidents of which all
+took place in the same inn, was recalled by the Boots.
+
+But to return to Squeers and his party:
+
+Having run into the tavern to "stretch his legs," he returned in a few
+minutes, as, at the same time, there emerged from the yard a rusty,
+pony-chaise, and a cart, driven by two labouring men. By these conveyances
+he transported his charges to "the delightful village of Dotheboys" about
+three miles away.
+
+Nicholas was preparing for bed that evening when the letter Newman Noggs
+had given him in London fell out of his pocket unopened. This letter
+interests at the moment by reason of its postscript, which runs: "If you
+should go near Barnard Castle, there is good ale at the King's Head. Say
+you know me, and I am sure they will not charge you for it. You may say
+_Mr._ Noggs there, for I was a gentleman then. I was indeed."
+
+It is not recorded that Nicholas had occasion to visit the King's Head,
+Barnard Castle, but we know that Dickens went there after having explored
+the neighbourhood of Greta Bridge. He and Phiz made the journey in a post
+chaise, there to deliver the letter Mr. Charles Smithson, the London
+solicitor, had given him by way of introduction to a certain person who
+would help him in his discoveries about the Yorkshire schools.
+
+Barnard Castle is about four miles from Greta Bridge, and is in the county
+of Durham, just across the Yorkshire border. Arriving there Dickens made
+the King's Head his headquarters. Since that date the inn has been
+enlarged somewhat, but much of the older portion remains the same as when
+he stayed there.
+
+It was here the interview referred to above took place before a fire in
+one of the cosiest rooms in the building, and the person who furnished the
+information became the original of John Browdie.
+
+Many legends about Dickens's stay at the King's Head have got into print,
+such as that he stayed there six weeks, that he wrote a great part of the
+book there, working hard at a table in front of the window all day, and
+that he spent the nights in the bar parlour gathering facts from the
+frequenters. Actually he only remained two nights, and wrote no more of
+his book there than a few brief notes, in the same way that Phiz made
+rough pictures in his sketch-book.
+
+It was whilst on this short visit that Dickens made the acquaintance of
+Mr. Humphrey, who kept a watchmaker's shop lower down the street. This
+worthy conducted him to some of the schools in the neighbourhood, and from
+the friendly association sprang the title of _Master Humphrey's Clock_,
+used by the novelist for his next serial. When Dickens first met Mr.
+Humphrey, who we believe was the source from which sprang all the
+legendary stories about Dickens and Barnard Castle, he exhibited no clock
+outside his shop. It was not until two years after Dickens's visit that
+the old man, having moved opposite the inn, placed a clock above the door.
+
+[Illustration: THE KING'S HEAD, BARNARD CASTLE
+
+_Photograph by T. W. Tyrrell_]
+
+The King's Head in those days was kept by two sisters, who were wont to
+inform customers that Dickens wrote a good deal of _Nicholas Nickleby_ in
+their house. He was always writing, it was said, and they could show the
+ink-stand he used during the long stay he made. This is a little
+exaggeration which reflected glory engenders sometimes.
+
+The inn is of the Georgian period and was built about the middle of the
+eighteenth century. It is situated in the market place, and the room
+Dickens occupied is still cared for and exhibited to visitors. The house
+is practically the same, with its intricate staircases, low ceilings, its
+old-world atmosphere, and old-fashioned appurtenances.
+
+Dotheboys Hall, Squeers's academy, has been identified as being at Bowes,
+and at the Unicorn Inn there Dickens is said to have met Shaw, the
+original of Squeers. It was Squeers's custom, we are told, "to drive over
+to the market town every evening, on pretence of urgent business, and stop
+till ten or eleven o'clock at a tavern he much affected," and no doubt it
+was to the Unicorn that he repaired.
+
+This ancient inn stands midway in the village and was at that time the
+most important inn between York and Carlisle. A dozen or more coaches
+changed every day in its yard, which was, and still is, with its abundant
+stabling, one of the largest of the ancient road-side hostelries surviving
+the old coaching days. It is still unspoiled, and we believe remains much
+the same as when Dickens and Phiz drew up there and partook of a
+substantial lunch, and ultimately interviewed the veritable Mr. Shaw,
+Squeers's prototype.
+
+The next inn carries us a good way into the story and brings us in company
+with Nicholas and Smike on their tramp to Portsmouth. Chapter XXII of the
+book describes how these two, having deserted Squeers, sally forth to seek
+their fortune at the naval port. On the first evening they arrived at
+Godalming, where they bargained for two beds and slept soundly in them.
+On the second day, they reached the Devil's Punch Bowl, at Hindhead, and
+Nicholas, having read to Smike the inscription upon the stone, together
+they passed on with steady purpose until they were within twelve miles of
+Portsmouth, just beyond Petersfield. Here they turned off the path to the
+door of a road-side inn, where they learned from the landlord that it was
+not only "twelve long miles" to their destination, but a very bad road.
+Following the advice of the innkeeper Nicholas decided to stay where he
+was for the night, and was led into the kitchen. Asked what they would
+have for supper "Nicholas suggested cold meat, but there was no cold
+meat--poached eggs, but there were no eggs--mutton chops, but there wasn't
+a mutton chop within three miles, though there had been more last week
+than they knew what to do with, and would be an extraordinary supply the
+day after to-morrow." Nicholas determined to leave the decision entirely
+to the landlord, who rejoined: "There's a gentleman in the parlour that's
+ordered a hot beefsteak pudding and potatoes at nine. There's more of it
+than he can manage, and I have very little doubt that, if I ask leave, you
+can sup with him. I'll do that in a minute." In spite of Nicholas's
+disinclination to consent to do any such thing, the landlord hurried off
+and in a few minutes Nicholas was shown into the presence of Mr. Vincent
+Crummles, who was rehearsing his two sons in "what is called in play-bills
+a terrific combat" with broadswords.
+
+After the rehearsal was finished Nicholas and Crummles drew round the fire
+and the conversation revealed the latter's profession and business. The
+appearance of the beefsteak pudding put a stop to the discussion for the
+time being; but after Smike and the two young Crummleses had retired for
+the night Nicholas and Mr. Vincent Crummles continued their conversation
+over a bowl of punch, which sent forth "a most grateful and inviting
+fragrance." Under the influence of this stimulant Mr. Vincent Crummles
+proposed that Nicholas should join his theatrical company.
+
+"There's genteel comedy in your walk and manner, juvenile tragedy in your
+eye, and touch-and-go farce in your laugh," said Mr. Vincent Crummles.
+"You'll do as well as if you had thought of nothing else but the lamps
+from your birth downwards." After further flattery and persuasiveness,
+Nicholas agreed to try, and without more deliberation declared it was a
+bargain and gave Mr. Vincent Crummles his hand upon it.
+
+Next morning they all continued their journey to Portsmouth in Mr. Vincent
+Crummles's "four-wheeled phaeton" drawn by his famous pony.
+
+Dickens does not name the inn in which this incident took place, and
+beyond stating it was twelve miles from Portsmouth gives no other
+indication helpful in identifying it.
+
+[Illustration: THE BOTTOM INN, NEAR PETERSFIELD
+
+_Drawn by C. G. Harper_]
+
+Mr. Charles G. Harper however says from Dickens's very accurate
+description there can be no question as to the identical spot the novelist
+had in mind, which is just below Petersfield. There is an inn, the Coach
+and Horses, standing by the wayside to-day, but according to Mr. Harper it
+did not exist at the time of the story, so that the inn to which Dickens
+referred was the Bottom Inn, or Gravel Hill Inn, as it was sometimes
+called, which stood there in those days, and exists to-day as a
+gamekeeper's cottage.
+
+There are other inns in the book that are referred to without name and one
+or two which leave no doubt as to their identity.
+
+The handsome hotel, for instance, where Nicholas accidentally overheard
+Sir Mulberry Hawk talking familiarly about his sister Kate, was situated,
+Dickens tells us, in one of the thoroughfares lying between Park Lane and
+Bond Street. It cannot, however, definitely be identified. It was in one
+of the boxes of the coffee-room that the incident took place and there
+were many such hotels at the time in the district whose coffee-rooms were
+partitioned off into such boxes as Dickens describes this one. It has been
+suggested that Mivart's, afterwards Claridge's--the old one, not the
+present building--was possibly the one Dickens meant. It stood in Brook
+Street and for that reason would perhaps answer the purpose. But this is
+mere conjecture.
+
+This hotel may also be the one referred to in Chapter XVI of Book II of
+_Little Dorrit_, where we are told "The courier had not approved of Mr.
+Dorrit's staying in the house of a friend, and had preferred to take him
+to an hotel in Brook Street, Grosvenor Square." He had just returned from
+the Continent and remained for a short time only. But it was the scene of
+two or three momentous interviews with Mr. Merdle, Flora Finching and
+young John Chivery.
+
+The Crown public-house Newman Noggs used to frequent in the neighbourhood
+of Golden Square, London, and which he told Nicholas was "at the corner of
+Silver Street and James Street, with a bar door both ways," has been
+rebuilt and greatly altered since those days. The names of the streets,
+too, have been changed to Upper James Street and Beak Street, but at the
+corner where they meet is to be found a Crown public-house occupying the
+site of Newman Noggs's favoured house of call.
+
+There is something more definite and real in the London Tavern referred to
+in the second chapter of the book, where the "United Metropolitan Improved
+Hot Muffin and Crumpet Baking and Punctual Delivery Company" was to hold
+its first meeting with Sir Matthew Pupker in the chair, which Company was
+being floated and engineered by Ralph Nickleby and his fellow conspirator,
+Mr. Bunney. Arriving in Bishopsgate Street Within, where the London Tavern
+was, and still is situated, they found it in a great bustle. Half a dozen
+men were exciting themselves over the announcement of the meeting which
+was to petition Parliament in favour of the wonderful Company with a
+capital of five hundred thousand shares of ten pounds each. The two men
+elbowed their way into a room upstairs containing a business-looking table
+and several business-looking people. The report of that meeting is too
+long to quote, but, long as it is, not too long for the reader to relish
+every word of it if he will but turn again to the pages describing it.
+After the petition was agreed upon, Mr. Nickleby and the other directors
+adjourned to the office to lunch, and to remunerate themselves; "for which
+trouble (as the company was yet in its infancy) they only charged three
+guineas each man for every such attendance."
+
+The London Tavern where this meeting was held was opened in 1768. It was
+built on the Tontine principle, the name of the architect one Richard B.
+Jupp. The great dining-room was known as the "Pillar-room" and was
+"decorated with medallions and garlands, Corinthian columns and
+pilasters." It had a ball-room running the whole length of the structure,
+which was also used for banquets, and was hung with paintings and
+contained a large organ at one end. In those days the hotel was famous for
+its turtle soup, the turtles being kept alive in large tanks, and as many
+as two tons were seen swimming in the vat at one time. The cellars were
+filled with barrels of porter, pipes of port, butts of sherry, and endless
+other bottles and bins. The building was erected to provide a spacious and
+convenient place for public meetings, such as had drawn Ralph Nickleby and
+his friends on the occasion referred to above.
+
+In _Household Words_ in 1852 was a long article on the tavern to which we
+are indebted for some of the facts here recorded. Meetings of Mexican
+Bondholders were held on the second floor; of a Railway Assurance
+"upstairs, and first to the left"; of an asylum election at the end of the
+passage; and of the party on the "first floor to the right," who had to
+consider "the union of the Gibbleton line of the Great-Trunk-Due-Eastern
+Junction"; all these functions brought persons in great excitement and
+agitation to its hospitable walls.
+
+For these meetings the rooms were arranged with benches, and sumptuously
+Turkey-carpeted: the end being provided with a long table for the
+directors, with an imposing array of paper and pens.
+
+In a word, it was a city tavern for city men, and it still exists to-day
+to cater for the requirements of the same class of business men, although
+perhaps not so ostentatiously. Banquets are still held there; city
+companies hold their meetings there, and Masonic institutions their
+lodges.
+
+Dickens knew the tavern very well, having given dinners there himself or
+taken the chair for some fund, as he did in June 1844, in aid of the
+"Sanatorium or Sick-house," an institution for students, governesses and
+young artists who were above using hospitals and could not afford the
+expenses of home-nursing in their lodgings.
+
+On another occasion (in 1851) Dickens presided there at the annual dinner
+held in aid of the General Theatrical Fund. The thought of this dinner may
+have come back to him when he was writing one of his short pieces entitled
+"Lying Awake," (1852) in which, among the strange things which came to his
+mind on those occasions, he mentions that he found himself once thinking
+how he had "suffered unspeakable agitation of mind from taking the chair
+at a public dinner at the London Tavern in my night clothes, which not all
+the courtesy of my kind friend and host, Mr. Bathe, could persuade me were
+quite adapted to the occasion."
+
+There are a few other inns not mentioned by name, or merely alluded to in
+passing, which, together with those we have dealt with, make _Nicholas
+Nickleby_ almost as interesting from this point of view as _Pickwick
+Papers_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+BARNABY RUDGE
+
+    THE MAYPOLE, CHIGWELL
+
+
+Of all the inns with which Dickens's books abound there is none that plays
+so important a part in any of his stories as the Maypole at Chigwell does
+in _Barnaby Rudge_. Other inns are just the scene of an incident or two,
+or are associated with certain characters or groups of characters; the
+Maypole is the actual pivot upon which the whole story of _Barnaby Rudge_
+revolves. It is associated in some way with every character that figures
+prominently in the narrative, and scene after scene is enacted either in
+it or near by. The story begins with a picturesque description of the inn
+and its frequenters, and ends with a delightful pen-picture of young Joe
+Willet comfortably settled there with Dolly as his wife, and a happy
+family growing up around them.
+
+For these reasons it may therefore be said to be the most important of
+all the Dickensian inns. It is also one of the few hostels Dickens
+describes in detail, and perhaps the only one he admittedly gave a
+fanciful name to, for its real name is the King's Head. Ever since it has
+been an inn it has been so called, and is known by that name to-day,
+although it is never referred to in conversation or print without the
+corroborative appendage of "The Maypole of _Barnaby Rudge_," nor does the
+sign-board omit this important fact. There are the remains of an inn near
+by at Chigwell Row, boasting the sign of the Maypole, and this may have
+suggested the name to Dickens, but that is all it can claim: the King's
+Head is the inn and Chigwell is the place chosen by Dickens for the centre
+of some of the chief scenes in his story, and the few fanciful touches he
+gives to it and its surroundings are nothing but the licence allowed a
+novelist for rounding off and completing the details necessary for the
+presentment of his ideal. As long as the King's Head exists, therefore, it
+will always remain famous as "the Maypole of _Barnaby Rudge_," and reflect
+pleasant memories to all who know the book.
+
+In 1841 Dickens, writing to his friend and biographer, John Forster,
+inviting him to take a trip to Chigwell, said: "Chigwell, my dear fellow,
+is the greatest place in the world. Name your day for going. Such a
+delicious old inn, opposite the churchyard--such a lovely ride--such
+beautiful forest scenery--such an out-of-the-way, rural, place--such a
+sexton! I say again name your day." In quoting this alluring invitation in
+his biography of the novelist, John Forster adds: "The day was named at
+once, and the whitest of stones marks it, in now sorrowful memory.
+Dickens's promise was exceeded by our enjoyment; and his delight in the
+double recognition of himself and of Barnaby, by the landlord of the nice
+old inn, far exceeded any pride he would have taken in what the world
+thinks the highest sort of honour."
+
+As _Barnaby Rudge_ had been published by this time, the novelist must have
+made many a trip to the King's Head previously, for the early chapters of
+the story in which the inn is introduced had been written long before.
+
+Time has played very few tricks either with the building or with Chigwell,
+for they are practically the same to-day as they were at the period in
+which Dickens was writing. The inn can still be said to be a delicious old
+one, and, if one rides to it as Dickens did, his description of the forest
+scenery and the nature of the out-of-the-way, rural place will be found
+as true to-day as when he discovered it, nearly a century ago: facts which
+many a pilgrim to it since can substantiate.
+
+[Illustration: THE KING'S HEAD, CHIGWELL
+
+_Drawn by L. Walker_]
+
+The description of the Maypole in the opening chapter of _Barnaby Rudge_
+has been quoted often, but we make no apology for quoting it again, for no
+more enticing way of introducing it could be imagined. Besides which it
+incidentally suggests its past history as well as affirms its present
+picturesqueness:
+
+"The Maypole was an old building, with more gable ends than a lazy man
+would care to count on a sunny day; huge zigzag chimneys, out of which it
+seemed as though even smoke could not choose but come in more than
+naturally fantastic shapes, imparted to it in its tortuous progress; and
+vast stables, gloomy, ruinous, and empty. The place was said to have been
+built in the days of King Henry the Eighth; and there was a legend, not
+only that Queen Elizabeth had slept there one night while upon a hunting
+excursion, to wit, in a certain oak-panelled room with a deep bay window,
+but that next morning, while standing on a mounting-block before the door,
+with one foot in the stirrup, the Virgin Monarch had then and there boxed
+and cuffed an unlucky page for some neglect of duty.... Whether these, and
+many other stories of the like nature, were true or untrue, the Maypole
+was really an old house, a very old house, perhaps as old as it claimed to
+be, and perhaps older, which will sometimes happen with houses of an
+uncertain, as with ladies of a certain, age. Its windows were old
+diamond-pane lattices, its floors were sunken and uneven, its ceilings
+blacked by the hand of Time, and heavy with massive beams. Over the
+doorway was an ancient porch, quaintly and grotesquely carved; and here on
+Summer evenings the more favoured customers smoked and drank--aye, and
+sang many a good song, too, sometimes--reposing in two grim-looking
+high-backed settles, which, like the twin dragons of some fairy tale,
+guarded the entrance to the mansion. In the chimneys of the disused rooms
+swallows had built their nests for many a long year, and, from earliest
+Spring to latest Autumn, whole colonies of sparrows chirped and twittered
+in the eaves. There were more pigeons about the dreary stable-yard and
+outbuildings than anybody but the landlord could reckon up. The wheeling
+and circling flights of runts, fantails, tumblers and pouters were perhaps
+not quite consistent with the grave and sober character of the building,
+but the monotonous cooing, which never ceased to be raised by some among
+them all day long, suited it exactly, and seemed to lull it to rest.
+
+"With its overhanging stories, drowsy little panes of glass, and front
+bulging out and projecting over the pathway, the old house looked as if it
+were nodding in its sleep. Indeed, it needed no great stretch of fancy to
+detect in it other resemblances to humanity. The bricks of which it was
+built had originally been a deep dark red, but had grown yellow and
+discoloured like an old man's skin; the sturdy timbers had decayed like
+teeth; and here and there the ivy, like a warm garment to comfort it in
+its age, wrapt its green leaves closely round the time-worn walls."
+
+That is a charming pen-picture of the Maypole's outward appearance, and
+beyond a little exaggeration as regards some details almost perfectly fits
+the "delicious" old inn to-day. Some topographers have seen fit to quarrel
+with the picture because the porch was never there as described by Dickens
+and because the gable ends could easily be counted without trouble, and
+because in their hurried visit they had failed to discover the old bricks
+and the warm garment of ivy wrapping its green leaves closely round the
+time-worn walls. But that is being meticulous, not to say pedantic, and if
+a visit is made to the back of the building this delightful simile can be
+thoroughly appreciated. Indeed, no more appropriate words could be found
+to describe its appearance to-day than those written by the novelist many
+years ago.
+
+Cattermole, who drew a picture of the inn for the book, went woefully
+wrong. He did not even follow Dickens's words, but drew a picture more
+representing an old English baronial mansion than an inn. Even granting
+that, before the Maypole was an inn it was a mansion, Cattermole very
+much overstepped the mark. History tells us that about 1713 the King's
+Head was used for sittings of the Court of Attachments, and that farther
+back in 1630 "the Bailiff of the Forests was directed to summon the
+Constables to appear before the Forest Officers, for the purposes of an
+election," at the "house of Bibby," which probably was no other than what
+became the King's Head at Chigwell. "In this quaint and pleasant inn," we
+are informed, "may still be seen the room in which the Court of
+Attachments was held." This evidently is the Chester Room to which we
+shall refer later. The same writer also mentions "an arched recess in the
+cellar, made to hold the wine which served for the revels of the Officers
+of the Forest, after the graver labours of the day."
+
+Let us follow the story of _Barnaby Rudge_ through, and see how everything
+in it focusses on the Maypole Inn.
+
+The story dates back to 1775, and opens with John Willet, the burly
+large-headed landlord with a fat face, sitting in his old seat in the
+chimney-corner before a blazing fire surrounded by the group of regular
+habitués. Here this company assembled each night in the recess of the
+huge wide chimney with their long clay pipes and tankards to discuss the
+local history and events. Here Solomon Daisy told his Maypole story. "It
+belongs to the house," says John Willet, "and nobody but Solomon Daisy has
+ever told it under this roof, or ever shall, that's more." This room, long
+since turned to the more modern use of an up-to-date kitchen, was the
+scene of many an incident in the book. Its cosy chimney-corner and
+high-back settles are no more, but the scene can be adjusted easily, even
+though a gas stove stultifies the vision somewhat. It was the resort of
+all and sundry in those days. Gabriel Varden credited himself with great
+resolution if he took another road on his way back from the Warren in
+order that he should not break his promise to Martha by looking in at the
+Maypole.
+
+It was a bold resolution, for the Maypole was as a magnet, and we are
+often told of how its cheery lights in the evenings were a lure to those
+within sight of them; for when Gabriel did go, as related on one occasion,
+and left the door open behind him, there was disclosed "a delicious
+perspective of warmth and brightness--when the ruddy gleam of the fire,
+streaming through the old red curtains of the common room, seemed to bring
+with it, as part of itself, a pleasant hum of voices, and a fragrant
+odour of steaming grog and rare tobacco, all steeped, as it were, in the
+cheerful glow." There he would find a company in snug seats in the
+snuggest of corners round a broad glare from a crackling log, and from a
+distant kitchen he would hear a gentle sound of frying, with musical
+clatter of plates and dishes, and a savoury smell that made even the
+boisterous wind a perfume--on such occasions Gabriel, we are told, would
+find his "firmness oozing rapidly away. He tried to look stoically at the
+tavern, but his features would relax into a look of fondness. He turned
+his head the other way, and the cold black country seemed to frown him
+off, and to drive him for a refuge into its hospitable arms."
+
+We can well imagine it, for who could resist its clean floor covered with
+crisp white sand, its well-swept hearth, its blazing fire, such as this
+friendly meeting place possessed? That was but one of its many attractive
+rooms.
+
+Up the "wide dismantled staircase" was the best apartment, in which John
+Chester had his momentous interview with Geoffrey Haredale. This is known
+to-day, as we have already said, as the Chester Room. "It was spacious
+enough in all conscience, occupying the whole depth of the house, and
+having at either end a great bay window, as large as many modern rooms
+... although the best room in the inn, it had the melancholy aspect of
+grandeur in decay, and was much too vast for comfort." This room exists
+to-day, and one can readily realise, on reading Dickens's meditation on
+its dullness and its chilly waste, how desolate it must have been as a
+living-room in a mansion, such as the Maypole once was. "God help the man
+whose heart ever changes with the world, as an old mansion when it becomes
+an inn," Dickens exclaims.
+
+[Illustration: THE CHESTER ROOM
+
+_Drawn by L. Walker_]
+
+The best bedroom to which Mr. Chester repaired for the night after his
+interview with Mr. Haredale was nearly as large and possessed "a great
+spectral bedstead, hung with faded brocade, and ornamented, at the top of
+each carved post, with a plume of feathers that had once been white, but
+with dust and age had now grown hearse-like and funereal"; but the room,
+John Willet informed his guest, was "as warm as a toast in a tankard." And
+so Mr. Chester was left to his rest in the Maypole's ancient bed.
+
+These apartments, stately and grand as they were, could not compare or
+compete in comfort with the bar, the bar parlour and other corners
+frequented by the more menial coterie of the inn. Even the stables were
+pleasant in their way, and, when Hugh, the ostler--Maypole Hugh as he was
+called--was ordered to take Mr. Chester's horse, John Willet assured his
+guest that "there's good accommodation for man and beast," which was true
+then and is true to-day.
+
+Later came Lord George Gordon, John Grueby and Mr. Gashford on their "No
+Popery" mission, all looking like "tagrag and bobtail," asking if there
+are any inns thereabouts. "There are no inns," replied Mr. Willet, with
+strong emphasis on the plural number; "but there's a inn--one inn--the
+Maypole Inn. That's a inn indeed. You won't see the like of that inn
+often." After being assured that his visitors were really the persons
+they represented themselves to be, John Willet recovered so far as to
+observe that there was ample accommodation at the Maypole for the party;
+"good beds, neat wines, excellent entertainment for man and beast; private
+rooms for large and small parties; dinners dressed upon the shortest
+notice; choice stabling, and a lock-up coach-house; and, in short, to run
+over such recommendatory scraps of language as were painted up on various
+portions of the building, and which in the course of forty years he had
+learnt to repeat with tolerable correctness." And so they were "put up"
+for the night, and they could desire nothing better.
+
+Without following the story in its relation to the horrors of the Gordon
+Riots, we record in passing that both Maypole Hugh and Barnaby joined the
+throng on leaving their cosy quarters of the inn.
+
+Passing over the frequent visits of such characters as Mr., Mrs. and Dolly
+Varden, Miss Haredale and others, we reach the stage in the story when the
+rioters arrived at the inn on their way to burn and raid the Warren in the
+neighbourhood. They encounter John Willet at the Porch, and immediately
+demand drink.
+
+Their ringleader was no other than Maypole Hugh, who confronted his late
+master with "These lads are thirsty and must drink. Bustle, Jack, bustle!
+Show us the best--the very best--the over-proof that you keep for your own
+drinking, Jack!" Then ensued a mad scene. The rabble entered the bar--"the
+sanctuary, the mystery, the hallowed ground: here it was, crammed with
+men, clubs, sticks, torches, pistols; filled with a deafening noise,
+oaths, shouts, screams, hootings; changed all at once into a bear-garden,
+a madhouse, an infernal temple; men darting in and out, by door and
+window, smashing the glass, turning the taps, drinking liquor out of china
+punch-bowls, sitting astride of casks, smoking private and personal pipes,
+cutting down the sacred grove of lemons, hacking and hewing of the
+celebrated cheese ... noise, smoke, light, darkness, frolic, anger,
+laughter, groans, plunder, fear, and ruin." Finally binding John to a
+chair they left him alone in his dismantled bar and made for the Warren,
+which they burned to the ground.
+
+In despair, Mr. Haredale seeks his niece and servants at the Maypole, only
+to find the spectacle of John Willet in the ignominious position the
+rioters left him, with his favourite house stripped and pulled about his
+ears. Damaged as the "Maypole" was in many ways, it never actually drops
+out of the story's interest; but during the trend of events in London we
+naturally hear little of it.
+
+John Willet had flown in despair from it, and took up his abode in the
+Black Lion in London for safety's sake, where eventually he again met his
+son Joe, now a one-armed hero back from the wars.
+
+Here in his solitude we find him sitting over the fire, "afar off in the
+remotest depths of his intellect," with a lurking hint or faint suggestion
+"that out of the public purse there might issue funds for the restoration
+of the Maypole to its former high place among the taverns of the earth."
+What actually did happen, however, was the marriage of his son Joe to
+Dolly, whose father gave her a handsome dowry, enabling the happy couple
+to return to the Maypole, reopen it, and there install themselves as host
+and hostess. And so they brought back to the inn all its famous glory,
+earning for it the epithet that there was no such country inn as the
+Maypole in all England.
+
+Barnaby returned to live with his mother on the farm established there,
+and Grip was his cherished companion throughout the rest of his life. John
+Willet retired into a small cottage in the village, where the fire-place
+was widened and enlarged for him, and where a boiler was hung up for his
+edification, and, furthermore, in the little garden outside the front door
+a fictitious Maypole was planted; so that he was quite at home directly.
+To this new abode came his old friends and cronies of the old
+chimney-corner of the Maypole to chum over the things that once were.
+
+No doubt they talked of the old days in the old inn, and occasionally
+turned in to its enticing haven and challenged anyone to find its equal by
+asking, as was asked before, "What carpet like its crunching sand, what
+merry music as its crackling logs, what perfume like its kitchen's dainty
+breath, what weather genial as its hearty warmth?" And we are sure that
+they all endorsed its historian's benediction--"Blessings on the old
+house, how sturdily it stood."
+
+We have attempted to bring to mind the atmosphere of the Maypole as it was
+in the days of the story of _Barnaby Rudge_, and to recall the characters
+and incidents associated with it. The pilgrim to this notable Dickens
+shrine to-day, remembering these things, will find that time has dealt
+kindly with the old inn. It is changed, of course, in many ways, but it is
+still the old Maypole, with its bar, its Chester room, its stables, its
+cellars running under the adjoining cottages, and its ivy still clinging
+to the old worn bricks at the back. Its windows are still diamond-paned,
+and its floors are still uneven and sunken in places; its heavy beams run
+across the ceiling. One can even hear the sparrows chirp and see the other
+birds disport themselves in their revels. The building has many gables,
+and its stories overhang and bulge over the pathway as if the old house
+was nodding in its sleep just as the novelist described it.
+
+And, in the churchyard opposite, the scene of Barnaby and his mother
+sitting upon a tombstone and eating their frugal meal can easily be
+visualized.
+
+Still set in a rural and beautiful district of England's verdant lanes,
+long may the Maypole survive!
+
+It is interesting to note that in 1899 "The Charles Dickens Lodge" was
+consecrated in the Maypole, and still holds its meetings there. The Lodge
+is held in what was undoubtedly the "best bedroom" of the inn, and the
+banquet follows in the Chester Room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+BARNABY RUDGE (_continued_) AND THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP
+
+    THE BOOT--THE BLACK LION--THE CROOKED BILLET--THE RED LION, BEVIS
+    MARKS--GRAY'S INN COFFEE-HOUSE--AND OTHERS
+
+
+There are very few instances in Dickens's descriptions of London that were
+not the outcome of his own actual observations. But in writing _Barnaby
+Rudge_, the action of which took place thirty years or so before he was
+born, he was forced to rely a good deal on tradition and history books.
+Yet, so particular was he about facts and details, it would be very
+difficult to find him tripping even in his geography.
+
+In regard to the inns and taverns of the book, we find, as we have shown,
+how intimately he knew the Maypole, and we believe it to be true, although
+in a lesser degree, in regard to the Boot, the headquarters of the Gordon
+Rioters, which, next to the Maypole, is the most notable inn in the book.
+Having lived in the neighbourhood where for over a century and a half this
+old inn or its predecessors stood, he no doubt visited it and absorbed the
+atmosphere of its past.
+
+It is first mentioned in Chapter XXXVIII, where we are told that, after
+being enrolled as "No Popery" men, Dennis and Hugh left Gashford's house
+together and spent two hours in inspecting the Houses of Parliament and
+their purlieus. "As they were thirsty by this time, Dennis proposed that
+they should repair together to the Boot, where there was good company and
+strong liquor. Hugh yielding a ready assent, they bent their steps that
+way with no loss of time."
+
+The Boot, we are told, was "a lone house of public entertainment, situated
+in the fields at the back of the Foundling Hospital; a very solitary spot
+at that period, and quite deserted after dark. The tavern stood at some
+distance from any high road, and was approached only by a dark and narrow
+lane; so that Hugh was much surprised to find several people drinking
+there, and great merriment going on."
+
+[Illustration: The Old Boot Inn. 1780.
+
+_From an old Engraving_]
+
+Here it was that Sim Tappertit, as chief or captain of the United
+Bulldogs, swaggered about with majestic air, among his fellow
+conspirators, creating a great impression by his dignity and assumed
+demeanour of importance, whilst plots and acts of menace were hatched out.
+In those days the fields were known as Lamb Conduit Fields, which district
+has become now a very thickly populated neighbourhood between Euston Road
+and Gray's Inn Road, with the name still perpetuated in Lambs Conduit
+Street. There is a Boot Tavern still standing to-day at 116 Cromer Street,
+and there is no reason to doubt that it is the successor of the Boot
+mentioned in _Barnaby Rudge_ as the headquarters of the Gordon Rioters,
+which actually stood at that spot in 1780. Situated as it was then, the
+solitary surroundings became a refuge at night for rioters in lanes, under
+the hay-stacks, or near the warmth of brick-kilns, when they were not in
+the tavern planning desperate deeds in the name of the Protestant
+Association of England, sanctioned by Lord George Gordon. The present Boot
+was rebuilt in 1801 by Peter Speedy, and five generations of the family
+have owned it for something like 150 years. Even as far back as 1630 we
+learn that a Thomas Cleave invested £50 in the Boot Tavern, the interest
+on which was to be spent weekly on thirteen penny loaves, to be
+distributed to the poor at the door of St. Pancras' Church every Sunday
+morning.
+
+Among the original illustrations to the book is one of the Boot engraved
+from a drawing by George Cattermole, who made it from a contemporary
+etching, which we reproduce here. In comparing it with Cattermole's
+picture it will be observed that it differs very slightly in detail, but
+is turned the other way round. This, no doubt, is accounted for by the
+fact that the drawing was made on wood and when engraved and printed the
+picture became reversed. The stream running in front of the inn is the
+Fleet, which still flows underground.
+
+A correspondent in _The Times_ on the 25th October, 1895, writing on the
+subject said that Dickens confirmed to him with his own lips in the Boot
+itself about the year 1867 "that this was the identical inn he had in his
+mind's eye when he conceived _Barnaby Rudge_."
+
+Unhappily the frontage has been aggressively modernised. Luckily the
+present landlord, Mr. Harry Ford, has retained the sign of "Ye Olde Boote"
+and is proud of the tavern's traditions.
+
+The three or four other inns of the book do not figure so realistically in
+it as do the Maypole and the Boot. The half-way house between Chigwell
+and London referred to in Chapter II, although unnamed, was no doubt the
+Green Man at Leytonstone, still standing near the present-day railway
+station.
+
+The Black Lion in Whitechapel, where Joe Willet took his frugal dinner
+after having settled his father's bills with the vintner in Thames Street,
+and where on another occasion, having determined to enlist in the Army, he
+met the recruiting sergeant, may have existed in those days, but that
+cannot be determined definitely. There certainly was a Black Lion Yard
+there, and maybe, at one time, an inn of that name stood close by,
+exhibiting the sign, which, we are told, was painted by the artist under
+instructions from the landlord "to convey into the features of the lordly
+brute whose effigy it bore as near a counterpart of his own face as his
+skill could compass." The result was "rather a drowsy, tame and feeble
+lion; and as these social representatives of a savage class are usually of
+a conventional character (being depicted, for the most part, in impossible
+attitudes, and of unearthly colour) he was frequently supposed by the most
+ignorant and uninformed among the neighbours to be the veritable portrait
+of the host as he appeared on the occasion of some great funeral ceremony
+or public mourning."
+
+This inn was the scene too of the meeting of Dolly Varden and Joe when the
+valiant soldier returned from the defence of the "Salwanners" minus an
+arm; and of the interview of the youthful couple when they came to that
+very pleasant understanding, after an enjoyable supper.
+
+The Crooked Billet, the headquarters of the recruiting sergeant, where
+Joe, "disconsolate and downhearted, but full of courage," was enrolled
+"among the gallant defenders of his native land," was in Tower Street, so
+we are told; and we read that, having taken the King's shilling, he was
+"regaled with a steaming supper of boiled tripe and onions, prepared, as
+his friend assured him more than once, at the express command of his Most
+Sacred Majesty the King." After he had done ample justice to it he was
+"conducted to a straw mattress in a loft over the stable, and locked in
+there for the night."
+
+Until 1912 there actually was an old weather-beaten public-house with that
+name at No. 1 Little Tower Hill, at the corner of Shorter Street. It was a
+very fine specimen of eighteenth-century architecture, although the
+frontage was not as old as the rest of the structure. As it would have
+been standing at the period of the story, no doubt this was the house
+Dickens had in mind. It was demolished, with other buildings, to conform
+to the necessity of city improvements.
+
+The noted coffee-house in Covent Garden to which Mr. Chester repaired
+after leaving the locksmith's might be any one of the many that flourished
+in that district at the time, such as "Tom's," "White's," "Wills's," and
+"Button's." "Tom's" was perhaps the most fashionable, and for that reason
+more likely to be favoured by Mr. Chester, as he would be only too proud
+to think he would be numbered among such folk as Dr. Johnson, Sir Joshua
+Reynolds, Garrick, Defoe, and all those famous men who resorted to it in
+its palmiest days. It was situated at No. 17 Russell Street.
+
+Turning to _The Old Curiosity Shop_, we can find but few inns or taverns
+that have any real importance to the story. Of those that are mentioned by
+name, no detailed description is given, nor is any very vital incident or
+character associated with them.
+
+In Chapter XXI, however, where Quilp invites Dick Swiveller to partake of
+liquid refreshment with him, we get the real Dickens touch: "As we are
+companions in adversity," he said, "shall we be companions in the surest
+way of forgetting it? If you had no particular business, now, to lead you
+in another direction, there is a house by the waterside where they have
+some of the noblest Schiedam--reputed to be smuggled, but that's between
+ourselves--that can be got in all the world. The landlord knows me.
+There's a little summer-house overlooking the river where we might take a
+glass of this delicious liquor with a whiff of the best tobacco ... and be
+perfectly happy, could we possibly contrive it; or is there any particular
+engagement that peremptorily takes you another way, Mr. Swiveller, eh?"
+There remained nothing more to be done but to set out for the house in
+question. The summer-house of which Mr. Quilp had spoken was "a rugged
+wooden box, rotten and bare to see, which overhung the river's mud and
+threatened to slide down into it. The tavern to which it belonged was a
+crazy building, sapped and undermined by the rats, and only upheld by the
+bars of wood which were reared against its walls, and had propped it up so
+long that even they were decaying and yielding with their load, and of a
+windy night might be heard to creak and crack as if the whole fabric were
+about to come toppling down. The house stood--if anything so old and
+feeble could be said to stand--on a piece of waste ground, blighted
+with the unwholesome smoke of factory chimneys.... Its internal
+accommodation amply fulfilled the promise of the outside. The rooms were
+low and damp, the clammy walls were pierced with chinks and holes, the
+rotten floors had sunk from their level, the very beams started from their
+place and warned the timid stranger from their neighbourhood."
+
+[Illustration: THE RED LION, BEVIS MARKS
+
+_Drawn by G. M. Brimelow_]
+
+Dickens gives no name to this tavern so minutely and wonderfully
+described, where Quilp and Dick drank with so much freedom. Yet, although
+it cannot be identified, the word-picture is too good to pass unheeded.
+However, many years ago there were scores of such which would answer to
+the description, on the Surrey side of the Thames, and no doubt Dickens
+hit upon one of them for Quilp's favourite resort near by his wharf. They
+have long since disappeared.
+
+No sign is mentioned either of Dick Swiveller's favourite inn "across the
+street," from Sampson Brass's office in Bevis Marks, where he obtained his
+"modest quencher." There is, however, at No. 17, the Red Lion Tavern that
+claims that honour and acquaints the world of the fact from its
+sign-board. It is quite an old-fashioned public-house, and has scarcely
+been altered since it numbered so bright and merry a soul as Dick among
+its frequenters.
+
+There is, however, one tavern mentioned in the story that leaves us in no
+doubt about its identification. It will be remembered how annoyed, indeed
+how desperate, Sampson Brass gets with the Single Gentleman for
+encouraging the Punch and Judy shows to the house. "I wish I only knew who
+his friends were," muttered Sampson, as another appeared in Bevis Marks.
+"If they'd just get up a pretty little commission _de lunatico_ at the
+Gray's Inn Coffee-House and give me the job, I'd be content to have the
+lodgings empty for awhile, at all events."
+
+The building which was once known as Gray's Inn Coffee-House stands
+to-day, although its front has been stuccoed and turned into chambers. It
+is the next house on the east from the Holborn gate of Gray's Inn. It is
+referred to at length in Chapter LIX of _David Copperfield_, when David,
+reaching London, plans to call on Traddles in his chambers in the Inn. He
+puts up at Gray's Inn Coffee-House. Having ordered a bit of fish and a
+steak he stood before the fire musing on the waiter's obscurity:
+
+"As I followed the chief waiter with my eyes, I could not help thinking
+that the garden in which he had gradually blown to be the flower he was
+was an arduous place to rise in. It had such a prescriptive,
+stiff-necked, long-established, solemn, elderly air. I glanced about the
+room, which had had its sanded floor sanded, no doubt, in exactly the same
+manner when the chief waiter was a boy, if he ever was a boy, which
+appeared to be improbable; and at the shining tables, where I saw myself
+reflected, in unruffled depths of old mahogany; and at the lamps, without
+a flaw in their trimmings or cleaning; and at the comfortable green
+curtains, with their pure brass rods, snugly enclosing the boxes; and at
+the two large coal fires, brightly burning; and at the rows of decanters,
+burly as if with the consciousness of pipes of expensive old port wine
+below; and both England and the law appeared to me to be very difficult
+indeed to be taken by storm. I went up to my bedroom to change my wet
+clothes; and the vast extent of that old wainscoted apartment (which was
+over the archway leading to the inn, I remember) and the sedate immensity
+of the four-post bedstead, and the indomitable gravity of the chests of
+drawers, all seemed to unite in sternly frowning on the fortunes of
+Traddles, or on any such daring youth. I came down again to my dinner; and
+even the slow comfort of the meal, and the orderly silence of the place,
+were eloquent on the audacity of Traddles, and his small hopes of a
+livelihood for twenty years to come."
+
+We wonder if the staid men who conduct their business in those rooms
+to-day are conscious that they occupy one of London's historic old
+coffee-taverns and a noted Dickens landmark to wit.
+
+The Jolly Sandboys Inn, mentioned at the beginning of Chapter XVIII of
+_The Old Curiosity Shop_, is doubtless a purely imaginary one. It was "a
+small road-side inn of pretty ancient date, with a sign representing three
+sandboys increasing their jollity with as many jugs of ale and bags of
+gold, creaking and swinging on its post on the opposite side of the road."
+But, as we have no definite information as to the identical spot Codlin
+and Short had reached at that moment, no attempt can be made to identify
+it.
+
+The same remarks apply to the Valiant Soldier, the public-house where Nell
+and her grandfather took shelter from the storm, in Chapter XXIX, and
+where the old man gambled away Nell's last coin in a game of cards.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT
+
+    THE BLUE DRAGON--THE HALF MOON AND SEVEN STARS--TWO SALISBURY
+    INNS--THE BLACK BULL, HOLBORN
+
+
+The Blue Dragon is an inn whose name, through the magic pen of Dickens,
+has become as familiar as that of the veritable Pecksniff himself, and
+almost as important. Dickens found evident delight in describing it and
+its beaming mistress, Mrs. Lupin, but was careful not to disclose its real
+whereabouts beyond saying that it was located in a "little Wiltshire
+village within easy journey of the fair old town of Salisbury." It is
+first introduced in Chapter II of _Martin Chuzzlewit_ in that wonderful
+description of an angry wind, which, among the other extraordinary and
+wilful antics it indulged in, gave "the old sign before the ale-house door
+such a cuff as it went that the Blue Dragon was more rampant than usual
+ever afterwards." In the following chapter we are allowed to become more
+intimate with this sign and learn what "a faded, and an ancient dragon he
+was; and many a wintry storm of rain, snow, sleet, and hail had changed
+his colour from a gaudy blue to a faint lack-lustre of grey. But there he
+hung; rearing, in a state of monstrous imbecility, on his hind legs;
+waxing, with every month that passed, so much more dim and shapeless that
+as you gazed at him on one side of the sign-board it seemed as if he must
+be gradually melting through it, and coming out upon the other. He was a
+courteous and considerate dragon, too; or had been in his distincter days;
+for in the midst of his rampant feebleness he kept one of his fore paws
+near his nose, as though he would say, 'Don't mind me--it's only my fun';
+while he held out the other in polite and hospitable entreaty."
+
+No less delightful is Dickens's picture of the mistress of the Blue
+Dragon, who "was in outward appearance just what a landlady should be:
+broad, buxom, comfortable and good-looking, with a face of clear red and
+white, which, by its jovial aspect, at once bore testimony to her hearty
+participation in the good things of the larder and cellar, and to their
+thriving and healthful influences. She was a widow, but years ago had
+passed through her state of weeds, and burst into flower again--and in
+full bloom she had continued ever since; and in full bloom she was now;
+with roses in her ample skirts, and roses on her bodice, roses in her cap,
+roses in her cheeks--aye, and roses, worth the gathering too, on her lips
+for that matter ... was comely, dimpled plump, and tight as a gooseberry."
+
+To this inn and the care of its jovial landlady unexpectedly came old
+Martin Chuzzlewit and Mary Graham in a rusty old chariot with post-horses.
+The old man, suffering horrible cramps and spasms, was accommodated in the
+best bedroom, "which was a large apartment, such as one may see in country
+places, with a low roof and a sunken flooring, all downhill from the door,
+and a descent of two steps on the inside so exquisitely unexpected that
+strangers, despite the most elaborate cautioning, usually dived in head
+first, as into a plunging bath. It was none of your frivolous and
+preposterously bright bedrooms, where nobody can close an eye with any
+kind of propriety or decent regard to the association of ideas; but it was
+a good, dull leaden drowsy place, where every article of furniture
+reminded you that you came there to sleep, and that you were expected to
+go to sleep."
+
+Here old Martin was put to bed in the old curtained four-poster, and was
+soon discovered by Mr. Hypocrite Pecksniff, who knew the Blue Dragon and
+its bar well and had come in from his house not far away. In short time
+followed the other relatives until all the beds in the inn and village
+were at a premium. These relatives included Mr. and Mrs. Spottletoe,
+Anthony Chuzzlewit and his son Jonas, the widow of a deceased brother and
+her two daughters, a grand-nephew, George Chuzzlewit, all of whom we
+assume slept at the inn; whilst Montague Tigg and Chevy Slime put up at
+the Half Moon and Seven Stars, where they ran up a bill they could not pay
+and so tried the Blue Dragon. The King's Arms in the village was no doubt
+the original of the Half Moon and Seven Stars.
+
+Throughout the first portion of the book the Blue Dragon is the meeting
+place of many of the characters, with Mrs. Lupin the friend of most of
+them. Therefore within its walls many scenes and incidents of the story
+take place, apart from the visits of old Martin and Mary Graham.
+
+One of its chief claims to affection, however, is its intimate association
+with Mark Tapley, the ostler there, and his attraction to Mrs. Lupin, in
+connection with which we need only recall the scene on the night of his
+departure for America and that on his ultimate and unexpected return.
+
+On this latter occasion he arrived at the Blue Dragon wet through and
+found Mrs. Lupin alone in the bar. Wrapped up in his great coat, she did
+not know him at first, but soon recognised him as he vigorously caught her
+in his arms and showered kisses upon her. He excused his final burst by
+saying "I ain't a-kissing you now, you'll observe. I have been among the
+patriots: I'm kissing my country." This exuberance ultimately led to the
+marriage of Mark to the buxom widow and the conversion of the sign of the
+Blue Dragon into that of the Jolly Tapley, a sign, Mark assured us, of his
+own invention: "Wery new, conwivial and expressive."
+
+And so with such a warm-hearted and homely couple to guide the fortunes of
+the Blue Dragon, we may assume that its comfort and hospitality continued
+to be a byword in the village and surrounding country.
+
+The Blue Dragon has been carefully identified as the George Inn at
+Amesbury, eight miles north of Salisbury, and not far from Mr.
+Pecksniff's house, for which an old mansion on the Wilsford Road near the
+village is made to stand.
+
+It is true that at Alderbury there is a Green Dragon, and, although it may
+reasonably be assumed that Dickens knew of this and appropriated the sign
+and changed its colour, he did not otherwise adopt the inn for the scene
+of those incidents we have referred to, for it was not commodious enough
+for the purpose. Whereas the George at Amesbury fulfils all the
+requirements of the story and was at the time a coaching inn and a
+hostelry capable of supplying all the wants and all the accommodation
+demanded by old Martin Chuzzlewit and the retinue that pursued him
+wherever he went.
+
+H. Snowden Ward, who made a minute study of this district in relation to
+the Blue Dragon, became convinced by means of ordnance maps and coach
+routes that Amesbury answered in every detail the requirements of the
+little Wiltshire village described by Dickens. He found that the turnpike
+house where Tom Pinch left his box still existed, and the church where he
+played the organ was rightly situated, and, though there was no walk
+through the wood from the house selected as Pecksniff's, there was a path
+through a little plantation making a short cut to the north-west corner
+of the churchyard.
+
+[Illustration: THE GEORGE, AMESBURY
+
+_Drawn by C. G. Harper_]
+
+Amesbury also fits geographically into the story in regard to the route of
+the London coach which carried Tom Pinch and others on their journeys to
+London, and the George Inn still stands a famous Dickens landmark there,
+where visitors can be shown the identical bedroom occupied by old Martin
+Chuzzlewit, and where they can otherwise indulge the sentiment of being
+in the Blue Dragon once presided over by the very attractive, comely and
+dimpled Mrs. Lupin when in her bloom, and utterly ignore the disparagement
+and contempt poured upon it by that unprincipled adventurer, Montague
+Tigg.
+
+Leaving the "little Wiltshire village" with as much reluctance as Mark
+Tapley did on one occasion, let us visit the "fair old town of Salisbury"
+in the company of Tom Pinch, who, it will be remembered, was commissioned
+to drive there to meet and bring back Martin Chuzzlewit, the new pupil.
+Mr. Pecksniff's horse, which resembled, it was said, his own moral
+character in so far that "he was full of promise, but of no performance,"
+was harnessed to the hooded vehicle--"it was more like a gig with a tumour
+than anything else"--and simple-hearted Tom, with his gallant equipage,
+pursued his way to the cathedral town, which he had a shrewd notion was a
+very desperate sort of place. Having put up his horse at an inn and given
+the hostler to understand that he would look in again in the course of an
+hour or two to see it take its corn, he set forth to view the streets.
+Salisbury was noted for its inns then, and the day being market day--still
+a notable sight to-day--he watched the farmers standing about in groups on
+the tavern steps. Later, as the evening drew in, he returned to the
+parlour of the tavern where he had left his horse, "had his little table
+drawn out close before the fire, and fell to work upon a well-cooked steak
+and smoking hot potatoes, with a strong appreciation of their excellence,
+and a very keen sense of enjoyment. Beside him, too, there stood a jug of
+most stupendous Wiltshire beer; and the effect of the whole was so
+transcendent that he was obliged every now and then to lay down his knife
+and fork, rub his hands and think about it. By the time the cheese and
+celery came, Mr. Pinch had taken a book out of his pocket, and could
+afford to trifle with the viands, now eating a little, now drinking a
+little, now reading a little."
+
+Whilst thus comfortably and happily occupied, a stranger appeared in the
+room, who turned out to be Martin Chuzzlewit, for whom he was waiting. On
+becoming friends a bowl of punch was ordered which in due course came "hot
+and strong," and "after drinking to each other in the steaming mixture
+they became quite confidential." When the time came to depart, Tom settled
+his bill and Martin paid for the punch, and, "having wrapped themselves
+up, to the extent of their respective means, they went out together to the
+front door, where Mr. Pecksniff's property stopped the way," and started
+on their way back.
+
+Dickens makes no mention of the inn where this meeting took place, but H.
+Snowden Ward identified it as the old George Hotel in the High Street. We
+cannot vouch for the accuracy of this, although we are not inclined to
+dispute it. It may have been the inn Dickens had in his mind's eye, but it
+must have been a recollection of an earlier visit to Salisbury, for at the
+time he was writing _Martin Chuzzlewit_ the George had lost its licence
+and would have been unable to supply the "jug of most stupendous Wiltshire
+beer" or the bowl of hot strong punch with which Tom Pinch and Martin
+regaled themselves. It may be the waiter sent for it as is done to-day.
+However, if the assumption that this is the tavern where the two met draws
+visitors to it, there can be no regrets, for it is surely one of the most
+ancient hostelries in the country. It dates back to 1320 and retains its
+fine Gothic arches of oak, its timbered roofs and ceilings, its massive
+oak supports to the cross-beams in several rooms, its splendid example of
+an oak Jacobean staircase, its four-poster bedsteads, old fire-places, and
+ancient furniture. In one of the rooms there is also a portion of a very
+ancient wall of Roman bricks in herringbone work, where in 1869 were
+found Roman coins, some of which are to be seen in the hotel to-day.
+
+[Illustration: THE GEORGE INN, SALISBURY
+
+_Photograph by T. W. Tyrell_]
+
+It is no longer a coaching inn. The court-yard where the strolling players
+of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries gave their dramatic
+performances is now the garden, and the entrance for the coaches has been
+narrowed to an ordinary hotel entrance. In doing this, the rooms on each
+side were widened, and in this process the massive rough-hewn oaks that
+support the cross-beams of the ceilings, and which at one time formed part
+of the walls, became isolated, and stand now like trees growing out of the
+earth.
+
+Such an ancient inn naturally has many historic stories and traditions
+associated with it, and these are not overlooked by the present proprietor
+in a little brochure available to visitors. Shakespeare, we are informed,
+acted in its court-yard, Oliver Cromwell slept in the inn when passing
+through the city to join his army on the 17th October, 1645, whilst Samuel
+Pepys makes mention of it in his diary where he records his welcome to a
+silk bed and a very good diet.
+
+This inn is referred to again in Chapter XXXI, when Tom Pinch, having
+parted from Mr. Pecksniff, tramped on foot to Salisbury and "went to the
+inn where he had waited for Martin," and ordered a bed, which, we are told
+"was a low four-poster shelving downward in the centre like a trough." He
+slept two nights at the inn before starting on his ride to London, so
+graphically described by Dickens, meeting Mrs. Lupin at the finger-posts
+where she had brought the box of good things which he shared with the
+coachman on the journey.
+
+Where was situated the Baldfaced Stag, where four fresh horses were
+supplied to the admiring gaze of the topers congregated about the door,
+cannot be determined. But the inn where Tom alighted in London, and where,
+in one of the public rooms opening from the yard, he fell fast asleep
+before the fire, although not named, was probably the "Swan with Two
+Necks," which stood in Lad Lane (now Gresham Street) until 1856. It was a
+famous coaching inn whence the Exeter and other coaches set out and
+returned.
+
+There was another inn at Salisbury where John Westlock entertained Tom
+Pinch and Martin to dinner one evening. It is described as "the very first
+hotel in the town." Tom and Martin had walked in from Pecksniff's on a
+very cold and dry day and arrived at the inn with such flushed and burning
+faces and so brimful of vigour that the waiter "almost felt assaulted by
+their presence." Dickens describes the hostelry in these words: "A Famous
+Inn! the hall a very grove of dead game and dangling joints of mutton; and
+in one corner an illustrious larder, with glass doors, developing cold
+fowls and noble joints, and tarts wherein the raspberry jam coyly withdrew
+itself, as such a precious creature should, behind a lattice-work of
+pastry. And behold, on the first floor, at the court end of the house, in
+a room with all the window-curtains drawn, a fire piled half-way up the
+chimney, plates warming before it, wax candles gleaming everywhere, and a
+table spread for three, with silver and glass enough for thirty--John
+Westlock."
+
+What a greeting for hungry souls after a long tramp in the brisk cold
+country air. "I have ordered everything for dinner that we used to say
+we'd have, Tom," said their host, and an excellent idea of a dinner it
+was, too--"like a dream," as he added.
+
+"John was wrong there," the narrator goes on, "because nobody ever dreamed
+such soup as was put upon the table directly afterwards; or such fish; or
+such side-dishes; or such a top and bottom; or such a course of birds and
+sweets; or, in short, anything approaching the reality of entertainment
+at ten-and-sixpence a head, exclusive of wines. As to _them_, the man who
+can dream such iced champagne, such claret, port or sherry, had better go
+to bed and stop there."
+
+It was a right royal, jolly dinner, and they were very merry and full of
+enjoyment all the time; "but not the least pleasant part of the festival
+was when they all three sat about the fire, cracking nuts, drinking wine,
+and talking cheerfully." They parted for the night, "John Westlock full of
+light-heartedness and good humour, and poor Tom Pinch quite satisfied."
+After breakfast next morning the two young men returned to Pecksniff's and
+John Westlock to London.
+
+Again Dickens does not give a name to this hotel. He tells us it was not
+the same one where Tom Pinch met Martin on the occasion referred to
+previously; but he does tell us that it was the very first hotel in the
+town and that it was a famous inn. That has given the clue to many
+students of the book who have identified it as the White Hart, a very old
+house where many coaches stopped and were horsed in the coaching days of
+the period of the story. The White Hart was certainly famous and quite
+capable of providing such a dinner as John Westlock gave his two friends.
+It is called an hotel to-day and is evidently very proud of its tradition
+and stories. Here are one or two anecdotes relating to its past taken from
+local histories.
+
+In the year 1618 King James came to Sarum and it was just before this
+visit that Sir Walter Raleigh passed through the city. He was on his way
+from Plymouth after the failure of his last voyage to Guiana and reached
+Salisbury on the evening of Monday, the 27th July, in company with his
+wife, Sir Lewis Stukeley and Manourie, a French empiric. His forebodings
+were of the gloomiest and he feared to meet the King whose early arrival
+was expected. He therefore resorted to stratagem, and feigned sickness,
+hoping by this means to gain time to employ the intercession of friends,
+arrange his affairs and perhaps awaken the King's compassion. He feigned
+sickness, then insanity, and by means of unguents provided by Manourie
+acquired the appearance of suffering from a loathsome skin disease. Three
+local physicians were called in and pronounced the disease incurable. This
+treatment and his exertions produced at the end of the second day an acute
+sense of hunger, and, in the words of the chronicler, "Manourie
+accordingly procured from the White Hart inn a leg of mutton and some
+loaves, which Raleigh devoured in secret and thus led his attendants to
+suppose that he took no kind of sustenance." It was in Salisbury at this
+time that he wrote his apology for his last voyage to Guiana. The Court
+arrived before he left, but he did not see the King and gained a temporary
+respite.
+
+On the 9th October, 1780, the celebrated Henry Laurens, President of the
+American Congress, arrived at the White Hart on his way to London, where
+he was committed to the Tower.
+
+The Duke and Duchess of Orleans with a numerous retinue arrived at the
+White Hart on the 13th September, 1816.
+
+On October 25th, 1830, the Duchess of Kent and Princess Victoria, with
+their suite, arrived at the White Hart from Erlestoke Park. They were
+attended by a guard of honour from the Salisbury Troop of Yeomanry.
+
+The White Hart is probably the most famous in the city to-day. Its outside
+appearance is more like a small replica of the National Gallery, with its
+stone pillars and stucco work. Prominently placed over the entrance is a
+graceful White Hart with its neck encircled with the gold band of
+tradition.
+
+A fitting inn, John Westlock, for your royal repast!
+
+The exciting and romantic days of coaching were beginning to ebb away at
+the time _Martin Chuzzlewit_ was published; but so wonderfully does
+Dickens describe the scenes on the road, and so exhilarating are his
+word-pictures, the spirit of those times can better be visualized from its
+pages than from any history of the period. Not only are those days not
+allowed to be forgotten, but inns that have since been wiped out of
+existence have had their name and fame indelibly marked on the tablets of
+time for ever.
+
+[Illustration: THE BLACK BULL, HOLBORN
+
+_Drawn by L. Walker_]
+
+Such is the case of the Black Bull that once stood in Holborn. It was here
+that the two estimable females, Sairey Gamp and Betsey Prig,
+professionally attended Mr. Lewsome in his illness. Mr. Lewsome, it will
+be remembered, was the young man who sold the drugs to Jonas Chuzzlewit
+with which old Anthony was poisoned, and who after the death of the latter
+made a voluntary confession of the fact, impelled to do so by the torture
+of mind and dread of death he himself endured by his severe sickness.
+
+This is Mrs. Gamp's announcement of her appointment:
+
+"There _is_ a gent, sir, at the Bull in Holborn, as has been took ill
+there, and is bad abed. They have a day-nurse as was recommended from
+Bartholomew's; and well I knows her, Mr. Mould, her name bein' Mrs. Prig,
+the best of creeturs. But she is otherwise engaged at night, and they are
+in wants of night-watching; consequent she says to them, having reposed
+the greatest friendliness in me for twenty year, 'The soberest person
+going, and the best of blessings in a sick room, is Mrs. Gamp. Send a boy
+to Kingsgate Street,' she says, 'and snap her up at any price, for Mrs.
+Gamp is worth her weight and more in goldian guineas.' My landlord brings
+the message down to me, and says, 'Bein' in a light place where you are,
+and this job promising so well, why not unite the two?'"
+
+Dickens then describes how Mrs. Gamp went to her private lodgings in
+Kingsgate Street close to the tavern, "for a bundle of robes and wrappings
+comfortable in the night season; and then repaired to the Bull in Holborn,
+which she reached as the clocks were striking eight.
+
+"As she turned into the yard, she stopped; for the landlord, landlady, and
+head chambermaid, were all on the threshold together, talking earnestly
+with a young gentleman who seemed to have just come or to be just going
+away. The first words that struck upon Mrs. Gamp's ear obviously bore
+reference to the patient; and, it being expedient that all good attendants
+should know as much as possible about the case on which their skill is
+brought to bear, Mrs. Gamp listened as a matter of duty."
+
+At a suitable moment she ventured the remark, "Ah! a rayal gentleman!"
+and, advancing, introduced herself, observing:
+
+"The night nurse from Kingsgate Street, well beknown to Mrs. Prig the
+day-nurse, and the best of creeturs.... It ain't the fust time by many
+score, ma'am," dropping a curtsy to the landlady, "that Mrs. Prig and me
+has nursed together, turn and turn about, one off, one on. We knows each
+other's ways, and often gives relief when others failed."
+
+Regarding herself as having now delivered her inauguration address, Mrs.
+Gamp curtsied all round, and signified her wish to be conducted to the
+scene of her official duties. The chambermaid led her, through a variety
+of intricate passages, to the top of the house; and, pointing at length to
+a solitary door at the end of a gallery, informed her that yonder was the
+chamber where the patient lay. That done, she hurried off with all the
+speed she could make.
+
+"Mrs. Gamp traversed the gallery in a great heat from having carried her
+large bundle up so many stairs, and tapped at the door, which was
+immediately opened by Mrs. Prig, bonneted and shawled and all impatience
+to be gone."
+
+Having learned from Mrs. Prig that the pickled salmon was quite delicious,
+that the cold meat tasted of the stables, that the drinks were all good,
+that "the physic and them things is on the drawers and mankleshelf," and
+other valuable bits of information, thanked her and entered upon her
+occupation. "A little dull, but not so bad as might be," Mrs. Gamp
+remarked. "I'm glad to see a parapidge in case of fire, and lots of roofs
+and chimley-pots to walk upon." Mrs. Gamp was looking out of the window at
+the time, and the observations she made then applied to the view seen from
+the same window during a visit to it just before the inn was destroyed.
+
+Having unpacked her bundle and settled things to her liking she came to
+the conclusion that it was time for supper and promptly rang for the maid.
+
+"I think, young woman," said Mrs. Gamp to the assistant chambermaid, in a
+tone expressive of weakness, "that I could pick a little bit of pickled
+salmon, with a nice little sprig of fennel, and a sprinkling of white
+pepper. I takes new bread, my dear, with jest a little pat of fresh
+butter, and a mossel of cheese. In case there should be such a thing as a
+cowcumber in the 'ouse, will you be so kind as bring it, for I'm rather
+partial to 'em, and they does a world of good in a sick-room. If they
+draws the Brighton Tipper here, I takes _that_ ale at night, my love; it
+bein' considered wakeful by the doctors. And whatever you do, young woman,
+don't bring more than a shilling's-worth of gin and water warm when I
+rings the bell a second time; for that is always my allowance, and I never
+takes a drop beyond!"
+
+"A tray was brought with everything upon it, even to the cucumber; and
+Mrs. Gamp accordingly sat down to eat and drink in high good humour. The
+extent to which she availed herself of the vinegar, and supped up that
+refreshing fluid with the blade of her knife, can scarcely be expressed in
+narrative."
+
+This was the occasion, and the Black Bull the place, where Mrs. Gamp gave
+utterance to her famous piece of philosophy: "What a blessed thing it
+is--living in a wale--to be contented."
+
+Without following Mrs. Gamp through the details of her effort to help the
+patient to convalescence--albeit those efforts were peculiar to herself
+and have a unique interest on that account--we need only record that, in
+spite of her assurance that, "of all the trying invalieges in this walley
+of the shadder, that one beats 'em black and blue," Mr. Lewsome was
+eventually able to be moved into the country and Mrs. Gamp was deputed to
+accompany him there by coach.
+
+"Arriving at the tavern, Mrs. Gamp (who was full-dressed for the journey,
+in her latest suit of mourning) left her friends to entertain themselves
+in the yard, while she ascended to the sick-room, where her
+fellow-labourer, Mrs. Prig, was dressing the invalid," who was ultimately
+assisted downstairs to the coach, just then on the point of starting.
+
+"It was a troublesome matter to adjust Mrs. Gamp's luggage to her
+satisfaction; for every package belonging to that lady had the
+inconvenient property of requiring to be put in a boot by itself, and to
+have no other luggage near it, on pain of actions at law for heavy damages
+against the proprietors of the coach. The umbrella with the circular patch
+was particularly hard to be got rid of, and several times thrust out its
+battered brass nozzle from improper crevices and chinks, to the great
+terror of the other passengers. Indeed, in her intense anxiety to find a
+haven of refuge for this chattel, Mrs. Gamp so often moved it, in the
+course of five minutes, that it seemed not one umbrella but fifty. At
+length it was lost, or said to be; and for the next five minutes she was
+face to face with the coachman, go wherever he might, protesting that it
+should be 'made good' though she took the question to the House of
+Commons.
+
+"At last, her bundle, and her pattens, and her basket, and everything
+else, being disposed of, she took a friendly leave of Poll and Mr.
+Bailey, dropped a curtsy to John Westlock, and parted as from a cherished
+member of the sisterhood with Betsey Prig.
+
+"'Wishin' you lots of sickness, my darling creetur,' Mrs. Gamp observed,
+'and good places. It won't be long, I hope, before we works together, off
+and on, again, Betsey: and may our next meetin' be at a large family's,
+where they all takes it reg'lar, one from another, turn and turn about,
+and has it businesslike.'"
+
+And so the coach rolled out of the Bull yard with Mrs. Gamp and her charge
+comfortably seated within, amidst a cloud of bustle and commotion,
+terminating events which have left their mark for all time on the history
+of the famous Dickensian tavern.
+
+Although the Black Bull during its existence in so important a
+thoroughfare as Holborn must have been the centre of much activity in the
+coaching days, the resort of many notables and the scene of important
+events, there seem scanty records of its past history available.
+
+We find but few references to it in the annals of London beyond the fact
+that it was a busy coaching inn from the seventeenth century until the
+passing of the coaches from the road in the nineteenth century, when its
+association with the notorious Mrs. Gamp gave it its chief claim to fame.
+
+[Illustration: THE SIGN OF THE BLACK BULL]
+
+How far its history dates back it is difficult to say. It may even have
+been one of those many fair houses and inns for travellers referred to by
+Stow as existing on the north side of Oldbourne in the middle of the
+sixteenth century. In the days when access to the city of London was not
+possible after sundown, the Black Bull and many others, situated outside
+the boundary, catered for those late comers who could not enter the gates.
+No doubt these inns were established to meet such contingencies, and
+perforce did a good trade. They were all very similar in general
+appearance and in accommodation. The Black Bull was the terminus and
+starting place for coaches, and its court-yard, like most of the others,
+was large and surrounded by galleries. It had, of course, many flights of
+stairs, and a variety of intricate passages up to the top of the building.
+But it had a more distinctive and prominent sign than the rest of them in
+this district, which, perhaps, made it more conspicuous. This was the very
+fine specimen of a black bull, with gilt horns and hoofs, and a golden
+band round its body. Its perfection of workmanship stamped it as that of
+some renowned artist. Resting on a bracket fixed to the front of the
+building, it naturally attracted attention immediately, and it was to be
+seen as late as 1904 when the building was finally demolished to make room
+for a different kind of business altogether. By that time all the romance
+of the coaching era had left the tavern, and its court-yard had long
+before been put to other uses.
+
+This building of Mrs. Gamp's day was erected in 1825, but many such had
+flourished earlier on the same site, although we believe the splendid
+effigy which adorned its exterior first appeared in that year. Prior to
+that date the inn was known as the Bull and Gate, unless Fielding enlarged
+its designation unwittingly when he tells us in 1750 that Tom Jones, on
+entering London after his exciting encounter with highwaymen between
+Barnet and the metropolis, put up at the "Bull and Gate in Holborn."
+Whatever it may have been called in Fielding's days, its fame will survive
+in history as the Black Bull of Holborn, immortalized by association with
+Sairey Gamp.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+DOMBEY AND SON
+
+    THE BEDFORD, BRIGHTON--THE ROYAL, LEAMINGTON--LONG'S HOTEL, BOND
+    STREET--AND OTHERS
+
+
+Although a good deal of _Dombey and Son_ is enacted at Brighton, only one
+of its famous hotels plays any prominent part in the story, and that is
+the Bedford. It is first mentioned during a conversation between Major
+Bagstock and Mr. Dombey, when the former asks "Are you remaining here, Mr.
+Dombey?" "I generally come down once a week, Major," returned that
+gentleman; "I stay at the Bedford." "I shall have the honour of calling at
+the Bedford, sir, if you'll permit me," said the Major, and in fulfilment
+of his promise he did so.
+
+On another occasion, "Mr. Dombey, bringing down Miss Tox and Mrs. Chick to
+see the children, and finding the Major again at Brighton, invited him to
+dinner at the Bedford, and complimented Miss Tox highly beforehand on her
+neighbour and acquaintance." The Major was considered to possess an
+inexhaustible fund of conversation, and showed as great an appetite in
+that respect "as in regard of the various dainties on the table, among
+which he may be said to have wallowed." After dinner, they had a long
+rubber of whist, before they took a late farewell of the Major, who
+retired to his own hotel, which, by the way, is not mentioned.
+
+On the following day, when Mr. Dombey, Mrs. Chick and Miss Tox were
+sitting at breakfast, Florence came running in to announce in great
+excitement the unexpected arrival of Walter and Captain Cuttle, who had
+come to ask the favour of a loan of three hundred pounds or so of Mr.
+Dombey to liquidate the financial embarrassment of their old friend Sol
+Gills. It will be recalled how Captain Cuttle offered as security his
+silver watch, the ready money he possessed, his silver teaspoons, and
+sugar-tongs; and "piling them up into a heap that they might look as
+precious as possible" delivered himself of these words:
+
+"Half a loaf's better than no bread, and the same remark holds good with
+crumbs. There's a few. Annuity of one hundred pound prannum also ready to
+be made over." The simple and transparent honesty of Captain Cuttle
+succeeded in the task he set himself, Mr. Dombey arranging the little
+matter for him.
+
+The Bedford can rightly claim the honour of having been the house where
+this memorable scene in the story of Captain Cuttle took place. In those
+days it was a prominent and fashionable hotel, and remains so to-day.
+
+Dickens frequently stayed at Brighton and very often at the Bedford, where
+he wrote a good deal of _The Haunted Man_ and portions of other stories.
+
+The Princess's Arms, spoken of as being "much resorted to by splendid
+footmen," which was in Princess's Place, where Miss Tox inhabited a dark
+little house, cannot be identified. Indeed, search for Princess's Place in
+old directories of Brighton has entirely failed, and it must be assumed
+that no such place ever existed there.
+
+At the time Dickens was writing _Dombey and Son_ in 1846, the Royal Hotel
+at Leamington, where Mr. Dombey stayed with Major Bagstock, and where
+Edith Granger, who became his second wife, visited him with her mother on
+one occasion, did not exist, having been demolished about 1841-2 to
+make way for railway improvements. But he knew the hotel in its palmy and
+aristocratic days, for in 1838 he and his artist friend, Phiz, made a
+bachelor excursion in the autumn of that year into the Midlands by coach,
+their first halt being Leamington, and the hotel they put up at there was
+Copp's Royal Hotel, which stood at the corner of Clemens Street and High
+Street. In writing to his wife of his arrival there, he said: "We found a
+roaring fire, an elegant dinner, a snug room, and capital beds all ready
+for us at Leamington, after a very agreeable (but very cold) ride." From
+here they visited Kenilworth, Warwick, and Stratford, and the outcome of
+the jaunts is reflected in the story.
+
+[Illustration: THE BEDFORD HOTEL, BRIGHTON
+
+_From an old Engraving_]
+
+[Illustration: THE ROYAL HOTEL, LEAMINGTON
+
+_From a contemporary lithograph_]
+
+Some writers, in referring to the incidents in _Dombey and Son_ associated
+with the Royal Hotel, have either assumed that it is still there, or,
+having discovered that there is no hotel with that name in the town, have
+given the Regent the credit of being the original of Mr. Dombey's Royal
+Hotel. Neither is correct. The Royal Hotel of _Dombey and Son_ was the
+Royal Hotel of Dickens's visit to Leamington in 1838, and his descriptions
+of it in the book must have been made from memory, for in 1846, when he
+was writing of it in the novel, the hotel had already been demolished.
+
+Leamington always boasted one peculiarity which it claimed did not belong
+to any other watering-place: the "truly select nature and high rank of
+respectability of the greater part of its frequenters." For the reception
+of such notables several really first-class hotels were provided.
+
+The Regent was the most fashionable for a period, owing to the fact that
+it was the resort of Royalty; but Copp's Royal Hotel was a keen rival, and
+when in 1828 it was "re-erected on a scale of magnificence almost
+unprecedented, displaying a grand front, cased in Roman cement to imitate
+stone ... in the style of Grecian architecture," it even outshone the
+Regent.
+
+The building was rusticated to the height of the first story and a balcony
+on a level with the second floor ran the whole extent of the hotel. Its
+appearance is fully described in an old and very rare guide-book, and so
+minutely described that it is worth quoting:
+
+"The wings, which are both slightly projected, are embellished with four
+fluted pilasters of the Corinthian order, which, springing from the level
+of the second floor and terminating at the top of the third, support a
+rich entablature extending the whole length of the building. Each wing is
+surmounted by four ornamental vases, and, at the extreme height of the
+centre, beneath the ornamental scroll, is a tablet containing the name of
+the hotel. The principal entrance is in the centre, beneath a portico
+projecting ten feet from the building, supported by duplicated pillars of
+the Doric order, fluted and surmounted by the Royal Arms, richly carved in
+stone. The interior of this building for chasteness of design, richness of
+material, and correctness of execution is, we believe, equal to any in the
+Kingdom. The entrance hall ... is lighted by a beautiful window of
+coloured glass, in the centre of which, on a fawn-coloured mosaic ground,
+are the Royal Arms, richly emblazoned, surrounded by an ornamental gold
+scroll on a purple ground containing medallions representing the principal
+views in the vicinity. The sideboards are supported and adorned by
+appropriate Grecian ornaments. On the right of the public dining-room,
+upwards of fifty feet by twenty-four feet, the ceiling is supported by
+pillars and pilasters of Doric order. A geometrical staircase of
+twenty-one steps conducts you to the public drawing-room, of the same
+noble dimensions as the dining-room; on the same floor are a number of
+private sitting-rooms, papered with rich French paper, of vivid colouring,
+representing subjects classical, mythological, etc. The bedrooms are
+fitted up with every attention to comfort and convenience.... Detached are
+extensive lock-up coach houses, stabling, etc."
+
+This meticulous description of it does not suggest that the Royal Hotel
+was one which would have appealed very much to Dickens, but it was the
+ideal spot for Major Bagstock and Mr. Dombey, and so we find that eight
+years later the novelist makes use of his knowledge of it, and it becomes
+the headquarters of his two characters during their visit to the
+fashionable watering-place, whilst its rooms furnish the background for a
+series of scenes to be found in the pages of _Dombey and Son_.
+
+It will be recalled that Major Bagstock persuaded Mr. Dombey that he
+wanted a change, and suggested that he should accompany him to Leamington.
+Mr. Dombey consented, became the Major's guest and the two travelled down
+by train, making the Royal Hotel their headquarters, "where the rooms and
+dinner had been ordered," and where the Major at their first meal "so
+oppressed his organs of speech by eating and drinking that when he retired
+to bed he had no voice at all, except to cough with, and could only make
+himself intelligible to the dark servant by gasping at him. He not only
+rose next morning, however, like a giant refreshed, but conducted himself,
+at breakfast, like a giant refreshing."
+
+At this meal they arranged their daily habits. The Major was to take the
+responsibility of ordering everything to eat and drink; and they were to
+have late breakfast together every morning, and a late dinner together
+every day. They occupied, no doubt, a suite of the private rooms referred
+to above, for there is no reference to the large dining-room, nor would it
+have suited the personal and special requirements of the two men and the
+friends they brought there.
+
+It will be remembered that, whilst these two friends were taking a
+constitutional, they encountered the Major's acquaintances, Mrs. Skewton
+and her daughter Edith, and Dombey was formally introduced. On taking
+their departure from the fair enchantress, the Major volunteered the fact
+that he was "staying at the Royal Hotel with his friend Dombey," and
+invited the ladies to join them "one evening when you are good," as he
+put it to Mrs. Skewton.
+
+Having met once or twice in the pump-room and elsewhere, and the men
+having called upon the ladies, the latter were invited to breakfast at the
+Royal Hotel, prior to a drive to Kenilworth and Warwick. In the meantime,
+Carker had arrived to transact some business with his master, and in the
+evening the three men dined together. At a fitting moment the wine was
+consecrated "to a divinity whom Joe is proud to know, and at a distance
+humbly and reverently to admire. Edith," went on the Major, "is her name;
+angelic Edith!" "Angelic Edith," cried the smiling Carker, "Edith, by all
+means," said Mr. Dombey. And thus, in a private dining-room of the Royal
+Hotel was pledged the toast of Dombey's future wife--the second Mrs.
+Dombey.
+
+The breakfast was punctually prepared next morning, and Dombey, Bagstock
+and Carker excitedly awaited the ladies' arrival. A pleasant time ensued
+and ultimately all set out on the little trip which proved so momentous a
+one for Mr. Dombey. For had he not made an appointment with Edith for the
+next day, "for a purpose," as he told Mrs. Skewton? At any rate, the three
+men returned to the Royal Hotel in good spirits, the Major being in such
+high glee that he cried out, "Damme, sir, old Joe has a mind to propose an
+alteration in the name of the hotel, and that it should be called the
+Three Jolly Bachelors in honour of ourselves and Carker."
+
+After keeping his appointment with Edith, and having been accepted, Mr.
+Dombey and the Major left Leamington, and the Royal Hotel has no further
+place in the story.
+
+When Mr. Toots, having come into a portion of his worldly wealth and
+furnished his choice set of apartments, determined to apply himself to the
+science of life, he engaged the Game Chicken to instruct him in "the
+cultivation of those gentle arts which refine and humanise existence." The
+Game Chicken, we are informed, was always to be heard of at the bar of the
+Black Badger. Towards the end of the book, when Toots and the Chicken part
+company, the latter seems to have chosen another house of call. "I'm afore
+the public, I'm to be heard on at the bar of the Little Helephant...."
+Whether these two taverns existed, or where, history does not relate.
+
+Cousin Feenix, on his arrival from abroad expressly to attend Mr. Dombey's
+wedding, stayed at Long's Hotel in Bond Street. No incident of any great
+moment takes place within its walls, except that Lord Feenix slept and
+was shaved there.
+
+Long's Hotel does not now exist, but was a fashionable and well-known
+house in those days when Lord Feenix was a man about town. It stood at the
+junction of Clifford Street and Bond Street, and was a square-standing
+corner building.
+
+It was frequented by the leading lights of the aristocracy and of the
+literary world in its flourishing days, and it is recorded that Byron
+lived there for a time. That he and Sir Walter Scott dined there together
+on one occasion is an outstanding fact of its history.
+
+From Cousin Feenix's fashionable hotel we turn to a very different kind of
+house in the King's Arms, Balls Pond way, where Mr. Perch seemed to be a
+well-known figure. Mr. Perch had an air of feverish lassitude about him
+that seemed referable to drams, "and which, in fact, might no doubt have
+been traced to those numerous discoveries of himself in the bars of
+public-houses." The King's Arms was one of these, in whose parlour he met
+the man "with milintary frogs," who took "a little obserwation" which he
+let drop about Carker and Mrs. Dombey, and worked it up in print "in a
+most surprising manner" in the Sunday paper, a journalistic method that
+apparently is not an invention of modern times.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+DAVID COPPERFIELD
+
+    THE ROYAL HOTEL, LOWESTOFT--THE PLOUGH, BLUNDERSTONE--THE VILLAGE
+    MAID, LOUND--THE YARMOUTH INNS--THE BLUE BOAR--THE RED LION--TWO
+    CANTERBURY INNS--THE PIAZZA HOTEL--JACK STRAW'S CASTLE--THE SWAN,
+    HUNGERFORD STAIRS--AND OTHERS
+
+
+Before Dickens commenced to write _David Copperfield_, he visited all the
+districts of its early scenes to obtain local colour, and to learn
+something of the geography of Blunderstone, Lowestoft and Yarmouth. He was
+a guest of Sir Morton Peto's at Somerleyton and was invited there
+ostensibly to see Lowestoft, a town then just emerging into prominence as
+a watering-place, in the hope that he might introduce it into one of his
+books. On another occasion he, with John Leech and Mark Lemon, visited
+Yarmouth and stayed at the Royal Hotel on the Marine Parade. He either
+did not care very much for Lowestoft, or else found that Yarmouth was more
+suitable to the purpose of his book, for we only find one small incident
+in it associated with the first-named town.
+
+This occurred on one autumn morning when Mr. Murdstone took little David
+on to the saddle of his horse and rode off with him to Lowestoft to see
+some friends there with a yacht. "We went to an hotel by the sea, where
+two gentlemen were smoking cigars in a room by themselves," says David.
+"Each of them was lying on at least four chairs and had a large rough
+jacket on. In a corner was a heap of coats and boat-cloaks, and a flag,
+all bundled up together."
+
+Here Mr. Murdstone was chaffed about David, whom his friends referred to
+as "the bewitching Mrs. Copperfield's incumbrance," and he warned them to
+take care as "somebody's sharp." "Who is?" asked Quinion. "Only Brooks of
+Sheffield," replied Mr. Murdstone, which caused much amusement, and
+whenever any reference was made to David he was always styled "Brooks of
+Sheffield." Sherry was ordered in with which to drink to Brooks, and David
+was made to partake of the wine with a biscuit, and drink to the toast of
+"Confusion to Brooks of Sheffield."
+
+After this incident they all walked about the cliffs, looked at things
+through a telescope, and then returned to the hotel to an early dinner,
+and David and his future father-in-law afterwards wended their way back to
+Blunderstone.
+
+The hotel in which all this took place was probably the Royal, which
+stands to-day facing the pier and harbour, but it has evidently been
+rebuilt, or very much altered structurally.
+
+Blunderstone has a village ale-house called the Plough, from which started
+Barkis the carrier on his daily trip to Yarmouth. David speaks of this
+inn, and pictures the parlour of it as the room where "Commodore Trunnion
+held that club with Mr. Pickle." It is still a comfortable ale-house and a
+centre of attraction to visitors of the unspoiled village where David was
+born.
+
+On the occasion of David's drive in the carrier's cart to Yarmouth for a
+stay with Daniel Peggotty in order to be out of the way for his mother's
+marriage to Mr. Murdstone, we are introduced to the road between the
+village and the famous seaside town, so frequently used by Barkis and so
+often referred to in the course of the story.
+
+[Illustration: THE PLOUGH INN, BLUNDERSTONE
+
+THE BUCK INN
+
+THE DUKE'S HEAD
+
+YARMOUTH
+
+_Photographs by T. W. Tyrrell_]
+
+The first halt was made at a public-house where a long wait occurred
+whilst a bedstead was delivered there. This inn was probably the Village
+Maid, at Lound, a name that may also have suggested that of the Willing
+Mind, the public-house where Mr. Peggotty went occasionally for short
+spells, as he put it to Mrs. Gummidge. But no public-house with that name,
+or anything like it, existed in Yarmouth, and it must, therefore, be
+assumed that no particular one was intended.
+
+Arriving at Yarmouth, David found Ham awaiting him at the public-house
+which was the stopping place of the Blunderstone carrier. Although Dickens
+does not mention its name, the Buck Inn undoubtedly was the identical
+house where Barkis came to a halt on such occasions, and it still exists
+in the Market Square. At the end of his visit, David, arm-in-arm with
+Little Em'ly, made for the same inn once again to meet Barkis for the
+homeward journey in his cart.
+
+The inn, however, at Yarmouth which has more importance attaching to it
+than any other is that where David met the friendly waiter whilst waiting
+for the coach to take him to London, and where he procured the sheet of
+paper and ink-stand to write his promised note to Clara Peggotty assuring
+her that "Barkis is willing."
+
+There is little doubt that the inn referred to here was the Duke's Head.
+It was the principal coaching inn of the town, and we know that Dickens
+knew it well. On his arrival there in Barkis's cart, David observed that
+"the coach was in the yard shining very much all over, but without any
+horses to it as yet; and it looked in that state as if nothing was more
+unlikely than its ever going to London." To the coffee-room, which was a
+long one with some maps in it, David was conducted by William the waiter,
+who assisted him to get through his meal, and told him the horrible tale
+of the man who died from drinking a glass of ale that was too old for him.
+But that incident of David and the friendly waiter is too well known to
+need recapitulation here.
+
+Before leaving Yarmouth, there is one more inn that claims attention. When
+David and Steerforth later on in the story visited the Peggottys, the
+hotel they stayed at has been identified as the Star Hotel, an old
+mansion, with moulded ribbed ceilings and the sides of the rooms panelled
+with oak. It has been added to since those days, but the old part still
+remains. It was in this house that Miss Mowcher was first introduced into
+the story.
+
+It is also believed that the Feathers at Gorleston is the "decent
+ale-house" on the road to Lowestoft where David Copperfield, as stated in
+Chapter XXXI, stopped to dine, when out for a walk whilst on a visit to
+Yarmouth.
+
+But let us return to David on the coach waiting to start for Salem House,
+Blackheath, via London. Having suffered a good deal of chaff from the
+maids and others over the huge dinner he was supposed to have eaten, the
+coach started on its journey, during which the jokes about his appetite
+continued. He reached his destination at last, having approached London
+"by degrees, and got, in due time, to the inn in the Whitechapel
+district," he says, "for which we were bound. I forget whether it was the
+Blue Bull or the Blue Boar; but I know it was the Blue Something, and that
+its likeness was painted up on the back of the coach." Here, more solitary
+than Robinson Crusoe, he went into the booking-office, and, "by invitation
+of the clerk on duty, passed behind the counter, and sat down on the scale
+at which they weighed the luggage." Thus he waited until called for by Mr.
+Mell, when the clerk "slanted me off the scale, and pushed me over to
+him, as if I were weighed, bought, delivered, and paid for."
+
+This inn was the Blue Boar, an old coaching inn long demolished, where the
+daily coach from Yarmouth made its halting place. There is still a relic
+of it in the shape of a sculptured effigy of a boar, with gilded tusks and
+hoofs, built into the wall of a tobacco factory marking the site of the
+inn.
+
+In Chapter XI of the book, describing David's start in life on his own
+account, there are one or two inns and taverns mentioned where he partook
+of meals and other refreshment. He tells us he had "a plate of bread and
+cheese and a glass of beer, from a miserable old public-house opposite our
+place of business, called the Lion, or the Lion and something else that I
+have forgotten." This has not definitely been identified, but may have
+been the White Swan at Hungerford Stairs, referred to later. On another
+occasion he went into a public-house one hot evening and said to the
+landlord, "What is your best--your _very best_--ale a glass?"
+"Twopence-halfpenny is the price of the Genuine Stunning ale," was the
+reply. "Then," says I, producing the money, "just draw me a glass of the
+Genuine Stunning, if you please, with a good head to it." Having served
+him, the landlord invited his wife to join him in surveying the little
+customer and "the landlord's wife, opening the little half-door of the
+bar, and bending down, gave me my money back, and gave me a kiss that was
+half-admiring and half-compassionate, but all womanly and good, I am
+sure."
+
+This incident actually occurred to Dickens himself when a lad in the
+blacking factory, for he has admitted it to be so, in his own words,
+recorded in Forster's "Life," Book 1, Chapter XI. He there states that on
+the occasion in question he "went into a public-house in Parliament
+Street, which is still there, though altered, at the corner of the short
+street leading into Cannon Row." The public-house where it took place was
+the Red Lion at 48 Parliament Street, and is situated at the corner of
+Derby Street. There is a Red Lion public-house there to-day--not the same
+one Dickens visited--that was demolished in 1899--but on the same spot. It
+is more pretentious than the old one, but keeps its red lion rampant as a
+sign, and has a bust of the novelist, standing within a niche in the front
+of the building as a hall-mark of its Dickensian association.
+
+The "little public-house close to the river, with an open space before it,
+where some coal-heavers were dancing," referred to in the same chapter,
+was the Fox under the Hill[1] in the Adelphi.
+
+There are two inns in Canterbury associated with the book, the county inn
+where Mr. Dick stayed when on his visits to David Copperfield every
+alternate Wednesday, and the "little inn" where Mr. Micawber stayed on his
+first and subsequent visits to the ancient city.
+
+The county inn was without doubt the Royal Fountain Hotel in St.
+Margaret's Street, for it was invariably referred to in the coaching days
+as _the_ county inn of the city, in the same manner that David speaks of
+it in the seventeenth chapter of David Copperfield, where he tells us that
+he "saw Mr. Dick every alternate Wednesday when he arrived by stage-coach
+at noon, to stay until next morning.... Mr. Dick was very partial to
+gingerbread. To render his visits more agreeable, my aunt had instructed
+me to open a credit for him at a cake shop, which was hampered with the
+stipulation that he should not be served with more than one shilling's
+worth in the course of any one day. This, and the reference of all his
+little bills at the county inn where he slept, to my aunt, before they
+were paid, induced me to suspect that he was only allowed to rattle his
+money, and not to spend it."
+
+On these occasions, Mr. Dick would be constantly in the company of David,
+and on the Thursday mornings he would accompany him from the hotel to the
+coach office before going back to school. And so the Royal Fountain Hotel
+has added to its traditions that of being the hotel where Mr. Dick slept.
+Dickens does not describe it in detail, and does not even refer to it
+again in the book; but on the 4th of November, 1861, which he describes as
+a "windy night," Dickens himself stayed there after giving a reading of
+_David Copperfield_ at the theatre. Writing to his daughter Mamie on that
+date he says, "a word of report before I go to bed. An excellent house
+to-night, and an audience positively perfect. The greatest part of it
+stalls, and an intelligent and delightful response in them, like a touch
+of a beautiful instrument. 'Copperfield' wound up in a real burst of
+feeling and delight."
+
+This letter was headed "Fountain Hotel, Canterbury." Dickens visited the
+city again in the summer of 1869, driving there from Gads Hill with some
+American friends, and made the Fountain Hotel his halting place, whilst he
+and his companions explored the city. They drove into Canterbury just as
+the bells of the cathedral were ringing for afternoon service, George
+Dolby informs us, and "turned into the by-street in which the Fountain
+Hotel is situated, where the carriages and horses were to be put up," and
+where the party took tea prior to starting back for home.
+
+"The inns in England are the best in Europe, those in Canterbury are the
+best in England, and the Fountain wherein I am now lodged as handsomely as
+I were in the King's palace, the best in Canterbury." So wrote the
+Ambassador of the Emperor of Germany to his master on the occasion of his
+visit to this country to attend the marriage ceremony of Edward the First
+to his second Queen, Margaret of France, in Canterbury Cathedral on the
+12th of September, 1299.
+
+The Royal Fountain Hotel, as it is now called, is one of the oldest inns
+in England; indeed, it is so old as to claim that the wife of Earl Godwin,
+when she came to meet her husband on his return from Denmark in the year
+1029, stayed there. It also claims to have been the temporary residence of
+Archbishop Lanfranc whilst his palace was being built in 1070; and there
+is a legend associated with it that the four knights who murdered Thomas à
+Becket made it their rendezvous in 1170.
+
+To-day the inn still retains its old-world atmosphere, although certain of
+its apartments and appurtenances have been made to conform to modern
+requirements. Its passages and stairs are narrow and winding, antique
+furniture, brasses, and copper utensils are in great evidence, and the
+huge kitchen with its wide fire-place and open chimney still reminds us of
+the old days. Upstairs is a spacious room measuring some forty or fifty
+feet in length, in the centre of which is one of those priceless tables
+made in separate pieces going the whole length of the room, looking, when
+we last saw it, with scores of chairs set around it, like a gigantic
+elongated board-room table waiting for a meeting to begin. This room is
+used for banquets, and often the Mayor holds his official dinners there.
+But it would seem that the chief claimants to its use is "The Canterbury
+Farmers' Club and East Kent Chamber of Agricultural Commerce," for its
+walls are covered with portraits in oils of some of the past presidents,
+whilst a long list of them dating from 1855-1919 hangs in a prominent
+position.
+
+The "little inn" where Mr. and Mrs. Micawber stayed on the occasion when
+they thought it was so advisable that they should see the Medway in the
+hope of finding an opening in the coal trade for Mr. Micawber is the Sun
+Inn in Sun Street, once the stopping-place for the omnibus which plied
+between Canterbury and Herne Bay.
+
+It will be remembered that David was taking tea with the Heeps when
+suddenly Mr. Micawber appeared. David, rather apprehensive of what his old
+friend might say next, hurried him away by asking, "Shall we go and see
+Mrs. Micawber, sir?" and they both sallied forth, Mr. Micawber humming a
+tune on the way. "It was a little inn where Mr. Micawber put up, and he
+occupied a little room in it, partitioned off from the commercial room,
+and strongly flavoured with tobacco smoke. I think it was over the
+kitchen, because a warm greasy smell appeared to come up through the
+chinks of the floor, and there was a flabby perspiration on the walls. I
+know it was near the bar, on account of the smell of spirits and jingling
+of glasses. Here, recumbent on a sofa, underneath a picture of a
+race-horse, with her head close to the fire and her feet pushing the
+mustard off the dumb-waiter at the other end of the room, was Mrs.
+Micawber."
+
+Undaunted by the fact that his resources were extremely low, Mr. Micawber
+pressed David to dine with him, and the repast was accordingly arranged.
+David describes it as "a beautiful little dinner. Quite an elegant dish
+of fish; the kidney end of a loin of veal, roasted; fried sausage-meat, a
+partridge, and a pudding. There was wine and there was strong ale; and
+after dinner Mrs. Micawber made us a bowl of hot punch with her own hands.
+Mr. Micawber was uncommonly convivial.... He got cheerfully sentimental
+about the town and proposed success to it, observing that Mrs. Micawber
+and himself had been made extremely snug and comfortable.... As the punch
+disappeared, Mr. Micawber became still more friendly and convivial. Mrs.
+Micawber's spirits becoming elevated, too, we sang 'Auld Lang Syne.'... In
+a word, I never saw anybody so thoroughly jovial as Mr. Micawber was, down
+to the very last moment of the evening, when I took a hearty farewell of
+himself and his amiable wife."
+
+[Illustration: "The Little Inn" Canterbury
+
+_Drawn by F. G. Kitton_]
+
+The "little inn" is the scene of another incident in the book, as narrated
+in Chapter LII, where Uriah Heep is exposed. David, Mr. Dick, Traddles,
+and Betsey Trotwood are invited down to Canterbury "to assist at an
+explosion." Arriving by the Dover Mail, they all put up at this inn on the
+recommendation of Mr. Micawber, and there awaited his arrival. It is
+recorded that they got into the hotel with some trouble in the middle of
+the night, and "went shivering at that uncomfortable hour" to their
+respective beds, through various close passages, "which smelt as if they
+had been steeped for ages in a solution of soup and stables." In the
+morning David took a stroll, and states how he "looked at the old house
+from the corner of the street ... the early sun was striking edgewise on
+its gables and lattice-windows, touching them with gold, and some beams of
+its old peace seemed to touch my heart."
+
+They all breakfasted together, full of anxiety and impatience for Mr.
+Micawber's appearance, which was punctually timed at the first chime of
+the half-hour.
+
+This "little inn," with its gables and lattices telling of its age, still
+occupies the angle of the peaceful streets close to the Cathedral Close.
+But Dickens's designation of it is hardly fitting, for it is quite a
+commodious building with stabling for about a dozen horses. It is,
+perhaps, a trifle smaller than when Dickens knew it, for the rooms on the
+ground-floor corner and one side are used as a jeweller's and a butcher's
+shop respectively.
+
+The inn still boasts of its "splendid accommodation for all," and is
+determined that its identification with Dickens should not be overlooked.
+On one side of the building is a hanging sign bearing the words:
+
+  THE SUN INN
+  BUILT 1503
+  THE "LITTLE INN"
+  OF DICKENS FAME
+
+whilst in case this should be missed by pilgrims, it has, painted up on
+the wall the other side:
+
+  SUN HOTEL
+  FORMERLY KNOWN AS
+  "THE LITTLE INN"
+  MADE FAMOUS BY
+  CHAS. DICKENS
+  IN HIS TRAVELS THRO' KENT
+  BUILT 1503
+
+It would seem that the proprietor who was responsible for these words was
+a little uncertain of the exact association of his "Little Inn" with
+Dickens. But, being determined to receive some of the reflected glory of
+the novelist's fame, and evidently ignorant of the book in which his
+"Little Inn" figured, played for safety in the use of a general, rather
+than a specific phrase.
+
+The inn is worth a visit, for it is still quaint, attractive, and
+picturesque. Although actually built, as we are told, in 1503, we
+understand that it was altered in the seventeenth century. Anyway, it is
+sufficiently old to be in keeping with its ancient surroundings.
+
+Turning to London, there is the Piazza Hotel in Covent Garden, mentioned
+by Steerforth in Chapter XXIV, where he was going to breakfast with one of
+his friends, which was no doubt the well-known coffee-house at the
+north-eastern angle of Covent Garden Piazza. It was the favourite resort
+of the actors and dramatists of the period. Sheridan and John Kemble often
+dined together in its coffee-room, and there is a record of them
+disagreeing on a certain matter. Sheridan, in a letter replying to one
+from Kemble, told him he attributed his letter "to a disorder which I know
+ought not to be indulged. I prescribe that thou shalt keep thine
+appointment at the Piazza Coffee-House to-morrow at five, and, taking four
+bottles of claret instead of three, to which in sound health you might
+stint yourself, forget that you ever wrote the letter, as I shall that I
+ever received it."
+
+Dickens stayed there himself in 1844 and again in 1846, two letters from
+him to his wife being dated from there.
+
+The Piazza facade where stood the coffee-house was taken down to build the
+Floral Hall, which is reputed to have been modelled on the Crystal Palace.
+
+In Chapter XXXV, David Copperfield, after a plunge in the old Roman bath
+in Strand Lane, went for a walk to Hampstead, and got some breakfast on
+the Heath. The inn where he took his repast, although not named, no doubt
+was Jack Straw's Castle. This is the only allusion to the famous hostelry
+in Dickens's books that we know of, but the novelist frequented it in his
+earlier writing years, when he was very fond of riding and walking, and
+indulged those forms of recreation to his profit during that hard-worked
+period of his literary career.
+
+In those brilliant days of Pickwick he would wander in all directions out
+of the London streets, and invite Forster to accompany him on these jaunts
+by sending him brief commands to join him. One of these ran: "You don't
+feel disposed, do you, to muffle yourself up and start off with me for a
+good brisk walk over Hampstead Heath? I know a good 'ous where we can have
+a red-hot chop for dinner, and a glass of good wine." And off they went,
+leading, as Forster says, to their "first experience of Jack Straw's
+Castle, memorable for many happy meetings in coming years."
+
+On another occasion, whilst writing _The Old Curiosity Shop_, Maclise
+accompanied them, but this time they drove to the Heath and then walked to
+the "Castle." Here Dickens read to his friends a number of the new story.
+Again, in 1844, he wrote: "Stanfield and Mac have come in, and we are
+going to Hampstead to dinner. I leave Betsey Prig as you know, so don't
+you make a scruple about leaving Mrs. Harris. We shall stroll leisurely
+up, to give you time to join us, and dinner will be on the table at Jack
+Straw's at four." A few months later, it is recorded, they dined there
+again, and it is evident that the old inn was a favourite haunt of the
+novelist on such occasions, and the Dickens traditions have so clung to it
+that during the flight of time they have become, as such traditions do,
+somewhat exaggerated. To-day, visitors are not only shown the chair he sat
+on, but have pointed out to them the bedroom he used to sleep in. There is
+no record, however, that he ever stayed the night there, or any reason
+for believing that he did, seeing how easy it was for him and his friends
+to get there and back from town. But Jack Straw's Castle has good reasons
+for being proud of its literary associations; for, in addition to those of
+Dickens and his famous friends, such names as Washington Irving,
+Thackeray, Du Maurier, Lord Leighton, and a host of others may be
+mentioned as frequenting it. To say nothing of the fact that "The Castle"
+is mentioned in Richardson's _Clarissa Harlowe_.
+
+[Illustration: JACK STRAW'S CASTLE, as it was in 1835
+
+_Drawn by L. Walker from an old engraving_]
+
+Apart, however, from its literary associations, Jack Straw's Castle has a
+romantic history. It is generally agreed that its name is derived from
+that of the notorious peasant leader of the rising in the reign of Richard
+II. And this may be so in spite of the fact that its present designation
+is not older than the middle of the eighteenth century.
+
+The Peasants' Revolt took place in 1381, and we are told that it is more
+than likely that the Hampstead villeins took part in the famous march to
+London. One authority says that "the St. Albans men, in their advance to
+join Jack Straw at his headquarters at Highbury, might or might not have
+passed through Hampstead. If a contingent of adherents was ready to join
+them at Hampstead, they probably took the village into their route,
+especially as it would give them particular pleasure to make an offensive
+demonstration against the Knights Hospitallers, who had a temple there and
+were the objects of bitter hatred. The attack of the mob upon the house of
+the Knights Hospitallers at Highbury is a well-known incident of the
+rising. Whether they visited Hampstead or not, they passed at no great
+distance from it--near enough to bring the Hampstead villeins within their
+influence. May it not be that the events of these few days provided the
+reason for the local name of Jack Straw's Castle? The mere fact of there
+being Hampstead sympathisers with Jack Straw who held their meetings at a
+certain house would be sufficient excuse to gain that house the title of
+Jack Straw's Castle."
+
+Sir Walter Besant thought that, although there is no direct evidence of
+Jack Straw being connected with the hostelry named after him, "it is quite
+possible that the Heath formed a rendezvous for the malcontents of his
+time." In early days there had been an earthwork on the site, which might
+have given rise to the name "Castle." Referring to this point, Professor
+Hales, who leans to the opinion that Jack Straw was no more than a generic
+appellation, and instances the fact of there being an inn called Jack
+Straw's Castle in a village near Oxford, says: "'Jack Straw's Castle' is
+so commanding and important that there can be little doubt there would be
+erected upon it some kind of earthwork or fort at a very early period.
+Traces of both the Neolithic and the Bronze Age man have been found on and
+near the Heath, and, possibly enough, both these races raised or held on
+the spot some rude fortification which subsequent times would call a
+'Castle.' This being so, we have only to infer, from facts already stated,
+that the place was used as a tryst for the local partisans of Jack Straw
+to arrive at the origin of the name of 'Jack Straw's Castle'--that is, the
+Castle of the Jack Strawites."
+
+To-day, Jack Straw's Castle is the favoured resort of the district, and
+perhaps the Dickens traditions act as the strongest lodestone to visitors,
+and do more to sustain its popularity than any others. At any rate, the
+Dickensian pilgrim on his ramble through Hampstead places great store on
+Jack Straw's Castle for the simple and justifiable reason that it had such
+attractions for the great novelist.
+
+The "little, dirty, tumble-down public-house" at the foot of Hungerford
+Stairs, where the Micawber family were lodged the night before their
+departure for Australia, was called the Swan. It was there at the time
+Dickens worked in the factory as a boy, and appears in contemporary
+pictures of Hungerford Stairs. The Micawbers occupied one of the wooden
+chambers upstairs, with the tide flowing underneath. We read that Betsey
+Trotwood and Agnes were there, "busily making some little extra comforts
+in the way of dress for the children. Peggotty was quietly assisting with
+the old insensible work-box, yard measure, and bit of wax candle before
+her that had outlived so much." In that ramshackle old inn was enacted
+that last wonderful scene with Mr. Micawber, when he insisted on making
+punch in England for the last time. Having obtained the assurance that
+Miss Trotwood and Miss Wickfield would join him in the toast, he
+"immediately descended to the bar, where he appeared to be quite at home;
+and in due time returned with a steaming jug," and quickly served out the
+fragrant liquid in tin mugs for his children, and drank from his own
+particular pint pot himself.
+
+There are three other inns calling for brief reference. The Gray's Inn
+Coffee-House, where David Copperfield stayed on his return from abroad,
+was first mentioned in _The Old Curiosity Shop_, and is dealt with in our
+chapter devoted to that book; the Golden Cross at Charing Cross, a
+prominent feature in Chapter XIX, is commented upon at length in "The Inns
+and Taverns of Pickwick"; and the coffee-house in Doctors' Commons where
+Mr. Spenlow conducted David Copperfield to discuss a certain delicate
+matter (Chapter XXXVIII) demolished in 1894.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+BLEAK HOUSE, LITTLE DORRIT, HARD TIMES
+
+    SOL'S ARMS--THE DEDLOCK ARMS--THE LONDON COFFEE--HOUSE--PEGASUS'
+    ARMS--ETC.
+
+
+There are very few inns of any importance mentioned in _Bleak House_, and
+only one that plays any prominent part in the story. The one at Barnet,
+where Esther Summerson hired the carriage to drive to Mr. Jarndyce's
+house, was no doubt meant to be the Red Lion, and is dealt with in the
+first chapter of the present volume; while the White Horse Cellar, where
+she alighted on her entry into London from Reading, claims attention in
+"The Inns and Taverns of Pickwick."
+
+Of the two other taverns, Sol's Arms, where the inquest on Nemo was held,
+and the Dedlock Arms at Chesney Wold, the former is the chief.
+
+The original of Sol's Arms was the old Ship Tavern which once stood at the
+corner of Chichester Rents off Chancery Lane. It is first referred to in
+Chapter XI as the place of the coroner's inquest. "The coroner is to sit
+in the first-floor room at the Sol's Arms, where the Harmonic Meetings
+take place twice a week, and where the chair is filled by a gentleman of
+professional celebrity, faced by Little Swills the comic vocalist.... The
+Sol's Arms does a brisk stroke of business all the morning."
+
+According to Allbut, Dickens took the name from a tavern in the Hampstead
+Road where the harmonic meetings of the Sol's Society were held, and it
+certainly seems that he adapted its characteristics to the Ship.
+
+At the appointed hour the coroner arrived, and was conducted by the beadle
+and the landlord to the Harmonic Meeting Room, "where he puts his hat on
+the piano, and takes a Windsor chair at the head of the long table, formed
+of several short tables put together, and ornamented with glutinous rings
+in endless involutions, made by the pots and glasses. As many of the jury
+as can crowd together at the tables sit there. The rest get among the
+spittoons and pipes, or lean against the piano."
+
+All in readiness, the famous inquest on Nemo, with poor Joe as a witness,
+took place, after which the Sol's Arms gradually "melts into the shadowy
+night, and then flares out of it strong in gas."
+
+That was a special event for the Sol's Arms, which generally speaking was
+just a tavern frequented by lawyers' clerks and the inhabitants of
+Chichester Rents and its neighbourhood. It, no doubt, was Krook's habitual
+place of call, it certainly was patronized by Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins,
+and Mr. Guppy must often have looked in; but its chief claim to fame was
+its being the meeting place of the Harmonic Company, of whom Little Swills
+was so distinguished a member.
+
+Although Chichester Rents, which exists to-day, is not the same Chichester
+Rents as when the Old Ship Tavern was there, and Krook lived there, with
+Miss Flite as a lodger, one is easily reminded of these things, and of the
+inquest, of Poor Joe, and of the great Little Swills, when one wanders
+through this district of Dickens Land.
+
+It is common knowledge that Chesney Wold, the country seat of the Dedlocks
+of the story, was Rockingham Castle, the home of the Hon. Richard Watson
+and Mrs. Watson, to whom Dickens dedicated _David Copperfield_. There is,
+therefore, no difficulty in tracing the Dedlock Arms. The village of
+Chesney Wold was the village of Rockingham. In Rockingham is an old inn
+bearing the date of 1763, known as Sonde's Arms, which stands for the
+Dedlock Arms of the story.
+
+_Little Dorrit_ is almost as devoid of reference to inns and taverns that
+count as _Bleak House_. In few cases the references are as a rule but
+passing ones. Perhaps the most interesting is to the Coffee-House on
+Ludgate Hill, where Arthur Clennam stayed, for it remains almost as it was
+in those days.
+
+In the third chapter of the first book, Dickens gives one of those telling
+pen-pictures of London for which he had no rival. It is of rather a dull
+and doleful hue, and depicts the aspect the city presents on a Sunday:
+"gloomy, close and stale." Arthur Clennam had just arrived from Marseilles
+by way of Dover and its coach "The Blue-Eyed Maid," and "sat in the window
+of a coffee-house on Ludgate Hill, counting one of the neighbouring bells,
+making sentences and burdens of songs out of it in spite of himself, and
+wondering how many sick people it might be the death of in the course of
+the year. At the quarter, it went off into a condition of deadly-lively
+importunity, urging the populace in a voluble manner to Come to church,
+Come to church, Come to church! At the ten minutes, it became aware that
+the congregation would be scanty, and slowly hammered out in low
+spirits, They _won't_ come, they _won't_ come, they _won't_ come! At
+the five minutes it abandoned hope, and shook every house in the
+neighbourhood for three hundred seconds, with one dismal swing per second,
+as a groan of despair. 'Thank heaven!' said Clennam when the hour struck,
+and the bell stopped."
+
+[Illustration: THE LONDON COFFEE HOUSE, LUDGATE HILL
+
+_From an old Engraving_]
+
+The particular coffee-house in whose window Clennam sat was the famous old
+London Coffee-House, and the particular church whose bells prompted his
+reflections, so microscopically described by the novelist, must have been
+St. Martin's next door. There can be little doubt of this, for we are told
+that Clennam "sat in the same place as the day died, looking at the dull
+houses opposite, and thinking, if the disembodied spirits of former
+inhabitants were ever conscious of them, how they must pity themselves for
+their old places of imprisonment.... Presently the rain began to fall in
+slanting lines between him and those houses, and people began to collect
+under cover of the public passage opposite, and to look hopelessly at the
+sky as the rain dropped thicker and faster."
+
+That "public passage opposite" must have been what is now the entrance to
+Ludgate Square.
+
+With these facts to guide us, we can supply the name and location of the
+coffee-house on Ludgate Hill. It exists to-day, nestling close to St.
+Martin's Church, on the west side, and, but for the substitution of a
+plate-glass shop-front, is to all intents and purposes unchanged in its
+outward appearances from what it was when Clennam sat in meditation at one
+of its windows.
+
+The illustration from an old engraving by S. Jenkins, after a drawing by
+G. Shepherd, shows the coffee-house and church as they were in 1814; and,
+if comparison of the picture of the former building is made with the
+present structure, it will be seen that it is practically identical,
+except so far as the ground floor is concerned.
+
+The house was first opened as a coffee-house in 1731 by one James Ashley,
+and its vast cellars stretched under Ludgate Hill to the foundations of
+the city walls. In those days, it was "within the Rules of the Fleet
+Prison, and was noted for the sales held there of booksellers' stocks and
+literary copyrights," and used to afford hospitality to the juries from
+the Old Bailey sessions when they disagreed. The grandfather of John
+Leech, the illustrator of _A Christmas Carol_ was the landlord of the
+tavern for some years, and later the father of the famous _Punch_ artist
+became the tenant, and filled it with the merry crowd associated with Mr.
+Punch's early days. Leech was followed as landlord by Mr. Lovegrove from
+the Horn Tavern in Doctors' Commons.
+
+There is a casual mention of the famous old George Inn in the Borough High
+Street, in Chapter XXII of Book 1 of _Little Dorrit_, where Tip Dorrit is
+spoken of as going into the inn to write a letter; and also passing
+references to Garraway's and the Jerusalem Coffee-House, as occasional
+resorts of Mr. Flintwinch. Full details concerning the George and
+Garraway's will be found in "The Inns and Taverns of Pickwick."
+
+The Jerusalem Coffee House was one of the oldest in the city of London,
+and was famous for its news-rooms, where merchants and captains connected
+with the commerce of India, China and Australia could see and consult the
+files of all the most important papers from those countries, as well as
+the chief shipping lists.
+
+The hotel in Brook Street, Grosvenor Square, where Mr. Dorrit stayed when
+he reached London from the Continent, was probably Mivart's, and is dealt
+with in the chapter devoted to Nicholas Nickleby.
+
+Coketown, of _Hard Times_, is generally supposed to be Manchester. We
+suspect it to be a composite picture, with a good deal of Preston in it,
+and other manufacturing towns as well. It is not possible, therefore, to
+identify the one or two inns which figure in the story.
+
+The hotel where Mr. James Harthouse stayed when he went there with an
+introduction to Mr. Bounderby might be any hotel in any town; and there
+seems no means of tracing the original of the "mean little public-house
+with red lights in it" at Pod's End, where Sissy Jupe brought Gradgrind
+and Bounderby. Dickens describes it "as haggard and as shabby as if, for
+want of custom, it had itself taken to drinking and had gone the way all
+drunkards go, and was very near the end of it."
+
+The name he gives to the public-house was the Pegasus' Arms. The Pegasus'
+leg, he informs us, might have been more to the purpose; but, underneath
+the winged horse upon the sign-board, the Pegasus' Arms was inscribed in
+Roman letters. Beneath that inscription, again, in a flowing scroll, the
+painter had touched off the lines:
+
+  Good malt makes good beer,
+  Walk in, and they'll draw it here;
+  Good wine makes good brandy,
+  Give us a call, and you'll find it handy.
+
+These lines were taken from an old inn-sign, the Malt Shovel, which once
+stood at the foot of Chatham Hill.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+A TALE OF TWO CITIES AND GREAT EXPECTATIONS
+
+    THE ROYAL GEORGE, DOVER--YE OLD CHESHIRE CHEESE--THE THREE JOLLY
+    BARGEMEN--THE CROSS KEYS, WOOD STREET--HUMMUM'S, COVENT GARDEN--THE
+    SHIP AND LOBSTER, GRAVESEND--THE FOX UNDER THE HILL, DENMARK HILL
+
+
+Notwithstanding the fact that _A Tale of Two Cities_ is to some persons
+Dickens's best book, or the one that many prefer to any other, it is the
+most barren for our purpose. Apart from the fact that its scenes are laid
+chiefly in another country, those that concern our own supply little
+enough material in the way of taverns that can be identified.
+
+In Chapter IV of Book 1, Dickens gives a fine description of the London
+Mail Coach's journey to Dover, but no incident associated with an inn is
+touched upon on the way, and not until the journey is terminated at Dover
+is an inn mentioned by name.
+
+"When the mail got successfully to Dover, in the course of the forenoon,"
+we are told, "the head drawer at the Royal George Hotel opened the coach
+door, as his custom was. He did it with some flourish of ceremony, for a
+mail journey from London in winter was an achievement to congratulate an
+adventurous traveller upon."
+
+Here Mr. Lorry, the only passenger left, shaking himself of straw,
+alighted from the coach and engaged a room for the night, where he awaited
+the arrival of Lucy Manette for the momentous interview which was to
+terminate in their voyage to Calais.
+
+We cannot, however, discover that there was any hotel with the name of the
+Royal George in Dover at that or any other period; but Robert Allbut,
+hunting for one to serve its purpose, hit upon the King's Head Hotel,
+which he says was the old coaching-house for the London Mail, and
+therefore must have been the hostelry Dickens had in mind. Other
+authorities mention the Ship, long since disappeared, upon whose site now
+stands the Lord Warden Hotel, where Dickens often stayed himself, and
+occasionally mentions in his writings. Taking into consideration the date
+of the story, one may rightly assume that the Ship was the hotel at which
+Mr. Lorry's coach deposited him. It was the Ship no doubt that Byron sang
+of in the following verse:
+
+  Thy cliffs, dear Dover! harbour and hotel;
+    Thy custom-house, with all its delicate duties;
+  Thy waiters running mucks at every bell;
+    Thy packets, all whose passengers are booties
+  To those who upon land or water dwell;
+    And last, not least, to strangers uninstructed,
+  Thy long, long bills, whence nothing is deducted.
+
+But it has long ago gone, and in its place the fashionable Lord Warden now
+stands.
+
+Ye Old Cheshire Cheese, that popular tavern in Fleet Street, was never, we
+believe, ever mentioned in any one of Dickens's books by name, nor can we
+discover that it was alluded to or described even under an assumed name.
+It is known that he visited it, and the menu card bearing a picture of
+what is known as Dr. Johnson's room, with Dickens and Thackeray seated at
+the table presided over by the shade of the lexicographer itself, is
+familiar to visitors.
+
+[Illustration: THE OLD CHESHIRE CHEESE]
+
+Dickens students, however, are of opinion that the Cheshire Cheese is the
+tavern where Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton dined after the trial at the
+Old Bailey, described in Chapter IV of Book 2. The evidence offered for
+this is as follows:
+
+Darnay tells Carton that he is faint for want of food.
+
+"Then why the devil don't you dine? I dined myself while those numskulls
+were deliberating which world you should belong to--this, or some other."
+"Let me show you the nearest tavern to dine well in," replied Carton.
+
+"Drawing his arm through his own, he took him down Ludgate Hill to Fleet
+Street, and so, up a covered way, into a tavern. Here they were shown a
+little room, where Charles Darnay was soon recruiting his strength with a
+good plain dinner and good wine: while Carton sat opposite to him at the
+same table, with his separate bottle of port before him, and his full
+half-insolent manner upon him."
+
+The Cheshire Cheese no doubt was the tavern Dickens was thinking of when
+he wrote the foregoing passages. It certainly was the resort of the
+literary and legal professions in those days, as it has been since. It is
+too well known to warrant any detailed account of it here. Besides, its
+two-and-a-half-century history is too packed with anecdote and story to
+allow of adequate description in our limited space. An excellent book is
+issued by the proprietors fully dealing with its past, and copiously
+illustrated.
+
+There seems to be a growing desire on the part of Dickens students to
+prove that Cooling, the hamlet in Kent near to Gads Hill is not the spot
+where are laid certain scenes of _Great Expectations_, in spite of the
+fact that Dickens told Forster it was. We do not propose to argue the
+matter here. The chief point at issue seems to be that there is no
+blacksmith's forge at Cooling, whereas there is at Chalk and at Hoo, two
+other villages in the district that claim the honour. Yet at Chalk there
+are no "graveyard lozenges," but at Hoo we believe there happens to be
+both lozenges in the churchyard and a forge in the village.
+
+On the other hand, we are told there _was_ a blacksmith's forge at Cooling
+in Dickens's time. If, therefore, we accept Cooling as Joe Gargery's
+village, the Horseshoe and Castle Inn there would stand for the Three
+Jolly Bargemen where Joe Gargery and Pip used to while away certain hours
+of the evening, as described in Chapter X of the book.
+
+It is first referred to on the occasion when Pip had promised "at his
+peril" to bring Joe home from it. "There was a bar at the Jolly
+Bargemen," Pip tells us, "with some alarmingly long chalk scores in it on
+the wall at the side of the door" which seemed never to be paid off. They
+had been there ever since he could remember, and had grown more than he
+had. There was a common-room at the end of the passage with a bright large
+kitchen fire, where Joe smoked his pipe in company with Mr. Wopsle. It was
+here that Pip again encountered his convict who stirred his drink with the
+file Pip had borrowed for him earlier in the story, and where he was
+presented with a shilling wrapped in "two fat sweltering one-pound notes
+that seemed to have been on terms of the warmest intimacy with all the
+cattle markets in the country."
+
+It is the scene of many incidents in the story. Indeed, it was the meeting
+place of all the men of the village, to whom Mr. Wopsle read the news
+round the fire, and where all the gossip of the district was retailed.
+
+The Horseshoe and Castle is a typical village inn, in all appearances like
+a doll's house, built of wood in a quite plain fashion, lying a little
+back from the road. It was in this inn that Mr. Jaggers unexpectedly
+appeared one day enquiring for Pip, which ultimately resulted in the
+change in Pip's fortune and his journey to London.
+
+Pip's journey from "our town," as he calls it, to the Metropolis, was, we
+read, "a journey of about five hours. It was a little past midday when the
+four-horse stage-coach by which I was passenger got into the ravel of
+traffic frayed out about the Cross Keys, Wood Street, Cheapside, London."
+
+This incident of the early life of Pip, related in 1860, was a
+reminiscence of Dickens's early childhood, which he recalls in _The
+Uncommercial Traveller_, when he tells us that, as a small boy, he "left
+Dullborough in the days when there were no railroads in the land," and he
+left it in a stage-coach. "Through all the years that have since passed,"
+he goes on, "have I ever lost the smell of the damp straw in which I was
+packed--like game--and forwarded, carriage paid, to the Cross Keys, Wood
+Street, Cheapside, London.... The coach that carried me away was
+melodiously called Timpson's Blue-Eyed Maid, and belonged to Timpson at
+the coach office up street." In speaking of Dullborough and "our town," it
+is known that Dickens was referring to Rochester.
+
+The Cross Keys was a notable coaching inn of those days, and the Rochester
+coaches started and ended their journey there. It was demolished over
+fifty years ago. Although Dickens does not give us one of his pleasant
+pen-pictures of it, he refers to it occasionally in other of his stories,
+such as _Little Dorrit_ and _Nicholas Nickleby_.
+
+Another one-time famous London inn, referred to in _Great Expectations_,
+but no longer existing, is Hummum's, in Covent Garden.
+
+When Pip received that note one evening on reaching the gateway of the
+Temple, warning him not to go home, he hired a chariot and drove to
+Hummum's, Covent Garden. He spent a very miserable night there. In those
+times, he tells us, "a bed was always to be got there at any hour of the
+night, and the chamberlain, letting me in at his ready wicket, lighted the
+candle next in order on his shelf, and showed me straight into the bedroom
+next in order. It was a sort of vault on the ground floor at the back,
+with a despotic monster of a four-post bed in it, straddling over the
+whole place, putting one of its arbitrary legs into the fire-place, and
+another into the doorway, and squeezing the wretched little washing-stand
+in quite a Divinely Righteous manner."
+
+He goes on to wail of his doleful night. The room smelt of cold soot and
+hot dust, the tester was covered in blue-bottle flies, which he thought
+must be lying up for next summer. "When I had lain awake a little while,
+those extraordinary voices, with which silence teems, began to make
+themselves audible. The closet whispered, the fire-place sighed, the
+little washing-stand ticked, and one guitar-string played occasionally in
+the chest of drawers."
+
+He then thought of the unknown gentleman who once came to Hummum's in the
+night and had gone to bed and destroyed himself and had been found in the
+morning weltering in his blood. Altogether a dismal, doleful and miserable
+experience of Hummum's. But no doubt Pip's liver or nerves were the cause
+of it, not the hotel.
+
+Another reference to it is made in _Sketches by Boz_ in the chapter
+describing the streets in the morning. Speaking of the pandemonium which
+reigns in Covent Garden at an early hour after daybreak, the talking,
+shouting, horses neighing, donkeys braying, Dickens says "these and a
+hundred other sounds form a compound discordant enough to a Londoner's
+ears, and remarkably disagreeable to those of country gentlemen who are
+sleeping at Hummum's for the first time."
+
+There is an hotel standing in Covent Garden with the same name to-day,
+but, although it is on the same spot, it is not the Hummum's of which Pip
+speaks. That was demolished long ago, and was the scene of a marvellous
+ghost story told in Boswell's Johnson concerning Parson Ford.
+
+The Ship at Gravesend, mentioned as the waterside inn where Pip and his
+assistants managed to row the convict Magwitch, with the idea of smuggling
+him out of the country, is known as the Ship and Lobster.
+
+[Illustration: THE SHIP AND LOBSTER, GRAVESEND
+
+_Drawn by C. G. Harper_]
+
+Having run alongside a little causeway made of stones, Pip left the rest
+of the occupants of the boat and stepped ashore, and found the light they
+had observed from the river to be in the window of a public-house. "It was
+a dirty place enough, and I daresay not unknown to smuggling adventurers;
+but there was a good fire in the kitchen, and there were eggs and bacon to
+eat and various liquors to drink. Also there were two double-bedded
+rooms--'such as they were,' the landlord said.... We made a very good meal
+by the kitchen fire, and then apportioned the bedrooms.... We found that
+the air was carefully excluded from both as if air was fatal to life; and
+there were more dirty clothes and bandboxes under the beds than I should
+have thought the family possessed. But we considered ourselves well off,
+notwithstanding, for a more solitary place we could not have found."
+
+Outside this inn Magwitch was again captured, and transferred to a galley,
+where Pip eventually joined him and accompanied him to his destination.
+
+Dickens knew Gravesend well, and his description of the Ship and Lobster
+is a faithful one. It is situated on the shore at Denton, a village
+adjoining the town, not far from the official Lighterman's at Denton
+Wharf. At one time it flourished as a popular tea-garden resort.
+
+There are two other inns in the book that must not be overlooked. The Blue
+Boar at Rochester, where Pip stayed when he visited his old town, which
+was the Bull Inn there, and is dealt with in "The Inns and Taverns of
+Pickwick"; and the tavern where Wemmick's wedding-breakfast was held. This
+is said to be the Fox under the Hill, nearly at the top of Denmark Hill.
+It is now a modern public-house, but sixty or seventy years ago it was an
+old wayside inn--a pleasant little tavern, and a favourite resort,
+especially on Sunday evenings in the summer, for the youthful population
+of Walworth and Camberwell.
+
+We close this chapter with the brief account of the festive occasion:
+
+"Breakfast had been ordered at a pleasant little tavern, a mile or so away
+upon the rising ground beyond the green[2] and there was a bagatelle board
+in the room, in case we should desire to unbend our minds after the
+solemnity. It was pleasant to observe that Mrs. Wemmick no longer unwound
+Wemmick's arm when it adapted itself to her figure, but sat in a
+high-backed chair against the wall, like a violoncello in its case, and
+submitted to be embraced as that melodious instrument might have done. We
+had an excellent breakfast, and, when anyone declined anything on the
+table, Wemmick said, 'Provided by contract you know; don't be afraid of
+it!' I drank to the new couple, drank to the Aged, drank to the Castle,
+saluted the bride at parting, and made myself as agreeable as I could."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+OUR MUTUAL FRIEND
+
+    THE SIX JOLLY FELLOWSHIP-PORTERS--THE THREE MAGPIES--THE SHIP,
+    GREENWICH--THE WHITE LION--THE ANGLERS' INN--THE EXCHEQUER
+    COFFEE-HOUSE
+
+
+The outstanding tavern in _Our Mutual Friend_ is that with the
+pleasant-sounding name of The Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters, the favoured
+resort of Rogue Riderhood, Gaffer Hexam, and their boon companions, which
+is so closely associated with the unravelling of the mystery of John
+Harmon. It exists to-day as the Grapes, and continues to be the favoured
+resort of river watermen whose business keeps or brings them to the
+picturesque Reach.
+
+When Dickens was engaged on his book, it is said that he wrote some
+chapters in a house adjoining the Grapes, overlooking the river. The
+Dropsical Tavern, as he calls it, was then known as the Bunch of Grapes,
+which, by a process of clipping, became first the Grapes Inn, and then
+finally the Grapes, by which it is known at the present time. Its front
+entrance is at 76 Narrow Street, Limehouse, and occupies little more space
+(as noted by the novelist) than to allow for its front door. Although the
+front of the building has been modernised, it still remains as narrow and
+tall as when Dickens likened it to "a handle of a flat iron set upright on
+its broadest end." The inn has been very little altered in other respects
+since he so minutely described it. Certainly, an ordinary public-house bar
+has cut off a portion of the original bar, and, if in those days "the
+available space in it was not much larger than a hackney-coach," its area
+is even smaller to-day, but yet quite comfortable enough to "soften the
+human breast."
+
+It is in describing this bar that Dickens gives the clue to the
+identification of the tavern. "No one," he says, "could have wished the
+bar bigger, that space was so girt in by corpulent little casks, and by
+cordial bottles radiant with fictitious _grapes in bunches_, and by lemons
+in nets, and by biscuits in baskets, and by polite beer-pulls that made
+low bows when customers were served with beer ... and by the landlady's
+own small table in a snugger corner near the fire...." Many of these
+alluring etceteras have given place to others, perhaps less enticing, and
+among those that have gone are the cordial bottles with the "grapes in
+bunches" on them. We have learned, however, from the present genial
+hostess, Mrs. Higgins, that at one time, not only did the cordial bottles
+bear the engraved sign of a bunch of grapes, but certain of the windows
+also were so embellished, and it was only a few years ago, when the front
+was altered, that these disappeared.
+
+It is not, however, necessary merely to rely on this piece of
+identification to assure us that the Grapes Inn was the original of the
+Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters, for a visit to it with Chapter VI of _Our
+Mutual Friend_ for a guidance leaves no doubt in the mind. Therein we read
+that "the Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters, already mentioned as a tavern of a
+dropsical appearance, had long settled down into a state of hale
+infirmity. In its whole constitution it had not a straight floor, and
+hardly a straight line; but it had outlasted, and clearly would yet
+outlast, many a better-trimmed building, many a sprucer public-house.
+Externally, it was a narrow, lopsided wooden jumble of corpulent windows
+heaped one upon another as you might heap as many toppling oranges, with
+a crazy wooden verandah impending over the water; indeed, the whole house,
+inclusive of the complaining flag-staff on the roof, impended over the
+water, but seemed to have got into the condition of a faint-hearted diver
+who has paused so long on the brink that he will never go in at all."
+
+That is how Dickens describes the river frontage of the Six Jolly
+Fellowship-Porters, and his words apply just as accurately to the Grapes
+Inn. As one stands on the crazy wooden verandah, which is reached from the
+foreshore by steep wooden steps, one can call to mind the scene in the
+book describing Gaffer Hexam landing the "found drowned," and then, by
+turning into the "tap and parlour" behind, "which gave on to the river,
+and had red curtains to match the noses of the regular customers," one
+finds oneself in the room where the inquest on John Harmon was held, with
+Gaffer Hexam as witness before the coroner's jury, Mr. Mortimer Light wood
+as "eminent solicitor," and Mr. Inspector watching the proceedings on
+behalf of the Home Office. The room is not used for such purposes to-day,
+but is put to the more pleasant one of social intercourse between workers
+on the great waterway during and after their labours, who, if you are so
+disposed, will welcome you there, and discourse on the mystery of tides
+and ships. If you accept them as fellow-creatures you may be invited to a
+game of darts, meanwhile regaling yourself with the modern substitutes for
+"those delectable drinks" known in the days when Miss Abbey Potterson
+reigned supreme on her throne as sole proprietor and manager of the
+Fellowship-Porters, as Purl, Flip, and Dog's Nose. These watermen reach
+this haven, if the tide is out, by means of the wooden steps; when the
+tide is high and the house is "all but afloat," the small row-boats are
+brought into use and the occupants approach the inn like veritable
+gondoliers and moor their craft outside whilst they refresh themselves
+within.
+
+[Illustration: THE GRAPES INN, LIMEHOUSE
+
+_Photograph by T. W. Tyrrell_]
+
+Beyond this room is the small one which served as Miss Abbey Potterson's
+haven. "This haven," Dickens says, "was divided from the rough world by a
+glass partition and a half-door with a leaden sill upon it for the
+convenience of resting your liquor; but over this half-door the bar's
+snugness so gushed forth that, albeit customers drank there standing, in a
+dark and draughty passage where they were shouldered by other customers
+passing in and out, they always appeared to drink under an enchanting
+delusion that they were in the bar itself."
+
+The glass partition and the half-door, over which Gaffer Hexam is seen
+leaning in Marcus Stone's picture in the book, is still there, but is not
+now used for the same purpose. It is the private entrance to the back of
+the modern public bar.
+
+What Dickens said of the antiquity of the Fellowship-Porters is true of
+the Grapes Inn. "The wood forming the chimney-pieces, beams, partitions,
+floors, and doors of the Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters seemed in its old
+age fraught with confused memories of its youth. In many places it had
+become gnarled and riven, according to the manner of old trees; knots
+started out of it, and here and there it seemed to twist itself into some
+likeness of boughs. In this state of second childhood, it had an air of
+being in its own way garrulous about its early life. Not without reason
+was it often asserted by the regular frequenters of the Porters that, when
+the light shone full upon the grain of certain panels, and particularly
+upon an old corner cupboard of walnut wood in the bar, you might trace
+little forests there, and tiny trees like the parent tree in full
+umbrageous leaf." Unfortunately, most of these oak panels and beams are
+now hidden from view by varnished match-boarding, but some of the panels
+and some of the beams remain exposed to confirm Dickens's fanciful
+picture.
+
+Miss Abbey Potterson, the mistress of this establishment, was "a tall,
+upright, well-favoured woman, though severe of countenance, and had more
+the air of a schoolmistress than mistress of the Six Jolly
+Fellowship-Porters." Here she ruled supreme, and at the closing time she
+ordered one after the other to leave with such admonitions as "George
+Jones, your time is up! I told your wife you should be punctual," and so
+all wished Miss Abbey good night and Miss Abbey wished good night to all.
+She knew how to manage the rough class of river-men who frequented her
+house, and was the more respected for it. "Being known on her own
+authority as Miss Abbey Potterson," Dickens tells us, "some waterside
+heads, which (like the water) were none of the clearest, harboured muddled
+motions that, because of her dignity and firmness, she was named after, or
+in some sort related to, the Abbey at Westminster. But Abbey was only
+short for Abigail, by which name Miss Potterson had been christened at
+Limehouse Church some sixty years and odd before."
+
+Without recording all the references in the book to the
+Fellowship-Porters, we note that, towards the end of it, John and Bella
+paid an official visit to the police station and visited afterwards the
+Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters with Mr. Inspector for purposes of
+identification. During this visit, Mr. Inspector gives this very good
+character to the inn, "a better-kept house is not known to our men. What
+do I say? Half so well a kept house is not known to our men. Show the
+Force the Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters, and the Force--to a
+constable--will show you a piece of perfection." This, no doubt, was
+Dickens's own opinion, too.
+
+The Grapes to-day serves the same purpose as did the Six Jolly
+Fellowship-Porters in the story, and is of as good repute. It is the house
+of call of the watermen from the river in the day-time and from the road
+after work is done, and it seems to be conducted by the present hostess
+much as it was by Miss Abbey Potterson, not so rigidly perhaps, but with
+the same good-natured friendliness which is reflected in the attitude and
+behaviour of all the frequenters. There does not even seem the necessity
+for a Bob Glibbery; at any rate, we have not met his successor on the
+occasions of our visits there. Nor does his room down "towards the bed of
+the river," where he was ordered to proceed to his supper, exist at the
+present time. That must have been somewhere contiguous to the secret
+smuggling arches which ran under the building from the river, now filled
+in.
+
+[Illustration: LIMEHOUSE REACH
+
+_Drawn by L. Walker_]
+
+The Grapes Inn is a place to visit. If one can choose a fine summer's
+evening to sit under "the corpulent windows" on the "crazy wooden
+verandah" and watch the busy river with its myriads of craft floating by,
+one can enjoy the view and atmosphere much as did Whistler, Napier Hemy,
+and Dickens himself.
+
+In J. Ashby Sterry's "A River Rhymer," is a set of verses entitled "Down
+Limehouse Way," two of which may be appropriately quoted here:
+
+  Close by I mind an inn you'll find,
+    Where you will not refuse
+  To rest a bit, as there you sit,
+    And gaze on river views--
+  'Tis very old--with windows bold,
+    That bulges o'er the tide;
+  Whence you can spy ships passing by
+    Or watch the waters glide!
+  You can sit in the red-curtained bay
+  And think, while you're puffing a clay,
+    'Tis no indecorum
+    To drink sangarorum--
+  While musing down Lime'us way!
+
+  You'll find this spot--now does it not
+    Recall and keep alive
+  The varied crew Charles Dickens drew
+    In eighteen sixty-five?
+  Here Hexam plied his trade and died,
+    And Riderhood conspired;
+  While things they'd pop at Pleasant's shop,
+    When cash might be required!
+  Here under Miss Abbey's firm sway,
+  Who made all her clients obey,
+    Was ruled with discretion
+    And rare self-possession
+  The "Porters" down Lime'us way!
+
+The name of the Fellowship-Porters which Dickens adopted for the sign of
+Miss Abbey Potterson's public-house was that of one of the old City
+Guilds. For over 800 years the City of London successfully claimed and
+exercised the sole right to unload grain vessels arriving in the Thames,
+and realised enormous revenues from the privilege. In 1155, the Guild or
+Brotherhood of Fellowship-Porters was incorporated and a charter was
+granted. It was reincorporated in 1613, and appointed by the City to carry
+or store corn, salt, coals, fish, and fruit of all kinds.
+
+The Fellowship-Porters at one time numbered 3,000 members, and the Guild
+had the power granted by act of Council in 1646 to choose twelve rulers,
+the Lord Mayor and Aldermen reserving the right to appoint one of the
+number. The company had a hall of its own which stood near to the
+Waterman's Hall in St. Mary's Hill, Billingsgate, but had no livery or
+arms, and ranked the nineteenth in the order of procedure. Membership
+carried with it the freedom of the City by payment of £2 18s. 6d., and
+five guineas to Fellowship Hall--these fees being demanded before they
+could work as dock labourers. When Millwall Docks were built, the City
+challenged the docks on the matter of their privilege, and the case went
+to the Law Courts. It was then discovered that the Charter could not be
+produced, it having been destroyed by the Great Fire of London, so it was
+supposed. This blow ruined the Guild, and some thirty years ago the
+organization was wound up, the then present members being deprived of
+work, pensions, and everything else their Charter entitled them to as
+Freemen of the City.
+
+Another notable tavern in _Our Mutual Friend_ is the Ship, at Greenwich,
+where two memorable little dinners were given. The first was the occasion
+when, Bella Wilfer having been presented with a purse and a fifty-pound
+bank-note by Mr. Boffin, took her dear old father, the cherub, to
+Greenwich by boat on a secret expedition, as she called it, and
+entertained him to dinner there.
+
+First calling for her father at his City office, where the messenger
+described her to her father as "a slap-up gal in a bang-up chariot," she
+handed him the purse with instructions, not to be disregarded, to "go to
+the nearest place where they keep everything of the very very best, ready
+made; you buy and put on the most beautiful suit of clothes, the most
+beautiful hat, and the most beautiful pair of bright boots (patent
+leather, Pa, mind!) that are to be got for money; and you come back to
+me." After half an hour he came back "so brilliantly transformed that
+Bella was obliged to walk round him in ecstatic admiration twenty times
+before she could draw her arm through his and delightfully squeeze it."
+
+She then ordered him to "take this lovely woman out to dinner." The
+question came, "Where shall we go, my dear?" "Greenwich!" said Bella
+valiantly. "And be sure you treat this lovely woman with everything of the
+best." And off they went in quest of the boat to take them down the river,
+and eventually arrived at the Ship Tavern. The little expedition down the
+river to reach it, we are told, "was delightful, and the little room
+overlooking the river into which they were shown for dinner was
+delightful. Everything was delightful. The park was delightful, the lunch
+was delightful, the dishes of fish were delightful, the wine was
+delightful. Bella was more delightful than any other item in the
+festival." And, as they sat together looking at the ships and steamboats
+making their way to the sea with the tide that was running down, "the
+lovely woman imagined all sorts of voyages for herself and Pa." So
+enchanted did Pa become that he was as willing "to put his head into the
+Sultan's tub of water as the beggar-boys below the window were to put
+_theirs_ in the mud"; and so the happy moments flew by and the time came
+to ring the bell, and pay the waiter, and return to London.
+
+Later on in the same identical room in the same identical tavern
+overlooking the Thames, the same delightful couple, with John Rokesmith,
+partook of another delightful dinner. Earlier in the day Bella Wilfer had
+become Mrs. John Rokesmith and celebrated the event with breakfast at
+Bella's cottage at Blackheath, and with a dinner at the Ship Tavern later,
+Bella's father being the only other guest.
+
+"What a dinner! Specimens of all the fishes that swim in the sea surely
+had swum their way to it, and, if samples of the fishes of divers colours
+that made a speech in the 'Arabian Nights,' and then jumped out of the
+frying pan, were not to be recognised, it was only because they had all
+become of one hue by being cooked in the batter among the whitebait. And
+the dishes being seasoned with Bliss--an article which they are sometimes
+out of at Greenwich--were of perfect flavour, and the golden drinks had
+been bottled in the golden age and hoarding up their sparkles ever since."
+
+The whole function was a sheer delight, a crowning success; but the full
+appreciation of its charm cannot be indicated by short quotations; it must
+be read in detail to be thoroughly enjoyed. The scene inspired J. Ashby
+Sterry to again drop into poetry:
+
+  A wedding banquet here must dwell
+    Within one's brightest recollection;
+  Where Bella, John and Pa, as well,
+    Made merry o'er the choice refection!
+  The sparkling wine, the happy pair,
+    With all their aged affection;
+  The bland "Archbishop's" tender care,
+    And Rumpty Wilfer's smart oration!--
+  A scene where fun and pathos blend,
+  With all the heart and truth that lend
+  A charm unto "Our Mutual Friend!"
+
+Alas! the tavern in which these happy hours were spent is a thing of
+the past, but its prosperous and palmy days are recorded in Time's annals.
+
+[Illustration: THE SHIP HOTEL, GREENWICH
+
+_Drawn by L. Walker_]
+
+In the days when Greenwich was famous for its whitebait dinners, the town
+was noted for its hotels overlooking the waterside. The chief of these was
+the Ship, whilst another notable one was the Trafalgar, hard by,
+patronised by members of the Cabinet of the day, who led the fashion in
+these functions; it being "the correct thing" then, when a little special
+festivity was forward, to resort to one of these inns at Greenwich for the
+purpose, it is not surprising to learn that on several occasions Dickens
+and his literary and artistic coterie followed the custom by arranging
+social gatherings in celebration of some event connected with one of the
+company either at the Ship or the Trafalgar. As early as 1837 we find him
+suggesting Greenwich for a friendly meeting-place.
+
+But there were two very noteworthy occasions associated with Dickens when
+Greenwich was selected for jovial and pleasant parties of close friends.
+The first of these took place on the novelist's return from America in
+1842, when a few of his kindred spirits adopted this method for welcoming
+him back to England. Among the company were Talfourd, Tom Hood, Monckton
+Milnes, B. W. Procter, D. Maclise, R.A., Clarkson Stanfield, R.A., Captain
+Marryat, "Ingoldsby" Barham, George Cruikshank, and John Forster. "I wish
+you had been at Greenwich the other day," he wrote to Felton, "where a
+party of friends gave me a private dinner; public ones I have refused.
+C---- was perfectly wild at the reunion, and, after singing all manner of
+marine songs, wound up the entertainment by coming home (six miles) in a
+little open phaeton of mine, _on his head_, to the mingled delight and
+indignation of the metropolitan police. We were very jovial, indeed."
+
+On the other occasion Dickens was the instigator of the feast. This was in
+1843, when, on the retirement of John Black from the editorial chair of
+the old _Chronicle_, the novelist arranged a dinner in honour of his old
+friend at Greenwich, on the 20th of May. Dickens ordered all things to
+perfection and the dinner succeeded in its purpose, as in other ways,
+quite wonderfully, Forster tells us. Among the entertainers were Sheil and
+Thackeray, Fonblanque and Charles Buller, Southwood Smith and William
+Johnson Fox, Macready and Maclise, as well as Forster and Dickens.
+
+These dinners took place at the Ship or the Trafalgar, both well known to
+the novelist, as was Greenwich generally, for he frequently refers to the
+ancient town and its customs in his writings.
+
+The Ship Tavern was originally built with a weather-board front,
+overlooking the river. But, about the middle of the last century, the
+newer and much handsomer structure as seen in our illustration, was
+erected upon the site of the original one, and its pretty garden was the
+scene of many gay parties, whilst its rooms often rang with merriment from
+the festive diners. After the waning of the fashion for whitebait
+banquets, it long maintained its popularity with visitors to the Thames
+historic town.
+
+_Our Mutual Friend_ is essentially a story of the Thames, and certainly
+the inns and taverns of the book are either on the water's edge or in
+close proximity to it. The two already dealt with are below London Bridge,
+in the midst of the busy traffic of trade, whilst the remainder are
+situated in its more picturesque district where pleasure is sought.
+
+It will be recalled that, when Mrs. Boffin and the secretary set out in
+search of the charming orphan recommended by the Rev. Frank Milvey, they
+hired a phaeton and made their way to the abode of Mrs. Betty Higden in
+whose care was the child. They discovered that old lady in complicated
+back settlements of "Muddy Brentford," and, having left their equipage at
+the sign of the Three Magpies, continued their quest on foot. A second
+visit to Brentford is recorded later in the book, on which occasion a
+carriage was ordered, for Bella and Sloppy were also of the party. "So to
+the Three Magpies as before; where Mrs. Boffin and Miss Bella were handed
+out, and whence they all went on foot to Mrs. Betty Higden's."
+
+No other allusion to the inn is made than the bare mention of the name;
+but the original inn to which Dickens alludes undoubtedly is the Three
+Pigeons, that ancient hostelry at Brentford whose history is associated
+with Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and their contemporaries, many of whom
+referred to it in their plays and essays. In Goldsmith's _She Stoops to
+Conquer_, it will be remembered, Tony Lumpkin sings a song in praise of
+it, whilst two scenes of the comedy take place in the inn.
+
+Lowen, a leading actor in Shakespeare's company, we are told, kept the inn
+at the time, and Shakespeare personally instructed him in Henry VIII. It
+was a well-known coaching inn then, and at one time its stables occupied
+several acres.
+
+In 1905 it was partially reconstructed, and in 1916 it was closed under
+order of the licensing justices of Middlesex.
+
+[Illustration: THE RED LION HOTEL, HAMPTON
+
+_Drawn by C. G. Harper_]
+
+In the chapter describing the flight of Betty Higden we are told that her
+pilgrimage took her through Chertsey, Walton, Kingston, and Staines, and
+so on to her journey's end. One day she was sitting in a market-place on a
+bench outside an inn. Here she became nervous of those who questioned
+her, and determined to move on. As she left the spot she had looked over
+her shoulder before turning out of the town, and had seen the "sign of the
+White Lion hanging across the road, and the fluttering market booths and
+the old grey church, and the little crowd gazing after her, but not
+attempting to follow her."
+
+Although the name of this town is not mentioned, there is no doubt that
+the description is of Hampton, and that the inn is the Red Lion, whose
+picturesque sign still spans the street, with the view of the "old grey
+church" behind it.
+
+The scenes of the fourth book bring us to the district of Henley, although
+the name is never mentioned and the locks and inns are given fictitious
+names. But it has not been difficult to locate the spots from the
+novelist's accurate descriptions. The only inn which plays an important
+part in the unravelling of the story in this neighbourhood is given the
+name of the Anglers' Inn. All authorities identify this as the Red Lion,
+Henley. It was here that Eugene Wrayburn found accommodation when in
+pursuit of Lizzie Hexam. The inn is on the west bank of the river and
+north of the bridge, and, being a favourite resort of anglers, the name
+Dickens gives it is appropriate enough. It was to this inn that Lizzie
+Hexam brought the apparently lifeless body of Eugene Wrayburn after her
+brave rescue of it from the water, following the murderous attack on him
+by Bradley Headstone.
+
+"She rowed hard--rowed desperately, but never wildly--and seldom removed
+her eyes from him in the bottom of the boat.... The boat touched the edge
+of the patch of inn lawn sloping gently to the water. There were lights in
+the windows, but there chanced to be no one out of doors. She made the
+boat fast, and again by main strength took him up, and never laid him down
+until she laid him down in the house."
+
+This patch of green lawn sloping gently to the river coincides with that
+of the Red Lion, Henley. It was also in this inn, some weeks later, that
+Lizzie and Eugene were married. It was still uncertain if he would
+recover, and, in conformity with his wish, the ceremony was performed
+round his bed, the Rev. Frank Milvey officiating, Bella and her husband,
+Mortimer Lightwood, Mrs. Milvey and Jenny Wren being in attendance.
+
+The Red Lion is a famous old coaching-inn, as well as a fishing and
+boating one of renown. It is not only very old but large. Standing by the
+bridge in prominent fashion it appeals to the eye at once:
+
+  'Tis a finely toned, picturesque, sunshiny, place,
+    Recalling a dozen old stories;
+  With a rare British, good-natured, ruddy-hued face,
+    Suggesting old wines and old Tories.
+
+to quote once more from Ashby Sterry's rhymes.
+
+It was on a window in this old inn that Shenstone the poet scratched with
+a diamond about 1750 that celebrated stanza of his:
+
+  Who'er has travelled life's dull round,
+    Where'er his stages may have been,
+  May sigh to think how oft he found
+    The warmest welcome at an inn;
+
+--at least, so tradition has it. But Mr. Charles G. Harper thinks it
+doubtful, and feels that the Henley referred to by historians must have
+been Henley-in-Arden.
+
+There is one inn mentioned in the book which has not, that we are aware
+of, been identified. It is the Exchequer Coffee-House, Palace Yard,
+Westminster, the address given by Mr. Julius Handford to Mr. Inspector on
+the occasion when he viewed the body of the drowned man (Bk. 1, Chapter
+III).
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD AND THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES
+
+    WOOD'S HOTEL, FURNIVAL'S INN--THE TILTED WAGON--THE TRAVELLERS'
+    TWOPENNY--THE CROZIER, CLOISTERHAM--THE KING'S ARMS, LANCASTER--THE
+    SHIP, ALLONBY--THE ANGEL, DONCASTER, AND OTHERS
+
+
+It is a curious fact that Wood's Hotel, one of London's old-time inns
+which must have been familiar to Dickens in his very early days--even
+before he commenced writing his _Pickwick Papers_--did not furnish a scene
+in any of his books until it figured in _Edwin Drood_, his last.
+
+As early as 1834, when on the staff of the "Morning Chronicle," Dickens
+lived at 13 Furnival's Inn, and in the following year moved to No 15,
+where he commenced _The Pickwick Papers_, and where he took to himself a
+wife and where his first child was born.
+
+During these days Wood's Hotel occupied the north side of the quiet
+quadrangle of Furnival's Inn, and Dickens must have known it well. It was
+a staid and respectable house with an air about it of domestic comfort,
+suitable for country visitors, and where, we are informed, family prayers,
+night and morning, were included in the accommodation.
+
+Its stately building of four stories had dignity added to it by the four
+tall white stone pillars in the centre portion of the front reaching to
+the third floor. Although stolid-looking, it was not aggressively so, nor
+was it altogether unpicturesque, with its grass plot immediately before
+the entrance, encircling a statue of the founder of the inn, surrounded by
+white posts connected by chains.
+
+Its imposing appearance from without reflected the comforts which the
+inside of a reputable family hotel is expected to provide. At such an
+hotel one would naturally look for courteous attention from waiters and
+chambermaids, and good meals cleanly served, and at Wood's no
+disappointment in these respects was experienced. Indeed, Dickens conveys
+that idea in referring to it in _Edwin Drood_.
+
+Entering through the archway of Furnival's Inn, the hotel caught the eye
+immediately, and acted as a relief to the straight, angular, and flat
+appearance of the buildings which formed the once famous quadrangle so
+intimately associated with Dickens.
+
+It is believed by some, and was definitely stated to be a fact by a writer
+in the American magazine, the "Cosmopolitan," for May, 1893, and again by
+a writer in the "Middlesex and Hertfordshire Notes and Queries," July,
+1895, that Dickens in his bachelor days had apartments on the second floor
+of the hotel in the right-hand corner, and that in the latter years of its
+existence the walls of this same room were decorated with pictures of
+scenes and characters from his works.
+
+We have, however, been unable to find any authority for this statement.
+But it is quite possible that he frequented the hotel, and we may even
+assume that he and his friends, Hablôt K. Browne and Robert Young, who
+occupied rooms in Furnival's when they were executing engravings for
+Pickwick, would perhaps chat over details in a snug room in the hotel,
+when they would be joined by their other friend and engraver, Finden.
+
+Bearing all these ideas in mind, it is certainly a little strange that
+Dickens waited for his last book before he introduced the hotel into his
+writings.
+
+In that book we are told that Mr. Grewgious crossed over to the hotel in
+Furnival's Inn from Staple Inn opposite for his dinner "three hundred days
+in the year at least," and after dinner crossed back again. On one
+occasion, a very important interview between him and Edwin Drood took
+place in his chambers, and Edwin was pressed to stay for a meal. "We can
+have dinner in from just across Holborn," Grewgious assured him, and
+Bazzard, his clerk, was not only invited to join them, but asked if he
+would mind "stepping over to the hotel in Furnival's, and asking them to
+send in materials for laying the cloth.... For dinner we'll have a tureen
+of the hottest and strongest soup available, and we'll have the best made
+dish that can be recommended and we'll have a joint (such as a haunch of
+mutton) and we'll have a goose, or a turkey, or any little stuffed thing
+of that sort that may happen to be in the bill of fare--in short, we'll
+have whatever there is on hand."
+
+Bazzard, after bringing out the round table, accordingly withdrew to
+execute the orders. His return with the waiters gives Dickens an
+opportunity for one of his humorous descriptive passages which we make no
+excuse for quoting in full:
+
+"Bazzard returned, accompanied by two waiters--an immovable waiter, and a
+flying waiter; and the three brought in with them as much fog as gave a
+new roar to the fire. The flying waiter, who had brought everything on his
+shoulders, laid the cloth with amazing rapidity and dexterity; while the
+immovable waiter, who had brought nothing, found fault with him. The
+flying waiter then highly polished all the glasses he had brought, and the
+immovable waiter looked through them. The flying waiter then flew across
+Holborn for the soup, and flew back again, and then took another flight
+for the made-dish, and flew back again, and then took another flight for
+the joint and the poultry, and flew back again, and between whiles took
+supplementary flights for a great variety of articles, as it was
+discovered from time to time that the immovable waiter had forgotten them
+all. But, let the flying waiter cleave the air as he might, he was always
+reproached on his return by the immovable waiter for bringing fog with him
+and being out of breath. At the conclusion of the repast, by which time
+the flying waiter was severely blown, the immovable waiter gathered up the
+table-cloth under his arm with a grand air, and, having sternly (not to
+say with indignation) looked on at the flying waiter while he set clean
+glasses round, directed a valedictory glance towards Mr. Grewgious,
+conveying: 'Let it be clearly understood between us that the reward is
+mine, and that _nil_ is the claim of this slave,' and pushed the flying
+waiter before him out of the room."
+
+Thus the waiters of Wood's Hotel, which was the name of the hotel referred
+to, although not mentioned by Dickens. Later in the book, we get a more
+intimate association with it. After the murder of Edwin Drood, Rosa Bud
+hurriedly takes coach from Rochester and presents herself to her guardian
+in his chambers. She is tired and hungry, naturally, and Grewgious,
+concerned for her welfare, asks her what she will take after her journey.
+"Shall it be breakfast, lunch, dinner, tea or supper?" he enquires.
+
+"Your rest, too, must be provided for," he went on; "and you shall have
+the prettiest chamber in Furnival's. Your toilet must be provided for, and
+you shall have everything that an unlimited head chambermaid--by which
+expression I mean a head chambermaid not limited as to outlay--can
+procure."
+
+[Illustration: WOOD'S HOTEL, FURNIVAL'S INN
+
+_Drawn by L. Walker_]
+
+"Rosa thanked him, but said she could only take a cup of tea. Mr.
+Grewgious, after several times running out, and in again, to mention such
+supplementary items as marmalade, eggs, watercresses, salted fish, and
+frizzled ham, ran across to Furnival's without his hat, to give his
+various directions. And soon afterwards they were realised in practice,
+and the board was spread."
+
+After a friendly chat over tea, he escorted her to her rooms. He "helped
+her to get her hat on again, and hung upon his arm the very little bag
+that was of no earthly use, and led her by the hand (with a certain
+stately awkwardness, as if he were going to walk a minuet) across Holborn,
+and into Furnival's Inn. At the hotel door, he confided her to the
+unlimited head chambermaid, and said that while she went up to see her
+room he would remain below, in case she should wish it exchanged for
+another, or should find that there was anything she wanted."
+
+Rosa's room was airy, clean, comfortable, almost gay. The Unlimited had
+laid in everything omitted from the very little bag (that is to say,
+everything she could possibly need) and Rosa tripped down the great stairs
+again, to thank her guardian for his thoughtful and affectionate care of
+her.
+
+"'Not at all, my dear,' said Mr. Grewgious, infinitely gratified; 'it is I
+who thank you for your charming confidence and for your charming company.
+Your breakfast will be provided for you in a neat, compact, and graceful
+little sitting-room (appropriate to your figure) and I will come to you at
+ten o'clock in the morning. I hope you don't feel very strange indeed in
+this strange place.'
+
+"'Oh no, I feel so safe!'
+
+"'Yes, you may be sure that the stairs are fireproof,' said Mr. Grewgious,
+'and that any outbreak of the devouring element would be perceived and
+suppressed by the watchmen.'"
+
+Having seen Rosa comfortably settled, he left her, assuring the night
+porter as he went that, "if someone staying in the hotel should wish to
+send across the road to me in the night, a crown will be ready for the
+messenger."
+
+To the hotel next morning Mr. Grewgious went faithfully to time with Mr.
+Crisparkle, who had followed Rosa up from Rochester as fast as he could.
+Soon also Tartar arrived. After a long consultation between them about Mr.
+Landless and the use Tartar's chambers could be put to for certain spying
+purposes, Tartar took Rosa and Mr. Grewgious for a row up the river.
+Apartments ultimately being found for Rosa elsewhere, she left Wood's
+Hotel, and no further reference is made to it in the book.
+
+In 1898 Furnival's Inn was demolished with its hotel. Upon its site now
+stand an insurance company's huge premises.
+
+In Chapter XV, detailing Neville Landless's long tramp from Cloisterham,
+we are told that he stopped at the next road-side tavern to refresh.
+Dickens describes it in the following words:
+
+"Visitors in want of breakfast--unless they were horses or cattle, for
+which class of guests there was preparation enough in the way of
+water-trough and hay--were so unusual at the sign of the Tilted Wagon that
+it took a long time to get the wagon into the track of tea and toast and
+bacon; Neville, in the interval, sitting in a sanded parlour, wondering in
+how long a time after he had gone the sneezy fire of damp fagots would
+begin to make somebody else warm. Indeed, the Tilted Wagon was a cool
+establishment on the top of a hill, where the ground before the door was
+puddles with damp hoofs and trodden straw; where a scolding landlady
+slapped a moist baby (with one red sock on and one wanting) in the bar;
+where the cheese was cast aground upon a shelf in company with a mouldy
+table-cloth and a green-handled knife in a sort of cast-iron canoe; where
+the pale-faced bread shed tears of crumbs over its shipwreck in another
+canoe; where the family linen, half-washed and half dried, led a public
+life of lying about; where everything to drink was drunk out of mugs, and
+everything else was suggestive of a rhyme to mugs: the Tilted Wagon, all
+these things considered, hardly kept its painted promise of providing good
+entertainment for man and beast."
+
+Mr. Edwin Harris, in his guide to Dickensian Rochester, has identified the
+Coach and Horses on the top of Strood Hill as the original of the Tilted
+Wagon.
+
+The Travellers' Twopenny, where the boy deputy was a "man-servant," as he
+explained to Jasper, was originally the White Duck, and afterwards Kit's
+lodging-house, and stood in the Maidstone Road at Rochester. It
+degenerated into a crazy wooden sort of cheap public-house, and was not
+demolished before it was necessary. On its site now stands a business
+warehouse.
+
+The Crozier, the "Orthodox Hotel," where Datchery lodged in the same city,
+was the Crown, and is dealt with in "The Inns and Taverns of Pickwick."
+
+In the late autumn of 1857, Dickens and Wilkie Collins started "on a ten
+or twelve days' expedition to out-of-the-way places, to do (in inns and
+coast corners) a little tour in search of an article and in avoidance of
+railroads." Their selection was the Lake District, but the outcome of
+their expedition was not one article merely but a series of five under the
+title of _The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices_, written in
+collaboration. The two idle apprentices were Francis Goodchild and Thomas
+Idle, the first name being the pseudonym of Dickens.
+
+These misguided young men, they inform us in the narrative, "were actuated
+by the low idea of making a perfectly idle trip in any direction. They had
+no intention of going anywhere in particular; they wanted to see nothing;
+they wanted to know nothing; they wanted to learn nothing; they wanted to
+do nothing. They wanted only to be idle ... and they were both idle in the
+last degree." In that spirit they set forth on their journey.
+
+Carrock Fell, Wigton, Allonby, Carlisle, Maryport, Hesket Newmarket, were
+all visited in turn, and the adventures of the twain in these spots duly
+set forth in the pages of the book. In due course they came to Lancaster,
+and, the inn at that town being the most important of the tour, we deal
+with it first.
+
+The travellers were meditating flight at the station on account of Thomas
+Idle being suddenly filled with "the dreadful sensation of having
+something to do." However, they decided to stay because they had heard
+there was a good inn at Lancaster, established in a fine old house; an inn
+where they give you bride-cake every day after dinner. "Let us eat
+bride-cake," they said, "without the trouble of being married, or of
+knowing anybody in that ridiculous dilemma." And so they departed from the
+station and were duly delivered at the fine old house at Lancaster on the
+same night.
+
+This was the King's Arms in the Market Street, the exterior of which was
+dismal, quite uninviting, and lacked any sort of picturesqueness such as
+one associates with old inns; but the interior soon compensated for the
+unattractiveness of the exterior by its atmosphere, fittings and customs.
+Being then over two centuries old, it had allurement calculated to make
+the lover of things old happy and contented. "The house was a genuine old
+house," the story tells us, "of a very quaint description, teeming with
+old carvings, and beams, and panels, and having an excellent staircase,
+with a gallery or upper staircase cut off from it by a curious fence-work
+of old oak, or of old Honduras mahogany wood. It was, and is, and will be,
+for many a long year to come, a remarkably picturesque house; and a
+certain grave mystery lurking in the depth of the old mahogany panels, as
+if they were so many deep pools of dark water--such, indeed, as they had
+been much among when they were trees--gave it a very mysterious character
+after nightfall."
+
+A terrible ghost story was attached to the house concerning a bride who
+was poisoned there, and the room in which the process of slow death took
+place was pointed out to visitors. The perpetrator of the crime, the story
+relates, was duly hanged, and in memory of the weird incident bride-cake
+was served each day after dinner.
+
+The complete story of this melodramatic legend is narrated to Goodchild by
+a spectre in the haunted chamber where he and his companion had been
+writing.
+
+Dickens wove into the story much fancy and not a little eerieness, and it
+is said that the publicity given to it in _Household Words_, in which it
+first appeared, created so much interest that the hotel was sought out by
+eager visitors who love a haunted chamber. As this was situated in an
+ancient inn with its antique bedstead all complete, to say nothing of the
+curious custom of providing bride-cake at dinner in memory of the
+unfortunate bride, the King's Arms, Lancaster, discovered its fame
+becoming world-wide instead of remaining local.
+
+At the time of the visit of Dickens and Wilkie Collins to this rare old
+inn, the proprietor was one Joseph Sly, and Dickens occupied what he
+termed the state bedroom, "with two enormous red four-posters in it, each
+as big as Charley's room at Gads Hill." He described the inn as "a very
+remarkable old house ... with genuine rooms and an uncommonly quaint
+staircase." A certain portion of the "lazy notes" for the book were, we
+are told, written at the King's Arms Hotel.
+
+[Illustration: THE KING'S ARMS, LANCASTER
+
+_Drawn by L. Walker_]
+
+On their arrival, Dickens and Collins sat down to a good hearty meal. The
+landlord himself presided over the serving of it, which, Dickens writes in
+a letter, comprised "two little salmon trout; a sirloin steak; a brace of
+partridges; seven dishes of sweets; five dishes of dessert, led off by a
+bowl of peaches; and in the centre an enormous bride-cake. 'We always have
+it here, sir,' said the landlord, 'custom of the house.' Collins turned
+pale, and estimated the dinner at half a guinea each."
+
+Mr. Sly became quite good friends with the two distinguished novelists,
+and cherished with great pride the signed portrait of Dickens which the
+author of _Pickwick_ presented him with. He left the old place in 1879 and
+it was soon afterwards pulled down and replaced by an ordinary commercial
+hotel. Although the bride-cake custom was abandoned, and the haunted
+chamber with its fantastic story swept away, it is interesting to know
+that the famous oak bedstead, in which Dickens himself slept, was acquired
+by the Duke of Norfolk.
+
+Mr. Sly, who died in 1895, never tired of recalling the visit of the two
+famous authors. He took the greatest pride in his wonderful old inn, and
+found real delight in conducting visitors over the building and telling
+amusing stories about Dickens and Wilkie Collins. Indeed, he was so proud
+of the association that he obtained Dickens's permission to reprint those
+passages of _The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices_ relating to the
+hostelry, in pamphlet form, with an introductory note saying, "The reader
+is perhaps aware that Mr. Charles Dickens and his friend Wilkie Collins,
+in the year 1857, visited Lancaster, and during their sojourn stayed at
+Mr. Sly's King's Arms Hotel."
+
+There is a further association with the inn and Dickens to be found in
+"Doctor Marigold's Prescriptions." We find it recorded there that Doctor
+Marigold and his Library Cart, as he called his caravan, "were down at
+Lancaster, and I had done two nights' more than the fair average business
+(though I cannot in honour recommend them as a quick audience) in the open
+square there, near the end of the street where Mr. Sly's King's Arms and
+Royal Hotel stands."
+
+"Doctor Marigold" was published in 1865, seven years after Dickens's
+visit. But he not only remembered the King's Arms, but also Mr. Sly, the
+proprietor, who thus became immortalised in a Dickens story. Mr. Sly
+evidently was a popular man in the town, and his energy and good nature
+were much appreciated. That this was so, the following paragraph bears
+witness:
+
+It is recorded as an historical fact that, on the marriage of H.R.H. the
+Prince of Wales, the demonstration made in Lancaster exceeded any held out
+of the Metropolis. The credit of this success is mainly due to Mr. Sly,
+who proposed the programme, which included the roasting of two oxen whole,
+and a grotesque torchlight procession. The manner in which the whole
+arrangements were carried out was so satisfactory to the inhabitants of
+the town and neighbourhood that, at a meeting held a short time after the
+event, it was unanimously resolved to present Mr. and Mrs. Sly with a
+piece of plate, of a design suitable to commemorate the event. The sum
+required was subscribed in a few days, the piece of plate procured, and
+the presentation was made in the Assembly Rooms on the 9th of November by
+the High Sheriff, W. A. F. Saunders, Esq., of Wennington Hall, in the
+presence of a numerous company.
+
+In its palmy days the King's Arms was a prominent landmark for travellers
+_en route_ to Morecambe Bay, Windermere, the Lakes, and Scotland. It was
+erected in 1625, and in the coaching era was the head hotel in the town
+for general posting purposes, and was the most suitable place for tourists
+to break their journey going North, or in returning. Consequently, it was
+one of the most important in the North of England.
+
+The inn the two idle apprentices entered at Hesket Newmarket "to drink
+whiskey and eat oat-cake" is not named, but it has been identified with a
+house which is no longer an inn. At the time of the story it was called
+the Queen's Head, and was quite a prominent hostelry in the town, the
+innkeeper of which is described as having "a ruddy cheek, a bright eye, a
+well-knit frame, an immense hand, a cheery, outspeaking voice, and a
+straight, bright, broad look. He had a drawing-room, too, upstairs, which
+was worth a visit to the Cumberland Fells."
+
+"The ceiling of this drawing-room," we are further told, "was so crossed
+and re-crossed by beams of unequal lengths, radiating from a centre, in a
+corner, that it looked like a broken starfish. The room was comfortably
+and solidly furnished with good mahogany and horsehair. It had a snug
+fireside, a couple of well-curtained windows, looking out upon the wild
+country behind the house. What it most developed was an unexpected taste
+for little ornaments and knick-knacks, of which it contained a most
+surprising number," which Dickens goes on to describe in his own whimsical
+manner.
+
+Hesket has not altered very much, we understand, since those days, and the
+inn itself remains, not as an inn, but as a private house, and the room
+where the oat-cake and whiskey were served still has its crossed and
+re-crossed beams of unequal length.
+
+From this inn, and under the guidance of the landlord, the two idle
+apprentices mounted Carrock--with what disastrous effects to Mr. Idle on
+the way down, readers of the story well know.
+
+On again reaching the inn, under uncomfortable circumstances, they
+remained only a few hours, and continued the tour to Wigton in a covered
+carriage. Here, Mr. Idle was "melodramatically carried to the inn's first
+floor and laid upon three chairs." The King's Arms is said to be the
+Wigton inn referred to, but no details are given of it in the book.
+
+Their next halting place was Allonby, where they put up at the Ship.
+Thomas Idle, we are informed, "made a crab-like progress up a clean little
+bulk-headed staircase, into a clean little bulk-headed room, where he
+slowly deposited himself on a sofa, with a stick on either hand of him,
+looking exceedingly grim," and both partook of dinner. The little inn is
+described as delightful, "excellently kept by the most comfortable of
+landladies and the most attentive of landlords." It still exists, and, "as
+a family and commercial hotel and posting-house commanding extensive views
+of the Solway Firth and the Scottish Hills," is apparently little altered
+since Dickens and Collins visited it. Its Dickensian associations are
+cherished by the owner to-day, who shows with pride the room occupied by
+the two literary giants.
+
+After their visit to Lancaster, already referred to, the two idle
+apprentices went on to Doncaster, and arrived there in the St. Leger Race
+week. They put up at the Angel Hotel, where they had secured rooms, which
+Dickens described as "very good, clean and quiet apartments on the second
+floor, looking down into the main street." His own room was "airy and
+clean, little dressing-room attached, eight water-jugs ... capital sponge
+bath, perfect arrangement, exquisite neatness."
+
+Doncaster during the race week is described as a collection of mad people
+under the charge of a body of designing keepers, horse-mad, betting-mad,
+vice-mad. But the two novelists managed to find it enticing enough to
+remain there a week.
+
+The Angel Hotel was often called the Royal because Queen Victoria stayed
+there in 1851. It was built in 1810, has always been a celebrated hotel,
+and was a busy coaching-inn in those days. It remains much as it was when
+Thomas Idle lay in the room for a week with his bad ankle and his friend
+Francis Goodchild went roaming around the city with his usual observant
+eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+SKETCHES BY BOZ AND THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER
+
+    THE GOAT AND BOOTS--THE BLUE LION AND STOMACH WARMER--THE RED
+    HOUSE--THE FREEMASONS' TAVERN--THE EAGLE--OFFLEY'S--THE RAINBOW--THE
+    ALBION--THE FLOWER-POT--THE BULL'S HEAD--THE DOLPHIN'S HEAD--THE LORD
+    WARDEN HOTEL--THE CRISPIN AND CRISPIANUS
+
+
+In Dickens's minor writings there are mentioned many inns, taverns and
+coffee-houses, some merely fictitious with fanciful names, others whose
+fame has been recorded in the social history of their times. _Sketches by
+Boz_ is fairly well supplied in this respect, but none of them is
+described at any length; indeed, scarcely anything but the names are
+mentioned, and those only in passing. In the second chapter of "Our
+Parish," we are introduced to the new curate who became so popular with
+the ladies that their enthusiasm for him knew no bounds. It culminated, we
+are told, when "he spoke for one hour and twenty-five minutes at an
+anti-slavery meeting at the Goat and Boots." A proposal was forthwith set
+on foot to make him a presentation, and this, in the shape of a splendid
+silver ink-stand engraved with an appropriate inscription, was publicly
+handed to him at a special breakfast at the aforementioned Goat and Boots,
+"in a neat little speech by Mr. Gubbins, the ex-churchwarden, and
+acknowledged by the curate in terms which drew tears into the eyes of all
+present--the very waiters melted."
+
+The Goat and Boots was no doubt a highly respectable hostelry, but its
+whereabouts is "wropped in mystery." So is the Blue Lion and Stomach
+Warmer, except that we are told that it was at Great Winglebury, and we
+know that Great Winglebury was a fictitious name for Rochester. But which
+was the inn that received this whimsical name at the hands of the novelist
+under whose roof Horace Hunter penned his challenge to that base
+umbrella-maker Alexander Trott, we are unable to state. On the other hand,
+the Winglebury Arms where Alexander Trott was staying at the time was the
+Bull Hotel, Rochester.[3] The Red House, Battersea, casually mentioned in
+the chapter on "The River" as the "Red-us," was a popular tavern and
+tea-gardens in those days and notorious for its pigeon-shooting; indeed,
+tradition has it that it took the lead in the quality and quantity of the
+sport, and that the crack shots assembled there to determine important
+matches. It was also famous as the winning-post of many a boat race from
+Westminster Bridge, and was the place "where all the prime of life lads
+assembled," the joy and fun of which is vividly described by Dickens in
+the chapter referred to. It was a red-bricked building, and a prominent
+landmark of what was then known as Battersea Fields, the one-time scene of
+many a duel.
+
+The Cross Keys mentioned in the chapter on "Omnibuses" we have already
+referred to when dealing with _Great Expectations_; whilst for particulars
+of the Golden Cross, the busy coaching-inn mentioned in "Hackney Coach
+Stands," and in "Early Coaches," we must refer the reader to "The Inns and
+Taverns of Pickwick."
+
+The Freemasons' Tavern in the chapter on "Public Dinners" does not receive
+much attention from Dickens. He is describing the public dinner given in
+aid of the "Indigent Orphans Friends' Benevolent Institution," and no
+reference beyond the use of the name is made to the building itself. The
+tavern still stands to-day, and no doubt more glorious in its splendour
+than it was on the occasion of the public dinner Dickens refers to. It is
+used to-day for similar purposes, the ceremony and atmosphere at which
+being little changed from what it was then. It is interesting to note that
+in the same building a farewell dinner was given Dickens on the eve of his
+departure for America in 1867, with Lord Lytton in the chair.
+
+The chapter devoted to the story of Miss Evans and the Eagle, recalls the
+notorious tavern immortalised in the famous jingle:
+
+  Up and down the City Road,
+    In and out the Eagle,
+  That's the way the money goes--
+    Pop goes the weasel!
+
+and the chronicle of Miss Jemima Evans's visit to the highly famed
+pleasure-resort will contribute more towards retaining the Eagle on the
+recording tablets of history than the contemporary rhymster's poetic
+effort. It was in 1825 that the Eagle Tavern turned its saloon into what
+was the forerunner of the music hall, and was the making of many a
+well-known singer. It was to this gay spot in London that Mr. Samuel
+Wilkins took Miss Jemima Evans, with whom he "kept company." They were
+joined in the Pancras Road by Miss Ivins's lady friend and her young man.
+We do not attempt to identify the Crown where they stayed on the way to
+taste some stout, and are content with the knowledge that they reached the
+rotunda where the concert was held, and to remind our readers of the
+impression it had on Miss J'mima Ivins and Miss J'mima Ivins's friend, who
+both exclaimed at once "How 'ev'nly!" when they were fairly inside the
+gardens. Dickens's description of the place will convey some idea of its
+splendour:
+
+"There were the walks, beautifully gravelled and planted--and the
+refreshment boxes, painted and ornamented like so many snuff-boxes--and
+the variegated lamps shedding their rich light upon the company's
+heads--and the place for dancing ready chalked for the company's feet--and
+a Moorish band playing at one end of the gardens--and an opposition
+military band playing away at the other. Then, the waiters were rushing to
+and fro with glasses of negus, and glasses of brandy and water, and
+bottles of ale, and bottles of stout; and ginger-beer was going off in
+one place, and practical jokes were going off in another; and people were
+crowding to the door of the Rotunda; and, in short, the whole scene was,
+as Miss J'mima Ivins, inspired by the novelty, or the stout, or both,
+observed, 'One of dazzling excitement.' As to the concert room, never was
+anything half so splendid. There was an orchestra for the singers, all
+paint, gilding, and plate-glass; and such an organ!... The audience was
+seated on elevated benches round the room, and crowded into every part of
+it; and everybody was eating and drinking as comfortably as possible."
+
+[Illustration: THE EAGLE TAVERN PLEASURE GARDENS
+
+_From an old Print_]
+
+What happened to our friends there, and how the trouble over the waistcoat
+and whiskers was adjusted, is not our business here. The printed account
+must be read elsewhere. But we have quoted what is perhaps one of the best
+pictures of this famous resort extant.
+
+Ultimately, the Rotunda was turned into the Grecian Theatre, and was not
+demolished until 1901. By then, of course, the real glory of the Eagle had
+departed and succeeding generations of Jemima Evanses and their young men
+friends had sought other glittering palaces for their pleasures.
+
+There are two taverns mentioned in the following paragraph appearing in
+the chapter on Mr. John Dounce:
+
+"There was once a fine collection of old boys to be seen round the
+circular table at Offley's every night, between the hours of half-past
+eight and half-past eleven. We have lost sight of them for some time.
+There were, and may be still for aught we know, two splendid specimens in
+full blossom at the Rainbow Tavern in Fleet Street, who always used to sit
+in the box nearest the fire-place, and smoked long cherry-stick pipes
+which went under the table with the bowls resting on the floor."
+
+Offley's, long ago demolished, was a noted tavern in its day, and,
+according to Timbs, enjoyed great and deserved celebrity, though
+short-lived. It was situated at No. 23 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden,
+and its fame rested on Burton ale and the largest supper-room in the
+neighbourhood. It had a certain dignity about it, and eschewed "pictures,
+placards, paper-hangings, or vulgar coffee-room finery," in order that its
+customers should not be disturbed in their relish of the good things
+provided. Of these good things may be mentioned Offley's chop, which was
+thick and substantial. The House of Commons chop was small and thin, and
+Honourable Members sometimes ate a dozen at a sitting. "Offley's chop was
+served with shalots shred and warmed in gravy, and accompanied by nips of
+Burton ale, and was a delicious after-theatre supper." There was a large
+room upstairs with wines really worth drinking, and withal Offley's
+presented a sort of quakerly plainness, but solid comfort. There was
+singing by amateurs one day a week, and, to prevent the chorus waking the
+dead in their cerements in St. Paul's churchyard opposite, the coffee-room
+window was double.
+
+Upon other evenings, there came to a large round table (a sort of
+privileged place) a few well-to-do, substantial tradesmen from the
+neighbourhood, and this was the little coterie to which Dickens refers.
+
+The Rainbow, also mentioned in the quotation above, was the second house
+in London to sell coffee and was at one time kept by a Mr. Farr, who was
+prosecuted for the nuisance caused by the odious smell in the roasting of
+the berry. In later years (about 1780) the tavern was kept by Alexander
+Moncrieff, grandfather of the author of "Tom and Jerry," and was known as
+the Rainbow Coffee-House. In those days the coffee-room had a lofty
+bay-window at the south end, looking into the Temple; the room was
+separated from the kitchen only by a glazed partition. In the bay was a
+table for the elders, amongst whom doubtless were the "grand old boys"
+Dickens speaks of as being always there, puffing and drinking away in
+great state. Everybody knew them, and it was supposed by some people that
+they were both "immortal."
+
+In the chapter "Making a Night of It," we learn that Mr. Potter, in his
+"rough blue coat with wooden buttons, made upon the fireman's principle,
+in which, with the addition of a low-crowned, flower-pot, saucer-shaped
+hat," created no inconsiderable sensation at the Albion in Little Russell
+Street, and divers other places of public and fashionable resort.
+
+"Making a Night of It" is no doubt mainly reminiscent of a merry evening
+in the business life of Dickens, and possibly the Albion was one of the
+favourite resorts of his, and of his co-clerk, Potter. In their day, the
+Albion was favoured by the theatrical profession and all those associated
+with things theatrical, and also by those young men who hung on the skirts
+of actors.
+
+Dickens used the Albion in the 'fifties. In a letter to W. H. Wills (1851)
+there are instructions to order a plain cold supper at Simpson's, the
+Albion, by Drury Lane Theatre, for the next play night. "I would merely
+have cold joints, lobsters, salad, and plenty of clean ice," he says.
+"Perhaps there might be one hot dish, as broiled bones. But I would have
+only one, and I would have it cheap." The play referred to was "Not so Bad
+as we Seem," which Dickens and his friends were rehearsing for the Guild
+of Literature and Art. The supper was to be paid for at so much per head,
+"not including wines, spirits or beers, which each gentleman will order
+for himself."
+
+Mr. Percy FitzGerald tells of another evening when Dickens took his
+friends to the Albion. It was the occasion of Hollingshead's revival of
+"The Miller and his Men," and Dickens was determined to be there. He gave
+a little dinner party at "the good old Albion," and all were in great
+spirits, seated in one of the "boxes" or eating pews as they might be
+called, and then crossed over the Drury Lane Theatre afterwards.
+
+In the chapter devoted to "Mr. Minns and his Cousin," in giving
+instructions as to the best way for Mr. Augustus Minns to get to Mr.
+Budden's in Poplar Walk, the latter says, "Now mind the direction; the
+coach goes from the Flower Pot in Bishopsgate Street, every half-hour.
+When the coach stops at the Swan, you'll see, immediately opposite you, a
+White House."
+
+The Flower Pot was a coaching inn of some distinction in those days, for
+not only did the coaches ply between it and the north-east of London, but
+the inn was also the starting point of the Norwich coach and others to the
+eastern counties. The Swan was at Stamford Hill, and, beyond that it was
+the scheduled stopping-place for coaches, to and from London, we can find
+no record of its history.
+
+The innumerable references to inns and taverns in _The Uncommercial
+Traveller_ are for the most part purely imaginary. Even when it is clear
+that Dickens is describing something he actually saw and experienced, he
+has taken the precaution, in this book, to disguise the inn's name and
+whereabouts. There are several such in the chapter entitled "Refreshments
+for Travellers," a chapter made up of a series of complaints and adverse
+criticisms verging on the brink of libel. For instance:
+
+"Take the old-established Bull's Head with its old-established knife-boxes
+on its old-established sideboards, its old-established flue under its
+old-established four-post bedsteads in its old-established airless rooms,
+its old-established frouziness upstairs and downstairs, its
+old-established cookery, and its old-established principles of plunder.
+Count up your injuries, in its side-dishes of ailing sweetbreads in white
+poultices, of apothecaries' powders in rice for curry, of pale stewed bits
+of calf ineffectually relying for an adventitious interest on forcemeat
+balls. You have had experience of the old-established Bull's Head stringy
+fowls, with lower extremities like wooden legs sticking up out of the
+dish; of its cannibalistic boiled mutton, gushing horribly among its
+capers, when carved; of its little dishes of pastry--roofs of spermaceti
+ointment erected over half an apple or four gooseberries. Well for you if
+you have yet forgotten the old-established Bull's Head fruity port; whose
+reputation was gained solely by the old-established price the Bull's Head
+put upon it, and by the old-established air with which the Bull's Head set
+the glasses and d'oyleys on, and held that Liquid Gout to the
+three-and-sixpenny wax candle, as if its old-established colour hadn't
+come from the dyers."
+
+Had that inn been properly named at the time, the proprietor's ire would
+have been raised, with serious consequences.
+
+Then there is the chapter on "An Old Stage-Coaching House," whose title
+seemed to augur well for our purpose. Yet, although it is interesting as
+picturing the decay of coaching and how it resulted on a coaching town,
+there is nothing by which we can fix the name of the town, and so identify
+the Dolphin's Head there. It had been a great stage-coaching town in the
+great stage-coaching times, and the ruthless railways had killed and
+buried it. That is all we are told about its whereabouts.
+
+"The sign of the house was the Dolphin's Head. Why only head I don't know;
+for the Dolphin's effigy at full length, and upside down--as a dolphin is
+always bound to be when artistically treated, though I suppose he is
+sometimes right side upward in his natural condition--graced the
+sign-board. The sign-board chafed its rusty hooks outside the bow-window
+of my room, and was a shabby work. No visitor could have denied that the
+dolphin was dying by inches, but he showed no bright colours. He had once
+served another master; there was a newer streak of paint below him,
+displaying with inconsistent freshness the legend, By J. MELLOWS.
+
+"Pursuing my researches in the Dolphin's Head, I found it sorely shrunken.
+When J. Mellows came into possession, he had walled off half the bar,
+which was now a tobacco shop with its own entrance in the yard--the once
+glorious yard where the post-boys, whip in hand and always buttoning
+their waistcoats at the last moment, used to come running forth to mount
+and away. A 'Scientific Shoeing-Smith and Veterinary Surgeon' had further
+encroached upon the yard; and a grimly satirical Jobber, who announced
+himself as having to let 'A neat one-horse fly, and a one-horse cart,' had
+established his business, himself, and his family, in a part of the
+extensive stables. Another part was lopped clean off from the Dolphin's
+Head, and now comprised a chapel, a wheelwright's, and a Young Men's
+Mutual Improvement and Discussion Society (in a loft); the whole forming a
+back lane. No audacious hand had plucked down the vane from the central
+cupola of the stables, but it had grown rusty and stuck at Nil: while the
+score or two of pigeons that remained true to their ancestral traditions
+and the place had collected in a row on the roof-ridge of the only
+outhouse retained by the Dolphin, where all the inside pigeons tried to
+push the outside pigeon off. This I accepted as emblematical of the
+struggle for post and place in railway times."
+
+There are, however, at least three inns we have been able to trace: the
+Blue Boar, London (dealt with in a previous chapter), the Crispin and
+Crispianus at Strood, and The Lord Warden Hotel at Dover. The latter is
+referred to in the chapter entitled "The Calais Night Mail" as follows:
+
+"I particularly detest Dover for the self-complacency with which it goes
+to bed. It always goes to bed (when I am going to Calais) with a more
+brilliant display of lamp and candle than any other town. Mr. and Mrs.
+Birmingham, host and hostess of the Lord Warden, are my much esteemed
+friends, but they are too conceited about the comforts of that
+establishment when the Night Mail is starting. I know it is a good house
+to stay at, and I don't want the fact insisted upon in all its warm bright
+windows at such an hour. I know The Warden is a stationary edifice that
+never rolls or pitches, and I object to its big outline seeming to insist
+upon that circumstance, and, as it were, to come over me with it, when I
+am reeling on the deck of the boat. Beshrew the Warden likewise for
+obstructing that corner, and making the wind so angry as it rushes round.
+Shall I not know that it blows quite soon enough without the officious
+Warden's interference?"
+
+The Lord Warden was evidently built on the site of the Ship, as we have
+already noted in the chapter devoted to _A Tale of Two Cities_.
+
+The Crispin and Crispianus at Strood is mentioned in the chapter on
+"Tramps." The tramp in question is a clockmaker, who, having repaired a
+clock at Cobham Hall, and paid freely for it, says, "We should be at
+liberty to go, and should be told by a pointing helper to keep round over
+yonder by the blasted oak, and go straight through the woods till we
+should see the town lights right before us.... So should we lie that night
+at the ancient sign of the Crispin and Crispianus, and rise early next
+morning to be betimes on tramp again."
+
+The Crispin and Crispianus is a very old-fashioned inn still standing just
+outside Strood. It is a long building with an overhanging upper floor
+built with wood. How long the present house has existed we cannot tell,
+but its hanging sign speaks of St. Crispin's Day, 1415, and it is said
+that it may probably have had its origin from the Battle of Agincourt
+fought on that day. Mr. Harper thinks the sign older than that, and
+probably was one of the very many religious inn-signs designed to attract
+the custom of thirsty wayfarers to Becket's shrine.
+
+The brothers Crispin and Crispian were members of a noble family in
+ancient Rome, who, professing Christianity, fled to Gaul and supported
+themselves by shoemaking in the town of Troyes. They suffered martyrdom
+in Soissons in A.D. 287. The sign represents the patron saints of the
+shoemaking fraternity, as these holy brothers are designated, at work on
+their cobblers' bench, and is understood to have been faithfully copied
+from a well-known work preserved to this day at the church of St.
+Pantaleon at Troyes.
+
+[Illustration: THE CRISPIN AND CRISPIANUS
+
+_Drawn by C. G. Harper_]
+
+The inn's interior is typical of those to be found in country villages,
+with its sanded floor of the parlour, and wooden settles with arms at each
+corner. One of these corners is said to have been the favourite seat of
+Dickens, for it is known that he sometimes called at the inn as he drew
+near the end of one of his long walks, either alone or with friends, for
+refreshments. It was an inn, as he said elsewhere, that no thirsty man was
+known to pass on a hot summer's day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+CHRISTMAS STORIES AND MINOR WRITINGS
+
+    THE MITRE INN--THE SALISBURY ARMS--THE PEAL OF BELLS--THE
+    NUTMEG-GRATER--THE DODO--THE PAVILIONSTONE HOTEL--HEN AND
+    CHICKENS--THE SWAN
+
+
+In the First Branch of "The Holly Tree," in _Christmas Stories_, there are
+many inns far and wide referred to, and reminiscences associated with each
+recalled. These reminiscences may be personal to Dickens or merely of an
+imaginary nature. The Holly Tree Inn itself is real enough, and has been
+identified as the George, Greta Bridge, referred to in our chapter on
+_Nicholas Nickleby_. There is no doubt, either, that the inn in the
+cathedral town where Dickens went to school was the Mitre Inn at Chatham.
+"It was the inn where friends used to put up," he says, "and where we used
+to go to see parents, and to have salmon and fowls, and to be tipped. It
+had an ecclesiastical sign--the Mitre--and a bar that seemed the next
+best thing to a bishopric, it was so snug. I loved the landlord's daughter
+to distraction--but let that pass. It was in that inn that I was cried
+over by my rosy little sister, because I had acquired a black eye in a
+fight. And though she had been, that Holly Tree night, for many a long
+year where all tears are dried, the Mitre softened me yet."
+
+[Illustration: THE MITRE INN, CHATHAM
+
+_From an engraving_]
+
+The Mitre Inn and Clarence Hotel still exists at Chatham, very much as it
+was in Dickens's childhood days when his family lived in Ordnance
+Terrace. It was kept in those days by a Mr. Tribe, who was a friend of
+John Dickens, and the two families met there and enjoyed many friendly
+evenings when Dickens and his sister, as he has told us, mounted on a
+dining-table for a stage, would sing some old sea-songs together. He had a
+clear treble voice then, but, recalling these incidents many years
+afterward, said, "he must have been a horrible little nuisance to many
+unoffending grown-up people who were called upon to admire him."
+
+The Mitre Inn was described in 1838 as being the Manor House, and the
+first posting-house of the town. It is also on record that, at the close
+of the eighteenth century, Lord Nelson used to reside there when on duty
+at Chatham, and that the room he occupied was known as "Nelson's Cabin"
+till recent times. William the Fourth, when Duke of Clarence, used to stay
+there, hence the added word of Clarence to the sign.
+
+The Salisbury Arms at Hatfield where Mr. and Mrs. Lirriper went upon their
+wedding-day, "and passed as happy a fortnight as ever happy was," adjoined
+the little post-office there, and now exists as a private house. Mr.
+Lirriper's youngest brother also had a sneaking regard for the Salisbury
+Arms, where he enjoyed himself for the space of a fortnight and left
+without paying his bill, an omission Mrs. Lirriper rectified in the
+innocent belief that it was fraternal affection which induced her
+unprincipled brother-in-law to favour Hatfield with his presence.
+
+It is believed that Dickens and Phiz stayed the night of October the 27th,
+1838, at the Salisbury Arms, when they made their excursion to the West
+Country.
+
+The scene of the first four chapters of "A Message from the Sea," is laid
+in "Steepways, North Devon, England," the name Dickens gives to Clovelly,
+and the story opens with a faithful and unmistakable description of one of
+the most beautiful and quaintest villages in England. To it comes Captain
+Jorgan to unravel a sea mystery, but no reference is made to his staying
+at the inn there. The task he has set himself, however, eventually takes
+him to another adjacent village, which Dickens calls Lanrean. There he
+puts up at the King Arthur's Arms, to identify which we must first
+identify Lanrean. That Dickens had a certain village near Clovelly in
+mind, there is little doubt, for he and Wilkie Collins, who collaborated
+in writing the story, went there for the purpose. Their description of
+Clovelly being so accurate and meticulous, it is only natural that
+Lanrean has a prototype, and, if found, the original of King Arthur's Arms
+would be forthcoming.
+
+The original of the Peal of Bells, the village ale-house, in "Tom
+Tiddler's Ground," on the other hand, has been discovered, for Mr.
+Traveller seeking Mr. Mopes the Hermit, naturally had to go where Mr.
+Mopes the Hermit located himself. This we know to have been near
+Stevenage, and F. G. Kitton identified the ale-house as the White Hart
+there, where Dickens called on his way to see Lucas, the original of Mr.
+Mopes, to enquire of the landlord, old Sam Cooper, the shortest route to
+his "ruined hermitage" some five miles distant.
+
+No particular coffee-houses were, we suspect, intended for the Slamjam
+Coffee-House or the Admiral Nelson Civic and General Dining Rooms,
+mentioned in "Somebody's Luggage"; nor can we hope to identify the George
+and the Gridiron, where the waiters supported nature by what they found in
+the plates, "which was, as it happened, and but too often thoughtlessly,
+immersed in mustard," or what was found in the glasses, "which rarely went
+beyond driblets and lemons."
+
+No name either is given to the inn in "Mugby Junction" where the traveller
+arrived at past three o'clock on a tempestuous morning and found himself
+stranded. Having got his two large black portmanteaux on a truck, the
+porter trundled them on "through a silent street" and came to a stop. When
+the owner had shivered on the pavement half an hour, "what time the
+porter's knocks at the inn door knocked up the whole town first, and the
+inn last, he groped his way into the close air of a shut-up house, and so
+groped between the sheets of a shut-up bed that seemed to have been
+expressly refrigerated for him when last made."
+
+It is known that Mugby stood for Rugby, but that is all. The particular
+shut-up inn, if it ever had any original, has not, so far as we are aware,
+been discovered.
+
+In _A Christmas Carol_ we are told that Scrooge "took his melancholy
+dinner in his usual melancholy tavern; and having read all the newspapers,
+and beguiled the rest of the evening with his banker's book, went home to
+bed."
+
+There were many taverns in the city of London at which Scrooge might have
+dined, and it may be that Baker's Chop-House in Change Alley, as has been
+suggested, was the one he chose. It is no longer a chop-house, having a
+year or so back been taken over by a city business company, and the
+building added to their premises. But it had been for a century or more a
+noted city chop-house, where, up to the last, meals were served on pewter
+plates, and other old-time customs were retained. It was one of those city
+houses, of which some still exist happily, where the waiters grow old in
+the service of their customers. Baker's had at least one such waiter,
+known familiarly as James, who pursued his calling there for thirty-five
+years, and became famous by having his portrait painted in oils and hung
+in the lower room, where it remained until the end of the career of the
+house as a tavern. Perhaps old Scrooge was one of his special customers.
+
+The Nutmeg-Grater, the inn kept by Benjamin Britain in "The Battle of
+Life," has no real prototype, but such an inn as described would entice
+any country rambler into its cosy interior. It was "snugly sheltered
+behind a great elm tree, with a rare seat for idlers encircling its
+capacious bole, addressed a cheerful front towards the traveller, as a
+house of entertainment ought, and tempted him with many mute but
+significant assurances of a comfortable welcome. The ruddy sign-board
+perched up in the tree, with its golden letters winking in the sun, ogled
+the passer-by, from among the leaves, like a jolly face, and promised
+good cheer. The horse trough, full of clear, fresh water, and the ground
+below it sprinkled with droppings of fragrant hay, made every horse that
+passed prick up his ears. The crimson curtains of the lower rooms, and the
+pure white hangings in the little bedrooms above, beckoned Come in! with
+every breath of air. Upon the bright green shutters, there were golden
+legends about beer and ale, and neat wines, and good beds, and an
+affecting picture of a brown jug frothing over at the top. Upon the
+window-sills were flowering plants in bright red pots, which made a lively
+show against the white front of the house; and in the darkness of the
+doorway there were streaks of light, which glanced off from the surface of
+bottles and tankards"----
+
+An ideal picture of an inn any traveller would love to encounter and
+sample.
+
+_Reprinted Pieces_ would form a happy hunting-ground for tracking down
+inns and public-houses mentioned in its pages if one were so minded. Few
+of them would prove to be of any importance if discovered, but the task
+would have its excitement and interest.
+
+Take for instance the chapter devoted to the Detective Police. No doubt
+the taverns used by the criminals which the police had to visit were real
+houses, as the detectives whom Dickens interviewed were real persons. In
+this chapter alone there is the Warwick Arms, through which, and the New
+Inn near R., Tally-Ho Thompson the horse stealer was tracked and captured;
+the "little public-house" near Smithfield, used by journeymen butchers,
+and those concerned in "the extensive robberies of lawns and silks"; and
+the Setting Moon in the Commercial Road, where Simpson was arrested in a
+room upstairs.
+
+Then there is the extinct inn, the Dodo, in one of the chiefest towns of
+Staffordshire--the pivot of the chapter on "A Plated Article." Which is
+the town, and which is the inn referred to, we know not. But Dickens's
+description of it is very minute:
+
+"If the Dodo were only a gregarious bird," he says, "if he had only some
+confused idea of making a comfortable nest, I could hope to get through
+the hours between this and bedtime, without being consumed by devouring
+melancholy. But the Dodo's habits are all wrong. It provides me with a
+trackless desert of sitting-room, with a chair for every day in the year,
+a table for every month, and a waste of sideboard where a lonely China
+vase pines in a corner for its mate long departed, and will never make a
+match with the candlestick in the opposite corner if it live till
+Doomsday. The Dodo has nothing in the larder. Even now I behold the Boots
+returning with my sole in a piece of paper; and, with that portion of my
+dinner, the Boots, perceiving me at the blank bow-window, slaps his leg as
+he comes across the road, pretending it is something else. The Dodo
+excludes the outer air. When I mount up to my bedroom, a smell of
+closeness and flue gets lazily up my nose like sleepy snuff. The loose
+little bits of carpet writhe under my tread, and take wormy shapes. I
+don't know the ridiculous man in the looking-glass, beyond having met him
+once or twice in a dish-cover--and I can never shave _him_ to-morrow
+morning! The Dodo is narrow-minded as to towels; expects me to wash on a
+freemason's apron without the trimming: when I ask for soap, gives me a
+stony-hearted something white, with no more lather in it than the Elgin
+marbles. The Dodo has seen better days, and possesses interminable stables
+at the back--silent, grass-grown, broken-windowed, horseless. This
+mournful bird can fry a sole, however, which is much. Can cook a steak,
+too, which is more. I wonder where it gets its sherry? If I were to send
+my pint of wine to some famous chemist to be analysed, what would it turn
+out to be made of? It tastes of pepper, sugar, bitter-almonds, vinegar,
+warm knives, any flat drinks, and a little brandy. Would it unman a
+Spanish exile by reminding him of his native land at all? I think not. If
+there really be any townspeople out of the churchyards, and if a caravan
+of them ever do dine, with a bottle of wine per man, in this desert of the
+Dodo, it must make good for the doctor next day!"
+
+If the Dodo is undiscoverable, the same need not be said of the
+Pavilionstone Hotel, because we know that Dickens gave that name to the
+town of Folkestone, in the chapter entitled "Out of Town." The lion of
+Pavilionstone, he tells us, is its great hotel, and one sees at once how
+he manufactured the name, for its hotel was, and is to-day, called the
+Pavilion.
+
+"A dozen years ago, going over to Paris by South-Eastern Tidal Steamer,"
+the narrative goes on, "you used to be dropped upon the platform of the
+main line Pavilionstone Station (not a junction then) at eleven o'clock on
+a dark winter's night, in a roaring wind; and in the howling wilderness
+outside the station was a short omnibus which brought you up by the
+forehead the instant you got in at the door; and nobody cared about
+you, and you were alone in the world. You bumped over infinite chalk,
+until you were turned out at a strange building which had just left off
+being a barn without having quite begun to be a house, where nobody
+expected your coming, or knew what to do with you when you were come, and
+where you were usually blown about, until you happened to be blown against
+the cold beef, and finally into bed. At five in the morning you were blown
+out of bed, and after a dreary breakfast, with crumpled company, in the
+midst of confusion, were hustled on board a steamboat, and lay wretched on
+deck until you saw France lingering and surging at you with great
+vehemence over the bowsprit."
+
+[Illustration: THE LORD WARDEN HOTEL, DOVER
+
+_See page 253_]
+
+[Illustration: THE PAVILION HOTEL, FOLKESTONE
+
+_From old Engravings_]
+
+This was written in 1855, and even by then Dickens had to admit that
+things had changed considerably for the better.
+
+"If you are going out to Great Pavilionstone Hotel, the sprightliest
+porters under the sun, whose cheerful looks are a pleasant welcome,
+shoulder your luggage, drive it off in vans, bowl it away in trucks, and
+enjoy themselves in playing athletic games with it. If you are for public
+life at our great Pavilionstone Hotel, you walk into that establishment as
+if it were your club; and find ready for you your news-room, dining-room,
+smoking-room, billiard-room, music-room, public breakfast, public dinner
+twice a day (one plain, one gorgeous), hot baths and cold baths. If you
+want to be bored, there are plenty of bores always ready for you, and from
+Saturday to Monday in particular you can be bored (if you like it) through
+and through. Should you want to be private at our Great Pavilionstone
+Hotel, say but the word, look at the list of charges, choose your floor,
+name your figure--there you are, established in your castle, by the day,
+week, month, or year, innocent of all comers or goers, unless you have my
+fancy for walking early in the morning down the groves of boots and shoes,
+which so regularly flourish at all the chamber doors before breakfast that
+it seems to me as if nobody ever got up or took them in....
+
+"A thoroughly good inn, in the days of coaching and posting, was a noble
+place. But no such inn would have been equal to the reception of four or
+five hundred people, all of them wet through, and half of them dead sick,
+every day in the year. This is where we shine, in our Pavilionstone
+Hotel...."
+
+The hotel has, alas, made way for something still more imposing. Its
+extensive red-brick building, containing hundreds of rooms, with its
+spacious gardens in front, would both astonish and disappoint the novelist
+if he saw it to-day, for there is no doubt that he was very fond of its
+predecessor, very frequently used it, and found hearty welcome there.
+
+The hotel is again referred to in the sketch entitled "A Flight" in the
+same volume, where, however, he calls it the Royal George Hotel.
+
+In the volume of _Miscellaneous Papers_ there is one describing a visit to
+Birmingham and Wolverhampton, under the heading of "Fire and Snow." At the
+latter town Dickens stayed at the Swan, which he says "is a bird of a good
+substantial brood, worthy to be a country cousin of the hospitable Hen and
+Chickens, whose company we have deserted for only a few hours, and with
+whom we shall roost again at Birmingham to-night."
+
+The Hen and Chickens here referred to was an hotel Dickens knew very well
+indeed. Apart from his books, Birmingham is very closely connected with
+Dickens himself and the various schemes he embarked upon for the welfare
+of others. He visited it on several occasions, either for the purpose of
+public reading from his works, to give theatrical performances for
+charity, or to appear at some national function associated with the city.
+These visits were spread over the whole of his life, the last occasion
+being on the 7th of January, 1870, when he presented the prizes to the
+students of the Birmingham and Midland Institute.
+
+During his stay in the city, Dickens usually put up at the Old Royal Hotel
+in Temple Row, or at the Hen and Chickens in New Street, and it may be
+assumed that he knew both hotels well. Only the former, however, is made
+the scene of an incident in his novels, and that is, when it is introduced
+into _The Pickwick Papers_.[4] He visited Birmingham some dozen times from
+1840 to 1870, and on most of the early occasions it is believed that he
+stayed at the Old Royal Hotel. But during his later visits he made the Hen
+and Chickens Hotel his headquarters. He was there in Christmas week, 1853,
+for the series of readings from his books, and before he left the city he
+and his friends were entertained at breakfast at the hotel, and a
+presentation was made to Mrs. Dickens.
+
+He was a guest there again in 1861, and on the occasion wrote his
+autograph in the album of the proprietress, dated "Last day of the year
+1861."
+
+For some reason he does not describe the hotel in the same manner as he
+does the Swan at Wolverhampton. The latter, he tells us, "has bountiful
+coal-country notions of firing, snug homely rooms; cheerful windows
+looking down upon the clusters of snowy umbrellas in the market-place....
+Neat, bright-eyed waitresses do the honours of the Swan. The Swan is
+confident about its soup, is troubled with no distrust concerning codfish,
+speaks the word of promise in relation to an enormous chine of roast
+beef.... The Swan is rich in slippers--in those good old flip-flap
+inn-slippers which nobody can keep on, which knock double knocks on each
+stair as their wearer comes downstairs, and fly away over the banisters
+before they have brought him to level ground."
+
+There are many other hotels and taverns mentioned in this collection of
+_Miscellaneous Papers_, but usually only by name, the mere list of which
+would serve no purpose.
+
+Those already touched upon or dealt with at length in the course of the
+present volume practically exhaust the subject, from which it will be seen
+how overwhelmingly attracted Dickens was to every kind of house of
+refreshment and in every thing relating thereto. The works of no other
+author of genius provide so much material for such a purpose, and no other
+writer has treated the subject with so much healthy realism, so much
+refreshing good nature and humour, or with such expressions of genuine
+joy.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+  A'Becket, Thomas, 154
+
+  Admiral Nelson, 262
+
+  Albion, Drury Lane, 247
+
+  Alderbury, 110
+
+  Allbut, 170, 179
+
+  Allonby, 228
+
+  Amesbury, 109
+
+  Angel, Doncaster, 237
+
+  -- Grantham, 53
+
+  -- Islington, 25, 49
+
+  Anglers' Inn, 214
+
+  Ashley, James, 174
+
+
+  Baker's Chop-House, 263
+
+  Baldfaced Stag, 116
+
+  _Barnaby Rudge_, 72
+
+  Barnard Castle, 59
+
+  Barnet, 22, 131
+
+  Battersea Fields, 241
+
+  _Battle of Life_, 264
+
+  Bawtry, 55
+
+  Beak Street, 67
+
+  Bedford Hotel, Brighton, 132
+
+  Besant, Sir Walter, 165
+
+  Bevis Marks, 101
+
+  Birmingham, 37, 271
+
+  Bishopsgate Street, 67
+
+  Black Badger, 141
+
+  Black Bull, Holborn, 121
+
+  Blackheath, 149, 205
+
+  Black Lion, Whitechapel, 86, 95
+
+  _Bleak House_, 169-172
+
+  Blue Boar, Whitechapel, 150
+
+  -- Rochester, 188
+
+  Blue Dragon, 105-112
+
+  Blue-eyed Maid Coach, 172, 184
+
+  Blue Lion and Stomach Warmer, 240
+
+  Blunderstone, 144
+
+  Bond Street, 66, 142
+
+  Borough Bridge, 55
+
+  Boot, 90-94
+
+  Bottom Inn, near Petersfield, 65
+
+  Bowes, 62
+
+  Brentford, 29, 212
+
+  Brighton, 132
+
+  -- Tipper, 125
+
+  Buck Inn, Yarmouth, 147
+
+  Bull, Rochester, 241
+
+  Bull and Gate, Holborn, 130
+
+  Bull's Head, 249
+
+  Bunch of Grapes, 192
+
+  Bunyan, John, 36
+
+  Byron, 142, 180
+
+
+  Camberwell, 189
+
+  Cannon Row, 151
+
+  Canterbury, 152
+
+  -- Farmers' Club, 155
+
+  Carlisle, 62, 228
+
+  Carrock Fell, 228
+
+  Cattermole, George, 78, 94
+
+  Chalk, 182
+
+  Charles V of Germany, 34
+
+  Chertsey, 30, 213
+
+  Cheshire Cheese, 180
+
+  Chesney Wold, 169, 171
+
+  Chichester Rents, 169
+
+  Chigwell, 72
+
+  -- Row, 73
+
+  _Christmas Carol_, 263
+
+  Christmas Stories, 255-264
+
+  Claridge's Brook Street, 66
+
+  _Clarissa Harlowe_, 164
+
+  Cleave, Thomas, 93
+
+  Clifford Street, 142
+
+  Clovelly, 261
+
+  Coach and Horses, Isleworth, 28
+
+  -- Petersfield, 65
+
+  -- Strood, 227
+
+  Coaching, Romance of, 16
+
+  Coketown, 175
+
+  Collins, Wilkie, 19, 227, 261
+
+  Compter, The, 40
+
+  _Compter's Commonwealth, The_, 35
+
+  Cooling, 182
+
+  Coventry, 37
+
+  Crispin and Crispianus, 252
+
+  Cromer, 81, 93
+
+  Cromwell, Oliver, 115
+
+  Crooked Billet, Tower St., 96
+
+  Cross Keys, Wood St., 184, 241
+
+  Crown, Golden Square, 67
+
+  Crozier, 227
+
+
+  _David Copperfield_, 102, 144-168
+
+  Dedlock Arms, 169
+
+  Defoe, 97
+
+  Denmark Hill, 189
+
+  Denton, 188
+
+  Devil's Punch Bowl, 63
+
+  Dickens, Charles, Lodge, 88
+
+  -- and Inns, 15
+
+  _Dickensian_, 28
+
+  _Doctor Marigold's Prescriptions_, 233
+
+  Dodo, 266
+
+  Dolby, George, 154
+
+  Dolphin's Head, 251
+
+  _Dombey and Son_, 132-142
+
+  Doncaster, 55, 237
+
+  Dotheboys Hall, 32-38
+
+  Dover, 178, 252
+
+  Duke's Head, Yarmouth, 148
+
+  Du Maurier, 164
+
+
+  Eagle, 242
+
+  Eaton Socon, 52
+
+  Edward I, 154
+
+  _Edwin Drood_, 217-227
+
+  Eight Bells, Hatfield, 29, 31
+
+  Eton Slocombe, 52
+
+  Euston Road, 93
+
+  Exchequer Coffee-House, 216
+
+  Exeter, 116
+
+
+  Feathers, Gorleston, 149
+
+  Fellowship-Porters, 202
+
+  Fennor, Wm., 34
+
+  Fielding, Henry, 130
+
+  Field Lane, 25
+
+  FitzGerald, Percy, 30, 248
+
+  Fleet Prison, 174
+
+  Flower Pot, 248
+
+  Folkestone, 208
+
+  -- Royal George, 271
+
+  Fountain Hotel, Canterbury, 152
+
+  Ford, Harry, 94
+
+  Forster, John, 23, 73, 162, 182, 210
+
+  Foundling Hospital, 90
+
+  Fox under the Hill, Adelphi, 152
+
+  -- Denmark Hill, 189
+
+  Freemasons' Tavern, 241
+
+  Furnival's Inn, 217, 225
+
+
+  Garraway's, 175
+
+  Garrick 97
+
+  General Theatrical Fund, 70
+
+  George, Amesbury, 109
+
+  -- Grantham, 53
+
+  George and Gridiron, 262
+
+  George Hotel, Salisbury, 114
+
+  George Inn, Borough, 175
+
+  -- Market Town, 30
+
+  George and New Inn, Greta Bridge, 55
+
+  George Inn, Greta Bridge, 57, 258
+
+  Goat and Boots, 240
+
+  Godalming, 62
+
+  Godwin, Earl, 154
+
+  Golden Cross, 241
+
+  Grantham, 53
+
+  Grapes Inn, 191-201
+
+  Gravel Inn, Petersfield, 66
+
+  Gray's Inn Coffee-house, 102, 167
+
+  Gray's Inn Road, 93
+
+  _Great Expectations_, 182-190, 241
+
+  Great Fire of London, 36, 203
+
+  Great North Road, 23, 26
+
+  Great Winglebury, 240
+
+  Grecian Theatre, 244
+
+  Green Dragon, Alderbury, 110
+
+  Green Man, Leytonstone, 95
+
+  Greenwich, 203
+
+  Gresham Street, 116
+
+  Greta Bridge, 38, 55-60
+
+
+  Hales, Prof., 165
+
+  Half Moon and Seven Stars, 108
+
+  Hampstead, 161
+
+  Hampton, 28, 213
+
+  _Hard Times_, 175-177
+
+  Harper, C. G., 14, 65, 216, 254
+
+  Hatfield, 29, 30
+
+  _Haunted Man_, 134
+
+  Hen and Chickens, Birmingham, 271
+
+  Henley, 214
+
+  Henley-in-Arden, 216
+
+  Henry VIII, 76
+
+  Herne Bay, 156
+
+  Hesket Newmarket, 228
+
+  Highbury, 164
+
+  Hindhead, 63
+
+  Holborn, 122
+
+  _The Holly Tree_, 20, 50, 258
+
+  Holly Tree Inn, 58, 258
+
+  Hoo, 182
+
+  Holyhead Road, 26
+
+  Horn Tavern, 175
+
+  Horseshoe and Castle, Cooling, 182
+
+  Hounslow, 28
+
+  _Household Words_, 69, 230
+
+  Hummum's, Covent Garden, 185
+
+  Hungerford Stairs, 150, 167
+
+
+  Inns and Railways, 15
+
+  -- -- Motor Cars, 15, 19
+
+  -- -- Coaching, 15
+
+  -- Dr. Johnson on, 16
+
+  Inn on the Portsmouth Road, 63
+
+  Irving, Washington, 164
+
+  Isleworth, 28
+
+  Islington, 25, 49
+
+
+  Jack Straw's Castle, 161
+
+  James Street, 67
+
+  Jerusalem Coffee-House, 175
+
+  Johnson, Dr., 16, 97, 180
+
+  Jolly Sandboys Inn, 104
+
+  Jupp, R. B., 68
+
+
+  Kemble, 161
+
+  Kenilworth, 135, 140
+
+  Kent, Duchess of, 120
+
+  King Arthur's Arms, 261
+
+  King James, 119
+
+  King's Arms, Amesbury, 108
+
+  -- Ball's Pond, 142
+
+  -- Lancaster, 229-235
+
+  -- Wigton, 236
+
+  King's Head, Barnard Castle, 59-61
+
+  -- Hotel, Dover, 179
+
+  -- Chigwell, 73
+
+  Kingsgate Street, 122
+
+  Kingston, 213
+
+  Kitton, 262
+
+  Knightsbridge, 28
+
+
+  Lad Lane, 116
+
+  Lamb Conduit Fields, 93
+
+  -- -- Street, 93
+
+  Lancaster, 228
+
+  Lanfranc, Archbishop, 154
+
+  Laurens, Henry, 120
+
+  _Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices_, 227-238
+
+  Leech, John, 144, 174
+
+  Leamington, 134
+
+  Leighton, Lord, 164
+
+  Lemon, Mark, 144
+
+  Limehouse, 192
+
+  _Little Dorrit_, 66, 172-175, 185
+
+  Little Helephant, 141
+
+  Little Inn, Canterbury, 155
+
+  -- Saffron Hill, 26
+
+  -- Tower Hill, 96
+
+  London Coffee House, 172
+
+  _London Lyckpenny, The_, 33
+
+  London Tavern, Bishopsgate, 67-70
+
+  Long's Hotel, Bond Street, 141
+
+  Lord Warden, Dover, 179, 252
+
+  Lound, 147
+
+  Lowestoft, 144
+
+  Ludgate Hill, 172
+
+  Lydgate, John, 32
+
+  _Lying Awake_, 70
+
+
+  Maclise, Daniel, 162, 210
+
+  Malt Shovel, 177
+
+  Manchester, 175
+
+  Margaret of France, 154
+
+  _Martin Chuzzlewit_, 105-131
+
+  Maryport, 228
+
+  _Master Humphrey's Clock_, 61
+
+  Maypole, Chigwell, 72-88
+
+  _Message from the Sea_, 261
+
+  Mitre Inn, Chatham, 258
+
+  Mivart's, Brook Street, 66, 175
+
+  _Morning Chronicle_, 217
+
+  Mountain, Mrs. S. A., 37
+
+  _Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings_, 31
+
+  _Mugby Junction_, 262
+
+
+  Nelson, Lord, 36, 260
+
+  Newark, 54
+
+  Newgate, 33, 40
+
+  New Inn, near R, 266
+
+  _Nicholas Nickleby_, 32-71, 185, 258
+
+  North Road Cycling Club, 53
+
+  Nutmeg Grater, 264
+
+
+  Offleys, 245
+
+  Old Bailey, 174, 180
+
+  _Old Curiosity Shop_, 97, 162, 168
+
+  Old Royal, Birmingham, 272
+
+  _Oliver Twist_, 22-31
+
+  Orleans, Duke of, 120
+
+  _Our Mutual Friend_, 46, 191-216
+
+
+  Park Lane, 66
+
+  Parliament Street, 151
+
+  Parr, J. S., 28
+
+  Pavilion, Folkestone, 19, 268
+
+  Pavilion Hotel, 268
+
+  Peacock, Islington, 49-52
+
+  Peal of Bells, 262
+
+  Peasants' Revolt, 164
+
+  Pegasus' Arms, 176
+
+  Pepys, Samuel, 35, 115
+
+  Petersfield, 63
+
+  Peto, Sir Morton, 144
+
+  Phiz, 54, 56, 59, 62, 135, 219, 261
+
+  Piazza Hotel, Covent Garden, 160
+
+  _Pickwick Papers_, 71
+
+  _Plated Article_, 266
+
+  Plough, Blunderstone, 146
+
+  Plymouth, 119
+
+  Portsmouth, 62, 63
+
+  Preston, 175
+
+  Princess's Arms, 134
+
+  Public House, near Grantham, 54
+
+  _Punch_, 174
+
+
+  Queen Elizabeth, 76
+
+  Queen's Head, Hesket New-Market, 235
+
+  -- Islington, 25
+
+  Quilp's favourite tavern, 98
+
+
+  Rainbow, 245
+
+  Raleigh, Sir Walter, 119
+
+  Reading, 169
+
+  Red House, Battersea, 241
+
+  Red Lion, Barnet, 22, 169
+
+  -- Bevis Marks, 99
+
+  -- Hampton, 213
+
+  -- Henley, 214
+
+  -- Parliament Street, 151
+
+  Regent Hotel, Leamington, 135
+
+  _Reprinted Pieces_, 265
+
+  Retford, 55
+
+  Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 97
+
+  Richard Coeur-de-Lion, 33
+
+  Richard II, 164
+
+  _River Rhymer_, 201
+
+  Rockingham, 171
+
+  Roman Bath, Strand Lane, 161
+
+  Royal George Hotel, Dover, 179
+
+  Royal Hotel, Leamington, 134
+
+  -- Lowestoft, 145
+
+  Rugby, 51, 263
+
+  Russell Street, 97
+
+
+  St. Albans, 24, 31, 37, 164
+
+  St. Pancras' Church, 94
+
+  St. Sepulchre's Church, 32, 40, 41
+
+  Salem House, Blackheath, 149
+
+  Salisbury, 109, 112-120
+
+  Salisbury Arms, Hatfield, 260
+
+  Saracen's Head, Snow Hill, 32-48
+
+  Scott, 142
+
+  Setting Moon, 266
+
+  Shakespeare, 115, 212
+
+  Shaw, Wm., 62
+
+  Sheridan, 161
+
+  _She Stoops to Conquer_, 212
+
+  Ship, Allonby, 236
+
+  -- Chichester Rents, 169
+
+  -- Dover, 179, 253
+
+  -- Gravesend, 187
+
+  -- Greenwich, 203
+
+  Shorter Street, 81, 96
+
+  Silver Street, 67
+
+  Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters, 191-201
+
+  _Sketches by Boz_, 186, 239-249
+
+  Slamjam Coffee House, 262
+
+  Smithfield, 40, 43
+
+  Smithson, Charles, 59
+
+  Snow Hill, 32, 38, 39
+
+  Sol's Arms, 169
+
+  _Somebody's Luggage_, 262
+
+  Somerleyton, 144
+
+  Speedy, Peter, 93
+
+  Spitalfields, 28
+
+  Staines, 213
+
+  Stamford, 53
+
+  Stanfield, Clarkson, 162, 210
+
+  Staple Inn, 220
+
+  Star Hotel, Yarmouth, 148
+
+  Sterry, J. Ashby, 201, 206, 216
+
+  Stevenage, 262
+
+  Stilton, 53
+
+  Stow, 129
+
+  Stratford-on-Avon, 135
+
+  Strood, 254
+
+  Stukeley, Sir Lewis, 119
+
+  Sun Inn, Canterbury, 156
+
+  Swan, Hungerford Stairs, 167
+
+  -- Stamford Hill, 248
+
+  -- Wolverhampton, 271
+
+  Swan with Two Necks, 116
+
+  Swift, Dean, 36
+
+
+  _Tale of Two Cities_, 178-182
+
+  Tally Ho! Coach, 37, 51
+
+  Thackeray, W. M., 164, 180, 210
+
+  Thames, 81, 95
+
+  Three Cripples, 19, 26
+
+  Three Jolly Bachelors, 141
+
+  Three Jolly Bargemen, 182
+
+  Three Magpies, Brentford, 212
+
+  Three Pigeons, Brentford, 212
+
+  Tilted Wagon, Strood, 226
+
+  _Tom Brown's Schooldays_, 51
+
+  Tom's Coffee House, Covent Garden, 97
+
+  _Tom Jones_, 130
+
+  _Tom Tiddler's Ground_, 262
+
+  Tower Street, 96
+
+  Trafalgar, Greenwich, 209
+
+  Traveller's Twopenny, 227
+
+  Tyrrell, T. W., 65
+
+
+  _Uncommercial Traveller_, 40, 184, 249-257
+
+  Unicorn, Bowes, 62
+
+  Upper James Street, 67
+
+
+  Valiant Soldier, 104
+
+  Victoria, Princess, 120
+
+  Village Maid, Lound, 147
+
+
+  Walton, 213
+
+  Walworth, 189
+
+  Ward, H. Snowden, 110, 114
+
+  Warwick, 135, 140
+
+  Warwick Arms, 266
+
+  Watson, Hon. R. and Mrs., 171
+
+  White Duck, 227
+
+  White Hart, Salisbury, 118
+
+  -- Stevenage, 262
+
+  White Horse, Eaton Socon, 52
+
+  White Horse Cellar, 169
+
+  White Lion, Hampton, 214
+
+  White Swan, Hungerford Stairs, 150
+
+  Wigton, 228
+
+  Willing Mind, 147
+
+  Winglebury Arms, 240
+
+  Wolverhampton, 271
+
+  Wood's Hotel, 217-225
+
+
+  Yarmouth, 144
+
+  York, 62
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] See _The Inns and Taverns of Pickwick_.
+
+[2] Camberwell Green.
+
+[3] See _The Inns and Taverns of Pickwick_.
+
+[4] See _The Inns and Taverns of Pickwick_.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42908 ***