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
Thefirst 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 excitingscenes 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” ofThe Holly Tree, starts on his journey to the Holly Tree Inn. “There was noNorthern 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.”
THE PEACOCK, ISLINGTONFrom 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. Inlater 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 Yorkshireschools prior to writingNicholas Nicklebyhe 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 nearestpublic-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 andpicturesque 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 itto 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:
THE GEORGE INN, GRETA BRIDGEDrawn 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. Inhalf 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 thedelightful 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 sayMr.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 ofMaster 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.
THE KING’S HEAD, BARNARD CASTLEPhotograph 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 ofNicholas Nicklebyin 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 bargainedfor 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 disinclinationto 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.
THE BOTTOM INN, NEAR PETERSFIELDDrawn 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 ofLittle Dorrit, where we are told “The courier had not approved of Mr. Dorrit’s staying in the house of a friend, andhad 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 andcontained 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.
InHousehold Wordsin 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, makeNicholas Nicklebyalmost as interesting from this point of view asPickwick Papers.
Barnaby Rudge
THE MAYPOLE, CHIGWELL
Ofall 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 inBarnaby 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 ofBarnaby Rudgerevolves. 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 tobe 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 ofBarnaby 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 ofBarnaby 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, isthe 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.”
AsBarnaby Rudgehad 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, ruralplace 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.
THE KING’S HEAD, CHIGWELLDrawn by L. Walker
The description of the Maypole in the opening chapter ofBarnaby Rudgehas 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 moregable 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 Summerevenings 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’sskin; 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 Maypolewas 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 ofBarnaby Rudgethrough, 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 hugewide 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 ofvoices, 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 baywindow, 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.
THE CHESTER ROOMDrawn by L. Walker
The best bedroom to which Mr. Chester repaired for the night after his interview with Mr. Haredalewas 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 beingassured 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 inthe 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 ofBarnaby 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, withits 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.
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
Thereare very few instances in Dickens’s descriptions of London that were not the outcome of his own actual observations. But in writingBarnaby 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.”
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 inBarnaby Rudgeas 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 inThe Timeson 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 conceivedBarnaby 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 Chigwelland 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 toThe 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 leadyou 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.”
THE RED LION, BEVIS MARKSDrawn 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 commissionde lunaticoat 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 ofDavid 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 aprescriptive, 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 hissmall 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 ofThe 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.