Martin Chuzzlewit
THE BLUE DRAGON—THE HALF MOON AND SEVEN STARS—TWO SALISBURY INNS—THE BLACK BULL, HOLBORN
TheBlue 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 ofMartin Chuzzlewitin 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 acuff 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 thelarder 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 remindedyou 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, theostler 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’shouse, 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 ashort cut to the north-west corner of the churchyard.
THE GEORGE, AMESBURYDrawn 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 beingin 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 tavernsteps. 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 writingMartin Chuzzlewitthe 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 Romanbricks in herringbone work, where in 1869 were found Roman coins, some of which are to be seen in the hotel to-day.
THE GEORGE INN, SALISBURYPhotograph 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 “wentto 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 thewaiter “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 ofentertainment at ten-and-sixpence a head, exclusive of wines. As tothem, 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 isevidently 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 thusled 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 timeMartin Chuzzlewitwas 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.
THE BLACK BULL, HOLBORNDrawn 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:
“Thereisa 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 landlordbrings 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 thelandlady, “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 takesthatale 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 dressingthe 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 thenotorious Mrs. Gamp gave it its chief claim to fame.
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 forcoaches, 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 betweenBarnet 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.
Dombey and Son
THE BEDFORD, BRIGHTON—THE ROYAL, LEAMINGTON—LONG’S HOTEL, BOND STREET—AND OTHERS
Althougha good deal ofDombey and Sonis 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 thesame 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 ofThe Haunted Manand 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 writingDombey and Sonin 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.
THE BEDFORD HOTEL, BRIGHTONFrom an old Engraving
THE ROYAL HOTEL, LEAMINGTONFrom a contemporary lithograph
Some writers, in referring to the incidents inDombey and Sonassociated 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 ofDombey and Sonwas 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 levelof 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 thesame 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 ofDombey 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 “sooppressed 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 “oneevening 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.
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
BeforeDickens commenced to writeDavid 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 Yarmouthand 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, anddrink 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.
THE PLOUGH INN, BLUNDERSTONE
THE BUCK INN
THE DUKE’S HEAD
YARMOUTHPhotographs 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 towrite 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 housethat 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 meover 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—yourvery 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 servedhim, 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-heaverswere 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 asthecounty 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 tosuspect 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 ofDavid Copperfieldat 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 droveinto 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 forMr. 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 beautifullittle 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.”
“The Little Inn” CanterburyDrawn 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 InnBuilt 1503The “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 HotelFormerly known as“The Little Inn”Made famous byChas. Dickensin His Travels Thro’ KentBuilt 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-easternangle 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 allusionto 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 writingThe 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 shallstroll 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 norecord, 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’sClarissa Harlowe.