Books: The Inns and Taverns of Pickwick
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B.W. Matz >> The Inns and Taverns of Pickwick
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Its original name was the "Crown," but in 1836 the said Wright,
on becoming proprietor, altered the name it then bore to that of
his own. He also changed its appearance to suit his own fancies.
In the earlier days it was a typical coaching inn, and had the
reputation of once having been favoured with a visit of Queen
Elizabeth, as well of Hogarth and his friends. It claimed to
have been built in 1390, and was then owned by Simon Potyn, who
was several times member of Parliament for the city.
In an old engraving of Rochester Bridge the inn can be seen with the
word "Wright's" distinctly showing in prominent letters emblazoned
on its frontage, if such proof that Jingle was not romancing were
necessary.
The inn was rebuilt in 1864, and has been identified as the
"Crozier" of Edwin Drood, where Datchery, on his first arrival
in the town "announced himself . . . as an idle dog living on his
means . . . as he stood with his back to the empty fire-place,
waiting for his fried sole, veal cutlet and pint of sherry."
In the meantime Mr. Pickwick and his friends, after having engaged
and inspected a private sitting-room and bedrooms and ordered their
dinner at "The Bull," set out to inspect the city and adjoining
neighbourhood.
Before the days of Pickwick, the "Bull" presumably was merely a
comfortable roadside coaching inn between Dover and London, with no
claim to fame other than that of being a favoured resort of the
military from the adjacent town of Chatham. It is true that Queen
Victoria--then but a Princess--was compelled, because of a mishap to
the bridge across the Medway and the stormy weather, to stay in the
inn with her mother, the Duchess of Kent, for one night only. They
were on their way to London from Dover. The event happened on the
29th of November, 1836, and caused a flutter of excitement in the
city and inspired the proprietor to add the words "Royal Victoria"
to the inn's name, and to justify the adornment of the front of the
building with the royal crest of arms.
But it remained for the Pickwickians to draw the inn out from
the ruck of the commonplace, and to spread its fame to all
corners of the globe; and the fact that it once had royal
patronage is nothing in comparison to the other fact that it
was the headquarters of the Pickwickians on a certain memorable
occasion. That is the attraction to it; that is the immutable
thing that makes its name a household word wherever the English
language is spoken. Indeed, that was the one notable event in
its history which filled the proprietor with pride, and in his
wisdom, in order to lure visitors into its comfortable interior,
he could find no more magnetic announcement for the signboard on
each side of the entrance than the plain unvarnished statement:
"Good House. Nice Beds. Vide Pickwick."
[illustration: The Bull Hotel, Rochester. From a photograph
by T.W.Tyrrell]
It may have boasted a history before then: it is difficult to say.
It existed in 1827 when Dickens housed the famous four within its
hospitable walls; and he doubtless knew it long before then when,
as a lad, he lived in Chatham; anyway, it was always a favourite
of his, and furnishes the scene of many incidents in his books, in
addition to the part it plays in the early portion of The Pickwick
Papers; it no doubt is the original of the "Winglebury Arms" in "The
Great Winglebury Duel" in Sketches by Boz, and is certainly the
"Blue Boar" of Great Expectations.
Dickens frequented it himself, and the room he occupied on those
occasions is known as the Dickens room and is furnished with pieces
of furniture from his residence at Gad's Hill. We know, too, that
he conducted his friends over it, on those occasions when he made
pilgrimages with them around the neighbourhood.
The house has been slightly altered since those days, but it
practically remains the same as when Dickens deposited the
Pickwickians in its courtyard that red-letter day in 1827. Its
outside is dull and sombre-looking, but its interior comfort and
spaciousness soon dispel any misgivings which its exterior might
have created.
The entrance hall is as spacious as it was when Dickens described
it, in "The Great Winglebury Duel," as ornamented with evergreen
plants terminating in a perspective view of the bar, and a glass
case, in which were displayed a choice variety of delicacies ready
for dressing, to catch the eye of a new-comer the moment he enters,
and excite his appetite to the highest possible pitch. "Opposite
doors," he says, "lead to the 'coffee' and 'commercial' rooms; and
a great wide rambling staircase--three stairs and a landing--four
stairs and another landing--one step and another landing--and so
on--conducts to galleries of bedrooms and labyrinths of sitting-rooms,
denominated 'private,' where you may enjoy yourself as privately as
you can in any place where some bewildered being or other walks into
your room every five minutes by mistake, and then walks out again, to
open all the doors along the gallery till he finds his own."
And so the visitor finds it to-day, although the interior of the
coffee-room may have been denuded of its compartments which the
interview between Pip and Bentley Drummie in Great Expectations
suggests were there on that occasion. It was in this room that
the Pickwickians breakfasted and awaited the arrival of the chaise
to take them to Dingley Dell; and it was over its blinds that
Mr. Pickwick surveyed the passers-by in the street, and before
which the vehicle made its appearance with the very amusing result
known to all readers of the book.
The commercial room is across the yard, over which on one occasion
Mr. Wopsle was reciting Collin's ode to Pip in Great Expectations
with such dramatic effect that the commercials objected and sent up
their compliments with the remark that "it wasn't the Tumbler's Arms."
From the hall runs the staircase upon which took place the famous
scene between Dr. Slammer and Jingle, illustrated so spiritedly by
Phiz. Those who remember the incident--and who does not?--can
visualize it all again as they mount the stairs to the bedrooms
above, which the Pickwickians occupied. They remain as Dickens
described them, even in some cases to the very bedsteads and
furniture, and are still shown to the interested visitor.
"Winkle's bedroom is inside mine," is how Mr. Tupman put it. That
is to say, the one led out of the other, and they are numbered 13
and 19; but which is which no one knows. Number 18, by the way, is
the room the Queen slept in on the occasion of her visit, eight
months after the appearance of the first part of Pickwick.
Number 17 is claimed as Mr. Pickwick's room, which is also the one
Dickens occupied on one occasion, and the one spoken of in Seven
Poor Travellers, from which the occupant assured us that after the
cathedral bell struck eight he "could smell the delicious savour of
turkey and roast beef rising to the window of my adjoining room,
which looked down into the yard just where the lights of the kitchen
reddened a massive fragment of the castle wall"
[illustrations: Staircase at the "Bull." Orchestra in Ballroom
at the "Bull"]
An important feature in those days, and presumably to-day, was
the ballroom, "the elegant and commodious assembly rooms to
the Winglebury Arms." In The Pickwick Papers Dickens thus
describes it: "It was a long room, with crimson-covered benches,
and wax candles in glass chandeliers. The musicians were
securely confined in an elevated den, and quadrilles were being
systematically got through by two or three sets of dancers. Two
card tables were made up in the adjoining card-room, and two pair
of old ladies and a corresponding number of stout gentlemen were
executing whist therein."
The room itself is little altered; although the glass chandeliers
have been removed, there still remains at the end the veritable
elevated den where the fiddlers fiddled. During the war it was
turned into a dining-room on account of the military and naval
demands of the town; but there may come a time when it will revert
to its old glory and tradition.
On the evening of the Pickwickians' arrival Jingle remarks that
there is a "Devil of a mess on the staircase, waiter. Forms
going up--carpenters coming down--lamps, glasses, harps. What's
going forward?"
"Ball, sir," said the waiter.
"Assembly, eh?"
"No, sir, not assembly, sir. Ball for the benefit of charity, sir."
This was the famous ball at which the incident occurred resulting in
the challenge to a duel between Dr. Slammer and Winkle, the details
of which require no reiteration here.
But the pleasant fact remains that the Bull Inn exists to-day and the
Dickens tradition clings to it still. One instinctively goes there
as the centre of the Dickensian atmosphere with which the old city
of Rochester is permeated.
The Bull Inn should never lose its fame. Indeed, as long as it
lasts it never will, because Pickwick can never be forgotten. The
present-day traveller will go by rail, or some day by an aerial
'bus, and may forget the old days during his journey; but when he
arrives there and walks into the inn yard, whole visions of the
coaching days will come back to him, and prominent amongst them will
be the arrival of the "Commodore" coach with the Pickwickians on
board, and the departure of the chaise with the same company with
Winkle struggling with the tall mare, on their way to Dingley Dell,
which resulted so disastrously. He might be curious enough to want
to discover the "little roadside public-house with two elm trees,
horse-trough and a sign-post in front," where the travellers
attempted to put up the horse. That, however, has not been
discovered, although Dickens no doubt had a particular one in
his mind at the time.
During their stay at Manor Farm, Dingley Dell, the Pickwickians
visited Muggleton to witness the cricket match between Dingley
Dell and all Muggleton. "Everybody whose genius has a topographical
bent," says Dickens, "knows perfectly well that Muggleton is a
corporate town, with a mayor, burgesses and freeman," but so far
no topographer has discovered which corporate town it was. Some
say Maidstone, others Town Malling. Until that vexed question
has been settled, however, the identification of the "large inn
with a sign-post in front, displaying an object very common in art,
but very rarely met with in nature--to wit, a Blue Lion with three
legs in the air, balancing himself on the extreme point of the
centre claw of his fourth foot," cannot definitely be verified.
The same remark applies to the Crown Inn, where Jingle stopped
on the same occasion.
[illustration: The Swan Inn, Town Malling. Drawn by C. G. Harper]
At Maidstone there is a "White Lion," and at Town Malling there is
the "Swan." Which of these is the original of the inn where Mr.
Wardle hired a chaise and four to pursue Jingle and Miss Rachael,
and on whose steps, the following Christmas, the Pickwickians, on
their second visit to Dingley Dell, were deposited "high and dry,
safe and sound, hale and hearty," by the Muggleton Telegraph, when
they discovered the Fat Boy just aroused from a sleep in front of
the tap-room fire, must be left to the choice of the reader.
CHAPTER IV
THE "WHITE HART," BOROUGH
The pursuit of Jingle and Miss Wardle by the lady's father and Mr.
Pickwick, culminates in the "White Hart," which, in days gone by,
was one of the most famous of the many famous inns that then stood
in the borough of Southwark. Long before Dickens began to write,
the "White Hart" was the centre of the coaching activity of the
metropolis south of the Thames, and .was one of the oldest inns
in the country.
Travellers from the Continent and the southern and eastern
counties of England to London made it their halting-place, whilst
from a business standpoint it had scarcely a rival. Coaches laden
with passengers and wagons full of articles of commerce made the
courtyard of the inn always a bustling and busy corner of a hustling
and busy neighbourhood. In the coaching era, therefore, the
"White Hart" was a household word to travellers and business men.
Dickens, with his magic pen and inventive genius, made it a
household word to the inhabitants of the whole globe, who never
had occasion to visit it either for business or pleasure.
Its history goes back many centuries: as far back as 1400, and
possibly earlier than that. Its sign was taken from the badge of
Richard II, who adopted the emblem of the "White Hart" from the
crest of his mother, Joanna of Kent. A fine old inn of the highest
type, the "White Hart" no doubt was the resort of the most prominent
nobles and retainers of the time, public men of the period and
ambassadors of commerce. It is not surprising, therefore, that it
figures in English history generally, and was particularly mentioned
by Shakespeare. It certainly was the centre of many a stirring
scene, and events of feasting and jollity, besides being a place
where great trade was transacted.
It is often mentioned in the Paston Letters in reference to Jack
Cade, who made it his headquarters in 1450. In Hall's Chronicles
it is recorded that the Captain, being made aware of the King's
absence, came first to Southwark, and there lodged at the "White
Hart." In Henry VI, Part II, Jack Cade is made to say, "Hath my
sword therefore broke through London gates, that you should leave
me at the 'White Hart' in Southwark?"
Thomas Cromwell, Henry Vlll's most able minister, was also
associated with the borough of Southwark, and on one occasion (in
1529) it is recorded that he received a message to the effect that
one R. awaited him at the "White Hart" on important business. Again
the inn has mention in connection with the rebellion brought about
by Archbishop Laud's attitude to the Scottish and Puritan Churches,
when we are told that the populace and soldiers associated with it
lodged at the "White Hart." And in a like manner mention might be
made of other occasions during which, in those far-off days, the
"White Hart" played some notable part in history and in the social
round of the period.
In 1676 it was entirely destroyed by the great fire of Southwark,
but was rebuilt immediately afterward on the old site and on the
old model. It was described by Strype about this time as a very
large inn, and we believe that it was able to accommodate between
one and two hundred guests and their retinue, with ample rooms left
for their belongings, horses and goods. It did a considerable
trade and was esteemed one of the best inns in Southwark, and so
it continued as a favourite place of resort for coaches and carriers
until the end of the coaching days.
When, therefore, Mr. Pickwick set all the world agog with his
adventures, the "White Hart" was recognized as a typical old
English inn, and was really at its best. It had arrived at this
prosperous state by easy stages during its previous 180 years,
and had a reputation for comfort and generous hospitality during
the best days of the coaching era, which had reached the golden
age when Mr. Pickwick discovered Sam Weller cleaning boots in its
coach yard one historic morning in the early nineteenth century.
It is not to be wondered at, then, that Dickens, who knew this
district so well and intimately, should introduce the "White Hart"
into his book as a setting for one of his most amusing scenes.
After speaking of London's inns in general, he makes special mention
of those in the Borough, where, he says, there still remained some
half-dozen old inns, "which have preserved their external features
unchanged, and which have escaped alike the rage for public
improvement and the encroachments of private speculation." Since
these words were written public improvement has "improved" all of
them, except one, the "George," right out of existence.
But let us use Dickens's own words to describe these inns in general
and the "White Hart" in particular, for none of ours can improve his
picture.
"Great, rambling, queer old places they are, with galleries and
passages and staircases, wide enough and antiquated enough to
furnish materials for a hundred ghost stories, supposing we should
ever be reduced to the lamentable necessity of inventing any, and
that the world should exist long enough to exhaust the innumerable
veracious legends connected with old London Bridge and its adjacent
neighbourhood on the Surrey side.
"It was in the yard of one of these inns--of no less celebrated a one
than the 'White Hart'--that a man was busily employed in brushing the
dirt off a pair of boots, early on the morning succeeding the events
narrated in the last chapter. He was habited in a coarse-striped
waistcoat, with black calico sleeves, and blue glass buttons, drab
breeches and leggings. A bright red handkerchief was wound in a
very loose and unstudied style round his neck, and an old white hat
was carelessly thrown on one side of his head. There were two rows
of boots before him, one cleaned and the other dirty, and at every
addition he made to the clean row, he paused from his work, and
contemplated its results with evident satisfaction."
This, we need hardly say, was the inimitable Sam Weller, and
it was his first introduction to the story with which his name
is now inseparable.
[illustration: The White Hart Inn, Southwark, in 1858. From
an engraving by Fairholt, after a drawing by J. Sachs]
Dickens then goes on to give further particulars of how the yard
looked on the particular morning of which he writes:
"The yard presented none of that bustle and activity which are the
usual characteristics of a large coach inn. Three or four lumbering
wagons, each with a pile of goods beneath its ample canopy, about
the height of the second-floor window of an ordinary house, were
stowed away beneath a lofty roof which extended over one end of the
yard; and another, which was probably to commence its journey that
morning, was drawn out into the open space. A double tier of
bedroom galleries, with old, clumsy balustrades, ran round two sides
of the straggling area, and a double row of bells to correspond,
sheltered from the weather by a little sloping roof, hung over the
door. . . . Two or three gigs and chaise-carts were wheeled up under
different little sheds and penthouses; and the occasional heavy
tread of a carthorse or rattling of a chain at the further end of
the yard announced to anybody who cared about the matter that the
stable lay in that direction. When we add that a few boys in smock
frocks were lying asleep on heavy packages, wool-packs and other
articles that were scattered about on heaps of straw, we have
described as fully as need be the general appearance of the yard
of the White Hart Inn, High Street, Borough, on the particular
morning in question."
This was the inn, then, to which Mr. Pickwick and Mr. Wardle
came in search of the runaway couple, and Sam Weller was the first
person they interviewed on the subject. The reader will refer to
Chapter X of the book should he want his memory refreshed regarding
the amusing scene with Sam, which has been so faithfully pictured
by Phiz in one of his illustrations. How they discovered the
misguided Rachael, how they bought off the adventurer, Jingle,
and how Mr. Pickwick, Wardle and the deserted lady set forth the
next day by the Muggleton heavy coach is duly set forth in Dickens's
own way.
The "White Hart" remained very much as Dickens found it and described
it in 1836 until it was finally demolished in 1889. Following the
advent of railways it lost a good deal of its glamour, and in its
last years the old galleries on two of its sides were let out in
tenements, and the presence of the occupants gave a certain animation
to the scene. In the large inner yard were some quaint old house
which were crowded with lodgers, but it still hung on to its old
traditions of the coaching times, and even up to its last days the
old inn was the halting-place of the last of the old-fashioned
omnibuses which plied between London Bridge and Clapham.
Nothing now remains to remind us of the old inn which Dickens and
Sam Weller have made immortal in the annals of coaching but a narrow
turning bearing its name, where is established a Sam Weller Club.
CHAPTER V
"LA BELLE SAUVAGE" AND THE "MARQUIS OF GRANBY," DORKING
"La Belle Sauvage" has, like many other historic inns, gone into the
limbo of past, if not of forgotten, things, leaving nothing but its
name denoting a cul-de-sac, to remind the present generation of its
one-time fame.
This was the inn where Tony Weller, resplendent in many layers of
cloth cape and huge brimmed hat, stopped "wen he drove up" on the
box seat of one of the stage coaches of the period. For Tony was,
as everybody knows, a coachman typical of the period of the book,
and the "Belle Savage" (the spelling of "savage" here follows the
fashion of the period referred to) was where he started and ended
his journeys in London. But the anecdote related by his son of
how he was hoodwinked into taking out a licence to marry Mrs.
Clarke contains the chief of the only two actual references to
the fact that his head-quarters were the "Belle Savage," as he
called it. It is certainly recorded that he started from the
"Bull" in Whitechapel when he drove the Pickwickians to Ipswich,
but it is the "Belle Savage" that is associated with his name.
"'What's your name, sir?' says the lawyer.
"'Tony Weller,' says my father. 'Parish?' says the lawyer. 'Belle
Savage,' says my father; for he stopped there wen he drove up, and
he know'd nothing about parishes, he didn't."
Now it seems to us a curious fact that Dickens never made any
further use of this famous inn, either in Pickwick or in his other
books; indeed, we can only recall one other reference to it, and
that when Sam's father rather despondently told him that "a thousand
things may have happened by the time you next hears any news of the
celebrated Mr. Veller o' the 'Bell Savage:'" It is particularly
curious in regard to Pickwick, for the inn was not only close to the
Fleet Prison, which figures so prominently in the book, but its
outbuildings actually adjoined it. Meagre as is the reference, it
is, nevertheless, retained in the memory, and the inn proclaimed a
Pickwickian one with as much satisfaction as if it had been the
scene of many an incident such as connect others with the book.
Unfortunately there are only one or two landmarks remaining to show
that it ever existed. One of these is the archway out of Ludgate
Hill, just beyond the hideous bridge which runs across the road, at
the side of No. 68, which in Pickwickian days was No. 38. Perhaps
the shape of the yard which still bears the inn's name may be
considered as a trace of its former glory. This yard is now
surrounded by the business premises of Messrs. Cassell and Co.,
the well-known publishers, which occupy the whole site of the old
building.
We can find no earlier reference to the inn than that in the reign
of Henry VI, when a certain John French in a deed (1453) made over
to his mother for her life "all that tenement or inn, with its
appurtenances, called Savage's Inn, otherwise called 'le Bell on
the Hope' in the parish of Fleet Street, London." Prior to that it
may be surmised that it belonged to a citizen of the name of Savage,
probably the "William Savage of Fleet Street in the Parish of St.
Bridget," upon whom, it is recorded in 1380, an attempt was made
"to obtain by means of forged letter, twenty shillings."
It would be clear from this that its sign was the "Bell and Hoop,"
before it became the property of the Savage family, from whom there
can be no doubt it got its name of "La Belle Savage." According to
Stow, Mrs. Isabella Savage gave the inn to the Cutlers' Company, but
this would seem to be incorrect, for more recent research has proved
definitely that it was a John Craythorne who did so in 1568. The
crest of the Cutlers' Company is the Elephant and Castle, and a
stone bas-relief of it, which once stood over the gateway of the inn
under the sign of the Bell, is still to be seen on the east wall of
La Belle Savage Yard to-day. It was placed there some fifty years
ago when the old inn was demolished.
[illustration: La Belle Sauvage Inn, Ludgate Hill. From a
drawing by T. Hosmer Shepherd]
Years before Craythorne presented the inn to the Cutlers' Company,
however, it was known as "La Belle Sauvage," for we are told that
Sir Thomas Wyatt, the warrior poet, in 1554 made his last stand
with his Kentish men against the troops of Mary just in front of
the ancient inn, "La Belle Sauvage." He was attempting to capture
Ludgate and was driven back with some thousands of rebel followers
to Temple Bar, where he surrendered himself to Sir Maurice Berkeley,
and so sealed his own fate and that of poor Lady Jane Grey.
Again, in 1584, the inn was described as "Ye Belle Sauvage," and
there have been many speculations as to the origin of the name, and
some doubt as to the correct spelling.
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