The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" Part 5

This was no other than Job Trotter, the servant to Mr. Alfred Jingle of No Hall, No Where, and in a few moments the two were in animated conversation over a little liquid refreshment at the bar.

How Job Trotter and Alfred Jingle not only got the better of the usually astute Sam and the innocent Mr. Pickwick, and entangled the latter into a very embarra.s.sing situation at the Young .Ladies'

School in the district; and how the latter extricated himself from the awkward predicament only to find that the instigators of it had again hurriedly left the town, is best gathered from the pages of the book itself.

"The process of being washed in the night air, and rough-dried in a closet is as dangerous as it is peculiar." This having been the case with Mr. Pickwick, he suffered as a consequence, and was laid up with an attack of rheumatism, and had to spend a couple of days in his bed at the hotel. To pa.s.s away the time, he devoted himself to "editing" the love story of Nathaniel Pipkin, which he read to his friends, who, having by this time arrived at the hotel, gathered at his bedside and took their wine there with him.

It was whilst staying at the "Angel" that Mr. Pickwick received the first intimation that a writ for breach of promise had been issued against him at the instance of Mrs. Bardell, much to the alarm and amus.e.m.e.nt of his friends. He did not, however, hasten back to London, but accepted Mr. Wardle's invitation to a shooting party in the neighbourhood, where he again involved himself in a further misadventure.

[ill.u.s.tration: The Angel Hotel, Bury St. Edmunds. Drawn by C. G. Harper]

Now all these little untoward events happened whilst Mr. Pickwick was staying at the "Angel," and. not only have they caused much amus.e.m.e.nt to the readers of the book, but incidentally have added fame and importance to the "Angel" at Bury to such an extent that the faithful reader of Pickwick who finds himself in the neighbourhood would no more think of pa.s.sing the "Angel" than would the pilgrim to the town omit visiting the famous abbey.

He will find the hotel little altered since the day when Mr.

Pickwick visited it, either as regards its old-time atmosphere or its Victorian hospitality.

It is a very plain and severe-looking building from the outside, suggesting a gigantic doll's house with real steps up to the front door all complete. Although it does not look as inspiring on approaching it as most d.i.c.kensian inns do, its interior, nevertheless, makes up in comfort what its exterior lacks in picturesqueness.

It has stood since 1779 and occupies the site of three ancient inns known at the time as the "Angel," the "Castle" and the "White Bear," respectively. In such an ancient town as Bury St. Edmunds, with so many years behind it, the "Angel" could tell a story worth narrating. Fronting the gates of the ancient Abbey, it occupies the most prominent place in the town. In the wide s.p.a.ce before it the Bury fair was held, and a famous and fas.h.i.+onable festivity it was, which lasted in the olden time for several days. Latterly, however, one day is deemed sufficient, and that is September 21 in each year.

In spite of its sombre appearance from the outside, it is considered one of the most important hotels in West Suffolk, and is still a typical old English inn, "a byword for comfort and generous hospitality throughout the eastern counties." The s.p.a.cious coffee-room, its well-appointed drawing and sitting-rooms, its many bedrooms, have an appeal to those desiring ease rather than the luxuriousness of the modern style. In addition it has extensive yards and stables, survivals of the old posting days, with a cosy tap-room and bar, to say nothing of all the natural little nooks and corners and accessories which pertain only to old-world hostelries.

There still remains the pump under which Sam had his "halfpenny shower-bath." And in the tap-room one can be easily reminded of the scene over which Sam presided and acquitted himself with so much satisfaction.

As to which was the room occupied by Mr. Pickwick, history is silent; but when d.i.c.kens was on his reporting expedition in Suffolk during the electoral campaign of 1835, he stayed at the "Angel"

and, tradition says, slept in room No. 11. Mr. Percy FitzGerald, on visiting it some years ago, ventured to seek of the "gnarled"

waiter information on the momentous question of Mr. Pickwick and his adventure.

"Piokwick, sir? Why, HE knew all about it," was the reply. "No. 11 was Mr. Pickwick's room, and the proprietor would tell us everything.

A most quaint debate arose," says Mr. FitzGerald, "on Mr. Pickwick's stay at the hotel. The host p.r.o.nounced EX CATHEDRA and without hesitation about the matter. . . . The power and vitality of the Pickwickian legend are extraordinary indeed; all day long we found people bewildered, as it were, by this faith, mixing up the author and his hero."

This is not unusual, and even in these days we find that d.i.c.kens's characters have become so real that no one stops to discuss whether this or that really happened to them, but just simply accepts their comings and goings as the comings and goings of the heroes and heroines of history are accepted, with perhaps just a little more belief in them. And so we can be a.s.sured that the "Angel" at Bury will be chiefly remembered as the hotel where Mr. Pickwick and his companions stayed, whoever before or since may have honoured it with a visit, or whatever else in its history may be recalled as important.

In 1861 d.i.c.kens again visited the town to give his famous readings from his works, and put up at the "Angel," so that the county hotel has many reasons for the proud t.i.tle of being a d.i.c.kensian inn.

CHAPTER IX

THE "BLACK BOY," CHELMSFORD, THE "MAGPIE AND STUMP,"

AND THE "BULL," WHITECHAPEL

After Mr. Pickwick and Sam had been so cleverly outwitted by Jingle and Job Trotter at Bury, they returned to London. Taking liquid refreshment one day afterwards in a city hostelry they chanced upon the elder Weller, who, in the course of conversation, revealed the fact that, whilst "working" an Ipswich coach, he had taken up Jingle and Job Trotter at the "Black Boy" at Chelmsford: "I took 'em up,"

he emphasised, "right through to Ipswich, where the manservant--him in the mulberries--told me they was a-going to put up for a long time." Mr. Pickwick decided to follow them, and started, as will be seen presently, from the Bull Inn, Whitechapel, for that town.

The reference to the "Black Boy" is but a pa.s.sing one, and it is not even recorded that Mr. Pickwick stopped there on his journey out; but the inn where Jingle was "taken up" was then one of the best known on the Ess.e.x road, and was not demolished until 1857, when it was replaced by a modern public-house which still displays the old signboard. In an article in The d.i.c.kensian* Mr. G. 0.

Rickwood gives some interesting particulars concerning its history, from which we gather that originally the "Black Boy" was the town house of the de Veres, the famous Earls of Oxford, whose princ.i.p.al seat, Hedingham Castle, was within a short distance of Chelmsford.

It was converted into a hostelry in the middle of the seventeenth century, and was first known as the Crown or New Inn. It was an ancient timber structure house, and some of the carved woodwork, with the well-known device of the boar's head taken from one of the rooms of the old inn, is still preserved in Chelmsford Museum.

[* 1917, p.214.]

At the close of the eighteenth century the "Black Boy" was recognised as the leading hostelry of the town, and was known far and wide. In the Pickwickian days it was a busy posting-house for the coaches from London to many parts of Norfolk.

[ill.u.s.tration: The "Black Boy," Chelmsford. From an old engraving]

Before Mr. Pickwick carried out his determination to pursue Jingle, he had occasion to visit the "Magpie and Stump," "situated in a court, happy in the double advantage of being in the vicinity of Clare Market and closely approximating to the back of New Inn."

This was the favoured tavern, sacred to the evening orgies of Mr. Lowten and his companions, and by ordinary people would be designated a public-house. The object of Mr. Pickwick's visit was to discover Mr. Lowten, and on enquiry, found him presiding over a sing-song and actually engaged in obliging with a comic song at the moment. After a brief interview with that worthy, Mr. Pickwick was prevailed upon to join the festive party.

[ill.u.s.tration: The "George the Fourth," Clare Market. Drawn by C. G. Harper]

There were, at the time, two taverns, either of which might have stood as the original for the "Magpie and Stump"; the "Old Black Jack" and the "George the Fourth," both in Portsmouth Street, and both were demolished in 1896. Which was the one d.i.c.kens had in mind it is difficult to say. His description of its appearance runs as follows: "In the lower windows, which were decorated with curtains of a saffron hue, dangled two or three printed cards, bearing reference to Devons.h.i.+re cyder and Dantzic spruce, while a large blackboard, announcing in white letters to an enlightened public that there were 500,000 barrels of double stout in the cellars of the establishment, left the mind in a state of not unpleasing doubt and uncertainty, as to the precise direction in the bowels of the earth in which this mighty cavern might be supposed to extend. When we add that the weather-beaten signboard bore the half-obliterated semblance of a magpie intently eyeing a crooked streak of brown paint, which the neighbours had been taught from infancy to consider as the 'stump,' we have said all that need be said of the exterior of the edifice."

The "Old Black Jack" has been identified as the original of the "Magpie and Stump" by some topographers, whilst Robert Allbut in his Rambles in d.i.c.kens-land favoured the "Old George the Fourth," adding that d.i.c.kens and Thackeray were well-remembered visitors there.

The Bull Inn, Whitechapel, the starting-place of Tony Weller's coach which was to take Mr. Pickwick to Ipswich, was actually at No. 25 Aldgate, and was perhaps the most famous of the group of inns of the neighbourhood whence many of the Ess.e.x, Suffolk and Norfolk coaches set out on their journeys. At the time of which we write it was owned by Mrs. Ann Nelson, whose antecedents had been born and bred in the business, while she herself had interests in more than one city hostelry, as well as owned coaches.

Mr. Charles G. Harper has several references to, and interesting anecdotes about, Mrs. Ann Nelson and her inns in his "Road" books.

In one such reference he tells us Mrs. Ann Nelson was "one of those stern, dignified, magisterial women of business, who were quite a remarkable feature of the coaching age, who saw their husbands off to an early grave and alone carried on the peculiarly exacting double business of inn-keeping and coach-proprietors.h.i.+p, and did so with success." She was the "Napoleon and Caesar" combined of the coaching business. Energetic, she spared neither herself nor her servants. The last to bed she was also the first to rise, "looking after the stable people and seeing that the horses had their feeds and were properly cared for." Insistent as she was on rigid punctuality in all things, and hard as she was on those who served her, she, nevertheless, treated them very well, and gave the coachmen and guards a special room, where they dined as well at reduced prices as any of the coffee-room customers. This room was looked upon as their private property, and there they regaled themselves with the best the house could provide. It was more sacred and exclusive than the commercial-rooms of the old Bagmen days, and was strictly unapproachable by any but those for whom it was set apart.

[ill.u.s.tration: The Bull Inn, Whitechapel. From the water-colour drawing by P. Palfrey]

The "Bull" began to decline when the railway was opened in 1839, and in 1868 it was demolished.

There is no doubt that d.i.c.kens knew it well, and probably used it in his journalistic days when having to take journeys to the eastern counties to report election speeches. In The Uncommercial Traveller he speaks of having strolled up to the empty yard of the "Bull,"

"who departed this life I don't know when, and whose coaches had all gone I don't know where."

When, therefore, he wanted a starting-point for Mr. Pickwick's adventure to Ipswich, the "Bull," which was nothing less than an inst.i.tution at the time, readily occurred to him.

There is an anecdote about d.i.c.kens and the coachmen's private apartment, told by Mr. Charles G. Harper. "On one occasion d.i.c.kens had a seat at a table, and 'the Chairman,' after sundry flattering remarks, as a tribute to the novelist's power of describing a coach Journey, said, 'Mr. d.i.c.kens, we knows you knows wot's wot, but can you, sir, 'andle a vip?' There was no mock modesty in d.i.c.kens. He acknowledged he could describe a journey down the road, but he regretted that in the management of a 'vip' he was not expert."

Here Sam arrived one morning with his master's travelling bag and portmanteau, to be closely followed by Mr. Pickwick himself, who, as Sam told his father, was "cabbin' it . .. havin' two mile o' danger at eightpence." In the inn yard he was greeted by a red-haired man who immediately became friendly and enquired if Mr. Pickwick was going to Ipswich. On learning that he was, and that he, too, had taken an outside seat, they became fast friends. Little did Mr.

Pickwick suppose that his newly made friend and he would meet again later under less congenial circ.u.mstances.

"Take care o' the archway, gen'l'men," was Sam's timely warning as the coach, under the control of his father, started out of the inn yard on its memorable journey down Whitechapel Road to the "Great White Horse," Ipswich, an hostelry which forms the subject of the following chapter.

CHAPTER X

THE "GREAT WHITE HORSE," IPSWICH

"In the main street of Ipswich, on the left-hand side of the way, a short distance after you have pa.s.sed through the open s.p.a.ce fronting the Town Hall, stands an inn known far and wide by the appellation of the 'Great White Horse,' rendered the more conspicuous by a stone statue of some rampacious animal with flowing mane and tail, distantly resembling an insane cart horse, which is elevated above the princ.i.p.al door."

With these identical words d.i.c.kens introduces his readers to, and indicates precisely, the position of the famous Great White Horse Inn at Ipswich, and a visitor to the popular city of Suffolk need have no better guide to the spot than the novelist. He will be a little surprised at the description of the white horse, which in reality is quite an unoffending and respectable animal, in the act of simply lifting its fore leg in a trotting action, that is all; but he will be well repaid if when he arrives there he reads again Chapter XXII of The Pickwick Papers before he starts to make himself acquainted with the intricacies of the interior.

That chapter, telling of the extraordinary adventure Mr. Pickwick experienced with the middle-aged lady in the double-bedded room, is one of the most amusing in the book, and one which has made the "Great White Horse" as familiar a name as any in fiction or reality.