Chapter X. takes us back to London, and there brings on to the crowded

stage of _Pickwick_, for the first time, Sam Weller, engaged as “Boots” of the “White Hart” in the Borough, in going over the foot-gear of the guests.

This is how Dickens described the yard of the “White Hart.” It is a little clean-cut cameo of description, vividly portraying the features of those old galleried inns that are now no more: “The yard presented none of that bustle and activity which are the usual characteristics of a large coach inn. Three or four lumbering waggons, 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 leading to the bar and coffee-room. Two or three gigs or chaise-carts were wheeled up under different little sheds and pent-houses, and the occasional heavy tread of a cart-horse, or rattling of a chain at the further end of the yard, announced to anyone 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, woolpacks, and other articles that were scattered about on heaps of straw, we have described as fully as need be the general appearance of the ‘White Hart’ inn, High Street, Borough.”

This one of the many picturesque old galleried inns of that street was demolished in 1865.

Sam is busily engaged, at moment of his introduction, cleaning eleven pairs of boots belonging to the sleepers in the galleried bedrooms above.

“A loud ringing of one of the bells was followed by the appearance of a smart chambermaid in the upper sleeping gallery, who, after tapping at one of the doors and receiving a request from within, called over the balustrades:

“‘Sam.’

“‘Hallo!’

“‘Number Twenty-two wants his boots.’

“‘Ask Number Twenty-two whether he’ll have ’em now, or wait till he gets ’em,’” was the reply.

Presently to this waggish person enter Mr. Pickwick, Old Wardle, and Perker, the lawyer. “‘Pretty busy, eh?’” asks the lawyer.

“Oh, werry well, sir; we shan’t be bankrupts, and we shan’t make our fort’ns. We eats our biled mutton without capers, and don’t care about horse-radish wen we can get beef;” which just about figures the middling and declining fortunes of the old Borough inns at that period.

The “Bull and Mouth” inn, casually mentioned in Chapter X., was the great coaching inn that stood in St. Martin’s-le-Grand, on the site of the Post Office building adjoining the church of St. Botolph. In 1830 it was rebuilt and re-named the “Queen’s Hotel,” and so remained until 1887. The enormous plaster sign of the “Bull and Mouth,” that was placed over the entrance to the stables in the by-street of that name, and kept its place there when the stables became a railway goods yard, is now in the Guildhall Museum.

The “Belle Sauvage,” on Ludgate Hill, another fine old galleried inn whence the coaches for the eastern counties largely set forth, is the subject of allusion in Chapters X. and XLIII. The house was pulled down many years ago, but the yard, now very commonplace, remains. It was known as “Savage’s Inn” so long ago as the reign of Henry the Sixth, and alternatively as the “Bell in the Hoop.” So early as 1568, when the property was bequeathed to the Cutler’s Company “for ever,” the “Belle Sauvage” myth was current; and thus we see that when Addison, in _The Spectator_, suggested the “beautiful savage” idea, he was but unconsciously reviving an ancient legend or witticism. One other variant, that ingeniously refers the sign of the inn to one Isabella Savage, a former landlady, seems to have created her for the purpose.

The “Marquis o’ Granby” at Dorking, kept by the “widder” who became the second Mrs. Weller, has been identified by some with the late “King’s Head” in that town; while the “Town Arms,” the “Peacock,” and the “White Hart” at “Eatanswill” (_i.e._ Ipswich) have never been clearly traced.

No difficulty of identification surrounds the “Old Leather Bottle” at Cobham, to whose rustic roof the love-lorn Tupman fled to hide his sorrows, in Chapter XI. It is to-day, however, a vastly altered place from the merely “clean and commodious village ale-house” in which Mr. Pickwick found his moping, but still hungry, friend, and its “Dickens Room” is a veritable museum. Additions have been made to the house, and it is now more or less of a rustic hotel, with the sign of the leather bottle swinging in the breeze, and beneath it our Mr. Pickwick himself, in the immortal attitude depicted in the frontispiece to _The Pickwick Papers_, declaiming, with one arm outstretched, the other tucked away under his coat-tails.

The “inn on Marlborough Downs,” referred to in the Bagman’s Story in