CHAPTER XI

DICKENSIAN INNS

The knowledge Dickens possessed of inns, old and new, was, as already said, remarkable. His education in this sort began early. From his early years in London, at the blacking factory, when he sampled the “genuine stunning” at the “Red Lion,” Parliament Street, through his experiences as a reporter of election speeches in the provinces, when long coach journeys presented a constant succession of inns and posting-houses, circumstances made him familiar with every variety of house of public entertainment; and afterwards, as novelist, he enlarged upon inns from choice, realising as he did that in those days romance had its chief home at them.

Dickensian inns, as treated of in this chapter, are those houses, other than the inns of _Pickwick_, associated with Dickens personally, or through his novels. It is hardly necessary to add at this day, that either association is assiduously cultivated, and that we have almost come to that dizzy edge of things where, in addition to the inns Dickens is certainly known to have mentioned or visited, those he would have treated of or stayed at, had he known better, will come under review, together with a further paper on the inns he did not immortalise, and why not.

When Dickens first visited Bath, in May, 1835, as a reporter, he stayed, according to tradition, at the humble “Saracen’s Head,” in Broad Street, and there also, according to tradition, he was assigned a humble room in an outhouse down the yard. A dozen times, if we may believe a former landlady’s story, he went with lighted candle across the windy yard to his bedroom; a dozen times, the wind puffed it out, and he never uttered a mild d----! It is a remarkable instance of restraint, likely to remain in the recollection of any landlady.

The “Saracen’s Head” cherishes these more or less authentic recollections, and you are shown, not only the room, but the “very bedstead”--a hoary four-poster--upon which Dickens slept; and if you are very good and reverent, and sufficiently abase yourself before the spirit of the place, you will be allowed to drink out of the very mug he is said to have drunk from and sit in the identical chair he is supposed to have sat in; and accordingly, when Dickensians visit Bath they sit in the chair and drink from the mug to the immortal memory, and do not commonly stop to consider this marvellous thing: that the humble, unknown reporter of 1835 should be identified by the innkeeper of that era with the novelist who only became famous two years later.

Going by the Glasgow Mail to Yorkshire in January, 1838, in company with “Phiz,” Dickens acquired the local colour for _Nicholas Nickleby_. We hear, in that story, how the coach carrying Nicholas, Squeers, and the schoolboys down to Dotheboys Hall, dined at “Eaton Slocomb,” by which Eaton Socon, fifty-five miles from London, on the Great North Road, is indicated. There, in that picturesque village among the flats of Huntingdonshire, still stands the charming little “White Horse” inn, which in those days, with the long-vanished “Cock,” divided the coaching business on that stage.

Grantham does not figure largely in the story, in whose pages the actual coach journey is lightly dismissed. There we find merely a mention of the “George” as “one of the best inns in England”; but in his private correspondence he refers to that house, enthusiastically, as “the very best inn I have ever put up at”: and Dickens, as we well know, was a finished connoisseur of inns.

The “George” at Grantham is typically Georgian: four-square, red-bricked and prim. It replaced a fine mediæval building, burnt down in 1780; but what it lacks in beauty it does, according to the testimony of innumerable travellers, make up for in comfort. At the sign of the “George,” says one, “you had a cleaner cloth, brighter plate, higher-polished glass, and a brisker fire, with more prompt attention and civility, than at most other places.”

From Grantham to Greta Bridge was, in coaching days, one day’s journey. There the traveller of to-day finds a quiet hamlet on the banks of the romantic Greta, but in that era it was a busy spot on the main coaching route, with two large and prosperous inns: the “George” and the “New Inn.” The “New Inn,” where Dickens stayed, is now a farmhouse, “Thorpe Grange” by name; while the “George,” standing by the bold and picturesque bridge, has itself retired from public life, and is now known as “the Square.” Under that name the great, unlovely building is divided up into tenements for three or four different families.

From Greta Bridge Dickens proceeded to Barnard Castle, where he and Phiz stayed, as a centre whence to explore Bowes, that bleak and stony-faced little town where he found “Dotheboys Hall,” and made it and Shaw, the schoolmaster, the centre of his romance. The “Unicorn” inn at Bowes is pointed out as the place where the novelist met Shaw, afterwards drawing the character of “Squeers” from his peculiarities. The rights and the wrongs of the Yorkshire schools, and the indictment of them that Dickens drew, form still a vexed question. Local opinion is by no means altogether amiably disposed towards the memory of Dickens in this matter; and although those schools were gravely mismanaged, we must not lose sight of the fact that this expedition undertaken by Dickens was largely a pilgrimage of passion, in which he looked to find scandals, and did so find them. To what extent, for the sake of his “novel with a purpose,” he dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s of the wrongs he found must ever be a subject for controversy.

The course of _Nicholas Nickleby_ brings us, in Chapter XXII., to the long tramp undertaken by Nicholas and Smike from London to Portsmouth, on “a cold, dry, foggy morning in early spring.” They made Godalming the first night, and “bargained for two humble beds.” The next evening saw them well beyond Petersfield, at a point fifty-eight miles from London, where the humble “Coach and Horses” inn stands by the wayside, and is perhaps the inn referred to by Dickens. The matter is doubtful, because, although the story was written in 1838, when the existing road along the shoulder of the downs at this point had been constructed, with the present “Coach and Horses” beside it, replacing the older inn and the original track that still goes winding obscurely along in the bottom, it is extremely likely that Dickens described the spot from his childish memories of years before, when, as a little boy, he had been brought up the road with the Dickens family, on their removal from Landport. At that time the way was along the hollow, where the “Bottom” inn, or “Gravel Hill” inn, then stood, in receipt of custom. The house stands yet, and is now a gamekeeper’s cottage.

Whichever of the two houses we choose, the identity of the spot is unassailable, because, although in the story it is described as twelve miles from Portsmouth, and is really thirteen, no other inn exists or existed for miles on either side. The bleak and barren scene is admirably drawn: “Onward they kept with steady purpose, and entered at length upon a wide and spacious tract of downs, with every variety of little hill and plain to change their verdant surface. Here, there shot up almost perpendicularly into the sky a height so steep, as to be hardly accessible to any but the sheep and goats that fed upon its sides, and there stood a huge mound of green, sloping and tapering off so delicately, and merging so gently into the level ground, that you could scarce define its limits. Hills swelling above each other, and undulations shapely and uncouth, smooth and rugged, graceful and grotesque, thrown negligently side by side, bounded the view in each direction; while frequently, with unexpected noise, there uprose from the ground a flight of crows, who, cawing and wheeling round the nearest hills, as if uncertain of their course, suddenly poised themselves upon the wing and skimmed down the long vista of some opening valley with the speed of very light itself.

“By degrees the prospect receded more and more on either hand, and as they had been shut out from rich and extensive scenery, so they emerged once again upon the open country. The knowledge that they were drawing near their place of destination gave them fresh courage to proceed; but the way had been difficult and they had loitered on the road, and Smike was tired! Thus twilight had already closed in, when they turned off the path to the door of a road-side inn, yet twelve miles short of Portsmouth.

“‘Twelve miles,’ said Nicholas, leaning with both hands on his stick, and looking doubtfully at Smike.

“‘Twelve long miles,’ repeated the landlord.

“‘Is it a good road?’ inquired Nicholas.

“‘Very bad,’ said the landlord. As, of course, being a landlord, he would say.

“‘I want to get on,’ observed Nicholas, hesitating. ‘I scarcely know what to do.’

“‘Don’t let me influence you,’ rejoined the landlord. ‘I wouldn’t go on if it was me.’”

And so here they stayed the night, much to their advantage.

The “handsome hotel,” “between Park Lane and Bond Street,” referred to in