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 passing 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 Essex 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 Dickensian* 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 principal
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.
[illustration: 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.
[illustration: 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 Dickens 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 Devonshire 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 Dickens-land favoured the "Old George the Fourth," adding
that Dickens 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 Essex, 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-proprietorship, 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.
[illustration: 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 Dickens 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
institution at the time, readily occurred to him.
There is an anecdote about Dickens and the coachmen's private
apartment, told by Mr. Charles G. Harper. "On one occasion Dickens
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. Dickens, we knows you knows wot's wot, but can
you, sir, 'andle a vip?' There was no mock modesty in Dickens. 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 circumstances.
"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.