BARNABY RUDGE (_continued_) AND THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP
THE BOOT--THE BLACK LION--THE CROOKED BILLET--THE RED LION, BEVIS
MARKS--GRAY'S INN COFFEE-HOUSE--AND OTHERS
There are very few instances in Dickens's descriptions of London that were
not the outcome of his own actual observations. But in writing _Barnaby
Rudge_, the action of which took place thirty years or so before he was
born, he was forced to rely a good deal on tradition and history books.
Yet, so particular was he about facts and details, it would be very
difficult to find him tripping even in his geography.
In regard to the inns and taverns of the book, we find, as we have shown,
how intimately he knew the Maypole, and we believe it to be true, although
in a lesser degree, in regard to the Boot, the headquarters of the Gordon
Rioters, which, next to the Maypole, is the most notable inn in the book.
Having lived in the neighbourhood where for over a century and a half this
old inn or its predecessors stood, he no doubt visited it and absorbed the
atmosphere of its past.
It is first mentioned in Chapter XXXVIII, where we are told that, after
being enrolled as "No Popery" men, Dennis and Hugh left Gashford's house
together and spent two hours in inspecting the Houses of Parliament and
their purlieus. "As they were thirsty by this time, Dennis proposed that
they should repair together to the Boot, where there was good company and
strong liquor. Hugh yielding a ready assent, they bent their steps that
way with no loss of time."
The Boot, we are told, was "a lone house of public entertainment, situated
in the fields at the back of the Foundling Hospital; a very solitary spot
at that period, and quite deserted after dark. The tavern stood at some
distance from any high road, and was approached only by a dark and narrow
lane; so that Hugh was much surprised to find several people drinking
there, and great merriment going on."
[Illustration: The Old Boot Inn. 1780.
_From an old Engraving_]
Here it was that Sim Tappertit, as chief or captain of the United
Bulldogs, swaggered about with majestic air, among his fellow
conspirators, creating a great impression by his dignity and assumed
demeanour of importance, whilst plots and acts of menace were hatched out.
In those days the fields were known as Lamb Conduit Fields, which district
has become now a very thickly populated neighbourhood between Euston Road
and Gray's Inn Road, with the name still perpetuated in Lambs Conduit
Street. There is a Boot Tavern still standing to-day at 116 Cromer Street,
and there is no reason to doubt that it is the successor of the Boot
mentioned in _Barnaby Rudge_ as the headquarters of the Gordon Rioters,
which actually stood at that spot in 1780. Situated as it was then, the
solitary surroundings became a refuge at night for rioters in lanes, under
the hay-stacks, or near the warmth of brick-kilns, when they were not in
the tavern planning desperate deeds in the name of the Protestant
Association of England, sanctioned by Lord George Gordon. The present Boot
was rebuilt in 1801 by Peter Speedy, and five generations of the family
have owned it for something like 150 years. Even as far back as 1630 we
learn that a Thomas Cleave invested £50 in the Boot Tavern, the interest
on which was to be spent weekly on thirteen penny loaves, to be
distributed to the poor at the door of St. Pancras' Church every Sunday
morning.
Among the original illustrations to the book is one of the Boot engraved
from a drawing by George Cattermole, who made it from a contemporary
etching, which we reproduce here. In comparing it with Cattermole's
picture it will be observed that it differs very slightly in detail, but
is turned the other way round. This, no doubt, is accounted for by the
fact that the drawing was made on wood and when engraved and printed the
picture became reversed. The stream running in front of the inn is the
Fleet, which still flows underground.
A correspondent in _The Times_ on the 25th October, 1895, writing on the
subject said that Dickens confirmed to him with his own lips in the Boot
itself about the year 1867 "that this was the identical inn he had in his
mind's eye when he conceived _Barnaby Rudge_."
Unhappily the frontage has been aggressively modernised. Luckily the
present landlord, Mr. Harry Ford, has retained the sign of "Ye Olde Boote"
and is proud of the tavern's traditions.
The three or four other inns of the book do not figure so realistically in
it as do the Maypole and the Boot. The half-way house between Chigwell
and London referred to in Chapter II, although unnamed, was no doubt the
Green Man at Leytonstone, still standing near the present-day railway
station.
The Black Lion in Whitechapel, where Joe Willet took his frugal dinner
after having settled his father's bills with the vintner in Thames Street,
and where on another occasion, having determined to enlist in the Army, he
met the recruiting sergeant, may have existed in those days, but that
cannot be determined definitely. There certainly was a Black Lion Yard
there, and maybe, at one time, an inn of that name stood close by,
exhibiting the sign, which, we are told, was painted by the artist under
instructions from the landlord "to convey into the features of the lordly
brute whose effigy it bore as near a counterpart of his own face as his
skill could compass." The result was "rather a drowsy, tame and feeble
lion; and as these social representatives of a savage class are usually of
a conventional character (being depicted, for the most part, in impossible
attitudes, and of unearthly colour) he was frequently supposed by the most
ignorant and uninformed among the neighbours to be the veritable portrait
of the host as he appeared on the occasion of some great funeral ceremony
or public mourning."
This inn was the scene too of the meeting of Dolly Varden and Joe when the
valiant soldier returned from the defence of the "Salwanners" minus an
arm; and of the interview of the youthful couple when they came to that
very pleasant understanding, after an enjoyable supper.
The Crooked Billet, the headquarters of the recruiting sergeant, where
Joe, "disconsolate and downhearted, but full of courage," was enrolled
"among the gallant defenders of his native land," was in Tower Street, so
we are told; and we read that, having taken the King's shilling, he was
"regaled with a steaming supper of boiled tripe and onions, prepared, as
his friend assured him more than once, at the express command of his Most
Sacred Majesty the King." After he had done ample justice to it he was
"conducted to a straw mattress in a loft over the stable, and locked in
there for the night."
Until 1912 there actually was an old weather-beaten public-house with that
name at No. 1 Little Tower Hill, at the corner of Shorter Street. It was a
very fine specimen of eighteenth-century architecture, although the
frontage was not as old as the rest of the structure. As it would have
been standing at the period of the story, no doubt this was the house
Dickens had in mind. It was demolished, with other buildings, to conform
to the necessity of city improvements.
The noted coffee-house in Covent Garden to which Mr. Chester repaired
after leaving the locksmith's might be any one of the many that flourished
in that district at the time, such as "Tom's," "White's," "Wills's," and
"Button's." "Tom's" was perhaps the most fashionable, and for that reason
more likely to be favoured by Mr. Chester, as he would be only too proud
to think he would be numbered among such folk as Dr. Johnson, Sir Joshua
Reynolds, Garrick, Defoe, and all those famous men who resorted to it in
its palmiest days. It was situated at No. 17 Russell Street.
Turning to _The Old Curiosity Shop_, we can find but few inns or taverns
that have any real importance to the story. Of those that are mentioned by
name, no detailed description is given, nor is any very vital incident or
character associated with them.
In Chapter XXI, however, where Quilp invites Dick Swiveller to partake of
liquid refreshment with him, we get the real Dickens touch: "As we are
companions in adversity," he said, "shall we be companions in the surest
way of forgetting it? If you had no particular business, now, to lead you
in another direction, there is a house by the waterside where they have
some of the noblest Schiedam--reputed to be smuggled, but that's between
ourselves--that can be got in all the world. The landlord knows me.
There's a little summer-house overlooking the river where we might take a
glass of this delicious liquor with a whiff of the best tobacco ... and be
perfectly happy, could we possibly contrive it; or is there any particular
engagement that peremptorily takes you another way, Mr. Swiveller, eh?"
There remained nothing more to be done but to set out for the house in
question. The summer-house of which Mr. Quilp had spoken was "a rugged
wooden box, rotten and bare to see, which overhung the river's mud and
threatened to slide down into it. The tavern to which it belonged was a
crazy building, sapped and undermined by the rats, and only upheld by the
bars of wood which were reared against its walls, and had propped it up so
long that even they were decaying and yielding with their load, and of a
windy night might be heard to creak and crack as if the whole fabric were
about to come toppling down. The house stood--if anything so old and
feeble could be said to stand--on a piece of waste ground, blighted
with the unwholesome smoke of factory chimneys.... Its internal
accommodation amply fulfilled the promise of the outside. The rooms were
low and damp, the clammy walls were pierced with chinks and holes, the
rotten floors had sunk from their level, the very beams started from their
place and warned the timid stranger from their neighbourhood."
[Illustration: THE RED LION, BEVIS MARKS
_Drawn by G. M. Brimelow_]
Dickens gives no name to this tavern so minutely and wonderfully
described, where Quilp and Dick drank with so much freedom. Yet, although
it cannot be identified, the word-picture is too good to pass unheeded.
However, many years ago there were scores of such which would answer to
the description, on the Surrey side of the Thames, and no doubt Dickens
hit upon one of them for Quilp's favourite resort near by his wharf. They
have long since disappeared.
No sign is mentioned either of Dick Swiveller's favourite inn "across the
street," from Sampson Brass's office in Bevis Marks, where he obtained his
"modest quencher." There is, however, at No. 17, the Red Lion Tavern that
claims that honour and acquaints the world of the fact from its
sign-board. It is quite an old-fashioned public-house, and has scarcely
been altered since it numbered so bright and merry a soul as Dick among
its frequenters.
There is, however, one tavern mentioned in the story that leaves us in no
doubt about its identification. It will be remembered how annoyed, indeed
how desperate, Sampson Brass gets with the Single Gentleman for
encouraging the Punch and Judy shows to the house. "I wish I only knew who
his friends were," muttered Sampson, as another appeared in Bevis Marks.
"If they'd just get up a pretty little commission _de lunatico_ at the
Gray's Inn Coffee-House and give me the job, I'd be content to have the
lodgings empty for awhile, at all events."
The building which was once known as Gray's Inn Coffee-House stands
to-day, although its front has been stuccoed and turned into chambers. It
is the next house on the east from the Holborn gate of Gray's Inn. It is
referred to at length in Chapter LIX of _David Copperfield_, when David,
reaching London, plans to call on Traddles in his chambers in the Inn. He
puts up at Gray's Inn Coffee-House. Having ordered a bit of fish and a
steak he stood before the fire musing on the waiter's obscurity:
"As I followed the chief waiter with my eyes, I could not help thinking
that the garden in which he had gradually blown to be the flower he was
was an arduous place to rise in. It had such a prescriptive,
stiff-necked, long-established, solemn, elderly air. I glanced about the
room, which had had its sanded floor sanded, no doubt, in exactly the same
manner when the chief waiter was a boy, if he ever was a boy, which
appeared to be improbable; and at the shining tables, where I saw myself
reflected, in unruffled depths of old mahogany; and at the lamps, without
a flaw in their trimmings or cleaning; and at the comfortable green
curtains, with their pure brass rods, snugly enclosing the boxes; and at
the two large coal fires, brightly burning; and at the rows of decanters,
burly as if with the consciousness of pipes of expensive old port wine
below; and both England and the law appeared to me to be very difficult
indeed to be taken by storm. I went up to my bedroom to change my wet
clothes; and the vast extent of that old wainscoted apartment (which was
over the archway leading to the inn, I remember) and the sedate immensity
of the four-post bedstead, and the indomitable gravity of the chests of
drawers, all seemed to unite in sternly frowning on the fortunes of
Traddles, or on any such daring youth. I came down again to my dinner; and
even the slow comfort of the meal, and the orderly silence of the place,
were eloquent on the audacity of Traddles, and his small hopes of a
livelihood for twenty years to come."
We wonder if the staid men who conduct their business in those rooms
to-day are conscious that they occupy one of London's historic old
coffee-taverns and a noted Dickens landmark to wit.
The Jolly Sandboys Inn, mentioned at the beginning of Chapter XVIII of
_The Old Curiosity Shop_, is doubtless a purely imaginary one. It was "a
small road-side inn of pretty ancient date, with a sign representing three
sandboys increasing their jollity with as many jugs of ale and bags of
gold, creaking and swinging on its post on the opposite side of the road."
But, as we have no definite information as to the identical spot Codlin
and Short had reached at that moment, no attempt can be made to identify
it.
The same remarks apply to the Valiant Soldier, the public-house where Nell
and her grandfather took shelter from the storm, in Chapter XXIX, and
where the old man gambled away Nell's last coin in a game of cards.