THE OLD TAVERNS.
Old inns in London may perhaps owe their repute to the share they have
in the scenery of Pickwick and Nickleby. The London inns and inn-yards,
still used as houses of entertainment, are among the last few survivals
which link us to the antique customs of old London. These are now being
swept away with a pitiless rapidity, and in a dozen years more not one
will be left. The enormous, sheltering, tiled roofs, the galleries,
balustrades, crannies, winding stairs, joined to make these singular
structures picturesque, with their lights and shadows, suggestive of the
buildings in an old Normandy town. The strange part is that these
hostelries seem to do business up to the moment of their extinction; and
even when that occurs, the traffic is transferred to a parasite
public-house bearing the same name. In most cases, however, the
tradition of its being a halt or starting place for carriers and country
waggons is maintained, as the great railway companies have seized on
many to serve as their goods depots. Hence we find the Bricklayers’ Arms
and such places, from under whose archways now rumble forth the Pickford
vans, instead of the favourite “Mouldy’s Iron Devil,” the six or
eight-horse waggon of our grandsires. The old inns were frail and
precarious structures; and it is a marvel that they should have survived
so long, the vast expanse of tiled roof being warped and bent in eddying
waves, while the crazy stairs and galleries of ancient wood were rotten
with age. Many of the Dickens inns were in the City, notably the one in
which Mr. Squeers put up when he used to repair to London to collect
victims for his school. Mr. Squeers’s house, with many other curious
places, was swept away when Snow Hill was abolished, and the Holborn
Viaduct carried through to Newgate Street.
Two picturesque specimens--the “Old Tabard,” in the Borough, and the
“Warwick Arms,” close to Paternoster Row, would have found admirers in
Nuremberg or Rouen. The latter was a remarkable specimen from its size
and elaborateness, with its huge roof, rambling galleries and crannies,
cavernous dark shadows, and general air of mystery. The tiled roofs of
these buildings seemed to grow bent and warped from age and weakness,
and fall into those wavings and twists which form an element of the
picturesque. The wood of the balustrades grew black and grimed; it was
strange that what appeared so crazy should have held together so long.
The “Tabard,” though it did not date from Chaucer’s day, as many
innocently fancied, was a genuine structure of the seventeenth century.
The wonder, in truth, is that any of these fragile structures should
still be in existence. Perhaps the most remarkable and most interesting
of the old inn-yards was that of the “Four Swans,” which stood till some
eight or ten years ago in Bishopsgate Street. This was considered the
most perfect and best preserved of all, having more galleries, and
having been the scene of a stirring adventure during the Roundhead and
Cavalier wars. Its neighbour, the “Green Dragon,” was levelled about the
same time. What a pleasing twang, it may be said, is there about the
titles of these hostelries, which contrast with the more prosaic
designations of latter-day life!
Of these old inns, with their yards and galleries, there are but two or
three in which the business of entertainment is still carried on. There
is the old “Bell Inn,” a grimed, caked, red-brick, ancient building,
with its sign of the Bell, a china shop in front, and an archway
according to the old pattern. Entering, there is the true old-world
flavour--the galleries, the tumble-down stairs fashioned of
wood-panelling with projecting eaves, the files of bells outside, the
kitchen to the left as in a foreign hotel, strange little rickety
stairsteps as from the cabin of a ship, with also the occasional
appearance of a figure in one of the galleries. The inn life here, from
these arrangements, is certain to correspond--every one is, as it were,
in evidence. You can hardly dream of the noisy Holborn just outside. It
is very different in the regular hostelries, where everything is at the
top of the house or at the bottom, not, as here, all round about it.
London has many of these quaint surprises to those who wish to see them.
Here is to be seen the low arch, under which the coaches and waggons
drove into the inn-yard, with its galleries running round, from which
chambermaids looked down or called to those below. Even now it seems a
strange order of things and a quaint arrangement, and you wonder how
business is carried on at such places.
It is, however, when we cross London Bridge and enter the Borough that
we come to the region of inn-yards. Here began the road to Canterbury,
and here, in the old times, the waggons and coaches arrived with their
goods and passengers; and we are at once struck with the innumerable
yards and small inclosures into which these vehicles used to drive.
There were a large number of these inns, most of which remain in some
shape, surviving at least as public-houses. There were the old “King’s
Head,” the old “White Hart,” the new “White Hart,” the “Old George,” the
“Queen’s Head,” the “Nag’s Head,” and the “Spur.” Few only of the old
pattern remain, and their days, or hours in one case, are certainly
numbered. The first is the old “King’s Head,” of which a fragment--some
thirty or forty yards long--still stands all ruinous and forlorn, with
its two ancient galleries or balustrades in a sadly tottering state, its
anatomy exposed in a heartless fashion at each end. One could be
sentimental and mournful over it. It is surrounded by new spick and span
brickwork, and a new “King’s Head” insolently confronts it and seems to
flourish.
[Illustration: THE WHITE HART.]
“In the Borough,” says the author of “Pickwick,” “there still remain
some half-a-dozen old inns which have preserved their external features
unchanged. Great, rambling, queer old places they are, with galleries
and passages and staircases, wide enough and antiquated enough to
furnish materials for a hundred ghost stories. It was in the yard of one
of these inns--of no less celebrated a one than the ‘White Hart,’ that a
man was employed in brushing the dirt off a pair of boots:” the
introduction as the world knows, of Mr. Pickwick to the immortal Samuel
Weller. The yard is then described: “It 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 a second-floor window of an ordinary
house, were stowed away beneath a lofting which extended over one end of
the yard; and another, which was to commence its journey in the morning,
was drawn out into an 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.”
The guests, it would appear, slept in rooms giving on the galleries all
round; for, we are told, “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 balustrade” to Sam. Presently the “bustling
landlady of the ‘White Hart’ made her appearance in the opposite
gallery, and after a little vituperation, flung a pair of lady’s shoes
into the yard and bustled away.”
It is curious to think that this scene was a description of what was
going on about fifty years ago, and was kept up for many years after
“Pickwick” was written. The picture of that morning--the chambermaid
coming out of the room in the gallery, the landlady throwing the boots
down to Sam--still rises before us as we turn into the yard. Two sides
of the inclosure now remain, but it shows how imposing an establishment
must have been the house that in Dickens’s time would be called “the
_celebrated_ ‘White Hart Inn.’” The huge tiled roof is there, and the
double tiers of galleries, with the doors of the guests’ chambers. But a
wooden shed has been built round the lower portion, close to where Sam
stood and was questioned by Mr. Perker and Mr. Wardle. Clothes-lines
hang across the galleries, and a few years ago squalid women could be
seen looking down and surveying the intruders, just as the chambermaid
and landlady looked down upon Mr. Weller. A waggon lies up in ordinary
in the corner, as it did in Dickens’s day. The whole is black, grimed,
rusty, and decayed, and fills the mind with a sort of melancholy, as
things “fallen from their high estate” do. By the right rises a flight
of stairs leading to the gallery, close to which is a quaint, short
balcony. Such is the old “White Hart,” or all that is left of it, which,
however, still accommodates a certain number of tenants. On the other
side is the newer “White Hart,” with its long row of glass windows,
seeming a comfortable place enough.[17]
Our next halt is at the “George,” which has really a bright and
[Illustration: THE GEORGE INN, BOROUGH.]
bustling air of business. It is a not unpicturesque courtyard from its
very irregularity, the old wooden galleries being alternated with
buildings of a different pattern, some projecting forward. The galleries
are gay with paint and plenty of flowers; and altogether one might seem
able to take one’s ease in one’s inn here very fairly. Even more
picturesque is the “Queen’s Head,” a little lower down, a very effective
gathering of irregular buildings. It has its two galleries on the left,
but another portion has been boarded in for greater room and comfort. A
tall archway in the centre block offers a De Hooghe-like glimpse of
another court beyond, while a bow-windowed bar-parlour has been built
out in front, and suggests a Captain Cuttle flavour. Here, too, is the
heavy tiled roof, over which rises a little peaked cupola, not without
effect. One hardly hears the hum of the Borough without. Who “puts up”
at these places? What sort of “entertainment for man or beast” is there?
How long do the guests stay? These are questions of high mystery. The
people who dwell here must have ways of their own, and be influenced by
the dispensations under which they abide. This conversing from aloft,
with occasional pausing to look down and see what is going on, lends a
sort of vitality to what would otherwise be a sleepy and antiquated kind
of existence. To this old arrangement, as is well known, it is that we
owe the form of our theatres. The old inn-yard being a favourite place
of entertainment, the guests would gather in the galleries to look over;
the floor suggested the later pit; while the stage was set up, facing
the archway, at the far end.
In Covent Garden, under Inigo Jones’s _loggia_, are found some old inns
of a thoroughly Pickwickian sort, with the bars and snuggeries which are
fitting background for a gathering of Dickens’s men and women. These are
“The Tavistock” and “The Bedford,” in high favour with country
bachelors. They must be as old almost as the colonnade itself; while the
“Bedford Coffee House” has quite a history of its own, resplendent with
the names of Churchill, Hogarth, the steak-ordering Duke of Norfolk, and
many a son of fame besides. Still flourishes also the “Hummums,” where
Parson Ford saw the ghost, as described by Dr. Johnson; but it has been
rebuilt.
On the top of Hampstead Heath, and situated in a most picturesque spot,
is “Jack Straw’s Castle,” a little inn which has a reputation of its
own. ’Tis said to be the highest point in the quarter, and though so
close to town, has an antique and truly rustic air. The pleasant
Hampstead mornings, with the keen air of those northern heights, the
glimpses of cheerful old red-brick houses, the vicinity of Church Row,
one of the most effective “bits” of old brick architecture in the
country, the delightful undulations of the Heath, all make “Jack Straw’s
Castle” a most acceptable hostelry, though John Sadleir was found hard
by, with his silver poison cup lying some yards away. Readers of
Forster’s “Life of Dickens” will recall the many rides of the novelist,
accompanied by his “trusty” friend, to this inn, and the pleasant
_tête-à-tête_ dinners that followed. Indeed, a pleasant volume might be
made on “The History of Old Inns, and Those who Frequented Them.” One of
the most famous is of course the “Red Lion” at Henley, where Johnson and
Boswell stayed--Johnson, indeed, had a particular predilection for
taverns. He was one of their most ardent votaries; he remains their most
eloquent apologist. In the inn at Chapel-house, after “triumphing over
the French for not having in any perfection the tavern life,” he went on
to enlarge upon them in a discourse which has become historical. “There
is no private house,” he declared, “in which people can enjoy
themselves so well as at a capital tavern. Let there be ever so great
plenty of good things, ever so much grandeur, ever so much elegance,
ever so much desire that every body should be easy; in the nature of
things it cannot be: there must always be some degree of care and
anxiety. The master of the house is anxious to entertain his guests; the
guests are anxious to be agreeable to him; and no man, but a very
impudent dog indeed, can as freely command what is in another man’s
house as if it were his own. Whereas, at a tavern there is a general
freedom from anxiety. You are sure you are welcome; and the more noise
you make, the more trouble you give, the more good things you call for,
the welcomer you are. No servants will attend you with the alacrity
which waiters do, who are incited by the prospect of an immediate reward
in proportion as they please. No, Sir; there is nothing which has yet
been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced, as by a
good tavern or inn.” Thus did he discourse to Boswell; while to Hawkins
he asserted that a tavern chair is the throne of human felicity.