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.”

The Old Boot Inn. 1780.
From an old EngravingHere 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.”

THE RED LION, BEVIS MARKS
Drawn by G. M. BrimelowDickens 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.