Dombey and Son

THE BEDFORD, BRIGHTON—THE ROYAL, LEAMINGTON—LONG’S HOTEL, BOND STREET—AND OTHERS

Although a good deal of Dombey and Son is enacted at Brighton, only one of its famous hotels plays any prominent part in the story, and that is the Bedford. It is first mentioned during a conversation between Major Bagstock and Mr. Dombey, when the former asks “Are you remaining here, Mr. Dombey?” “I generally come down once a week, Major,” returned that gentleman; “I stay at the Bedford.” “I shall have the honour of calling at the Bedford, sir, if you’ll permit me,” said the Major, and in fulfilment of his promise he did so.

On another occasion, “Mr. Dombey, bringing down Miss Tox and Mrs. Chick to see the children, and finding the Major again at Brighton, invited him to dinner at the Bedford, and complimented Miss Tox highly beforehand on her neighbour and acquaintance.” The Major was considered to possess an inexhaustible fund of conversation, and showed as great an appetite in that respect “as in regard of the various dainties on the table, among which he may be said to have wallowed.” After dinner, they had a long rubber of whist, before they took a late farewell of the Major, who retired to his own hotel, which, by the way, is not mentioned.

On the following day, when Mr. Dombey, Mrs. Chick and Miss Tox were sitting at breakfast, Florence came running in to announce in great excitement the unexpected arrival of Walter and Captain Cuttle, who had come to ask the favour of a loan of three hundred pounds or so of Mr. Dombey to liquidate the financial embarrassment of their old friend Sol Gills. It will be recalled how Captain Cuttle offered as security his silver watch, the ready money he possessed, his silver teaspoons, and sugar-tongs; and “piling them up into a heap that they might look as precious as possible” delivered himself of these words:

“Half a loaf’s better than no bread, and the same remark holds good with crumbs. There’s a few. Annuity of one hundred pound prannum also ready to be made over.” The simple and transparent honesty of Captain Cuttle succeeded in the task he set himself, Mr. Dombey arranging the little matter for him.

The Bedford can rightly claim the honour of having been the house where this memorable scene in the story of Captain Cuttle took place. In those days it was a prominent and fashionable hotel, and remains so to-day.

Dickens frequently stayed at Brighton and very often at the Bedford, where he wrote a good deal of The Haunted Man and portions of other stories.

The Princess’s Arms, spoken of as being “much resorted to by splendid footmen,” which was in Princess’s Place, where Miss Tox inhabited a dark little house, cannot be identified. Indeed, search for Princess’s Place in old directories of Brighton has entirely failed, and it must be assumed that no such place ever existed there.

At the time Dickens was writing Dombey and Son in 1846, the Royal Hotel at Leamington, where Mr. Dombey stayed with Major Bagstock, and where Edith Granger, who became his second wife, visited him with her mother on one occasion, did not exist, having been demolished about 1841-2 to make way for railway improvements. But he knew the hotel in its palmy and aristocratic days, for in 1838 he and his artist friend, Phiz, made a bachelor excursion in the autumn of that year into the Midlands by coach, their first halt being Leamington, and the hotel they put up at there was Copp’s Royal Hotel, which stood at the corner of Clemens Street and High Street. In writing to his wife of his arrival there, he said: “We found a roaring fire, an elegant dinner, a snug room, and capital beds all ready for us at Leamington, after a very agreeable (but very cold) ride.” From here they visited Kenilworth, Warwick, and Stratford, and the outcome of the jaunts is reflected in the story.

THE BEDFORD HOTEL, BRIGHTON
From an old Engraving

THE ROYAL HOTEL, LEAMINGTON
From a contemporary lithograph

Some writers, in referring to the incidents in Dombey and Son associated with the Royal Hotel, have either assumed that it is still there, or, having discovered that there is no hotel with that name in the town, have given the Regent the credit of being the original of Mr. Dombey’s Royal Hotel. Neither is correct. The Royal Hotel of Dombey and Son was the Royal Hotel of Dickens’s visit to Leamington in 1838, and his descriptions of it in the book must have been made from memory, for in 1846, when he was writing of it in the novel, the hotel had already been demolished.

Leamington always boasted one peculiarity which it claimed did not belong to any other watering-place: the “truly select nature and high rank of respectability of the greater part of its frequenters.” For the reception of such notables several really first-class hotels were provided.

The Regent was the most fashionable for a period, owing to the fact that it was the resort of Royalty; but Copp’s Royal Hotel was a keen rival, and when in 1828 it was “re-erected on a scale of magnificence almost unprecedented, displaying a grand front, cased in Roman cement to imitate stone ... in the style of Grecian architecture,” it even outshone the Regent.

The building was rusticated to the height of the first story and a balcony on a level with the second floor ran the whole extent of the hotel. Its appearance is fully described in an old and very rare guide-book, and so minutely described that it is worth quoting:

“The wings, which are both slightly projected, are embellished with four fluted pilasters of the Corinthian order, which, springing from the level of the second floor and terminating at the top of the third, support a rich entablature extending the whole length of the building. Each wing is surmounted by four ornamental vases, and, at the extreme height of the centre, beneath the ornamental scroll, is a tablet containing the name of the hotel. The principal entrance is in the centre, beneath a portico projecting ten feet from the building, supported by duplicated pillars of the Doric order, fluted and surmounted by the Royal Arms, richly carved in stone. The interior of this building for chasteness of design, richness of material, and correctness of execution is, we believe, equal to any in the Kingdom. The entrance hall ... is lighted by a beautiful window of coloured glass, in the centre of which, on a fawn-coloured mosaic ground, are the Royal Arms, richly emblazoned, surrounded by an ornamental gold scroll on a purple ground containing medallions representing the principal views in the vicinity. The sideboards are supported and adorned by appropriate Grecian ornaments. On the right of the public dining-room, upwards of fifty feet by twenty-four feet, the ceiling is supported by pillars and pilasters of Doric order. A geometrical staircase of twenty-one steps conducts you to the public drawing-room, of the same noble dimensions as the dining-room; on the same floor are a number of private sitting-rooms, papered with rich French paper, of vivid colouring, representing subjects classical, mythological, etc. The bedrooms are fitted up with every attention to comfort and convenience.... Detached are extensive lock-up coach houses, stabling, etc.”

This meticulous description of it does not suggest that the Royal Hotel was one which would have appealed very much to Dickens, but it was the ideal spot for Major Bagstock and Mr. Dombey, and so we find that eight years later the novelist makes use of his knowledge of it, and it becomes the headquarters of his two characters during their visit to the fashionable watering-place, whilst its rooms furnish the background for a series of scenes to be found in the pages of Dombey and Son.

It will be recalled that Major Bagstock persuaded Mr. Dombey that he wanted a change, and suggested that he should accompany him to Leamington. Mr. Dombey consented, became the Major’s guest and the two travelled down by train, making the Royal Hotel their headquarters, “where the rooms and dinner had been ordered,” and where the Major at their first meal “so oppressed his organs of speech by eating and drinking that when he retired to bed he had no voice at all, except to cough with, and could only make himself intelligible to the dark servant by gasping at him. He not only rose next morning, however, like a giant refreshed, but conducted himself, at breakfast, like a giant refreshing.”

At this meal they arranged their daily habits. The Major was to take the responsibility of ordering everything to eat and drink; and they were to have late breakfast together every morning, and a late dinner together every day. They occupied, no doubt, a suite of the private rooms referred to above, for there is no reference to the large dining-room, nor would it have suited the personal and special requirements of the two men and the friends they brought there.

It will be remembered that, whilst these two friends were taking a constitutional, they encountered the Major’s acquaintances, Mrs. Skewton and her daughter Edith, and Dombey was formally introduced. On taking their departure from the fair enchantress, the Major volunteered the fact that he was “staying at the Royal Hotel with his friend Dombey,” and invited the ladies to join them “one evening when you are good,” as he put it to Mrs. Skewton.

Having met once or twice in the pump-room and elsewhere, and the men having called upon the ladies, the latter were invited to breakfast at the Royal Hotel, prior to a drive to Kenilworth and Warwick. In the meantime, Carker had arrived to transact some business with his master, and in the evening the three men dined together. At a fitting moment the wine was consecrated “to a divinity whom Joe is proud to know, and at a distance humbly and reverently to admire. Edith,” went on the Major, “is her name; angelic Edith!” “Angelic Edith,” cried the smiling Carker, “Edith, by all means,” said Mr. Dombey. And thus, in a private dining-room of the Royal Hotel was pledged the toast of Dombey’s future wife—the second Mrs. Dombey.

The breakfast was punctually prepared next morning, and Dombey, Bagstock and Carker excitedly awaited the ladies’ arrival. A pleasant time ensued and ultimately all set out on the little trip which proved so momentous a one for Mr. Dombey. For had he not made an appointment with Edith for the next day, “for a purpose,” as he told Mrs. Skewton? At any rate, the three men returned to the Royal Hotel in good spirits, the Major being in such high glee that he cried out, “Damme, sir, old Joe has a mind to propose an alteration in the name of the hotel, and that it should be called the Three Jolly Bachelors in honour of ourselves and Carker.”

After keeping his appointment with Edith, and having been accepted, Mr. Dombey and the Major left Leamington, and the Royal Hotel has no further place in the story.

When Mr. Toots, having come into a portion of his worldly wealth and furnished his choice set of apartments, determined to apply himself to the science of life, he engaged the Game Chicken to instruct him in “the cultivation of those gentle arts which refine and humanise existence.” The Game Chicken, we are informed, was always to be heard of at the bar of the Black Badger. Towards the end of the book, when Toots and the Chicken part company, the latter seems to have chosen another house of call. “I’m afore the public, I’m to be heard on at the bar of the Little Helephant....” Whether these two taverns existed, or where, history does not relate.

Cousin Feenix, on his arrival from abroad expressly to attend Mr. Dombey’s wedding, stayed at Long’s Hotel in Bond Street. No incident of any great moment takes place within its walls, except that Lord Feenix slept and was shaved there.

Long’s Hotel does not now exist, but was a fashionable and well-known house in those days when Lord Feenix was a man about town. It stood at the junction of Clifford Street and Bond Street, and was a square-standing corner building.

It was frequented by the leading lights of the aristocracy and of the literary world in its flourishing days, and it is recorded that Byron lived there for a time. That he and Sir Walter Scott dined there together on one occasion is an outstanding fact of its history.

From Cousin Feenix’s fashionable hotel we turn to a very different kind of house in the King’s Arms, Balls Pond way, where Mr. Perch seemed to be a well-known figure. Mr. Perch had an air of feverish lassitude about him that seemed referable to drams, “and which, in fact, might no doubt have been traced to those numerous discoveries of himself in the bars of public-houses.” The King’s Arms was one of these, in whose parlour he met the man “with milintary frogs,” who took “a little obserwation” which he let drop about Carker and Mrs. Dombey, and worked it up in print “in a most surprising manner” in the Sunday paper, a journalistic method that apparently is not an invention of modern times.