Our Mutual Friend

THE SIX JOLLY FELLOWSHIP-PORTERS—THE THREE MAGPIES—THE SHIP, GREENWICH—THE WHITE LION—THE ANGLERS’ INN—THE EXCHEQUER COFFEE-HOUSE

The outstanding tavern in Our Mutual Friend is that with the pleasant-sounding name of The Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters, the favoured resort of Rogue Riderhood, Gaffer Hexam, and their boon companions, which is so closely associated with the unravelling of the mystery of John Harmon. It exists to-day as the Grapes, and continues to be the favoured resort of river watermen whose business keeps or brings them to the picturesque Reach.

When Dickens was engaged on his book, it is said that he wrote some chapters in a house adjoining the Grapes, overlooking the river. The Dropsical Tavern, as he calls it, was then known as the Bunch of Grapes, which, by a process of clipping, became first the Grapes Inn, and then finally the Grapes, by which it is known at the present time. Its front entrance is at 76 Narrow Street, Limehouse, and occupies little more space (as noted by the novelist) than to allow for its front door. Although the front of the building has been modernised, it still remains as narrow and tall as when Dickens likened it to “a handle of a flat iron set upright on its broadest end.” The inn has been very little altered in other respects since he so minutely described it. Certainly, an ordinary public-house bar has cut off a portion of the original bar, and, if in those days “the available space in it was not much larger than a hackney-coach,” its area is even smaller to-day, but yet quite comfortable enough to “soften the human breast.”

It is in describing this bar that Dickens gives the clue to the identification of the tavern. “No one,” he says, “could have wished the bar bigger, that space was so girt in by corpulent little casks, and by cordial bottles radiant with fictitious grapes in bunches, and by lemons in nets, and by biscuits in baskets, and by polite beer-pulls that made low bows when customers were served with beer ... and by the landlady’s own small table in a snugger corner near the fire....” Many of these alluring etceteras have given place to others, perhaps less enticing, and among those that have gone are the cordial bottles with the “grapes in bunches” on them. We have learned, however, from the present genial hostess, Mrs. Higgins, that at one time, not only did the cordial bottles bear the engraved sign of a bunch of grapes, but certain of the windows also were so embellished, and it was only a few years ago, when the front was altered, that these disappeared.

It is not, however, necessary merely to rely on this piece of identification to assure us that the Grapes Inn was the original of the Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters, for a visit to it with Chapter VI of Our Mutual Friend for a guidance leaves no doubt in the mind. Therein we read that “the Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters, already mentioned as a tavern of a dropsical appearance, had long settled down into a state of hale infirmity. In its whole constitution it had not a straight floor, and hardly a straight line; but it had outlasted, and clearly would yet outlast, many a better-trimmed building, many a sprucer public-house. Externally, it was a narrow, lopsided wooden jumble of corpulent windows heaped one upon another as you might heap as many toppling oranges, with a crazy wooden verandah impending over the water; indeed, the whole house, inclusive of the complaining flag-staff on the roof, impended over the water, but seemed to have got into the condition of a faint-hearted diver who has paused so long on the brink that he will never go in at all.”

That is how Dickens describes the river frontage of the Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters, and his words apply just as accurately to the Grapes Inn. As one stands on the crazy wooden verandah, which is reached from the foreshore by steep wooden steps, one can call to mind the scene in the book describing Gaffer Hexam landing the “found drowned,” and then, by turning into the “tap and parlour” behind, “which gave on to the river, and had red curtains to match the noses of the regular customers,” one finds oneself in the room where the inquest on John Harmon was held, with Gaffer Hexam as witness before the coroner’s jury, Mr. Mortimer Light wood as “eminent solicitor,” and Mr. Inspector watching the proceedings on behalf of the Home Office. The room is not used for such purposes to-day, but is put to the more pleasant one of social intercourse between workers on the great waterway during and after their labours, who, if you are so disposed, will welcome you there, and discourse on the mystery of tides and ships. If you accept them as fellow-creatures you may be invited to a game of darts, meanwhile regaling yourself with the modern substitutes for “those delectable drinks” known in the days when Miss Abbey Potterson reigned supreme on her throne as sole proprietor and manager of the Fellowship-Porters, as Purl, Flip, and Dog’s Nose. These watermen reach this haven, if the tide is out, by means of the wooden steps; when the tide is high and the house is “all but afloat,” the small row-boats are brought into use and the occupants approach the inn like veritable gondoliers and moor their craft outside whilst they refresh themselves within.

THE GRAPES INN, LIMEHOUSE
Photograph by T. W. Tyrrell

Beyond this room is the small one which served as Miss Abbey Potterson’s haven. “This haven,” Dickens says, “was divided from the rough world by a glass partition and a half-door with a leaden sill upon it for the convenience of resting your liquor; but over this half-door the bar’s snugness so gushed forth that, albeit customers drank there standing, in a dark and draughty passage where they were shouldered by other customers passing in and out, they always appeared to drink under an enchanting delusion that they were in the bar itself.”The glass partition and the half-door, over which Gaffer Hexam is seen leaning in Marcus Stone’s picture in the book, is still there, but is not now used for the same purpose. It is the private entrance to the back of the modern public bar.

What Dickens said of the antiquity of the Fellowship-Porters is true of the Grapes Inn. “The wood forming the chimney-pieces, beams, partitions, floors, and doors of the Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters seemed in its old age fraught with confused memories of its youth. In many places it had become gnarled and riven, according to the manner of old trees; knots started out of it, and here and there it seemed to twist itself into some likeness of boughs. In this state of second childhood, it had an air of being in its own way garrulous about its early life. Not without reason was it often asserted by the regular frequenters of the Porters that, when the light shone full upon the grain of certain panels, and particularly upon an old corner cupboard of walnut wood in the bar, you might trace little forests there, and tiny trees like the parent tree in full umbrageous leaf.” Unfortunately, most of these oak panels and beams are now hidden from view by varnished match-boarding, but some of the panels and some of the beams remain exposed to confirm Dickens’s fanciful picture.

Miss Abbey Potterson, the mistress of this establishment, was “a tall, upright, well-favoured woman, though severe of countenance, and had more the air of a schoolmistress than mistress of the Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters.” Here she ruled supreme, and at the closing time she ordered one after the other to leave with such admonitions as “George Jones, your time is up! I told your wife you should be punctual,” and so all wished Miss Abbey good night and Miss Abbey wished good night to all. She knew how to manage the rough class of river-men who frequented her house, and was the more respected for it. “Being known on her own authority as Miss Abbey Potterson,” Dickens tells us, “some waterside heads, which (like the water) were none of the clearest, harboured muddled motions that, because of her dignity and firmness, she was named after, or in some sort related to, the Abbey at Westminster. But Abbey was only short for Abigail, by which name Miss Potterson had been christened at Limehouse Church some sixty years and odd before.”

Without recording all the references in the book to the Fellowship-Porters, we note that, towards the end of it, John and Bella paid an official visit to the police station and visited afterwards the Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters with Mr. Inspector for purposes of identification. During this visit, Mr. Inspector gives this very good character to the inn, “a better-kept house is not known to our men. What do I say? Half so well a kept house is not known to our men. Show the Force the Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters, and the Force—to a constable—will show you a piece of perfection.” This, no doubt, was Dickens’s own opinion, too.

The Grapes to-day serves the same purpose as did the Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters in the story, and is of as good repute. It is the house of call of the watermen from the river in the day-time and from the road after work is done, and it seems to be conducted by the present hostess much as it was by Miss Abbey Potterson, not so rigidly perhaps, but with the same good-natured friendliness which is reflected in the attitude and behaviour of all the frequenters. There does not even seem the necessity for a Bob Glibbery; at any rate, we have not met his successor on the occasions of our visits there. Nor does his room down “towards the bed of the river,” where he was ordered to proceed to his supper, exist at the present time. That must have been somewhere contiguous to the secret smuggling arches which ran under the building from the river, now filled in.

LIMEHOUSE REACH
Drawn by L. WalkerThe Grapes Inn is a place to visit. If one can choose a fine summer’s evening to sit under “the corpulent windows” on the “crazy wooden verandah” and watch the busy river with its myriads of craft floating by, one can enjoy the view and atmosphere much as did Whistler, Napier Hemy, and Dickens himself.

In J. Ashby Sterry’s “A River Rhymer,” is a set of verses entitled “Down Limehouse Way,” two of which may be appropriately quoted here:

Close by I mind an inn you’ll find,
Where you will not refuse
To rest a bit, as there you sit,
And gaze on river views—
’Tis very old—with windows bold,
That bulges o’er the tide;
Whence you can spy ships passing by
Or watch the waters glide!
You can sit in the red-curtained bay
And think, while you’re puffing a clay,
’Tis no indecorum
To drink sangarorum—
While musing down Lime’us way!

You’ll find this spot—now does it not
Recall and keep alive
The varied crew Charles Dickens drew
In eighteen sixty-five?
Here Hexam plied his trade and died,
And Riderhood conspired;
While things they’d pop at Pleasant’s shop,
When cash might be required!
Here under Miss Abbey’s firm sway,
Who made all her clients obey,
Was ruled with discretion
And rare self-possession
The “Porters” down Lime’us way!

The name of the Fellowship-Porters which Dickens adopted for the sign of Miss Abbey Potterson’s public-house was that of one of the old City Guilds. For over 800 years the City of London successfully claimed and exercised the sole right to unload grain vessels arriving in the Thames, and realised enormous revenues from the privilege. In 1155, the Guild or Brotherhood of Fellowship-Porters was incorporated and a charter was granted. It was reincorporated in 1613, and appointed by the City to carry or store corn, salt, coals, fish, and fruit of all kinds.

The Fellowship-Porters at one time numbered 3,000 members, and the Guild had the power granted by act of Council in 1646 to choose twelve rulers, the Lord Mayor and Aldermen reserving the right to appoint one of the number. The company had a hall of its own which stood near to the Waterman’s Hall in St. Mary’s Hill, Billingsgate, but had no livery or arms, and ranked the nineteenth in the order of procedure. Membership carried with it the freedom of the City by payment of £2 18s. 6d., and five guineas to Fellowship Hall—these fees being demanded before they could work as dock labourers. When Millwall Docks were built, the City challenged the docks on the matter of their privilege, and the case went to the Law Courts. It was then discovered that the Charter could not be produced, it having been destroyed by the Great Fire of London, so it was supposed. This blow ruined the Guild, and some thirty years ago the organization was wound up, the then present members being deprived of work, pensions, and everything else their Charter entitled them to as Freemen of the City.

Another notable tavern in Our Mutual Friend is the Ship, at Greenwich, where two memorable little dinners were given. The first was the occasion when, Bella Wilfer having been presented with a purse and a fifty-pound bank-note by Mr. Boffin, took her dear old father, the cherub, to Greenwich by boat on a secret expedition, as she called it, and entertained him to dinner there.First calling for her father at his City office, where the messenger described her to her father as “a slap-up gal in a bang-up chariot,” she handed him the purse with instructions, not to be disregarded, to “go to the nearest place where they keep everything of the very very best, ready made; you buy and put on the most beautiful suit of clothes, the most beautiful hat, and the most beautiful pair of bright boots (patent leather, Pa, mind!) that are to be got for money; and you come back to me.” After half an hour he came back “so brilliantly transformed that Bella was obliged to walk round him in ecstatic admiration twenty times before she could draw her arm through his and delightfully squeeze it.”

She then ordered him to “take this lovely woman out to dinner.” The question came, “Where shall we go, my dear?” “Greenwich!” said Bella valiantly. “And be sure you treat this lovely woman with everything of the best.” And off they went in quest of the boat to take them down the river, and eventually arrived at the Ship Tavern. The little expedition down the river to reach it, we are told, “was delightful, and the little room overlooking the river into which they were shown for dinner was delightful. Everything was delightful. The park was delightful, the lunch was delightful, the dishes of fish were delightful, the wine was delightful. Bella was more delightful than any other item in the festival.” And, as they sat together looking at the ships and steamboats making their way to the sea with the tide that was running down, “the lovely woman imagined all sorts of voyages for herself and Pa.” So enchanted did Pa become that he was as willing “to put his head into the Sultan’s tub of water as the beggar-boys below the window were to put theirs in the mud”; and so the happy moments flew by and the time came to ring the bell, and pay the waiter, and return to London.

Later on in the same identical room in the same identical tavern overlooking the Thames, the same delightful couple, with John Rokesmith, partook of another delightful dinner. Earlier in the day Bella Wilfer had become Mrs. John Rokesmith and celebrated the event with breakfast at Bella’s cottage at Blackheath, and with a dinner at the Ship Tavern later, Bella’s father being the only other guest.

“What a dinner! Specimens of all the fishes that swim in the sea surely had swum their way to it, and, if samples of the fishes of divers colours that made a speech in the ‘Arabian Nights,’ and then jumped out of the frying pan, were not to be recognised, it was only because they had all become of one hue by being cooked in the batter among the whitebait. And the dishes being seasoned with Bliss—an article which they are sometimes out of at Greenwich—were of perfect flavour, and the golden drinks had been bottled in the golden age and hoarding up their sparkles ever since.”

The whole function was a sheer delight, a crowning success; but the full appreciation of its charm cannot be indicated by short quotations; it must be read in detail to be thoroughly enjoyed. The scene inspired J. Ashby Sterry to again drop into poetry:

A wedding banquet here must dwell
Within one’s brightest recollection;
Where Bella, John and Pa, as well,
Made merry o’er the choice refection!
The sparkling wine, the happy pair,
With all their aged affection;
The bland “Archbishop’s” tender care,
And Rumpty Wilfer’s smart oration!—
A scene where fun and pathos blend,
With all the heart and truth that lend
A charm unto “Our Mutual Friend!”

Alas! the tavern in which these happy hours were spent is a thing of the past, but its prosperous and palmy days are recorded in Time’s annals.

THE SHIP HOTEL, GREENWICH
Drawn by L. WalkerIn the days when Greenwich was famous for its whitebait dinners, the town was noted for its hotels overlooking the waterside. The chief of these was the Ship, whilst another notable one was the Trafalgar, hard by, patronised by members of the Cabinet of the day, who led the fashion in these functions; it being “the correct thing” then, when a little special festivity was forward, to resort to one of these inns at Greenwich for the purpose, it is not surprising to learn that on several occasions Dickens and his literary and artistic coterie followed the custom by arranging social gatherings in celebration of some event connected with one of the company either at the Ship or the Trafalgar. As early as 1837 we find him suggesting Greenwich for a friendly meeting-place.

But there were two very noteworthy occasions associated with Dickens when Greenwich was selected for jovial and pleasant parties of close friends. The first of these took place on the novelist’s return from America in 1842, when a few of his kindred spirits adopted this method for welcoming him back to England. Among the company were Talfourd, Tom Hood, Monckton Milnes, B. W. Procter, D. Maclise, R.A., Clarkson Stanfield, R.A., Captain Marryat, “Ingoldsby” Barham, George Cruikshank, and John Forster. “I wish you had been at Greenwich the other day,” he wrote to Felton, “where a party of friends gave me a private dinner; public ones I have refused. C—— was perfectly wild at the reunion, and, after singing all manner of marine songs, wound up the entertainment by coming home (six miles) in a little open phaeton of mine, on his head, to the mingled delight and indignation of the metropolitan police. We were very jovial, indeed.”

On the other occasion Dickens was the instigator of the feast. This was in 1843, when, on the retirement of John Black from the editorial chair of the old Chronicle, the novelist arranged a dinner in honour of his old friend at Greenwich, on the 20th of May. Dickens ordered all things to perfection and the dinner succeeded in its purpose, as in other ways, quite wonderfully, Forster tells us. Among the entertainers were Sheil and Thackeray, Fonblanque and Charles Buller, Southwood Smith and William Johnson Fox, Macready and Maclise, as well as Forster and Dickens.These dinners took place at the Ship or the Trafalgar, both well known to the novelist, as was Greenwich generally, for he frequently refers to the ancient town and its customs in his writings.

The Ship Tavern was originally built with a weather-board front, overlooking the river. But, about the middle of the last century, the newer and much handsomer structure as seen in our illustration, was erected upon the site of the original one, and its pretty garden was the scene of many gay parties, whilst its rooms often rang with merriment from the festive diners. After the waning of the fashion for whitebait banquets, it long maintained its popularity with visitors to the Thames historic town.

Our Mutual Friend is essentially a story of the Thames, and certainly the inns and taverns of the book are either on the water’s edge or in close proximity to it. The two already dealt with are below London Bridge, in the midst of the busy traffic of trade, whilst the remainder are situated in its more picturesque district where pleasure is sought.

It will be recalled that, when Mrs. Boffin and the secretary set out in search of the charming orphan recommended by the Rev. Frank Milvey, they hired a phaeton and made their way to the abode of Mrs. Betty Higden in whose care was the child. They discovered that old lady in complicated back settlements of “Muddy Brentford,” and, having left their equipage at the sign of the Three Magpies, continued their quest on foot. A second visit to Brentford is recorded later in the book, on which occasion a carriage was ordered, for Bella and Sloppy were also of the party. “So to the Three Magpies as before; where Mrs. Boffin and Miss Bella were handed out, and whence they all went on foot to Mrs. Betty Higden’s.”

No other allusion to the inn is made than the bare mention of the name; but the original inn to which Dickens alludes undoubtedly is the Three Pigeons, that ancient hostelry at Brentford whose history is associated with Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and their contemporaries, many of whom referred to it in their plays and essays. In Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer, it will be remembered, Tony Lumpkin sings a song in praise of it, whilst two scenes of the comedy take place in the inn.

Lowen, a leading actor in Shakespeare’s company, we are told, kept the inn at the time, and Shakespeare personally instructed him in Henry VIII. It was a well-known coaching inn then, and at one time its stables occupied several acres.

In 1905 it was partially reconstructed, and in 1916 it was closed under order of the licensing justices of Middlesex.

THE RED LION HOTEL, HAMPTON
Drawn by C. G. Harper

In the chapter describing the flight of Betty Higden we are told that her pilgrimage took her through Chertsey, Walton, Kingston, and Staines, and so on to her journey’s end. One day she was sitting in a market-place on a bench outside an inn. Here she became nervous of those who questioned her, and determined to move on. As she left the spot she had looked over her shoulder before turning out of the town, and had seen the “sign of the White Lion hanging across the road, and the fluttering market booths and the old grey church, and the little crowd gazing after her, but not attempting to follow her.”

Although the name of this town is not mentioned, there is no doubt that the description is of Hampton, and that the inn is the Red Lion, whose picturesque sign still spans the street, with the view of the “old grey church” behind it.

The scenes of the fourth book bring us to the district of Henley, although the name is never mentioned and the locks and inns are given fictitious names. But it has not been difficult to locate the spots from the novelist’s accurate descriptions. The only inn which plays an important part in the unravelling of the story in this neighbourhood is given the name of the Anglers’ Inn. All authorities identify this as the Red Lion, Henley. It was here that Eugene Wrayburn found accommodation when in pursuit of Lizzie Hexam. The inn is on the west bank of the river and north of the bridge, and, being a favourite resort of anglers, the name Dickens gives it is appropriate enough. It was to this inn that Lizzie Hexam brought the apparently lifeless body of Eugene Wrayburn after her brave rescue of it from the water, following the murderous attack on him by Bradley Headstone.

“She rowed hard—rowed desperately, but never wildly—and seldom removed her eyes from him in the bottom of the boat.... The boat touched the edge of the patch of inn lawn sloping gently to the water. There were lights in the windows, but there chanced to be no one out of doors. She made the boat fast, and again by main strength took him up, and never laid him down until she laid him down in the house.”

This patch of green lawn sloping gently to the river coincides with that of the Red Lion, Henley. It was also in this inn, some weeks later, that Lizzie and Eugene were married. It was still uncertain if he would recover, and, in conformity with his wish, the ceremony was performed round his bed, the Rev. Frank Milvey officiating, Bella and her husband, Mortimer Lightwood, Mrs. Milvey and Jenny Wren being in attendance.

The Red Lion is a famous old coaching-inn, as well as a fishing and boating one of renown. It is not only very old but large. Standing by the bridge in prominent fashion it appeals to the eye at once:

’Tis a finely toned, picturesque, sunshiny, place,
Recalling a dozen old stories;
With a rare British, good-natured, ruddy-hued face,
Suggesting old wines and old Tories.

to quote once more from Ashby Sterry’s rhymes.

It was on a window in this old inn that Shenstone the poet scratched with a diamond about 1750 that celebrated stanza of his:

Who’er has travelled life’s dull round,
Where’er his stages may have been,
May sigh to think how oft he found
The warmest welcome at an inn;

—at least, so tradition has it. But Mr. Charles G. Harper thinks it doubtful, and feels that the Henley referred to by historians must have been Henley-in-Arden.

There is one inn mentioned in the book which has not, that we are aware of, been identified. It is the Exchequer Coffee-House, Palace Yard, Westminster, the address given by Mr. Julius Handford to Mr. Inspector on the occasion when he viewed the body of the drowned man (Bk. 1, Chapter III).