In the First Branch of "The Holly Tree," in _Christmas Stories_, there are many inns far and wide referred to, and reminiscences associated with each recalled. These reminiscences may be personal to Dickens or merely of an imaginary nature. The Holly Tree Inn itself is real enough, and has been identified as the George, Greta Bridge, referred to in our chapter on _Nicholas Nickleby_. There is no doubt, either, that the inn in the cathedral town where Dickens went to school was the Mitre Inn at Chatham. "It was the inn where friends used to put up," he says, "and where we used to go to see parents, and to have salmon and fowls, and to be tipped. It had an ecclesiastical sign--the Mitre--and a bar that seemed the next best thing to a bishopric, it was so snug. I loved the landlord's daughter to distraction--but let that pass. It was in that inn that I was cried over by my rosy little sister, because I had acquired a black eye in a fight. And though she had been, that Holly Tree night, for many a long year where all tears are dried, the Mitre softened me yet." [Illustration: THE MITRE INN, CHATHAM _From an engraving_] The Mitre Inn and Clarence Hotel still exists at Chatham, very much as it was in Dickens's childhood days when his family lived in Ordnance Terrace. It was kept in those days by a Mr. Tribe, who was a friend of John Dickens, and the two families met there and enjoyed many friendly evenings when Dickens and his sister, as he has told us, mounted on a dining-table for a stage, would sing some old sea-songs together. He had a clear treble voice then, but, recalling these incidents many years afterward, said, "he must have been a horrible little nuisance to many unoffending grown-up people who were called upon to admire him." The Mitre Inn was described in 1838 as being the Manor House, and the first posting-house of the town. It is also on record that, at the close of the eighteenth century, Lord Nelson used to reside there when on duty at Chatham, and that the room he occupied was known as "Nelson's Cabin" till recent times. William the Fourth, when Duke of Clarence, used to stay there, hence the added word of Clarence to the sign. The Salisbury Arms at Hatfield where Mr. and Mrs. Lirriper went upon their wedding-day, "and passed as happy a fortnight as ever happy was," adjoined the little post-office there, and now exists as a private house. Mr. Lirriper's youngest brother also had a sneaking regard for the Salisbury Arms, where he enjoyed himself for the space of a fortnight and left without paying his bill, an omission Mrs. Lirriper rectified in the innocent belief that it was fraternal affection which induced her unprincipled brother-in-law to favour Hatfield with his presence. It is believed that Dickens and Phiz stayed the night of October the 27th, 1838, at the Salisbury Arms, when they made their excursion to the West Country.