The "little, dirty, tumble-down public-house" at the foot of Hungerford Stairs, where the Micawber family were lodged the night before their departure for Australia, was called the Swan. It was there at the time Dickens worked in the factory as a boy, and appears in contemporary pictures of Hungerford Stairs. The Micawbers occupied one of the wooden chambers upstairs, with the tide flowing underneath. We read that Betsey Trotwood and Agnes were there, "busily making some little extra comforts in the way of dress for the children. Peggotty was quietly assisting with the old insensible work-box, yard measure, and bit of wax candle before her that had outlived so much." In that ramshackle old inn was enacted that last wonderful scene with Mr. Micawber, when he insisted on making punch in England for the last time. Having obtained the assurance that Miss Trotwood and Miss Wickfield would join him in the toast, he "immediately descended to the bar, where he appeared to be quite at home; and in due time returned with a steaming jug," and quickly served out the fragrant liquid in tin mugs for his children, and drank from his own particular pint pot himself. There are three other inns calling for brief reference. The Gray's Inn Coffee-House, where David Copperfield stayed on his return from abroad, was first mentioned in _The Old Curiosity Shop_, and is dealt with in our chapter devoted to that book; the Golden Cross at Charing Cross, a prominent feature in Chapter XIX, is commented upon at length in "The Inns and Taverns of Pickwick"; and the coffee-house in Doctors' Commons where Mr. Spenlow conducted David Copperfield to discuss a certain delicate matter (Chapter XXXVIII) demolished in 1894. CHAPTER X BLEAK HOUSE, LITTLE DORRIT, HARD TIMES SOL'S ARMS--THE DEDLOCK ARMS--THE LONDON COFFEE--HOUSE--PEGASUS' ARMS--ETC. There are very few inns of any importance mentioned in _Bleak House_, and only one that plays any prominent part in the story. The one at Barnet, where Esther Summerson hired the carriage to drive to Mr. Jarndyce's house, was no doubt meant to be the Red Lion, and is dealt with in the first chapter of the present volume; while the White Horse Cellar, where she alighted on her entry into London from Reading, claims attention in "The Inns and Taverns of Pickwick." Of the two other taverns, Sol's Arms, where the inquest on Nemo was held, and the Dedlock Arms at Chesney Wold, the former is the chief. The original of Sol's Arms was the old Ship Tavern which once stood at the corner of Chichester Rents off Chancery Lane. It is first referred to in Chapter XI as the place of the coroner's inquest. "The coroner is to sit in the first-floor room at the Sol's Arms, where the Harmonic Meetings take place twice a week, and where the chair is filled by a gentleman of professional celebrity, faced by Little Swills the comic vocalist.... The Sol's Arms does a brisk stroke of business all the morning."