Dickensian Inns & TavernsMatz, B. W. (Bertram Waldrom)
History
Dickensian Inns & Taverns
Matz, B. W. (Bertram Waldrom)
Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 -- Settings; Taverns (Inns) -- England
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."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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