The Dover Road: Annals of an Ancient TurnpikeHarper, Charles G. (Charles George)
History
The Dover Road: Annals of an Ancient Turnpike
Harper, Charles G. (Charles George)
Dover Road (England); England -- Description and travel; England -- Social life and customs
The old inns of Dartford are very numerous. Most of them, unfortunately,
have been cut up into small beer-houses and tenements since the coaches
were run off the road by steam, but one fine old galleried inn, the
"Bull," remains to show what the coaching inns of long ago were like. The
courtyard is now roofed-in with glass, and the little bedrooms behind the
carved balusters of the gallery are largely given up to spiders and
lumber. But, fortunately for those who care to see what an old galleried
inn was like, the changes here have consisted only of additions instead,
as is only too usual, of destruction. There is a curious detail, too,
about the "Bull," and that is the whimsical position of its sign in a
place where ninety out of a hundred people never see it. The "bull in a
china-shop" is proverbial, but a bull among the chimney-pots is something
quite out of the common. It is here, though, that the effigy of a great
black bull may be seen, reared up aloft in a place between the
constellations and the beasts of the field.
[Illustration: THE "BULL" INN, DARTFORD.]
There is one modern incident in connection with the "Bull" at Dartford
which shows how inflamed were the passions of the working class in favour
of George the Fourth's silly and indiscreet wife, and this incident
happened while the monarch was changing horses here. It was a journeyman
currier who showed his sympathy with Queen Caroline, and he did so by
thrusting his head in at the carriage window, and roaring in the face of
startled majesty, "You are a murderer!" which can be taken neither as a
compliment nor a statement of fact--unless, indeed, we agree with that
mathematically inclined cynic who held that a "fact" was a lie and a half.
Pastor Moritz, in his account of a seven weeks' tour in England, tells us
how he passed through Dartford. He was by no means a distinguished person,
but what he has to say of his travels is interesting, as contributing to
show how others see us. He came into England by way of the Thames, May 31,
1782, and landed (he says) just below Dartford--probably at Greenhithe--to
which place he walked in company with some others, and there breakfasted.
He was fresh from the dreary, sandy Mark of Brandenburg, and this fair
county of Kent delighted him hugely. At Dartford he saw, for the first
time, an English soldier. That robust Tommy struck him with admiration,
both for the sake of his red coat and his martial bearing. "Here, too, I
first saw" (says he) "(what I deemed a true English sight) two boys boxing
in the street." The party separated at Dartford, and, taking two
post-chaises at the "Bull," drove to London, the Pastor "stunned," as it
were, by a constant rapid succession of interesting objects, arriving at
Greenwich nearly in a state of stupefaction.
[Sidenote: WAT TYLER]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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