The Gourmet's Guide to LondonNewnham-Davis, Lieut.-Col. (Nathaniel)
General
The Gourmet's Guide to London
Newnham-Davis, Lieut.-Col. (Nathaniel)
Restaurants -- England -- London -- Guidebooks
On the staircase walls of the New White Horse Cellars is a little
collection of prints and way-bills, caricatures, etchings, old bills of
Hatchett's Hotel, posters and advertisements from _The Times_ and other
papers of the hours at which the coaches for the west started. In this
curious little gallery of odds and ends are some documents relating
to the old cellar on the other side of the road. But the White Horse
Cellars were under Hatchett's in the great coaching days, from the year
of the battle of Waterloo to 1840. It was from Hatchett's that Jerry,
in Pierce Egan's book, took his departure when going back to Hawthorn
Hall, and said farewell to Tom and Logic, and it was in the travellers'
room of the White Horse Cellars, a title that was used alternatively
with "Hatchett's," that Mr Pickwick and his friends sheltered from the
rain, waiting for the Bath coach.
Hatchett's in Dickens's time was not the comfortable house that I
knew in the eighties, when the revival of stage-coaching was at its
height. Indeed, there could not be a picture of greater discomfort than
Dickens sketched in a few words when he wrote: "The travellers' room
at 'The White Horse Cellar' is, of course, uncomfortable; it would be
no travellers' room if it were not. It is the right-hand parlour, into
which an aspiring kitchen fireplace appears to have walked, accompanied
by a rebellious poker, tongs, and shovel. It is divided into boxes for
the solitary confinement of travellers, and is furnished with a clock,
a looking-glass, and a live waiter, which latter article is kept in
a small kennel for washing glasses, in a corner of the apartment."
Dickens's word picture of the scene at the start of the coach at
half-past seven on a damp, muggy and drizzly day is a fine pen-and-ink
sketch, and Cruikshank, in one of his caricatures, "The Piccadilly
Nuisance," shows very much the scene as Dickens described it, with the
orange-women and the sellers of all kinds of useless trifles on the
kerb; the coaches jostling each other, passengers falling off from
them, and the pavement an absolute hustle of humanity.
Cruikshank's various drawings and caricatures preserve the appearance
of Hatchett's of the old days in the memory better than any word
pictures could do. The bow-windows of the old hotel with many panes
of glass in them; the stiff pillared portico, with on it the name
"Hatchett's," and a little lamp before it, and above it the board with
the inscription, "The New White Horse Cellar. Coaches and waggons to
all parts of the kingdom." Above this board again was a painting of an
old white horse. I fancy that the title of the Cellars, when they were
on the other side of the way, must have been taken from some celebrated
old horse--though Williams, who was the first landlord of the original
cellars, is said to have given them their name as a compliment to the
House of Hanover, and that it was the white horse, not the cellar, that
was old.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account