The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick": With Some Observations on Their Other AssociationsMatz, B. W. (Bertram Waldrom)
History
The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick": With Some Observations on Their Other Associations
Matz, B. W. (Bertram Waldrom)
Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870. Pickwick papers; Taverns (Inns) -- England
The "Bush" was, in its time, the chief coaching inn of the city, and
one of the headquarters of Moses Pickwick's coaching business. It
stood until 1864, near the Guildhall, and its site is now occupied
by Lloyd's Bank. This was another inn that Dickens stayed at in
1835 whilst reporting for The Morning Chronicle. Writing from that
address he says he expects to forward the conclusion of Russell's
dinner "by Cooper's company coach, leaving the 'Bush' at half-past
six next morning; and by the first Bell's coach on Thursday he will
forward the report of the Bath dinner, endorsing the parcel for
immediate delivery with extra rewards for the porter."
CHAPTER XIV
THE "FOX UNDER THE HILL," OTHER LONDON TAVERNS,
AND THE "SPANIARDS," HAMPSTEAD
On his return from Bath, Mr. Pickwick was immediately arrested
and conveyed to the Fleet Prison. In the course of the chapters
following this event there are several inns or taverns either
mentioned incidentally, or figure more or less prominently, such
as the new public-house opposite the Fleet, the "Fox Under the
Hill," Sarjeants' Inn Coffee House, the public-house, opposite
the Insolvent Debtors' Court, the Horn Coffee House in the Doctors'
Commons and the "Spaniards," Hampstead Heath. Of these the "Fox
Under the Hill," casually referred to by Mr. Roker as the spot
where Tom Martin "whopped the coach-heaver," was situated on
the Thames water-side in the Adelphi, at the bottom of Ivy Lane.
The incident he related was no doubt a recollection of Dickens's
early days in the blacking factory at Hungerford Stairs, for
the public-house was known to him, as the following sentence in
his biography shows--"One of his favourite realities was a little
public-house by the water-side called the 'Fox Under the Hill,'
approached by an underground passage which we once missed on looking
for it together"; and he had a vision which he has mentioned in
Copperfield of sitting eating something on a bench outside, one fine
evening, and looking at some coal-heavers dancing before the house.
The public-house, nevertheless, was there when Dickens and his
biographer were seeking it, for it was not demolished until the
Victoria Embankment was built many years later.
Robert Allbut states that the "Fox Under the Hill" was the tavern
where Martin Chuzzlewit, junior, was accommodated when he arrived
in London, and where he was visited by Mark Tapley.
[illustration: The "Fox Under the Hill"]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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