The Old Inns of Old England, Volume 1 (of 2): A Picturesque Account of the Ancient and Storied Hostelries of Our Own CountryHarper, Charles G. (Charles George)
History
The Old Inns of Old England, Volume 1 (of 2): A Picturesque Account of the Ancient and Storied Hostelries of Our Own Country
Harper, Charles G. (Charles George)
England -- Social life and customs; Hotels -- England
The “Bull and Mouth” inn, casually mentioned in Chapter X., was the great
coaching inn that stood in St. Martin’s-le-Grand, on the site of the
Post Office building adjoining the church of St. Botolph. In 1830 it was
rebuilt and re-named the “Queen’s Hotel,” and so remained until 1887. The
enormous plaster sign of the “Bull and Mouth,” that was placed over the
entrance to the stables in the by-street of that name, and kept its place
there when the stables became a railway goods yard, is now in the
Guildhall Museum.
[Illustration: THE “LEATHER BOTTLE,” COBHAM.]
The “Belle Sauvage,” on Ludgate Hill, another fine old galleried inn
whence the coaches for the eastern counties largely set forth, is the
subject of allusion in Chapters X. and XLIII. The house was pulled down
many years ago, but the yard, now very commonplace, remains. It was known
as “Savage’s Inn” so long ago as the reign of Henry the Sixth, and
alternatively as the “Bell in the Hoop.” So early as 1568, when the
property was bequeathed to the Cutler’s Company “for ever,” the “Belle
Sauvage” myth was current; and thus we see that when Addison, in _The
Spectator_, suggested the “beautiful savage” idea, he was but
unconsciously reviving an ancient legend or witticism. One other variant,
that ingeniously refers the sign of the inn to one Isabella Savage, a
former landlady, seems to have created her for the purpose.
The “Marquis o’ Granby” at Dorking, kept by the “widder” who became the
second Mrs. Weller, has been identified by some with the late “King’s
Head” in that town; while the “Town Arms,” the “Peacock,” and the “White
Hart” at “Eatanswill” (_i.e._ Ipswich) have never been clearly traced.
No difficulty of identification surrounds the “Old Leather Bottle” at
Cobham, to whose rustic roof the love-lorn Tupman fled to hide his
sorrows, in Chapter XI. It is to-day, however, a vastly altered place from
the merely “clean and commodious village ale-house” in which Mr. Pickwick
found his moping, but still hungry, friend, and its “Dickens Room” is a
veritable museum. Additions have been made to the house, and it is now
more or less of a rustic hotel, with the sign of the leather bottle
swinging in the breeze, and beneath it our Mr. Pickwick himself, in the
immortal attitude depicted in the frontispiece to _The Pickwick Papers_,
declaiming, with one arm outstretched, the other tucked away under his
coat-tails.
[Illustration: THE DICKENS ROOM, “LEATHER BOTTLE,” COBHAM.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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