The “George,” after the fine old church--that church in which Tom Pinch played the organ--is the chief ornament of Amesbury, and that it was the inn meant by Dickens when he wrote _Martin Chuzzlewit_ is in the village an article of faith which no visitor dare controvert or dispute in any way on the spot. Like the small boys who do not say “Yah!” and are not courageous enough to make grimaces until safely out of arm’s reach, we only dare dispassionately discuss the _pros_ and _cons_ when out of the place. It were not possible on the spot to object, “Yes, but,” and then proceed to argue the point with the landlord, who confidently shows you old Martin Chuzzlewit’s bedroom and a room with a descent of one step inside, instead of the “two steps on the inside so exquisitely unexpected that strangers, despite the most elaborate cautioning, usually dived in, head first, as into a plunging-bath.” [Illustration: THE “GEORGE,” AMESBURY.] But the truth is, like many another literary landmark, the “Blue Dragon” in _Martin Chuzzlewit_ is a composite picture, combining the features of both the “George” at Amesbury, eight miles to the north of Salisbury, and those of the “Green Dragon” at Alderbury, three miles to the south. Nay, there were not so long ago at Alderbury those who remembered the picture-sign of the “Green Dragon” there, which doubtless Dickens saw in his wanderings around the neighbourhood. “A faded and an ancient dragon he was; and many a wintry storm of rain, snow, sleet, and hail had changed his colour from a gaudy blue to a faint lack-lustre shade of grey. But there he hung; rearing in a state of monstrous imbecility on his hind-legs; waxing with every month that passed so much more dim and shapeless that as you gazed at him on one side of the sign-board it seemed as if he must be gradually melting through it and coming out upon the other.” (Chap. III.) The sign has long since been replaced by the commonplace lettering of the present day, but it was then, in Dickens’s own words, “a certain Dragon who swung and creaked complainingly before the village ale-house door,” a phrase which at once shows us that if by the “Blue Dragon” of the story the “George” at Amesbury was intended to be described, that was a derogatory description of the fine old hostelry. This brings us to the chief point upon which the validity of this claim of the “Green Dragon” at Alderbury must rest. Dickens distinctly alludes to the “Blue Dragon” as a “village ale-house,” and such it is and has ever been; while to the “George” at Amesbury that description cannot even now justly apply, and certainly it could never in coaching times, when in the heyday of its prosperity, have been so fobbed off with such a phrase. Moreover, we will do well to bear in mind that old Chuzzlewit and his companion did not put up at the inn--this “village ale-house”--from choice. The gentleman was “taken ill upon the road,” and had to seek the first house that offered.