Among those inns that no Dickensian neglects is “Jack Straw’s Castle,” on Hampstead Heath, a house as commonplace and as little like any castle of romance as it is possible to conceive. How else could it be? It was built as a private residence in the beginning of the eighteenth century, and, with various additions and alterations, each one vulgarising the house a step further, it now is little better than a London “public.” The Dickensian association is here a personal one, and somewhat thin at that. It does not form a scene in any one of his stories, but was a house he sometimes affected in his suburban walks. In 1837 we find him writing to that “harbitrary gent,” Forster, inviting him to a winter’s walk across the Heath, and adding, “I knows a good ’ous there where we can have a red-hot chop for dinner and a glass of good wine.” “This,” says Forster, “led to our first experience of ‘Jack Straw’s Castle,’ memorable for many happy meetings in coming years.” How do myths germinate and sprout? Are they invented, or do they spring spontaneously into being? Two myths cling to “Jack Straw’s Castle”: the one that it stands upon the site of a fort thrown up by that peasant leader in the reign of Richard the Second; the other that Dickens not only visited the house, but often stayed there, a chair called “Dickens’s Easy Chair” being shown in what is represented as having been his bedroom. The Great Dickens Legend is now well on its way, and the inns “where he stayed” will at no distant day match the apocryphal “Queen Elizabeth’s Bedrooms” that amaze the historical student with their number. [Illustration: “JACK STRAW’S CASTLE.”] The “Jack Straw” legend is old, although by no means so old as the house. It is probable that the house was built on the site of some ancient earthwork, but that might have been either much older or much later than Jack Straw; and in any case history has nothing to say about the spot. The first reference to the inn by its present name appears to be in the report of a horse-race on the Heath in 1748. In the same year an allusion to it in Richardson’s _Clarissa Harlowe_ speaks merely of “The Castle.” The illustration printed here shows the bow-window of a good many years ago, a somewhat picturesque feature now abolished in favour of an ugly modern front. CHAPTER XII HIGHWAYMEN’S INNS