Inns and Taverns of Old London | Page 9

the old inn. Many changes

were to pass over its head during the nearly four centuries which
elapsed ere it was touched once more by the pen of genius, changes
wrought by the havoc of fire and the attritions of the hand of time.
When those years had fled a figure was to be seen in its courtyard to
become better known to and better beloved by countless thousands than
the rebel leader of the fifteenth century. "In the Borough," wrote the
creator of that figure, "there still remain some half dozen old inns,
which have preserved their external features unchanged, and which
have escaped alike the rage for public improvement and the
encroachments of private speculation. Great, rambling, queer old places
they are, with galleries, and passages, and staircases, wide enough and
antiquated enough to furnish materials for a hundred ghost stories.... It
was in the yard of one of these inns--of no less celebrated a one than
the White Hart--that a man was busily employed in brushing the dirt off
a pair of boots, early on the morning succeeding the events narrated in
the last chapter. He was habited in a coarse-striped waistcoat, with
black calico sleeves, and blue glass buttons; drab breeches and leggings.
A bright red handkerchief was wound in a very loose and unstudied
style round his neck, and an old white hat was carelessly thrown on one
side of his head. There were two rows of boots before him, one cleaned
and the other dirty, and at every addition he made to the clean row, he
paused from his work, and contemplated its results with evident
satisfaction."
[Illustration: WHITE HART INN, SOUTHWARK.]
Who does not recognize Sam Weller, making his first appearance in
"The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club"? And who has not
revelled in the lively scene in the White Hart when Mr. Pickwick and
his friends arrived in the nick of time to prevent the ancient but still
sentimental Rachael from becoming Mrs. Jingle? It is not difficult to
understand why that particular instalment of "Pickwick" was the
turning-point of the book's fortunes. Prior to the advent of Sam in the
courtyard of the White Hart the public had shown but a moderate
interest in the new venture of "Boz," but from that event onward the
sales of the succeeding parts were ever on the increase. Sam and the
White Hart, then, had much to do with the career of Dickens, for if
"Pickwick" had failed it is more than probable that he would have
abandoned literature as a profession.

When Dickens wrote, the White Hart was still in existence. It is so no
longer. Till late in the last century this hostelry was spared the fate
which had overtaken so many Southwark taverns, even though, in place
of the nobles it had sheltered, its customers had become hop-merchants,
farmers, and others of lower degree. In 1889, in the month of July, four
hundred and thirty-nine years after it had received Jack Cade under its
roof, the last timbers of the old inn were levelled to the ground.

CHAPTER II
.
INNS AND TAVERNS EAST OF ST. PAUL'S.
Boswell relates how, in one of his numerous communicative moods, he
informed Dr. Johnson of the existence of a club at "the Boar's Head in
Eastcheap, the very tavern where Falstaff and his joyous companions
met; the members of which all assume Shakespeare's characters. One is
Falstaff, another Prince Henry, another Bardolph, and so on." If the
assiduous little Scotsman entertained the idea of joining the club, a
matter on which he does not throw any light, Johnson's rejoinder was
sufficient to deter him from doing so. "Don't be of it, Sir. Now that you
have a name you must be careful to avoid many things not bad in
themselves, but which will lessen your character."
Whether Johnson's remark was prompted by an intimate knowledge of
the type of person frequenting the Boar's Head in his day cannot be
decided, but there are ample grounds for thinking that the patrons of
that inn were generally of a somewhat boisterous kind. That, perhaps, is
partly Shakespeare's fault. Prior to his making it the scene of the mad
revelry of Prince Hal and his none too choice companions, the history
of the Boar's Head, so far as we know it, was sedately respectable. One
of the earliest references to its existence is in a lease dated 1537, some
sixty years before the first part of Henry IV was entered in the
Stationers' Register. Some half century later, that is in 1588, the inn
was kept by one Thomas Wright, whose son came into a "good
inheritance," was made clerk of the King's Stable, and a knight, and
was "a very discreet and honest gentleman."
But Shakespeare's