The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" / With Some Observations on Their Other Associations

by B. W. Matz

CHAPTER V

"LA BELLE SAUVAGE" AND THE "MARQUIS OF GRANBY," DORKING

"La Belle Sauvage" has, like many other historic inns, gone into the limbo of past, if not of forgotten, things, leaving nothing but its name denoting a cul-de-sac, to remind the present generation of its one-time fame.

This was the inn where Tony Weller, resplendent in many layers of cloth cape and huge brimmed hat, stopped "wen he drove up" on the box seat of one of the stage coaches of the period. For Tony was, as everybody knows, a coachman typical of the period of the book, and the "Belle Savage" (the spelling of "savage" here follows the fashion of the period referred to) was where he started and ended his journeys in London. But the anecdote related by his son of how he was hoodwinked into taking out a licence to marry Mrs. Clarke contains the chief of the only two actual references to the fact that his head-quarters were the "Belle Savage," as he called it. It is certainly recorded that he started from the "Bull" in Whitechapel when he drove the Pickwickians to Ipswich, but it is the "Belle Savage" that is associated with his name.

"'What's your name, sir?' says the lawyer.

"'Tony Weller,' says my father. 'Parish?' says the lawyer. 'Belle Savage,' says my father; for he stopped there wen he drove up, and he know'd nothing about parishes, he didn't."

Now it seems to us a curious fact that Dickens never made any further use of this famous inn, either in Pickwick or in his other books; indeed, we can only recall one other reference to it, and that when Sam's father rather despondently told him that "a thousand things may have happened by the time you next hears any news of the celebrated Mr. Veller o' the 'Bell Savage:'" It is particularly curious in regard to Pickwick, for the inn was not only close to the Fleet Prison, which figures so prominently in the book, but its outbuildings actually adjoined it. Meagre as is the reference, it is, nevertheless, retained in the memory, and the inn proclaimed a Pickwickian one with as much satisfaction as if it had been the scene of many an incident such as connect others with the book.

Unfortunately there are only one or two landmarks remaining to show that it ever existed. One of these is the archway out of Ludgate Hill, just beyond the hideous bridge which runs across the road, at the side of No. 68, which in Pickwickian days was No. 38. Perhaps the shape of the yard which still bears the inn's name may be considered as a trace of its former glory. This yard is now surrounded by the business premises of Messrs. Cassell and Co., the well-known publishers, which occupy the whole site of the old building.

We can find no earlier reference to the inn than that in the reign of Henry VI, when a certain John French in a deed (1453) made over to his mother for her life "all that tenement or inn, with its appurtenances, called Savage's Inn, otherwise called 'le Bell on the Hope' in the parish of Fleet Street, London." Prior to that it may be surmised that it belonged to a citizen of the name of Savage, probably the "William Savage of Fleet Street in the Parish of St. Bridget," upon whom, it is recorded in 1380, an attempt was made "to obtain by means of forged letter, twenty shillings."

It would be clear from this that its sign was the "Bell and Hoop," before it became the property of the Savage family, from whom there can be no doubt it got its name of "La Belle Savage." According to Stow, Mrs. Isabella Savage gave the inn to the Cutlers' Company, but this would seem to be incorrect, for more recent research has proved definitely that it was a John Craythorne who did so in 1568. The crest of the Cutlers' Company is the Elephant and Castle, and a stone bas-relief of it, which once stood over the gateway of the inn under the sign of the Bell, is still to be seen on the east wall of La Belle Savage Yard to-day. It was placed there some fifty years ago when the old inn was demolished.

[illustration: La Belle Sauvage Inn, Ludgate Hill. From a drawing by T. Hosmer Shepherd]

Years before Craythorne presented the inn to the Cutlers' Company, however, it was known as "La Belle Sauvage," for we are told that Sir Thomas Wyatt, the warrior poet, in 1554 made his last stand with his Kentish men against the troops of Mary just in front of the ancient inn, "La Belle Sauvage." He was attempting to capture Ludgate and was driven back with some thousands of rebel followers to Temple Bar, where he surrendered himself to Sir Maurice Berkeley, and so sealed his own fate and that of poor Lady Jane Grey.

Again, in 1584, the inn was described as "Ye Belle Sauvage," and there have been many speculations as to the origin of the name, and some doubt as to the correct spelling.

In 1648 and 1672 exhibitions of landlords' tokens of various inns were held, whereat were shown two belonging to "La Belle Sauvage," the sign of one being that of an Indian woman holding a bow and arrow, and the other, of Queen Anne's time, that of a savage standing by a bell, and it has been conjectured that this latter sign may have suggested the name. But as the inn was known as "Ye Belle Savage" some sixty years previously this is hardly likely. Another conjecture as to its origin was made by Addison in The Spectator, who, having read an old French romance which gives an account of a beautiful woman called in French "La Belle Sauvage" and translated into English as "Bell Savage," considered the name was derived from that source. Alderman Sir W. P. Treloar, in his excellent little book on "Ludgate Hill," puts forth another idea. "As the inn," he says, "was the mansion of the Savage family, and near to Bailey or Ballium, it is at least conceivable that it would come to be known as the Bail or Bailey Savage Inn, and afterward the Old Bail or Bailey Inn." We prefer, however, to favour the Isabella Savage theory as the likely one.

Long before Elizabeth's time and long after-wards the inn was a very famous one. In the days before Shakespeare the actors gave performances of their plays in the old inn yard, using the courtyards as the pit in theatres is used to-day, and the upper and lower galleries for what are now the boxes and galleries of modern theatres. In 1556, the old inns, such as the "Cross Keys," the "Bull" and "Belle Sauvage" were used extensively for this purpose, the latter, we are told, almost ranking as a permanent theatre. We find Collier also stating that the "Belle Sauvage" was a favourite place for these performances.

Originally the old inn consisted of two courts, an inner and outer one. The present archway from Ludgate Hill led into the latter, which at one time contained private houses. A distinguished resident in one of these (No. 11) was Grinling Gibbons. According to Horace Walpole, Gibbons carved an exquisite pot of flowers in wood, which stood on his window-sill there, and shook surprisingly with the motion of the coaches that passed beneath. The inn proper, surrounded by its picturesque galleries, stood in a corner of the inner court, entered by a second archway about half-way up the yard.

Part of the inn abutted on to the back of Fleet Prison, and Mr. Tearle in his Rambles with an American, bearing this fact in mind, ingeniously suggests that the conception of the idea for smuggling Mr. Pickwick from the prison by means of a piano without works may have been conceived in Mr. Weller's brain while resting in the "Belle Sauvage" and contemplating the prison wall.

In 1828, the period of The Pickwick Papers, J. Pollard painted a picture of the Cambridge coach ("The Star") leaving the inn. A portion of this picture showing the coach and the north side of Ludgate Hill, was published as a lithograph by Thomas McLean of the Haymarket. It gives the details of the inn entrance and the coach on a large scale. The inn at the time was owned by Robert Nelson. He was a son of Mrs. Ann Nelson, the popular proprietor of the "Bull," Whitechapel. Besides the coaches for the eastern counties, those also for other parts of the country started from its precincts, for such names as Bath, Bristol, Exeter, Plymouth, Oxford, Gloucester, Coventry, Carlisle, Manchester were announced on the signboard at the side of the archway.

In spite of the fact that Dickens only once refers to the inn, its name and fame, nevertheless, will always be associated with him and with Tony Weller, who was so familiar with it and so attached to it, as to name it as the parish he resided in.

[illustration: The Cambridge Coach leaving Belle Sauvage yard. From a lithograph]

The relating of the story of how Tony Weller was driven into his second marriage, which reveals "La Belle Sauvage" as his headquarters, also first brings into prominence the "Markis o' Granby," Dorking, as the residence of Mrs. Susan Clarke, and incidentally the scene of more than one amusing incident after she became Mrs. Weller, senior. "The 'Marquis of Granby' in Mrs. Weller's time," we are informed, "was quite a model of a roadside public-house of the better class—just large enough to be convenient, and small enough to be snug."

In the chapter describing how Sam displayed his high sense of duty as a son, by paying a visit to his "mother-in-law," as he called her, and how he discovered Mr. Stiggins indulging in "hot pine-apple rum and water," we get a little pen-picture of the inn.

"On the opposite side of the road was a signboard on a high post representing the head and shoulders of a gentleman with an apoplectic countenance, in a red coat with deep blue facings, and a touch of the same over his three-cornered hat, for a sky . . . an undoubted likeness of the Marquis of Granby of glorious memory. The bar window displayed a choice collection of geranium plants, and a well-dusted row of spirit phials. The open shutters bore a variety of golden inscriptions, eulogistic of good beds and neat wines; and the choice group of countrymen and hostlers lounging about the stable door and horse-trough afforded presumptive proof of the excellent quality of the ale and spirits which were sold within."

Phiz's picture, forming the vignette on the title-page, hardly does justice to this description, although the incident of old Weller performing the "beautiful and exhilarating" act of immersing Mr. Stiggins's head in the horse-trough full of water, is spirited enough.

The "Markis Gran by Dorken," as the elder Weller styled it in his letter to Sam, is another of those inns, which figure prominently in the book, that have never been actually identified. Robert Allbut, in 1897, claimed to have found the original in the High Street opposite the Post Office at the side of Chequers' Court. Only a part of it then existed, and was being used as a grocer's shop.

Herbert Railton gave an artistic picture of the courtyard in the Jubilee edition of the book, but we are not able to state on what authority it was based.

There were, however, two inns at Dorking, the "King's Head" and the "King's Arms," over which speculation has been rife as to which was the original of the inn so favoured by the Revd. Mr. Stiggins. Of the two, perhaps, the latter, still existing, seems to fit Dickens's description best.