There are two inns in Canterbury associated with the book, the county inn where Mr. Dick stayed when on his visits to David Copperfield every alternate Wednesday, and the “little inn” where Mr. Micawber stayed on his first and subsequent visits to the ancient city.
The county inn was without doubt the Royal Fountain Hotel in St. Margaret’s Street, for it was invariably referred to in the coaching days as the county inn of the city, in the same manner that David speaks of it in the seventeenth chapter of David Copperfield, where he tells us that he “saw Mr. Dick every alternate Wednesday when he arrived by stage-coach at noon, to stay until next morning.... Mr. Dick was very partial to gingerbread. To render his visits more agreeable, my aunt had instructed me to open a credit for him at a cake shop, which was hampered with the stipulation that he should not be served with more than one shilling’s worth in the course of any one day. This, and the reference of all his little bills at the county inn where he slept, to my aunt, before they were paid, induced me to suspect that he was only allowed to rattle his money, and not to spend it.”
On these occasions, Mr. Dick would be constantly in the company of David, and on the Thursday mornings he would accompany him from the hotel to the coach office before going back to school. And so the Royal Fountain Hotel has added to its traditions that of being the hotel where Mr. Dick slept. Dickens does not describe it in detail, and does not even refer to it again in the book; but on the 4th of November, 1861, which he describes as a “windy night,” Dickens himself stayed there after giving a reading of David Copperfield at the theatre. Writing to his daughter Mamie on that date he says, “a word of report before I go to bed. An excellent house to-night, and an audience positively perfect. The greatest part of it stalls, and an intelligent and delightful response in them, like a touch of a beautiful instrument. ‘Copperfield’ wound up in a real burst of feeling and delight.”
This letter was headed “Fountain Hotel, Canterbury.” Dickens visited the city again in the summer of 1869, driving there from Gads Hill with some American friends, and made the Fountain Hotel his halting place, whilst he and his companions explored the city. They drove into Canterbury just as the bells of the cathedral were ringing for afternoon service, George Dolby informs us, and “turned into the by-street in which the Fountain Hotel is situated, where the carriages and horses were to be put up,” and where the party took tea prior to starting back for home.
“The inns in England are the best in Europe, those in Canterbury are the best in England, and the Fountain wherein I am now lodged as handsomely as I were in the King’s palace, the best in Canterbury.” So wrote the Ambassador of the Emperor of Germany to his master on the occasion of his visit to this country to attend the marriage ceremony of Edward the First to his second Queen, Margaret of France, in Canterbury Cathedral on the 12th of September, 1299.
The Royal Fountain Hotel, as it is now called, is one of the oldest inns in England; indeed, it is so old as to claim that the wife of Earl Godwin, when she came to meet her husband on his return from Denmark in the year 1029, stayed there. It also claims to have been the temporary residence of Archbishop Lanfranc whilst his palace was being built in 1070; and there is a legend associated with it that the four knights who murdered Thomas à Becket made it their rendezvous in 1170.
To-day the inn still retains its old-world atmosphere, although certain of its apartments and appurtenances have been made to conform to modern requirements. Its passages and stairs are narrow and winding, antique furniture, brasses, and copper utensils are in great evidence, and the huge kitchen with its wide fire-place and open chimney still reminds us of the old days. Upstairs is a spacious room measuring some forty or fifty feet in length, in the centre of which is one of those priceless tables made in separate pieces going the whole length of the room, looking, when we last saw it, with scores of chairs set around it, like a gigantic elongated board-room table waiting for a meeting to begin. This room is used for banquets, and often the Mayor holds his official dinners there. But it would seem that the chief claimants to its use is “The Canterbury Farmers’ Club and East Kent Chamber of Agricultural Commerce,” for its walls are covered with portraits in oils of some of the past presidents, whilst a long list of them dating from 1855-1919 hangs in a prominent position.
The “little inn” where Mr. and Mrs. Micawber stayed on the occasion when they thought it was so advisable that they should see the Medway in the hope of finding an opening in the coal trade for Mr. Micawber is the Sun Inn in Sun Street, once the stopping-place for the omnibus which plied between Canterbury and Herne Bay.
It will be remembered that David was taking tea with the Heeps when suddenly Mr. Micawber appeared. David, rather apprehensive of what his old friend might say next, hurried him away by asking, “Shall we go and see Mrs. Micawber, sir?” and they both sallied forth, Mr. Micawber humming a tune on the way. “It was a little inn where Mr. Micawber put up, and he occupied a little room in it, partitioned off from the commercial room, and strongly flavoured with tobacco smoke. I think it was over the kitchen, because a warm greasy smell appeared to come up through the chinks of the floor, and there was a flabby perspiration on the walls. I know it was near the bar, on account of the smell of spirits and jingling of glasses. Here, recumbent on a sofa, underneath a picture of a race-horse, with her head close to the fire and her feet pushing the mustard off the dumb-waiter at the other end of the room, was Mrs. Micawber.”
Undaunted by the fact that his resources were extremely low, Mr. Micawber pressed David to dine with him, and the repast was accordingly arranged. David describes it as “a beautiful little dinner. Quite an elegant dish of fish; the kidney end of a loin of veal, roasted; fried sausage-meat, a partridge, and a pudding. There was wine and there was strong ale; and after dinner Mrs. Micawber made us a bowl of hot punch with her own hands. Mr. Micawber was uncommonly convivial.... He got cheerfully sentimental about the town and proposed success to it, observing that Mrs. Micawber and himself had been made extremely snug and comfortable.... As the punch disappeared, Mr. Micawber became still more friendly and convivial. Mrs. Micawber’s spirits becoming elevated, too, we sang ‘Auld Lang Syne.’... In a word, I never saw anybody so thoroughly jovial as Mr. Micawber was, down to the very last moment of the evening, when I took a hearty farewell of himself and his amiable wife.”