It would seem that the proprietor who was responsible for these words was a little uncertain of the exact association of his “Little Inn” with Dickens. But, being determined to receive some of the reflected glory of the novelist’s fame, and evidently ignorant of the book in which his “Little Inn” figured, played for safety in the use of a general, rather than a specific phrase.
The inn is worth a visit, for it is still quaint, attractive, and picturesque. Although actually built, as we are told, in 1503, we understand that it was altered in the seventeenth century. Anyway, it is sufficiently old to be in keeping with its ancient surroundings.
Turning to London, there is the Piazza Hotel in Covent Garden, mentioned by Steerforth in Chapter XXIV, where he was going to breakfast with one of his friends, which was no doubt the well-known coffee-house at the north-eastern angle of Covent Garden Piazza. It was the favourite resort of the actors and dramatists of the period. Sheridan and John Kemble often dined together in its coffee-room, and there is a record of them disagreeing on a certain matter. Sheridan, in a letter replying to one from Kemble, told him he attributed his letter “to a disorder which I know ought not to be indulged. I prescribe that thou shalt keep thine appointment at the Piazza Coffee-House to-morrow at five, and, taking four bottles of claret instead of three, to which in sound health you might stint yourself, forget that you ever wrote the letter, as I shall that I ever received it.”
Dickens stayed there himself in 1844 and again in 1846, two letters from him to his wife being dated from there.
The Piazza facade where stood the coffee-house was taken down to build the Floral Hall, which is reputed to have been modelled on the Crystal Palace.
In Chapter XXXV, David Copperfield, after a plunge in the old Roman bath in Strand Lane, went for a walk to Hampstead, and got some breakfast on the Heath. The inn where he took his repast, although not named, no doubt was Jack Straw’s Castle. This is the only allusion to the famous hostelry in Dickens’s books that we know of, but the novelist frequented it in his earlier writing years, when he was very fond of riding and walking, and indulged those forms of recreation to his profit during that hard-worked period of his literary career.
In those brilliant days of Pickwick he would wander in all directions out of the London streets, and invite Forster to accompany him on these jaunts by sending him brief commands to join him. One of these ran: “You don’t feel disposed, do you, to muffle yourself up and start off with me for a good brisk walk over Hampstead Heath? I know a good ’ous where we can have a red-hot chop for dinner, and a glass of good wine.” And off they went, leading, as Forster says, to their “first experience of Jack Straw’s Castle, memorable for many happy meetings in coming years.”
On another occasion, whilst writing The Old Curiosity Shop, Maclise accompanied them, but this time they drove to the Heath and then walked to the “Castle.” Here Dickens read to his friends a number of the new story. Again, in 1844, he wrote: “Stanfield and Mac have come in, and we are going to Hampstead to dinner. I leave Betsey Prig as you know, so don’t you make a scruple about leaving Mrs. Harris. We shall stroll leisurely up, to give you time to join us, and dinner will be on the table at Jack Straw’s at four.” A few months later, it is recorded, they dined there again, and it is evident that the old inn was a favourite haunt of the novelist on such occasions, and the Dickens traditions have so clung to it that during the flight of time they have become, as such traditions do, somewhat exaggerated. To-day, visitors are not only shown the chair he sat on, but have pointed out to them the bedroom he used to sleep in. There is no record, however, that he ever stayed the night there, or any reason for believing that he did, seeing how easy it was for him and his friends to get there and back from town. But Jack Straw’s Castle has good reasons for being proud of its literary associations; for, in addition to those of Dickens and his famous friends, such names as Washington Irving, Thackeray, Du Maurier, Lord Leighton, and a host of others may be mentioned as frequenting it. To say nothing of the fact that “The Castle” is mentioned in Richardson’s Clarissa Harlowe.
JACK STRAW’S CASTLE, as it was in 1835
Drawn by L. Walker from an old engraving