A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations
THE ROYAL GEORGE, DOVER—YE OLD CHESHIRE CHEESE—THE THREE JOLLY BARGEMEN—THE CROSS KEYS, WOOD STREET—HUMMUM’S, COVENT GARDEN—THE SHIP AND LOBSTER, GRAVESEND—THE FOX UNDER THE HILL, DENMARK HILL
Notwithstanding the fact that A Tale of Two Cities is to some persons Dickens’s best book, or the one that many prefer to any other, it is the most barren for our purpose. Apart from the fact that its scenes are laid chiefly in another country, those that concern our own supply little enough material in the way of taverns that can be identified.
In Chapter IV of Book 1, Dickens gives a fine description of the London Mail Coach’s journey to Dover, but no incident associated with an inn is touched upon on the way, and not until the journey is terminated at Dover is an inn mentioned by name.
“When the mail got successfully to Dover, in the course of the forenoon,” we are told, “the head drawer at the Royal George Hotel opened the coach door, as his custom was. He did it with some flourish of ceremony, for a mail journey from London in winter was an achievement to congratulate an adventurous traveller upon.”
Here Mr. Lorry, the only passenger left, shaking himself of straw, alighted from the coach and engaged a room for the night, where he awaited the arrival of Lucy Manette for the momentous interview which was to terminate in their voyage to Calais.
We cannot, however, discover that there was any hotel with the name of the Royal George in Dover at that or any other period; but Robert Allbut, hunting for one to serve its purpose, hit upon the King’s Head Hotel, which he says was the old coaching-house for the London Mail, and therefore must have been the hostelry Dickens had in mind. Other authorities mention the Ship, long since disappeared, upon whose site now stands the Lord Warden Hotel, where Dickens often stayed himself, and occasionally mentions in his writings. Taking into consideration the date of the story, one may rightly assume that the Ship was the hotel at which Mr. Lorry’s coach deposited him. It was the Ship no doubt that Byron sang of in the following verse:
Thy cliffs, dear Dover! harbour and hotel;
Thy custom-house, with all its delicate duties;
Thy waiters running mucks at every bell;
Thy packets, all whose passengers are booties
To those who upon land or water dwell;
And last, not least, to strangers uninstructed,
Thy long, long bills, whence nothing is deducted.
But it has long ago gone, and in its place the fashionable Lord Warden now stands.
Ye Old Cheshire Cheese, that popular tavern in Fleet Street, was never, we believe, ever mentioned in any one of Dickens’s books by name, nor can we discover that it was alluded to or described even under an assumed name. It is known that he visited it, and the menu card bearing a picture of what is known as Dr. Johnson’s room, with Dickens and Thackeray seated at the table presided over by the shade of the lexicographer itself, is familiar to visitors.