CHAPTER XII
Our Mutual Friend
THE SIX JOLLY FELLOWSHIP-PORTERS—THE THREE MAGPIES—THE SHIP, GREENWICH—THE WHITE LION—THE ANGLERS’ INN—THE EXCHEQUER COFFEE-HOUSE
The outstanding tavern in Our Mutual Friend is that with the pleasant-sounding name of The Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters, the favoured resort of Rogue Riderhood, Gaffer Hexam, and their boon companions, which is so closely associated with the unravelling of the mystery of John Harmon. It exists to-day as the Grapes, and continues to be the favoured resort of river watermen whose business keeps or brings them to the picturesque Reach.
When Dickens was engaged on his book, it is said that he wrote some chapters in a house adjoining the Grapes, overlooking the river. The Dropsical Tavern, as he calls it, was then known as the Bunch of Grapes, which, by a process of clipping, became first the Grapes Inn, and then finally the Grapes, by which it is known at the present time. Its front entrance is at 76 Narrow Street, Limehouse, and occupies little more space (as noted by the novelist) than to allow for its front door. Although the front of the building has been modernised, it still remains as narrow and tall as when Dickens likened it to “a handle of a flat iron set upright on its broadest end.” The inn has been very little altered in other respects since he so minutely described it. Certainly, an ordinary public-house bar has cut off a portion of the original bar, and, if in those days “the available space in it was not much larger than a hackney-coach,” its area is even smaller to-day, but yet quite comfortable enough to “soften the human breast.”
It is in describing this bar that Dickens gives the clue to the identification of the tavern. “No one,” he says, “could have wished the bar bigger, that space was so girt in by corpulent little casks, and by cordial bottles radiant with fictitious grapes in bunches, and by lemons in nets, and by biscuits in baskets, and by polite beer-pulls that made low bows when customers were served with beer ... and by the landlady’s own small table in a snugger corner near the fire....” Many of these alluring etceteras have given place to others, perhaps less enticing, and among those that have gone are the cordial bottles with the “grapes in bunches” on them. We have learned, however, from the present genial hostess, Mrs. Higgins, that at one time, not only did the cordial bottles bear the engraved sign of a bunch of grapes, but certain of the windows also were so embellished, and it was only a few years ago, when the front was altered, that these disappeared.
It is not, however, necessary merely to rely on this piece of identification to assure us that the Grapes Inn was the original of the Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters, for a visit to it with Chapter VI of Our Mutual Friend for a guidance leaves no doubt in the mind. Therein we read that “the Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters, already mentioned as a tavern of a dropsical appearance, had long settled down into a state of hale infirmity. In its whole constitution it had not a straight floor, and hardly a straight line; but it had outlasted, and clearly would yet outlast, many a better-trimmed building, many a sprucer public-house. Externally, it was a narrow, lopsided wooden jumble of corpulent windows heaped one upon another as you might heap as many toppling oranges, with a crazy wooden verandah impending over the water; indeed, the whole house, inclusive of the complaining flag-staff on the roof, impended over the water, but seemed to have got into the condition of a faint-hearted diver who has paused so long on the brink that he will never go in at all.”
That is how Dickens describes the river frontage of the Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters, and his words apply just as accurately to the Grapes Inn. As one stands on the crazy wooden verandah, which is reached from the foreshore by steep wooden steps, one can call to mind the scene in the book describing Gaffer Hexam landing the “found drowned,” and then, by turning into the “tap and parlour” behind, “which gave on to the river, and had red curtains to match the noses of the regular customers,” one finds oneself in the room where the inquest on John Harmon was held, with Gaffer Hexam as witness before the coroner’s jury, Mr. Mortimer Light wood as “eminent solicitor,” and Mr. Inspector watching the proceedings on behalf of the Home Office. The room is not used for such purposes to-day, but is put to the more pleasant one of social intercourse between workers on the great waterway during and after their labours, who, if you are so disposed, will welcome you there, and discourse on the mystery of tides and ships. If you accept them as fellow-creatures you may be invited to a game of darts, meanwhile regaling yourself with the modern substitutes for “those delectable drinks” known in the days when Miss Abbey Potterson reigned supreme on her throne as sole proprietor and manager of the Fellowship-Porters, as Purl, Flip, and Dog’s Nose. These watermen reach this haven, if the tide is out, by means of the wooden steps; when the tide is high and the house is “all but afloat,” the small row-boats are brought into use and the occupants approach the inn like veritable gondoliers and moor their craft outside whilst they refresh themselves within.