On their arrival, Dickens and Collins sat down to a good hearty meal. The landlord himself presided over the serving of it, which, Dickens writes in a letter, comprised “two little salmon trout; a sirloin steak; a brace of partridges; seven dishes of sweets; five dishes of dessert, led off by a bowl of peaches; and in the centre an enormous bride-cake. ‘We always have it here, sir,’ said the landlord, ‘custom of the house.’ Collins turned pale, and estimated the dinner at half a guinea each.”
Mr. Sly became quite good friends with the two distinguished novelists, and cherished with great pride the signed portrait of Dickens which the author of Pickwick presented him with. He left the old place in 1879 and it was soon afterwards pulled down and replaced by an ordinary commercial hotel. Although the bride-cake custom was abandoned, and the haunted chamber with its fantastic story swept away, it is interesting to know that the famous oak bedstead, in which Dickens himself slept, was acquired by the Duke of Norfolk.
Mr. Sly, who died in 1895, never tired of recalling the visit of the two famous authors. He took the greatest pride in his wonderful old inn, and found real delight in conducting visitors over the building and telling amusing stories about Dickens and Wilkie Collins. Indeed, he was so proud of the association that he obtained Dickens’s permission to reprint those passages of The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices relating to the hostelry, in pamphlet form, with an introductory note saying, “The reader is perhaps aware that Mr. Charles Dickens and his friend Wilkie Collins, in the year 1857, visited Lancaster, and during their sojourn stayed at Mr. Sly’s King’s Arms Hotel.”
There is a further association with the inn and Dickens to be found in “Doctor Marigold’s Prescriptions.” We find it recorded there that Doctor Marigold and his Library Cart, as he called his caravan, “were down at Lancaster, and I had done two nights’ more than the fair average business (though I cannot in honour recommend them as a quick audience) in the open square there, near the end of the street where Mr. Sly’s King’s Arms and Royal Hotel stands.”
“Doctor Marigold” was published in 1865, seven years after Dickens’s visit. But he not only remembered the King’s Arms, but also Mr. Sly, the proprietor, who thus became immortalised in a Dickens story. Mr. Sly evidently was a popular man in the town, and his energy and good nature were much appreciated. That this was so, the following paragraph bears witness:
It is recorded as an historical fact that, on the marriage of H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, the demonstration made in Lancaster exceeded any held out of the Metropolis. The credit of this success is mainly due to Mr. Sly, who proposed the programme, which included the roasting of two oxen whole, and a grotesque torchlight procession. The manner in which the whole arrangements were carried out was so satisfactory to the inhabitants of the town and neighbourhood that, at a meeting held a short time after the event, it was unanimously resolved to present Mr. and Mrs. Sly with a piece of plate, of a design suitable to commemorate the event. The sum required was subscribed in a few days, the piece of plate procured, and the presentation was made in the Assembly Rooms on the 9th of November by the High Sheriff, W. A. F. Saunders, Esq., of Wennington Hall, in the presence of a numerous company.
In its palmy days the King’s Arms was a prominent landmark for travellers en route to Morecambe Bay, Windermere, the Lakes, and Scotland. It was erected in 1625, and in the coaching era was the head hotel in the town for general posting purposes, and was the most suitable place for tourists to break their journey going North, or in returning. Consequently, it was one of the most important in the North of England.
The inn the two idle apprentices entered at Hesket Newmarket “to drink whiskey and eat oat-cake” is not named, but it has been identified with a house which is no longer an inn. At the time of the story it was called the Queen’s Head, and was quite a prominent hostelry in the town, the innkeeper of which is described as having “a ruddy cheek, a bright eye, a well-knit frame, an immense hand, a cheery, outspeaking voice, and a straight, bright, broad look. He had a drawing-room, too, upstairs, which was worth a visit to the Cumberland Fells.”
“The ceiling of this drawing-room,” we are further told, “was so crossed and re-crossed by beams of unequal lengths, radiating from a centre, in a corner, that it looked like a broken starfish. The room was comfortably and solidly furnished with good mahogany and horsehair. It had a snug fireside, a couple of well-curtained windows, looking out upon the wild country behind the house. What it most developed was an unexpected taste for little ornaments and knick-knacks, of which it contained a most surprising number,” which Dickens goes on to describe in his own whimsical manner.
Hesket has not altered very much, we understand, since those days, and the inn itself remains, not as an inn, but as a private house, and the room where the oat-cake and whiskey were served still has its crossed and re-crossed beams of unequal length.