There are, however, at least three inns we have been able to trace: the Blue Boar, London (dealt with in a previous chapter), the Crispin and Crispianus at Strood, and The Lord Warden Hotel at Dover. The latter is referred to in the chapter entitled “The Calais Night Mail” as follows:
“I particularly detest Dover for the self-complacency with which it goes to bed. It always goes to bed (when I am going to Calais) with a more brilliant display of lamp and candle than any other town. Mr. and Mrs. Birmingham, host and hostess of the Lord Warden, are my much esteemed friends, but they are too conceited about the comforts of that establishment when the Night Mail is starting. I know it is a good house to stay at, and I don’t want the fact insisted upon in all its warm bright windows at such an hour. I know The Warden is a stationary edifice that never rolls or pitches, and I object to its big outline seeming to insist upon that circumstance, and, as it were, to come over me with it, when I am reeling on the deck of the boat. Beshrew the Warden likewise for obstructing that corner, and making the wind so angry as it rushes round. Shall I not know that it blows quite soon enough without the officious Warden’s interference?”
The Lord Warden was evidently built on the site of the Ship, as we have already noted in the chapter devoted to A Tale of Two Cities.
The Crispin and Crispianus at Strood is mentioned in the chapter on “Tramps.” The tramp in question is a clockmaker, who, having repaired a clock at Cobham Hall, and paid freely for it, says, “We should be at liberty to go, and should be told by a pointing helper to keep round over yonder by the blasted oak, and go straight through the woods till we should see the town lights right before us.... So should we lie that night at the ancient sign of the Crispin and Crispianus, and rise early next morning to be betimes on tramp again.”
The Crispin and Crispianus is a very old-fashioned inn still standing just outside Strood. It is a long building with an overhanging upper floor built with wood. How long the present house has existed we cannot tell, but its hanging sign speaks of St. Crispin’s Day, 1415, and it is said that it may probably have had its origin from the Battle of Agincourt fought on that day. Mr. Harper thinks the sign older than that, and probably was one of the very many religious inn-signs designed to attract the custom of thirsty wayfarers to Becket’s shrine.
The brothers Crispin and Crispian were members of a noble family in ancient Rome, who, professing Christianity, fled to Gaul and supported themselves by shoemaking in the town of Troyes. They suffered martyrdom in Soissons in A.D. 287. The sign represents the patron saints of the shoemaking fraternity, as these holy brothers are designated, at work on their cobblers’ bench, and is understood to have been faithfully copied from a well-known work preserved to this day at the church of St. Pantaleon at Troyes.
THE CRISPIN AND CRISPIANUS
Drawn by C. G. Harper