[illustration: The Bull Inn, Whitechapel. From the water-colour drawing by P. Palfrey]
The "Bull" began to decline when the railway was opened in 1839, and in 1868 it was demolished.
There is no doubt that Dickens knew it well, and probably used it in his journalistic days when having to take journeys to the eastern counties to report election speeches. In The Uncommercial Traveller he speaks of having strolled up to the empty yard of the "Bull," "who departed this life I don't know when, and whose coaches had all gone I don't know where."
When, therefore, he wanted a starting-point for Mr. Pickwick's adventure to Ipswich, the "Bull," which was nothing less than an institution at the time, readily occurred to him.
There is an anecdote about Dickens and the coachmen's private apartment, told by Mr. Charles G. Harper. "On one occasion Dickens had a seat at a table, and 'the Chairman,' after sundry flattering remarks, as a tribute to the novelist's power of describing a coach Journey, said, 'Mr. Dickens, we knows you knows wot's wot, but can you, sir, 'andle a vip?' There was no mock modesty in Dickens. He acknowledged he could describe a journey down the road, but he regretted that in the management of a 'vip' he was not expert."
Here Sam arrived one morning with his master's travelling bag and portmanteau, to be closely followed by Mr. Pickwick himself, who, as Sam told his father, was "cabbin' it . .. havin' two mile o' danger at eightpence." In the inn yard he was greeted by a red-haired man who immediately became friendly and enquired if Mr. Pickwick was going to Ipswich. On learning that he was, and that he, too, had taken an outside seat, they became fast friends. Little did Mr. Pickwick suppose that his newly made friend and he would meet again later under less congenial circumstances.
"Take care o' the archway, gen'l'men," was Sam's timely warning as the coach, under the control of his father, started out of the inn yard on its memorable journey down Whitechapel Road to the "Great White Horse," Ipswich, an hostelry which forms the subject of the following chapter.
CHAPTER X
THE "GREAT WHITE HORSE," IPSWICH
"In the main street of Ipswich, on the left-hand side of the way, a short distance after you have passed through the open space fronting the Town Hall, stands an inn known far and wide by the appellation of the 'Great White Horse,' rendered the more conspicuous by a stone statue of some rampacious animal with flowing mane and tail, distantly resembling an insane cart horse, which is elevated above the principal door."