The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" / With Some Observations on Their Other Associations

by B. W. Matz

With these identical words Dickens introduces his readers to, and indicates precisely, the position of the famous Great White Horse Inn at Ipswich, and a visitor to the popular city of Suffolk need have no better guide to the spot than the novelist. He will be a little surprised at the description of the white horse, which in reality is quite an unoffending and respectable animal, in the act of simply lifting its fore leg in a trotting action, that is all; but he will be well repaid if when he arrives there he reads again Chapter XXII of The Pickwick Papers before he starts to make himself acquainted with the intricacies of the interior.

That chapter, telling of the extraordinary adventure Mr. Pickwick experienced with the middle-aged lady in the double-bedded room, is one of the most amusing in the book, and one which has made the "Great White Horse" as familiar a name as any in fiction or reality.

There are few inns in the novelist's books described so fully. He must have known it well; indeed, he is supposed to have stayed there when, in his early days, he visited Ipswich to report an election for The Morning Chronicle; and probably a similar mistake happened to him to that which Mr. Pickwick experienced. So when he says, "The 'Great Horse' is famous in the neighbourhood, in the same degree as a prize ox, or county paper-chronicled turnip, or unwieldy pig—for its enormous size," he evidently was recalling an impression of those days.

[illustration: The White Horse Hotel, Ipswich. Drawn by L. Walker]

It is an imposing structure viewed from without, with stuccoed walls, and a pillared entrance, over which stands the sign which so attracted the novelist's attention. The inside is spacious, with still the air of the old days about it, and contains fifty bedrooms and handsome suites of rooms; but Dickens was a little misleading regarding its size and a little unkind in his reproaches. At any rate, if the seemingly unkind things he said of it were deserved in those days of which he writes, they are no longer.

"Never were such labyrinths of uncarpeted passages," he says; "such clusters of mouldy, ill-lighted rooms, such huge numbers of small dens for eating or sleeping in, beneath any one roof, as are collected together between the four walls of the Great White Horse Inn."

Here on a certain very eventful day appeared Mr. Pickwick, who was to have met his friends there, but as they had not arrived when he and Mr. Peter Magnus reached it by coach, he accepted the latter's invitation to dine with him.

Dickens's disparaging descriptions of the inn's accommodation lead one to believe that his experiences of the "over-grown tavern," as he calls it, were not of the pleasantest. He refers to the waiter as a corpulent man with "a fortnight's napkin" under his arm, and "coeval stockings," and tells how this worthy ushered Mr. Pickwick and Mr. Magnus into "a large badly furnished apartment, with a dirty grate, in which a small fire was making a wretched attempt to be cheerful, but was fast sinking beneath the dispiriting influence of the place." Here they made their repast from a "bit of fish and a steak," and "having ordered a bottle of the most horrible port wine, at the highest possible price, for the good of the house, drank brandy and water for their own." After finishing their scanty meal they were conducted to their respective bedrooms, each with a japanned candlestick, through "a multitude of torturous windings." Mr. Pickwick's "was a tolerably large double-bedded room, with a fire; upon the whole, a more comfortable looking apartment than Mr. Pickwick's short experience of the accommodation of the 'Great White Horse' had led him to expect."

Whether all this was ever true does not seem to have mattered much to the various proprietors, for they were not only proud of the association of the inn with Pickwick, but made no attempt to hide what the novelist said of its shortcomings. On the contrary, one of them printed in a little booklet the whole of the particular chapter wherein these disrespectful remarks appear. Indeed, that is the chief means of advertisement to lure the traveller in, and when he gets there he finds Pickwick pictures everywhere on the walls to dispel any doubt he might have of the associations.

It is not necessary to re-tell the story of Mr. Pickwick's misadventure here. It will be recalled that having forgotten his watch he, in a weak moment, walked quietly downstairs, with the japanned candlestick in his hand, to secure it again. "The more stairs Mr. Pickwick went down, the more stairs there seemed to be to descend, and again and again, when Mr. Pickwick got into some narrow passage, and began to congratulate himself on having gained the ground floor, did another flight of stairs appear before his astonished eyes. . . .Passage after passage did he explore; room after room did he peep into"; until at length he discovered the room he wanted and also his watch.