This Moses Pickwick was a grandson of Eleazer Pickwick, who, it is recorded, was a foundling. The story told concerning him is that when an infant he was picked up by a lady in the village of Wick near Bath, carried to her home, adopted and educated. Hence, according to some, the name Pick-Wick. There is, however, a village near to hand actually called "Pickwick," which may also have inspired the name for the foundling.
For some reasons unknown, or, at any rate, unrevealed, this foundling developed a craze for the coaching business, and, ultimately, taking service in one of the coaching inns, devoted his time and interests whole-heartedly to the profession, or calling. Eventually he became the owner of the business.
His grandson, Moses, became even more famous during the coaching era than his foundling antecedent, and at the time Pickwick was written he was the actual proprietor of the White Hart Hotel, as well as of the coaches which ran to and from it. He became, also, the most popular owner in the trade, and retired to the village of Upper Swanswick a rich man. We believe the name is still perpetuated in the neighbourhood.
Now it is known as a fact that Dickens took the name Pickwick from the said Moses Pickwick the proprietor of the "White Hart," whose coaches he had seen and ridden in a year or two previously. So that apart from the brief references to the inn in The Pickwick Papers its history is very much associated with the book.
Unfortunately, Dickens does not give us any minute description of it, as he does of other inns. Although it was the most important coaching house in the city, it could not be spoken of as particularly attractive in appearance. It looked more like a barracks than an hotel, indeed, we believe it was used for such a purpose in its degenerate days before it was finally demolished in 1867.
During its prosperous era, it was the resort of all the distinguished visitors who flocked to Bath during those gay and festive times.
There is still a relic of it in existence. The gracefully carved effigy of a white hart, which decorated the front of the building, now serves a similar purpose on an inn with the same name in the suburb of Widcombe, near by. On the site of the old house now stands the Grand Pump Room Hotel.
The Royal Hotel to which Mr. Winkle resorted, after his adventure with the valorous Dowler, for the purpose of escape to Bristol by the branch coach, probably never existed—at any rate, by that name. Dickens may have had the "York House" in his mind, for he stayed there himself on one occasion, and it was one of those ornate hotels, accustomed to receiving royal and distinguished visitors, suggesting such a title as Dickens gave it.
There is, however, a tavern in Bath which claimed—or was made to claim—a Pickwickian association, and that is the Beaufort Arms. The story in connection with it is that before it was a tavern it was originally "the small greengrocer's shop" over which the Bath footmen held their social evenings, and was, therefore, the scene of the memorable "leg o' mutton swarry," given in honour of Sam Weller. This may be so; we prefer to think that it was more likely to have been the public-house from which, as we are told, drinks were fetched for that dignified function.
The "Saracen's Head" in the same city has a Dickensian, if not a Pickwickian, interest, for Dickens stayed there when, in his journalistic days, he was following Lord John Russell through the country in 1835, reporting his speeches. We can be sure that it was during this brief visit that he gained an insight into the social doings and customs of the city, and also gathered the extensive knowledge of its topography his book exhibits. The "Saracen's Head" is proud of its Dickens associations; the actual chair he sat in, the actual jug he drank from, and the actual room he slept in are each shown with much ado to visitors; whilst several anecdotes associated with the novelist's visit on the occasion are re-told with perfect assurance of their truth.