The “Royal Hotel,” whence Mr. Winkle fled by branch coach to Bristol, is not to be found, and the “Bush” at Bristol itself is a thing of the past. It stood in Corn Street, and was swept out of existence in 1864, the Wiltshire Bank now standing on the site of it; but how busy a place it was in Pickwickian days let the old picture of coaches arriving and departing eloquently tell.
The inns of the succeeding chapters—the tavern (unnamed) at Clifton, the “Farringdon Hotel,” the “Fox-under-the-Hill,” overlooking the river from Ivy Bridge Lane in the Strand, the “New Hotel,” Serjeant’s Inn Coffee House, and Horn’s Coffee House—are merely given passing mention, and it is only in Chapter XLVI. that we come to closer touch with actualities, in the arrest of Mrs. Bardell in the tea-gardens of the “Spaniards” inn, Hampstead Heath. The earwiggy arbours of that Cockney resort are still greatly frequented on Saturdays, Sundays, and public holidays.
A very modest and comparatively little-known Pickwickian house is the “Bell,” Berkeley Heath, on the dull, flat high-road between Bristol and Gloucester, unaltered since the day when Mr. Pickwick set forth by post-chaise with Mr. Bob Sawyer and his fellow-roysterer, Ben Allen, from the “Bush” at Bristol for Birmingham. Here they had lunch, as the present sign-board of the inn, gravely and with a quaint inaccuracy, informs us: insisting that it was “Charles Dickens and party” who so honoured the “Bell.” They had come only nineteen miles, and without any exertion on their own part, yet when they changed horses here, at half-past eleven a.m., Bob Sawyer found it necessary to dine, to enable them “to bear up against the fatigue.”
“‘Quite impossible!’ said Mr. Pickwick, himself no mean trencherman.
“‘So it is,’ rejoined Bob; ‘lunch is the very thing. Hallo, you sir! Lunch for three, directly, and keep the horses back for a quarter of an hour. Tell them to put everything they have cold on the table, and some bottled ale, and let us taste your very best Madeira.’”
THE “BUSH,” BRISTOL.
Those were truly marvellous times. All the way from Bristol those three had been drinking milk-punch, and had emptied a case-bottle of it, and we may be quite sure (although it is not stated) that they made havoc of a prodigious breakfast before they started; Yet they did “very great justice” to that lunch, and when they set off again the case-bottle was filled with “the best substitute for milk-punch that could be procured on so short a notice.”
“THE BELL,” BERKELEY HEATH.