The Old Inns of Old England, Volume 1 (of 2) / A Picturesque Account of the Ancient and Storied Hostelries of Our Own Country

by Charles G. Harper

THE “GEORGE,” AMESBURY.

But the truth is, like many another literary landmark, the “Blue Dragon” in Martin Chuzzlewit is a composite picture, combining the features of both the “George” at Amesbury, eight miles to the north of Salisbury, and those of the “Green Dragon” at Alderbury, three miles to the south. Nay, there were not so long ago at Alderbury those who remembered the picture-sign of the “Green Dragon” there, which doubtless Dickens saw in his wanderings around the neighbourhood. “A faded and an ancient dragon he was; and many a wintry storm of rain, snow, sleet, and hail had changed his colour from a gaudy blue to a faint lack-lustre shade of grey. But there he hung; rearing in a state of monstrous imbecility on his hind-legs; waxing with every month that passed so much more dim and shapeless that as you gazed at him on one side of the sign-board it seemed as if he must be gradually melting through it and coming out upon the other.” (Chap. III.)

The sign has long since been replaced by the commonplace lettering of the present day, but it was then, in Dickens’s own words, “a certain Dragon who swung and creaked complainingly before the village ale-house door,” a phrase which at once shows us that if by the “Blue Dragon” of the story the “George” at Amesbury was intended to be described, that was a derogatory description of the fine old hostelry.

This brings us to the chief point upon which the validity of this claim of the “Green Dragon” at Alderbury must rest. Dickens distinctly alludes to the “Blue Dragon” as a “village ale-house,” and such it is and has ever been; while to the “George” at Amesbury that description cannot even now justly apply, and certainly it could never in coaching times, when in the heyday of its prosperity, have been so fobbed off with such a phrase. Moreover, we will do well to bear in mind that old Chuzzlewit and his companion did not put up at the inn—this “village ale-house”—from choice. The gentleman was “taken ill upon the road,” and had to seek the first house that offered.

Those curious in the byways of Dickens topography will find Alderbury three miles from Salisbury, on the left-hand side of the Southampton road. Half a mile from it, on the other side of the way, stands “St. Mary’s Grange,” a red-brick building in a mixed Georgian and Gothic style, built by Pugin, and locally reputed to be the original of Mr. Pecksniff’s residence: a circumstance which may well give us pause and opportunity for considering whether Dickens had that distinguished architect in his mind when creating the character of his holy humbug.

INTERIOR OF THE “GREEN DRAGON,” ALDERBURY.

The “Green Dragon,” which we have thus shown to have, at the least of it, as good a title as the “George” at Amesbury to be considered the original of the house kept by the genial Mrs. Lupin, friend of Tom Pinch, Mark Tapley, and Martin Chuzzlewit in particular, and of her fellow-creatures in general, does not directly face the highway, but is set back from it at an angle, behind a little patch of grass. It is pre-eminently rustic, and is even more ancient than the casual wayfarer, judging merely from its exterior, would suppose; for a fine fifteenth-century carved stone fireplace in what is now the bar parlour bears witness to an existence almost mediæval. It is a beautiful, though dilapidated, work of Gothic art of the Early Tudor period, ornamented with boldly carved crockets, heraldic roses, and shields of arms, and is worthy of inspection for itself alone, quite irrespective of its literary interest.

A London inn intimately associated with Martin Chuzzlewit finally disappeared in the early part of 1904, when the last vestiges of the “Black Bull,” Holborn, were demolished. The “Black Bull,” in common with the numerous other old inns of Holborn, in these last few years all swept away, stood just outside the City of London, and was originally, like its neighbours, established for the accommodation of those travellers who, in the Middle Ages, arrived too late in the evening to enter the City. At sundown the gates of the walled City of London were closed, and, unless the traveller was a very privileged person indeed, he found no entrance until the next morning, and was obliged to put up at one of the many hostelries that sprang up outside and found their account in the multitude of such laggards by the way. The old “Black Bull,” after many alterations, was rebuilt in a very commonplace style in 1825, and in later years it became a merely sordid public-house, with an unlovely pile of peculiarly grim “model” dwellings in the courtyard. In spite of those later changes, the great plaster effigy of the Black Bull himself, with a golden girdle about his middle, remained on his bracket over the first floor window until the house was pulled down, May 18th, 1904.