SIGN OF THE “BLACK BULL,” HOLBORN.
An amusing story belongs to that sign, for it was, in 1826, the subject of a struggle between the landlord, one Gardiner, on the one side and the City authorities on the other. The Commissioner of Sewers served a notice upon Gardiner, requiring him to take his bull down, but the landlord was obstinate, and refused to do anything of the kind, whereupon the Commissioner assembled a storming-party of over fifty men, with ladders and tackle for removing the objectionably large and weighty effigy. No sooner, however, had the enemy begun their preparations, when, to their astonishment, and to that of the assembled crowds, the bull soared majestically and steadily to what Mrs. Gamp would doubtless have called the “parapidge.” Arrived there he displayed a flag with the bold legend, “I don’t intrude now.”
Some arrangement was evidently arrived at, for the bull occupied its original place, above the first-floor window over the archway, for the whole of the seventy-eight years between 1826 and 1904.
The house is referred to in Martin Chuzzlewit as the “Bull,” and is the place to which Sairey Gamp repaired from Kingsgate Street to relieve Betsy Prig in the nursing of the mysterious patient. She found it “a little dull, but not so bad as might be,” and was “glad to see a parapidge, in case of fire, and lots of roofs and chimley-pots to walk upon.”
There are no greatly outstanding inns to be found in Bleak House, the “Dedlock Arms,” really the “Sondes Arms” at Rockingham, being merely mentioned. On the other hand, in David Copperfield we find the “Plough” at Blundeston mentioned, and that hotel at Yarmouth whence the London coach started: only unfortunately it is not possible to identify it, either with the “Crown and Anchor,” the “Angel,” or the “Star.”
In Parliament Street, Westminster, until 1899, stood the “Red Lion” public-house, identified with the place where David Copperfield (Chapter IX.) called for the glass of the “genuine stunning.” The incident was one of Dickens’s own youthful experiences, and is therefore to be taken, together with much else in that story, as autobiography.
“I was such a child, and so little, that frequently when I went into the bar of a strange public-house for a glass of ale or porter, to moisten what I had had for dinner, they were afraid to give it me. I remember, one hot evening, I went into the bar of a public-house, and said to the landlord:
“‘What is your best—your very best ale a glass?’ For it was a special occasion, I don’t know what. It may have been my birthday.
“‘Twopence-halfpenny,’ says the landlord, ‘is the price of the Genuine Stunning ale.’