In “The Lazy Tour” some particulars are given concerning a curious custom at the King’s Arms, where they give you bride-cake every day after dinner. This melodramatic love-story is presented in the form of a narrative by one of the half-dozen “noiseless old men in black” who acted as waiters at the inn, whence we learn that the strange custom originated in the traditional murder, by poison, of a young bride in an apartment afterwards known as the Bride’s Chamber, the criminal being subsequently hanged at Lancaster Castle. Around the legend, in which money and pride and greed and cruel revenge play a prominent part, Dickens threw the halo of his wondrous fancy, and so stimulated public interest in the hostelry that visitors thereto were eager to see the alleged haunted chamber with its antique bedstead of black oak, and to taste the bride-cake in memory of the unfortunate young woman.
FORT HOUSE, BROADSTAIRS. ([Page 194].)
As it was before the recent alterations. The “airy nest” of Dickens, 1850-1851. A portion of “David Copperfield” was written here.
Externally, the old King’s Arms (situated at the corner of Market Street and King’s Street) was not of a picturesque character, although a certain quiet dignity was imparted to the stone frontage by the broad windows extending from roof to basement, and by the pillared doorway of the principal entrance. When Mr. Sly left the old place in 1879, it was pulled down, and a kind of commercial hotel erected on the site, which narrowly escaped destruction by fire in 1897. After his day the custom of having bride-cake was discontinued, but it is interesting to know that the famous oak bedstead (upon which Dickens himself slept) is in the safe possession of the Duke of Norfolk, for whom it was purchased at a high price when the old oak fittings, etc., were disposed of about twenty-seven years since. Mr. Sly, who died in 1896, never tired of recalling the visit of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, and the former delighted the worthy landlord by presenting him with a signed portrait of himself, inscribed, “To his good friend Mr. Sly,” which is still retained by the family as a cherished memento. Shortly after the publication of “The Lazy Tour” Mr. Sly obtained permission to reprint the descriptive chapter by Dickens, for presentation to his guests; the pamphlet contained illustrations representing the entrance-hall and staircase, and this prefatory note: “The reader is perhaps aware that Mr. Charles Dickens and his friend Mr. Wilkie Collins, in the year 1857, visited Lancaster, and during their sojourn stopped at Mr. Sly’s, King’s Arms Hotel. In the October number of Household Words, under the title of ‘The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices,’ Mr. Dickens presents his readers with a remarkable story of a Bridal Chamber, from whence the following extracts are taken.” Mr. J. Ashby-Sterry, writing in 1897, alludes to the King’s Arms as “a rare old place, full of antique furniture, curios, and musical bedsteads,” and says that its proprietor, Mr. Sly (who died about a year previously), who took the greatest pride in his admirable old inn, liked nothing better than taking an appreciative visitor over the place and giving amusing reminiscences of the memorable visit of the authors of “Pickwick” and “The Woman in White.”
3 ALBION VILLAS, FOLKESTONE. ([Page 199].)
“A very pleasant house, overlooking the sea.” The opening chapters of “Little Dorrit” were written here. The conservatory is a modern addition.
THE WOODEN LIGHTHOUSE, FOLKESTONE HARBOUR. ([Page 200].)
“I may observe of the very little wooden lighthouse, that when it is lighted at night—red and green—it looks like a medical man’s” (“Out of Town”).
With regard to Lancaster itself, it would seem that Dickens’s opinion (as expressed by Francis Goodchild) then was “that if a visitor on his arrival (there) could be accommodated with a pole which could push the opposite side of the street some yards farther off, it would be better for all parties”; but, while “protesting against being obliged to live in a trench,” he conceded Lancaster to be a pleasant place—“a place dropped in the midst of a charming landscape, a place with a fine ancient fragment of castle, a place of lovely walks, a place possessing staid old houses richly fitted with old Honduras mahogany, which had grown so dark with time that it seems to have got something of a retrospective mirror-quality into itself, and to show the visitor, in the depths of its grain, through all its polish, the hue of the wretched slaves who groaned long ago under old Lancaster merchants. And Mr. Goodchild adds that the stones of Lancaster do sometimes whisper even yet of rich men passed away—upon whose great prosperity some of these old doorways frowned sullen in the brightest weather—that their slave-gain turned to curses, as the Arabian Wizard’s money turned to leaves, and that no good ever came of it even unto the third and fourth generation, until it was wasted and gone.”[85] Concerning the lunatic asylum at Lancaster there is a note of approval: “An immense place ... admirable offices, very good arrangements, very good attendants,” followed by this truly Dickensian touch of sympathy and pathos: “Long groves of blighted men-and-women trees; interminable avenues of hopeless faces; numbers without the slightest power of really combining for any earthly purpose; a society of human creatures who have nothing in common but that they have all lost the power of being humanly social with one another.”[86]
From Lancaster Francis Goodchild and Thomas Idle took train to Leeds, “of which enterprising and important commercial centre it may be observed with delicacy that you must either like it very much or not at all.” Next day, the first of the Race Week, they proceed to Doncaster, and put up at that noted establishment the Angel, still flourishing in the principal thoroughfare as of yore. Here they had “very good, clean, and quiet apartments” on the second floor, looking down into the main street, Dickens describing his own bedroom as “airy and clean, little dressing-room attached, eight water-jugs (I never saw such a supply), capital sponge-bath, perfect arrangement, and exquisite neatness.”[87] That great annual festival known as Race Week had just begun, and the streets of Doncaster were full of jockeys, betting men, drunkards, and other undesirable persons, from morning to night—and all night. From their windows the apprentices gazed with interest and wonderment upon the motley assemblage, for this was their first experience of the St. Leger and its saturnalia.