Cooper and his family entered France July, 1826, and February, 1828, they thought the time had come to change the scene, and proceeded to England. "I drove around to the rue d'Anjou
to take my leave of General Lafayette," wrote Cooper. To Calais they had rain and chill and darkness most of the way. Passing through the gate, they drove to the inn immortalized by Lawrence Sterne and Beau Brummel, where they found English comfort with French cooking and French taste. One of February's fine days they left the Hotel Dessein to embark for England. After a two-hours' run the cliffs of Dover appeared on each side of that port,—the nearest to the continent,—making these chalk cliffs seem, Cooper says, "a magnificent gateway to a great nation."
Leaving the fishing-boats of the French coast, "the lofty canvas
of countless ships and several Indiamen rose from the sea," as they shot towards the English shore, many "bound to that focus of coal-smoke, London." Quietly landing at Dover-haven, they went to Wright's tavern, where they missed the French manner, mirrors, and table-service, but "got in their place a good deal of solid, unpretending comfort." In due time Mr. Wright put them and their luggage into a comfortable post-coach, and on the road he called "quite rotten, sir," to London. To Americans, at that date, the road proved good, and also the horses that made the sixteen miles to Canterbury in an hour and a half, where
they drove to another Mr. Wright's; going to four of the name between Dover and London, Cooper concluded with an apology that "it was literally all Wright on this road."
