“Time was when on an allusion to Barnard’s Inn it was impossible to keep one’s pen from writing of Pip and Herbert Pocket who had there once (once! they have still) their lodging. Or Staple Inn, and straightway one’s thoughts flew to Hiram Grewgius, and Neville, and Mr. Tartar, and ‘the flowers that grew out of the salt sea.’ Or Gray’s Inn, and one smiled over the recollection of Mr. Parkle and his friend, and of the gentleman who, by the help of the leeches and Mrs. Miggot, was restored to health. Or the late Lyon’s Inn, which should be as indissolubly connected with the name of Mr. Testator as ever it was with that of the unfortunate Mr. William Weare. Mention Furnival’s, and you speak of the place where the most part of ‘Pickwick’ was composed; Lincoln’s, and I drink to the memory of Miss Flite and Esther Summerson, of Richard and Ada.
“But my object in writing is to say that if any one after reading Mr. Fitzgerald’s paper should journey to those charming forgotten spots of which he speaks, let him walk to the end of the little square in Barnard’s Inn, and he will find, on looking beyond the south wall, that straight before him stands an old cowhouse of the time of George I. Often have I loitered about this quiet place, but never realized what that building was till one day an old man passed trundling a wheelbarrow. ‘All thet’s left of the farm,’ quoth he, nodding at the shed; and not till then was I conscious that at the close of the nineteenth century, in the heart of what Mr. Gosse calls ‘Londonland,’ there is still to be seen, suggestive of green meadows and syllabubs, such a countrified relic of the ancient inhabitants of Holborn.
CLIFFORD’S INN.
“Also one should visit Clifford’s Inn, where once, somewhere high up on the fourth floor, George Dyer was to be found; which reminds me that, though the New River is covered over in Colebrooke Row, Lamb’s cottage exists pretty much as it did on the day when gentle G. D., staff in hand, plunged into the waters that rippled tranquilly along. Poor Dyer! Of all places, Clifford’s Inn is not the one where I would choose to live and die: rather Staple, with its bright little terrace; or Clement’s, bereft though it is of its sundial, the gift, brought from Italy, of Goldsmith’s Lord Clare. There is a mouldy air and a dismal about the quaint Tudor hall (the Inn’s principal ornament), where Sir Matthew Hale sat to settle the citizens’ claims after the Great Fire; and though the hammered iron railings and the gates and the trees would all come out charmingly enough in an American magazine, I don’t think even one of the admirable Yankee artists could make much of a picture of these dilapidated dreary mansions.
GRAY’S INN (page 112).
“Then, on your way west, stay at Somerset House, where there is a certain wreathed and domed room I wot of which will repay you for a somewhat toilsome ascent up a fine staircase. This gallery was built by Chambers for the use of the Academy (you will recollect Ramberg’s picture, engraved by Martin, of a Private View here in 1787), and Reynolds has been here before you, and here he delivered his Discourses; and all the great men and women of the first half of the century have passed over this threshold, including the famous Dr. Parr, who tells how he came in the Princess of Wales’s train.”