The Pub in Literature: England's Altered State, by Steven Earnshaw

 

DICKENS

Barnaby Rudge (1841)

 
'There are no inns,' rejoined Mr Willet, with a strong emphasis on the plural number; 'but there's a Inn - one Inn - the Maypole Inn. That's a Inn indeed. You won't see the like of that Inn often.'

‘Oh dear old Johnny, here's a change! That the Maypole bar should come to this, and we should live to see it!

 

In Barnaby Rudge an inn and a tavern take centre stage. The Maypole represents olde England - self-satisfied, comfortable, traditional, moribund. The Boot is the headquarters of the rioters, who meet a fitting end in a lake of blazing gin.

 

The Black Lion Whitechapel. Possibly real (in which case defunct).

The Boot Situated in Lamb Conduit Fields 'which district has become now a very thickly populated neighbourhood between Euston Road and Greys Inn Road, with the name still perpetuated in Lambs Conduit Street' - 'The present Boot was rebuilt in 1801 by Peter Speedy, - five generations of the family have owned it for something like 150 years' (Matz, p.93) (116 Cromer Street). (Picture, 106K)

The Crooked Billet Possibly real (defunct).

The Green Man (Unnamed) Half-way house between Chigwell and London. Extant.

Heneky's Holborn. 'Heneky's dates from 1695, and its extensive cellars stretch beneath the chambers of Gray's Inn. Readersof Barnaby Rudge will remember that these vaults were used as a place of refuge during the Gordon Riots.' (Popham, p.24).

The Maypole The King's Head, Chigwell. Matz says that Cattermole's picture is 'woefully wrong', and some have also noted that Dickens's description is a little distorted (it is possible for even the laziest person to count the gables). This all seems besides the point. In the novel The Maypole has to stand for much that is right, and much that is wrong, with England. Its destruction at the hands of the rioters signals the end of 'olde England', whilst its rebirth offers new values, although still with some continuity. Extant.

In the year 1775, there stood upon the borders of Epping Forest, at a distance of about twelve miles from London - measuring from the Standard in Cornhill, or rather from the spot on or near to which the Standard used to be in days of yore - a house of public entertainment called the Maypole; which fact was demonstrated to all such travellers as could neither read nor write (and at that time a vast number both of travellers and stay-at-homes were in this condition) by the emblem reared on the roadside over against the house, which, if not of those goodly proportions that Maypoles were wont to present in olden times, was a fair young ash, thirty feet in height, and straight as any arrow that ever English yeoman drew.

The Maypole - by which term from henceforth is meant the house, and not its sign - the Maypole was an old building, with more gable ends than a lazy man would care to count on a sunny day; huge zig-zag chimneys, out of which it seemed as though even smoke could not choose but come in more than naturally fantastic shapes, imparted to it in its tortuous progress; and vast stables, gloomy, ruinous, and empty. The place was said to have been built in the days of King Henry the Eighth; and there was a legend, not only that Queen Elizabeth had slept there one night while upon a hunting excursion, to wit, in a certain oak-panelled room with a deep bay window, but that next morning, while standing on a mounting block before the door with one foot in the stirrup, the virgin monarch had then and there boxed and cuffed an unlucky page for some neglect of duty. The matter-of-fact and doubtful folks, of whom there were a few among the Maypole customers, as unluckily there always are in every little community, were inclined to look upon this tradition as rather apocryphal; but, whenever the landlord of that ancient hostelry appealed to the mounting block itself as evidence, and triumphantly pointed out that there it stood in the same place to that very day, the doubters never failed to be put down by a large majority, and all true believers exulted as in a victory. Whether these, and many other stories of the like nature, were true or untrue, the Maypole was really an old house, a very old house, perhaps as old as it claimed to be, and perhaps older, which will sometimes happen with houses of an uncertain, as with ladies of a certain, age.

...

With its overhanging stories, drowsy little panes of glass, and front bulging out and projecting over the pathway, the old house looked as if it were nodding in its sleep. Indeed, it needed no great stretch of fancy to detect in it other resemblances to humanity.

...

It was a hale and hearty age though, still: and in the summer or autumn evenings, when the glow of the setting sun fell upon the back and chestnut trees of the adjacent forest, the old house, partaking of its lustre, seemed their fit companion, and to have many good years of life in him yet.

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Other scenes: The Maypole's unbeatable attraction is described when Gabriel is unable to pass by. His wife thinks the place tantamount to a poacher of Christian men, but even she is won over.

 

The Red Lion (Unnamed) Bevis Marks. Extant.

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Extras

Gabriel is lured in

Having encountered the stranger, Gabriel Varden decides he needs a light from the Maypole, even though he has promised his wife he won't go there. The scene is reminiscent of Wordsworth's Benjamin the Waggoner, particularly when he uses the excuse that by stopping a while he is being merciful to his horse.

When he got to the Maypole, however, and Joe, responding to his well-known hail, came running out to the horse's head, leaving the door open behind him, and disclosing a delicious perspective of warmth and brightness - when the ruddy gleam of the fire, streaming through the old red curtains of the common room, seemed to bring with it, as part of itself, a pleasant hum of voices, and a fragrant odour of steaming grog and rare tobacco, all steeped as it were in the cheerful glow - when the shadows, flitting across the curtain, showed that those inside had risen from their snug seats, and were making room in the snuggest corner (how well he knew that corner!) for the honest locksmith, and a broad glare, suddenly streaming up, bespoke the goodness of the crackling log from which a brilliant train of sparks was doubtless at that moment whirling up the chimney in honour of his coming - when, superadded to these enticements, there stole upon him from the distant kitchen a gentle sound of frying, with a musical clatter of plates and dishes, and a savoury smell that made even the boisterous wind a perfume - Gabriel felt his firmness oozing rapidly away. He tried to look stoically at the tavern, but his features would relax into a look of fondness. He turned his head the other way, and the cold black country seemed to frown him off, and drive him for a refuge into its hospitable arms.

'The merciful man, Joe,' said the locksmith, 'is merciful to his beast. I'll get out for a little while.'

And how natural it was to get out! And how unnatural it seemed for a sober man to be plodding wearily along through miry roads, encountering the rude buffets of the wind and pelting of the rain, when there was a clean floor covered with crisp white sand, a well swept hearth, a blazing fire, a table decorated with white cloth, bright pewter flagons, and other tempting preparations for a well-cooked meal - when there were these things, and company disposed to make the most of them, all ready to his hand, and entreating him to enjoyment!

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Mrs Varden

Old John would have it that they must sit in the bar, and nobody objecting, into the bar they went. All bars are snug places, but the Maypole's was the very snuggest, cosiest, and completest bar, that ever the wit of man devised. Such amazing bottles in old oaken pigeon-holes; such gleaming tankards dangling from pegs at about the same inclination as thirsty men would hold them to their lips; such sturdy little Dutch kegs ranged in rows on shelves; so many lemons hanging in separate nets, and forming the fragrant grove already mentioned in this chronicle, suggestive, with goodly loaves of snowy sugar stowed away hard by, of punch, idealised beyond all mortal knowledge; such closets, such presses, such drawers full of pipes, such places for putting things away in hollow window-seats, all crammed to the throat with eatables, drinkables, or savoury condiments; lastly, and to crown all, as typical of the immense resources of the establishment, and its defiances to all visitors to cut and come again, such a stupendous cheese!

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Death by gin

But there was a worse spectacle than this - worse by far than fire and smoke, or even the rabble's unappeasable and maniac rage. The gutters of the street, and every crack and fissure in the stones, with scorching spirit, which being dammed up by busy hands, overflowed the road and pavement, and formed a great pool, into which the people dropped down dead by dozens. They lay in heaps all round this fearful pond, husbands and wives, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, women with children in their arms and babies at their breasts, and drank until they died. While some stooped with their lips to the brink and never raised their heads again, others sprang up from their fiery draught, and danced, half in a mad triumph, and half in the agony of suffocation, until they fell, and steeped their corpses in the liquor that had killed them. Nor was even this the worst or most appalling kind of death that happened on this fatal night. From the burning cellars, where they drank out of hats, pails, buckets, tubs, and shoes, some men were drawn, alive, but all alight from head to foot; who, in their unendurable anguish and suffering, making for anything that had the look of water, rolled, hissing, in this hideous lake, and splashed up liquid fire which lapped in all it met with as it ran along the surface, and neither spared the living nor the dead. On this last night of the great riots - for the last night it was - the wretched victims of a senseless outcry, became themselves the dust and ashes of the flames they had kindled, and strewed in the public streets of London.

It is a poor heart that never rejoices - it must have been the poorest, weakest, and most watery heart that ever beat, which would not have warmed towards the Maypole bar. Mrs Varden's did directly. She could no more have reproached John Willet among those household gods, the kegs and bottles, lemons, pipes, and cheese, than she could have stabbed him with his own bright carving-knife.

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