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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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