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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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