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Gray's Inn Coffee-House
Also mentioned in David Copperfield.
The Jolly Sandboys Fictional.
The Valiant Soldier
Fictional.
The Wilderness Quilp's
favourite haunt, where he drinks Scheidam, a particularly fiery
version of gin.
Frustrated in his attempt to find out more of the
whereabouts of Nell and grandfather, Quilp suggests he and Swiveller
go to 'a house by the waterside where they have some of the noblest
Schiedam' [Schiedam = gin].
The landlord knows me. There's a little summer-house overlooking
the river, where we might take a glass of this delicious liqour
with a whiff of the best tobacco - it's in this case, and of the
rarest quality, to my certain knowledge - and be perfectly snug
and happy, could we possibly contrive it; or is there any very
particular engagement that peremptorily takes you another way,
Mr Swiveller, eh?'
...
The summer-house of which Mr Quilp had spoken was a rugged wooden
box, rotten and bare to see, which overhung the river's mud, and
threatened to slide down into it. The tavern to which it belonged
was a crazy building, sapped and undermined by the rats, and only
upheld by great bars of wood which were reared against its walls,
and had propped it up so long that even they were decaying and
yielding with their load, and of a windy night might be heard
to creak and crack as if the whole fabric were about to come toppling
down. The house stood - if anything so old and feeble could be
said to stand - on a piece of waste ground, blighted with the
unwholesome smoke of factory chimneys, and echoing the clank of
iron wheels and rush of troubled water. Its internal accommodations
amply fulfilled the promise of the outside. The rooms were low
and damp, the clammy walls were pierced with chinks and holes,
the rotten floors had sunk from their level, the very beams started
from their places and warned the timid stranger from their neighbourhood.
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