Page:The George Inn, Southwark.djvu/40

 extract from the former article contains the argument he used to substantiate his claim:—

"Moreover it (the "George") is especially notable as being the spot where Mr. Pickwick first encountered the immortal Sam Weller. The "White Hart" is the name, I am aware, given in the book, but it is said that Dickens changed the sign in order that the place should not be too closely identified. This was by no means an unusual custom with the novelist. I think he did the same thing in Edwin Drood, where the "Bull" at Rochester is described under the sign of the "Blue Boar." A similar change was made in Great Expectations where the same inn is disguised in like fashion, in the account of the dinner given after Pip was bound apprentice to Joe Gargery. The "White Hart" is close by, on the same side of the way, a little nearer London Bridge, but little, if anything, is remaining of the old inn, and the whole of the place and its surroundings have been modernised.

I, however, had the opportunity of comparing both inns some years ago, and have no hesitation in saying that the "George" is the inn where the irrepressible Alfred Jingle and the elderly Miss Rachel were discovered by the warm-hearted, hot-tempered Wardle. If you like to go upstairs you can see the very room where Mr. Jingle consented to forfeit all claims to the lady's hand for the consideration of a hundred and twenty pounds. Cannot you fancy, too, the landlord shouting instructions from those picturesque flower-decked galleries to Sam in the yard below?"

These deductions and views are not in any way convincing to us; indeed, we find ourselves in complete disagreement with them, and few Dickensians, we feel sure, will endorse them.

Mr. Ashby Sterry's argument regarding the "Bull" and the "Blue Boar" at Rochester proves nothing. Dickens described the "Bull" there in the Pickwick Papers and called it the "Bull" at Rochester, as he did the "Leather Bottle" at Cobham, the "Angel" at Bury St. Edmunds, the "Great White Horse" at Ipswich—to name a few