CHAPTER X
CLEARING UP ALL DOUBTS (IF ANY EXISTED) OF THE
DISINTERESTEDNESS OF Mr. A. JINGLE'S CHARACTER
There are in London several old inns, once the headquarters
of celebrated coaches in the days when coaches performed
their journeys in a graver and more solemn manner than
they do in these times; but which have now degenerated into little
more than the abiding and booking-places of country wagons. The
reader would look in vain for any of these ancient hostelries,
among the Golden Crosses and Bull and Mouths, which rear
their stately fronts in the improved streets of London. If he
would light upon any of these old places, he must direct his steps
to the obscurer quarters of the town, and there in some secluded
nooks he will find several, still standing with a kind of gloomy
sturdiness, amidst the modern innovations which surround them.
In the Borough especially, there still remain some half-dozen
old inns, which have preserved their external features unchanged,
and which have escaped alike the rage for public improvement and
the encroachments of private speculation. Great, rambling queer
old places they are, with galleries, and passages, and staircases,
wide enough and antiquated enough to furnish materials for a hundred
ghost stories, supposing we should ever be reduced to the lamentable
necessity of inventing any, and that the world should exist long
enough to exhaust the innumerable veracious legends connected with
old London Bridge, and its adjacent neighbourhood on the Surrey side.
Pages:
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234