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.

It was in the yard of one of these inns - of no less celebrated a one

than the White Hart - that a man was busily employed in brushing the

dirt off a pair of boots, early on the morning succeeding the events

narrated in the last chapter. He was habited in a coarse, striped

waistcoat, with black calico sleeves, and blue glass buttons; drab

breeches and leggings. A bright red handkerchief was wound in a very

loose and unstudied style round his neck, and an old white hat was

carelessly thrown on one side of his head. There were two rows of

boots before him, one cleaned and the other dirty, and at every

addition he made to the clean row, he paused from his work, and

contemplated its results with evident satisfaction.

The yard presented none of that bustle and activity which are the

usual characteristics of a large coach inn. Three or four lumbering

wagons, each with a pile of goods beneath its ample canopy, about the

height of the second-floor window of an ordinary house, were stowed

away beneath a lofty roof which extended over one end of the yard;

and another, which was probably to commence its journey that

The Pickwick Papers