We all know, as Dickens has reminded us elsewhere, the great station hotel, belonging to the company of proprietors which has suddenly sprung up in any place we like to name, “. . . in which we can get anything we want, after its kind, for money; but where nobody is glad to see us, or sorry to see us, or minds (our bill paid) whether we come or go, or how, or when, or why, or cares about us . . . where we have no individuality, but put ourselves into the general post, as it were, and are sorted and disposed of according to our division.”  That is more the modern method and is in direct contrast to the old coaching method, which, alas! may never return, of which the inns in Pickwick furnish us with glowing examples.

We certainly are coming back to these roadside inns in the present age of rapid motor transit; yet we are in too much of a tearing hurry to make the same use of the old inns as they did in the more leisurely age.

We believe these old inns attract to-day not only because of their quaintness and the old-world atmosphere which adheres to them, but because of the tradition which clings to them; and the most popular tradition of all, and the one of which the proprietors are most proud, is the Dickens tradition.

There are scores of such inns in the city of London and throughout the country whose very names immediately conjure up some merry scene in his books and revive never-to-be-forgotten memories of exhilarating incidents.

Time, the devastating builder, and the avaricious landlord have played havoc with many.  Several, however, remain to tell their own tale, whilst the memory of others is sustained by a modern building bearing the old name, all of which are landmarks for the Dickens lover.

Many of them, of course, existed only in the novelist’s fertile imagination; but most of them had foundation in reality, and most of them, particularly in Pickwick, are mentioned by name and have become immortal in consequence; and were it not for the popularity of his writings, their fame in many instances would have deserted them and their glory have departed.

Inns, hotels and wayside public-houses play a most important part in The Pickwick Papers, and many of the chief scenes are enacted within their walls.  The book, indeed, opens in an hotel and ends in one.  The first scene arising from the projected “journeys and investigations” of those four distinguished members of the Club took place in an hotel, or—­to speak correctly—­outside one, namely, the “Golden Cross” at Charing Cross.  There is even an earlier reference to a public-house near St. Martin’s le Grand, from where the “first cab was fetched,” whilst the last important incident of the book was enacted in another, the Adelphi Hotel off the Strand, when Mr. Pickwick announced his determination to retire into private life at Dulwich.

In the ensuing pages, the Pickwickians are followed in the tours they made in pursuit of adventure, and the inns and taverns they stopped at are taken in the order of their going and coming.  With each is recalled the story, adventure, or scene associated with it, and if it has any history of its own apart from that gained through the book, record is made of the facts concerning it.