The Project Gutenberg eBook, Pickwickian Studies, by Percy Fitzgerald

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Title: Pickwickian Studies

Author: Percy Fitzgerald

Release Date: November 15, 2007 [eBook #23490]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PICKWICKIAN STUDIES***

Transcribed from the 1899 New Century Press edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org

PICKWICKIAN STUDIES

BY
PERCY FITZGERALD, M.A., F.S.A.
AUTHOR OF "_The History of Pickwick_," "_Pickwickian Manners and
Customs_,"
"_Bozland_," _&c._

London:
THE NEW CENTURY PRESS, LIMITED
434 STRAND, W.C
1899

CHAPTER I. IPSWICH

I.--The Great White Horse

This ancient Inn is associated with some pleasant and diverting
Pickwickian memories. We think of the adventure with "the lady in the
yellow curl papers" and the double-bedded room, just as we would recall
some "side splitting" farce in which Buckstone or Toole once made our
jaws ache. As all the world knows, the "Great White Horse" is found in
the good old town of Ipswich, still flourishes, and is scarcely altered
from the days when Mr. Pickwick put up there. Had it not been thus
associated, Ipswich would have remained a place obscure and scarcely
known, for it has little to attract save one curious old house and some
old churches; and for the theatrical antiquary, the remnant of the old
theatre in Tacket Street, where Garrick first appeared as an amateur
under the name of Lyddal, about a hundred and sixty years ago, and where
now the Salvation Army "performs" in his stead. {1} The touch of "Boz"
kindled the old bones into life, it peopled the narrow, winding streets
with the Grummers, Nupkins, Jingles, Pickwick and his followers; with the
immortal lady aforesaid in her yellow curl papers, to say nothing of Mr.
Peter Magnus. From afar off even, we look at Ipswich with a singular
interest; some of us go down there to enjoy the peculiar feeling--and it
_is_ a peculiar and piquant one--of staying at Mr. Pickwick's Inn--of
sleeping even in his room. This relish, however, is only given to your
true "follower," not to his German-metal counterfeit--though, strange to
sa