The "Golden Cross" also figures prominently in David Copperfield on
the occasion of the arrival of the hero of the book from Canterbury:

"We went to the 'Golden Cross,'" he says, "then a mouldy sort of
establishment in a close neighbourhood. A waiter showed me into the
coffee-room, and a chambermaid introduced me to my small bedchamber,
which smelt like a hackney coach and was shut up like a family vault."

Later in the evening he met his old school friend, Steerforth, who
was evidently on better and more familiar terms with the waiter, for
he not only demanded, but secured a better bedroom for David.

[illustration: The Golden Cross Hotel, Charing Cross, in 1828.
From an engraving]

"I found my new room a great improvement on my old one," he says,
"it not being at all musty and having a fourpost bedstead in it,
which was quite a little landed estate. Here, among pillows enough
for six, I soon fell asleep in a blissful condition, and dreamed
of ancient Rome, Steerforth and friendship, until the early morning
coaches rumbling out of the archway underneath made me dream of
thunder and the gods."

This comfortable new aspect of the inn did not stop at his bedroom,
for he took breakfast the next morning "in a snug private
apartment, red-curtained and Turkey carpeted, where the fire burnt
bright and a fine hot breakfast was set forth on a table covered
with a clean cloth. . . . I could not enough admire the change
Steerforth had wrought in the 'Golden Cross'; or compose the dull,
forlorn state I had held yesterday with this morning's comfort and