That is the story of the association of the "Leather Bottle," Cobham,
with The Pickwick Papers, which has spread its fame to the uttermost
parts of the world. That is the chief reason why in certain seasons
of the year the "Leather Bottle" and Cobham are visited by thousands
of admirers of the novelist, and also why the ideal Kentish village
has become a magnet to lovers of England's rural lanes and arable
fields; but the charm of it all is that when it is reached both it
and the inn are to be found exactly as Dickens so faithfully described
them many years ago.

The inn is just an inn; a commodious village ale-house; that is the
best description of it. Its picturesque exterior, with its hanging
sign bearing a portrait of Mr. Pickwick in the act of addressing the
club, and the legend, "Dickens's Old Pickwick Leather Bottle," and
its red-tiled roof, its small windows with their old-fashioned
shutters, is no less quaint and attractive than its old-time interior.
Its original sign--the Leather Bottle--hangs in the tiny bar which is on
the immediate right of the passage, and behind a glass window, looking
as unlike a bar as anything imaginable. From this curious little
receptacle refreshment for travellers and villagers is dispensed in
stone mugs embellished with the sign of the inn; and its "low-roofed
room" is at the end of the passage as Mr. Pickwick found it, with its
oak beams across the ceiling adding to its picturesqueness. In this
room the "high back leather-cushioned chairs" are still to be seen,
together with a grandfather clock and other antique pieces of
furniture in thorough keeping with tradition.

There, too, is the great "variety of old portraits" which decorated
the wall in Mr. Pickwick's time, with every other available inch