"who departed this life I don't know when, and whose coaches had all
gone I don't know where."

When, therefore, he wanted a starting-point for Mr. Pickwick's
adventure to Ipswich, the "Bull," which was nothing less than an
institution at the time, readily occurred to him.

There is an anecdote about Dickens and the coachmen's private
apartment, told by Mr. Charles G. Harper. "On one occasion Dickens
had a seat at a table, and 'the Chairman,' after sundry flattering
remarks, as a tribute to the novelist's power of describing a coach
Journey, said, 'Mr. Dickens, we knows you knows wot's wot, but can
you, sir, 'andle a vip?' There was no mock modesty in Dickens. He
acknowledged he could describe a journey down the road, but he
regretted that in the management of a 'vip' he was not expert."

Here Sam arrived one morning with his master's travelling bag and
portmanteau, to be closely followed by Mr. Pickwick himself, who, as
Sam told his father, was "cabbin' it . .. havin' two mile o' danger
at eightpence." In the inn yard he was greeted by a red-haired man
who immediately became friendly and enquired if Mr. Pickwick was
going to Ipswich. On learning that he was, and that he, too, had
taken an outside seat, they became fast friends. Little did Mr.
Pickwick suppose that his newly made friend and he would meet again
later under less congenial circumstances.

"Take care o' the archway, gen'l'men," was Sam's timely warning as
the coach, under the control of his father, started out of the inn
yard on its memorable journey down Whitechapel Road to the "Great
White Horse," Ipswich, an hostelry which forms the subject of the