White Horse Inn."

Here on a certain very eventful day appeared Mr. Pickwick, who was
to have met his friends there, but as they had not arrived when he
and Mr. Peter Magnus reached it by coach, he accepted the latter's
invitation to dine with him.

Dickens's disparaging descriptions of the inn's accommodation lead
one to believe that his experiences of the "over-grown tavern," as
he calls it, were not of the pleasantest. He refers to the waiter
as a corpulent man with "a fortnight's napkin" under his arm, and
"coeval stockings," and tells how this worthy ushered Mr. Pickwick
and Mr. Magnus into "a large badly furnished apartment, with a dirty
grate, in which a small fire was making a wretched attempt to be
cheerful, but was fast sinking beneath the dispiriting influence
of the place." Here they made their repast from a "bit of fish and
a steak," and "having ordered a bottle of the most horrible port
wine, at the highest possible price, for the good of the house,
drank brandy and water for their own." After finishing their scanty
meal they were conducted to their respective bedrooms, each with a
japanned candlestick, through "a multitude of torturous windings."
Mr. Pickwick's "was a tolerably large double-bedded room, with a
fire; upon the whole, a more comfortable looking apartment than Mr.
Pickwick's short experience of the accommodation of the 'Great White
Horse' had led him to expect."

Whether all this was ever true does not seem to have mattered much
to the various proprietors, for they were not only proud of the
association of the inn with Pickwick, but made no attempt to hide
what the novelist said of its shortcomings. On the contrary, one of