the latter, or something even more substantial, that Mr. Pickwick
had been indulging during the day he wrote that momentous message.
Garraway's was known to Defoe, Dean Swift, Steele and others, each
of whom have references to it in their books, and during its
affluent days it was never excelled by other taverns in the city
for good fare and comfort. It was there that the "South Sea
Bubblers" frequently met.

[illustration: Garraway's Coffee House. From a sketch taken
shortly before demolition]

Garraway's is mentioned in other books of Dickens. In Martin
Chuzzlewit, for instance, Nadgett, who undertook the task of
making secret enquiries for the Anglo-Bengalee business, used to
sit in Garraway's, and was occasionally seen drying a damp pocket
handkerchief before the fire, looking over his shoulder for the
man who never appeared.

It is also referred to in Little Dorrit as one of the coffee houses
frequented by Mr. Flintwich.

In The Uncommercial Traveller, in writing about the "City of the
Absent," Dickens makes this further allusion to the tavern:

"There is an old monastery-cript under Garraway's (I have been in
it among the port wine), and perhaps Garraway's, taking pity on the
mouldy men who wait in its public room, all their lives, gives them
cool house-room down there on Sundays."

Again in Christmas Stories the narrator of the "Poor Relation's Story"