In April, we are told, “longen folk to goon on pilgrimages”. Chaucer’s pilgrims set off from The Tabard Inn at Southwark. Today, Harvey’s London flagship, “The Royal Oak”, lies comparatively nearby in Tabard Street. This splendid pub, rescued from dereliction by Harvey’s in 1997, is a short walk from London Bridge. No fewer than five Harvey’s ales were available, on draught, when I dropped in recently. Lewesians, aggrieved at the proscription of their favourite beers in former Beard’s houses, could do worse than make a pilgrimage to Borough. Some Harvey’s memorabilia decorate the walls but I was most enchanted by two framed photographs of the ‘French Pub’ in Dean Street, hanging near the toilets. The sight of Landlord, Gaston Berlemont, standing behind his bar, brought back happy memories of the brief battle with Soho-itis that I fought in my twenties.
Gaston’s flamboyant moustaches would have graced Lewes itself last weekend, when the White Hart hosted the sixtieth anniversary celebrations of the Handlebar Moustache Society. Members from across Europe descended on the town. I came across two Swedish delegates combing the secondhand bookshops, on Saturday morning.
Dickens associations abound in the Borough, as attested by the London A-Z. Quilp Street, Copperfield Street, Little Dorrit Court. In another ‘White Hart’ (demolished 1889) Mr Pickwick first met Sam Weller. Near Harvey’s ‘Royal Standard’ stood two debtors’ jails - King’s Bench Prison (Mr Micawber) and The Marshalsea, where not only William Dorrit but also Dicken’s own father were incarcerated.
Google, by contrast, ‘Dickens and Lewes’, and you draw a blank. Consider though the best man at Dicken’s wedding in 1836; the godfather of his first child. Step forward, Thomas Beard (1807-91), a journalist, but also member of the Sussex brewing family whose passing we so lament.