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There are few Londoners who will not grieve to hear that the well-known inn on the Spaniards Road, "Jack Straw's Castle," famous as the rendezvous of authors, artists, statesmen, and many a celebrity of old days, is going the way of other ancient buildings. The low rooms and quaint interior of the hostel are now being entirely transformed and modernised.
'Wy now, said Sam, looking round, 'would anybody believe as a man at his time o' life could be running his head agin spinsters and punsters being the same thing? 'There an't a straw's difference between 'em, said Mr. Weller. 'Your father didn't drive a coach for so many years, not to be ekal to his own langvidge as far as THAT goes, Sammy.
Below North End on West Heath this character is maintained, and there are few sights in England more beautiful than the richly clothed broken ground stretching away from the slopes below Jack Straw's Castle when the sunlight catches the leaves of the poplars and beeches, making them shine with shimmery silver light. On all sides are magnificent views of distant horizons.
For a type of old-world servant I would recall rather some more public worthy, such as that stout old hostler whom, whenever you went up to stay in Hampstead, you would see standing planted outside that stout old hostelry, Jack Straw's Castle. He stands there no more, and the hostelry can never again be to me all that it was of solid comfort.
Since Christ is the corner stone whereon we are laid, it must be only through him that we are to treat with God, as we have heard sufficiently above; for God does not look upon my cross even though I torture myself to death, but he looks upon Christ through whom my works are acceptable before God, which otherwise would not be worth an alms of a straw's value.
Again, on p. 55 we have this passage: "I was thirsty, having walked from "Jack Straw's Castle," at Hampstead, where poor Kiteley and I had been taking a chop." This was written in 1855, only a few years after Forster's admirable performance of Kiteley with the other amateurs in "Every man in his humour." "Jack Straw's Castle," too, was a regular haunt of Forster and Dickens.
It doesn't trouble me now; it's all right; and when it might have troubled me, it didn't add a straw's weight. It fell right off from me. You can't suffer all through with more than one thing; when you were engaged, I had my load to bear. I knew I had forfeited everything; what difference did one part make more than another?
It barred the promontory from the mainland. And at the back of it, beyond its kitchen garden and its courtyard, a fringe of Heath still parted it from the hill road that went from "Jack Straw's Castle" to "The Bull and Bush." You reached it by a lane that led from the road to the Heath. The house belonged to the Heath and the open country.
Come, let us seek somewhere that we may eat, and then we shall go on our way." We dined at 'Jack Straw's Castle' along with a little crowd of bicyclists and others who were genially noisy. About ten o'clock we started from the inn. It was then very dark, and the scattered lamps made the darkness greater when we were once outside their individual radius.
"Isn't it time we got some tea?" she said, getting up and looking about her as if she were searching for a tea-shop. "I suppose it is," he answered reluctantly, and he rose too. "We go this way," he said, moving in the direction of Jack Straw's Castle. "Let's come back to the Heath," he added, "after we've had tea!" "But why?" she asked. "Oh, because it's so beautiful."
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