Читать книгу The Collector - Henry T. Tuckerman - Страница 6
INNS.
Оглавление‘Whoe’er has travelled life’s dull round,
Whate’er his fortunes may have been,
Must sigh to think how oft he’s found
Life’s warmest welcome at an inn.’
Shenstone.
he old, legitimate, delightful idea of an Inn is becoming obsolete; like so many other traditional blessings, it has been sacrificed to the genius of locomotion. The rapidity with which distance is consumed obviates the need that so long existed of by-way retreats and halting-places. A hearty meal or a few hours’ sleep, caught between the arrival of the trains, is all the railway traveller requires; and the modern habit of moving in caravans has infinitely lessened the romantic probabilities and comfortable realities of a journey: the rural alehouse and picturesque hostel now exist chiefly in the domain of memory; crowds, haste, and ostentation triumph here over privacy and rational enjoyment, as in nearly all the arrangements of modern society. Old Walton would discover now but few of the secluded inns that refreshed him on his piscatorial excursions; the ancient ballads on the wall have given place to French paper; the scent of lavender no longer makes the linen fragrant; instead of the crackle of the open wood-fire, we have the dingy coal-smoke, and exhalations of a stove; and green blinds usurp the place of the snowy curtains. Not only these material details, but the social character of the inn is sadly changed. Few hosts can find time to gossip; the clubs have withdrawn the wits; the excitement of a stage-coach arrival is no more; and a poet might travel a thousand leagues without finding a romantic ‘maid of the inn,’ such as Southey has immortalized. Jollity, freedom, and comfort are no longer inevitably associated with the name; the world has become a vast procession that scorns to linger on its route, and has almost forgotten how to enjoy. Thanks, however, to the conservative spell of literature, we can yet appreciate, in imagination at least, the good old English inn. Goldsmith’s Village Alehouse has daguerreotyped its humble species, while Dr. Johnson’s evenings at the ‘Mitre’ keep vivid the charm of its metropolitan fame. Indeed, it is quite impossible to imagine what British authors would have done without the solace and inspiration of the inn. Addison fled thither from domestic annoyance; Dryden’s chair at ‘Will’s’ was an oracular throne; when hard pressed, Steele and Savage sought refuge in a tavern, and wrote pamphlets for a dinner; Farquhar found there his best comic material; Sterne opens his Sentimental Journey with his landlord, Monsieur Dessein, Calais, and his inn-yard; Shenstone confessed he found ‘life’s warmest welcome at an inn;’ Sheridan’s convivial brilliancy shone there with peculiar lustre; Hazlitt relished Congreve anew, reading him in the shady windows of a village inn after a long walk; even an old Almanac, or Annual Register, will acquire an interest under such circumstances; and a dog-eared copy of the Seasons found in such a place induced Coleridge to exclaim, ‘This is fame!’ while Byron exulted when informed that a well-thumbed volume of the English Bards had been seen, soon after its publication, at a little hostel in Albany. Elia’s quaint anecdote of the Quakers when they all ate supper without paying for it, and Irving’s ‘Stout Gentleman,’ are incidents which could only have been suggested by a country inn; and as to the novelists, from Smollett and Fielding to Scott and Dickens, the most characteristic scenes occur on this vantage-ground, where the strict unities of life are temporarily discarded, and its zest miraculously quickened by fatigue, hunger, a kind of infinite possibility of events, a singular mood of adventure and pastime, nowhere else in civilized lands so readily induced. It is, therefore, by instinct that these enchanting chroniclers lead us thither, from old Chaucer to our own Longfellow. Gil Bias acquired his first lesson in a knowledge of the world, by his encounter with the parasite at the inn of Panafleur; and Don Quixote’s enthusiasm always reaches a climax at these places of wayside sojourn. The ‘Black Bull,’ at Islington, is said to have been Sir Walter Raleigh’s mansion; ‘Dolly’s Chop-House’ is dear to authors for the sake of Goldsmith and his friends, who used to go there on their way to and from Paternoster Row. At the ‘Salutation and Cat,’ Smithfield, Coleridge and Lamb held memorable converse; and Steele often dated his Tatlers from the ‘Trumpet.’ How appropriate for Voltaire to have lodged, in London, at the ‘White Peruke’! Spenser died at an inn in King Street, Westminster, on his return from Ireland. At the ‘Red Horse,’ Stratford, is the ‘Irving room,’ precious to the American traveller; and how renowned have sweet Anne Page and jolly Falstaff made the very name of the ‘Garter Inn’! In the East a monastery, in the Desert a tent, on the Nile a boat, a hacienda in South America, a kiosk in Turkey, a caffé in Italy, but in Britain an inn, is the pilgrim’s home, and one not less characteristic. The subject, as suggestive of the philosophy of civilization, is worth investigation.
In England and in towns of Anglo-Saxon origin, where the economies of life have a natural sway, we find inns representative; in London, especially, a glance at the parlour wall reveals the class to whose convenience the tavern is dedicated: in one the portraits of actors, in another scenes in the ring and on the racecourse; here the countenance of a leading merchant, and there a military effigy, suggest the vocation of those who chiefly frequent the inn. Nor are local features less certain to find recognition: a view of the nearest nobleman’s estate, or his portrait, ornaments the sitting-room; and the observant eye can always discover an historical hint at these public resorts. Heywood, the dramatist, aptly specified this representative character of inns:—
‘The gentry to the King’s Head,
The nobles to the Crown,
The knights unto the Golden Fleece,
And to the Plough the clown;
The churchman to the Mitre,
The shepherd to the Star,
The gardener hies him to the Rose,
To the Drum the man of war;
To the Feathers, ladies, you; the Globe
The seamen do not scorn;
The usurer to the Devil, and
The townsman to the Horn;
The huntsman to the White Hart,
To the Ship the merchants go,
But you that do the Muses love
The sign called River Po;
The bankrupt to the World’s End,
The fool to the Fortune hie,
Unto the Mouth the oyster-wife,
The fiddler to the Pie;
······ The drunkard to the Vine, The beggar to the Bush, then meet And with Sir Humphrey dine.’
Inn signs are indeed historical landmarks: in the Middle Ages, the ‘Cross Keys,’ the ‘Three Kings,’ and ‘St. Francis,’ abounded; the Puritans substituted for ‘Angel and Lady,’ the ‘Soldier and Citizen;’ the ‘Saracen’s Head’ was a device of the Crusades; and before the ‘Coach and Horses’ was the sign of the ‘Packhorse,’ indicative of the days of equestrian travel. Many current anecdotes attest the virtue of an old, and the hazards of a new inn sign; as when the loyal host substituted the head of George the Fourth for the ancient ass, which latter effigy being successfully adopted by a neighbouring innkeeper, his discomfited rival had inscribed under the royal effigy, ‘This is the real ass.’ Thackeray cites an inn sign as illustrative of Scotch egotism: ‘In Cupar-Fife,’ he writes, ‘there’s a little inn called the “Battle of Waterloo,” and what do you think the sign is? The “Battle of Waterloo” is one broad Scotchman laying about him with a broadsword.’
The coffee-room of the best class of English inns, carpeted and curtained, the dark rich hue of the old mahogany, the ancient plate, the four-post bed, the sirloin or mutton joint, the tea, muffins, Cheshire and Stilton, the ale, the coal-fire, and The Times, form an epitome of England; and it is only requisite to ponder well the associations and history of each of these items, to arrive at what is essential in English history and character. The impassable divisions of society are shown in the difference between the ‘commercial’ and the ‘coffee-room;’ the time-worn aspect of the furniture is eloquent of conservatism; the richness of the meats and strength of the ale explain the bone and sinew of the race; the tea is fragrant with Cowper’s memory, and suggestive of East India conquests; the cheese proclaims a thrifty agriculture, the bed and draperies comfort, the coal-fire manufactures; while The Times is the chart of English enterprise, division of labour, wealth, self-esteem, politics, trade, court-life, ‘inaccessibility to ideas,’ and bullyism.
The national subserviency to rank is as plainly evinced by the plates on chamber-doors at the provincial inns, setting forth that therein on a memorable night slept a certain scion of nobility. And from the visitor at the great house of a neighbourhood, when sojourning at the inn thereof, is expected a double fee. As an instance of the inappropriate, of that stolid insensibility to taste and tact which belongs to the nation, consider the English waiter. His costume is that of a clergyman, or a gentleman dressed for company, and in ridiculous contrast with his menial obeisance; perhaps it is the self-importance nourished by this costume which renders him such a machine, incapable of an idea beyond the routine of handing a dish and receiving a sixpence.
Old Hobson, whose name is proverbially familiar, went with his wain from Cambridge to the ‘Bull Inn,’ Bishopsgate Street, London. ‘Clement’s Inn’ tavern was the scene of that memorable dialogue between Shallow and Sir John; at the ‘Cock,’ in Bond Street, Sir Charles Sedley got scandalously drunk. ‘Will’s Coffee-house’ was formerly called the ‘Rose;’ hence the line—
‘Supper and friends expect me at the Rose.’
‘Button’s,’ so long frequented by the wits of Queen Anne’s time, was kept by a former servant of Lady Warwick; and there the author of Cato fraternized with Garth, Armstrong, and other contemporary writers. Ben Jonson held his club at the ‘Devil Tavern,’ and Shakspeare and Beaumont used to meet him at the ‘Mermaid;’ the same inn is spoken of by Pope, and Swift writes ‘Stella’ of his dinner there. Beaumont thus reveals to Ben Jonson their convivial talk:—
‘What things have we seen
Done at the “Mermaid”! heard words that have been
So nimble and so full of subtle fire,
As if that every one from whom they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
And had resolved to live a fool the rest
Of his dull life.’
The author of Peter Wilkins was a frequent visitor at an hostel near Clifford’s Inn, and Dr. Johnson frequented all the taverns in Fleet Street. Old Slaughter’s coffee-house, in St. Martin’s Lane, was the favourite resort of Hogarth; the house where Jeremy Taylor was born is now an inn; and Prior’s uncle kept an inn in London, where the poet was seen, when a boy, reading Horace. This incident is made use of by Johnson, in his Lives of the Poets, in a very caustic manner; for, after relating it, he observes of Prior, that ‘in his private relaxations he revived the tavern, and in his amorous pedantry he exhibited the college.’
There is no city in Europe where an imaginative mood can be so indefinitely prolonged as at Venice; and in the early summer, the traveller, after gliding about all day in a gondola, and thinking of Barbarossa, Faliero, Titian, and the creations of Shakspeare, Otway, Byron, and Cooper, at evening, from under the arches of St. Mark’s Square, watches the picturesque, and sometimes mysterious figures, and then, between moss-grown palaces and over lone canals, returns to his locanda to find its aspect perfectly in accordance with his reverie; at least, such was my experience at the ‘Golden Lion.’ The immense salle-à-manger was dimly lighted, and the table for two or three guests set in a corner and half surrounded by a screen; when I raised my eyes from my first dinner there, they fell on a large painting of the Death of Seneca, a print of which had been familiar to my childhood; and thus memory was ever invoked in Venice, and her dissolving views reflected in the mirror of the mind, unbroken by the interruptions from passing life that elsewhere render them so brief. The mere fact of disembarking at the weedy steps, the utter silence of the canal, invaded only by the plash of the gondolier’s oar, or his warning cry at the angle, the tessellated pavement and quaintly-carved furniture of the bedroom, and a certain noiseless step and secretive gravity observable in the attendants, render the Venetian inn memorable and distinct in reminiscence, and in perfect harmony with the place and its associations.
During the late revolutionary era in Europe, the inn tables of Germany afforded the most reliable index of political opinion; the free discussion which was there indulged brought out every variety of sentiment and theory, as it included all classes, with a due sprinkling of foreigners. From the old novel to the new farce, indeed, the extremes of public opinion and the average tone of manners, the laughable contre-temps and the delightful adventure, are made to reveal themselves at inns, so that political sects and all vocations are identified with them. To Rip Van Winkle, the most astonishing change he discovered in his native village, after his long nap, was the substitution of Washington’s likeness for that of King George on the tavern sign.
The dark staircase, rising from the mule stable of a posada, the bare chambers, wool-knotted mattresses, odour of garlic, and vegetables swimming in oil, are items of the Spanish inn not likely to be forgotten by the epicurean traveller. But good beds and excellent chocolate are to be found at the most uninviting Spanish inns; and the imaginative traveller enjoys the privilege of sojourning at the very one where Don Quixote was knighted. In highly-civilized lands, inns have not only a national, but a professional character; the sign, the pictures on the wall, and the company, have a certain individuality,—marine in sailors’ inns, pugilistic in sporting ones, and picturesque in those haunted by artists; the lines of demarcation are as visible as those which separate newspapers and shops; in the grand division of labour that signalizes modern life, the inn also has thus become an organ and a symbol. Even their mottoes and symbols give traditional suggestions, or emblazon phases of opinion; natural history has been exhausted in supplying effigies; mythology has yielded up all her deities and institutions; heroes and localities are kept fresh in the traveller’s imagination by their association with ‘creature comforts.’ Thus he dreams of Cromwell at the ‘Tumble-down Dick,’ and of the Stuarts at the ‘King Charles in the Oak,’ the days of chivalry at the ‘Star and Garter’ or the ‘Croix de Malta,’ of brilliant campaigns at the ‘Wagram and Montmorency,’ of woman’s love at the ‘Petrarch and Laura,’ and of man’s at the ‘Freemasons’ Tavern.’[1]
My host at Ravenna had been Byron’s purveyor during the poet’s residence there; and he was never weary of descanting upon his character and the incidents of his sojourn; in fact, upon discovering my interest in the subject, he forgot the landlord in the cicerone, and gave no small part of a day to accompanying me to the haunts of the bard. Our first visit was to the Guiccioli Palace, and here he described his lordship’s dinners with the precision and enthusiasm of an antiquarian certifying a document or medal; then he took me to the Pine Forest, and pointed out the track where Byron used to wheel his horse at full gallop, and discharge his pistol at a bottle placed on a stump—exercises preparatory to his Grecian campaign. At a particular flagstone, in the main street, my guide suddenly paused; ‘Signore,’ said he ‘just as milord had reached this spot one evening, he heard the report of a musket, and saw an officer fall a few rods in advance; dismounting, he rushed to his side, and found him to be a familiar acquaintance, an agent of the government, who had thus become the victim to private vengeance. Byron had him conveyed to his own apartment and placed on a bed, where in half an hour he expired. This event made a deep impression on his mind; he was dispirited for a week, and wrote a description of death from a shot, which you will find in his poems, derived from this scene.’ With such local anecdotes my Byronic host entertained me so well, that the departed bard ever since has seemed to live in my remembrance rather than my fancy.
Whoever has eaten trout caught in the Arno at the little inn at Tivoli, or been detained by stress of weather in that of Albano, will not forget the evidences the walls of both exhibit that rollicking artists have felt at home there. Such heads and landscapes, caricatures and grotesque animals, as are there improvised, baffle description.
A well is the inn of the desert. ‘The dragoman usually looks out for some place of shelter,’ says the author of Over the Lebanon to Balbek; ‘the shadow of a ruin or the covering of a grove of fig-trees is the most common, and, if possible, near a well or stream. The first of all considerations is to reach a spot where you can get water; so that throughout the East the well answers to the old English “Half-way House,” and road-side “Accommodation for Man and Beast,” which gave their cheerful welcome to the “Tally Ho” and “Red Rover” that flourished before this age of iron.’
The pedestrian in Wales sometimes encounters a snug and beautifully-situated hostel (perhaps the ‘Angler’s Rest’), where five minutes beside the parlour fire, and a chat with the landlady or her pretty daughter, give him so complete a home feeling that it is with painful reluctance he again straps on his knapsack; at liberty to muse by the ever-singing tea-kettle if the weather is unpropitious, stroll out in view of a noble mountain or a fairy lake in the warm sunset, or hear the news from the last wayfarer in the travellers’ room; and there is thus mingled a sense of personal independence, comfort, and solitude, which is rarely experienced even in the most favoured domain of hospitality. An equally winsome but more romantic charm holds the roaming artist who stops at Albano or Volterra, where the dreamy campagna or Etruscan ruins alternate with groups of sunburnt contadini, lighted up by the charcoal’s glow in a way to fascinate Salvator, before his contented gaze; his portfolio fills up with miraculous rapidity; and the still life is agreeably varied by the scenic costumes and figures which grace the vintage or a festa. Some humble Champollion could easily add to the curiosities of literature by a volume gleaned among inn inscriptions—from the marble tablet announcing the sojourn of a royal personage, to the rude caricature on the whitewashed wall, and the sentimental couplet on the window-pane; to say nothing of the albums which enshrine so many tributes to Etna and the White Mountains—the heirlooms of Abbaté, the famous padrone of Catania, and Crawford of the Notch.
Sicily is famous for the absence of inns, and the intolerable discomfort of those that do exist; but mine host of Catania was the prince of landlords. A fine specimen of manly beauty, and with the manners of a gentleman, he seemed to think his guests entitled to all the courtesy which should follow an invitation; he made formal calls upon them, and gave sage advice as to the best way to pass the time; fitted them out with hospitable skill and experienced counsels for the ascent of Etna, and brought home choice game from his hunting excursions, as a present to the ‘stranger within his gates.’ His discourse, too, was of the most bland and entertaining description; he was ‘a fellow of infinite wit, of most excellent fancy;’ and these ministrations derived a memorable charm from a certain gracefulness and winsome cordiality. No wonder his scrap-book is filled with eulogiums, and that the traveller in Sicily, by the mere force of contrast, records in hyperboles the merits of the ‘Corona d’Oro.’ Alas for the mutability of inns and their worthy hosts! Abbaté was killed by an accidental shot, during an émeute in Catania, in 1848.
The waxed floor, light curtains, and gay paper of a Parisian bedroom, however cheerful, are the reverse of snug; but in the provincial inns of the Continent, with less of comfort there is often more historical interest than in those of England; the stone staircases and floors, and the scanty furniture are forlorn; and the exuberance of the host’s civility is often in ludicrous contrast with the poverty of his larder. An hour or two in the dreary salle-à-manger of a provincial French inn on a rainy day is the acme of a voyageur’s depression. The restaurant and café have superseded the French inns, of whose gastronomic renown and scenes of intrigue and violence we read in Dumas’s historical novels; romance and tragedy, the convivial and the culinary associations, are equally prominent. ‘Suburban cabarets,’ observes a popular writer, ‘were long dangerous rendezvous for Parisians;’ before and during the Grand Monarque’s reign the French taverns were representative, the army, court, men of letters, and even ecclesiastics having their favourite haunt: Molière went to the ‘Croix de Lorraine,’ and Racine to the ‘Mouton Blanc;’ the actors met at ‘Les Deux Faisans;’ one of the last of the old-school Parisian landladies—she who kept the ‘Maison Rouge’—is celebrated in Béranger’s Madame Gregoire; Ravaillac went from a tavern to assassinate Henry the Fourth; and fashionable orgies were carried on in the ‘Temple Cellars.’ It is not uncommon to find ourselves in a friar’s dormitory, the large hotels in the minor towns having frequently been erected as convents; and in Italy, such an inn as that of Terracina, with its legends of banditti and its romantic site, the waves of the Mediterranean moaning under its lofty windows, infallibly recalls Mrs. Radcliffe. In the cities many of the hotels are palaces where noble families have dwelt for centuries, and about them are perceptible the traces of decayed magnificence and the spell of traditional glory and crime. To an imaginative traveller these fanciful attractions often compensate for the absence of substantial merit, and there is something mysterious and winsome in the obsolete architecture and fallen grandeur of these edifices;—huge shadows glide along the high cornices, the mouldy frescoes look as if they had witnessed strange vicissitudes, and the imagination readily wanders through a series of wonderful experiences of which these old palazzi have been the scene. Here, as elsewhere in the land, it is the romantic element, the charm of antiquity, that is the redeeming feature. For picturesque beauty of situation, neatness, and rural comfort, some of the inns of Switzerland are the most delightful on the Continent, inviting the stranger to linger amid the clear, fresh, and glorious landscape, and relish the sweet butter, white bread, and unrivalled honey and eggs, served so neatly every morning by a fair mountaineer with snowy cap and gay bodice.
I am a lover of the woods, and sometimes cross the bay, with a friend, to Long Island, and pass a few hours in the strip of forest that protected our fugitive army at the Battle of Flatbush; there are devious and shadowy paths intersecting it, and in spring and autumn the wild flowers, radiant leaves, and balmy stillness cheer the mind and senses, fresh from the dust and bustle of the city. Often after one of these woodland excursions we have emerged upon a quiet road, with farm-houses at long intervals, and orchards and grain-fields adjacent, and followed its course to a village, whose gable-roofed domicile and ancient graveyard indicate an old settlement; and here is a little inn which recalls our idea of the primitive English alehouse. It has a little Dutch porch, a sunny garden, the liquor is served from the square bottles of Holland, the back parlour is retired and neat, and the landlady sits all day in the window at her sewing, and, when a little acquainted, will tell you all about the love-affairs of the village; the cheese and sour-krout at dinner suggest a Flemish origin.
The old sign that hangs at the road-side was brought to this country by an English publican, when the fine arts were supposed to be at so low a stage as to furnish no Dick Tinto equal to such an achievement. It represents the arms of Great Britain, and doubtless beguiled many a trooper of his Majesty when Long Island was occupied by the English; no sooner, however, had they retreated, than the republican villagers forced the landlord to have an American eagle painted above the king’s escutcheon. Indeed, it is characteristic of inns that they perpetuate local associations: put your head into an Italian boarding-house in New York, and the garlic, macaroni, and red wine lead you to think yourself at Naples; the snuff, dominoes, and gazettes mark a French café all the world over; in Montreal you wake up in a room like that you occupied at Marseilles; and at Halifax the malt liquor is as English as the currency.
‘The sports of the inn yards’ are noted often in the memoirs of Elizabeth’s reign. In a late biography of Lord Bacon, his brother Anthony is spoken of as ‘having taken a house in Bishopsgate Street, near the famous “Ball Inn,” where plays are performed before cits and gentlemen, very much to the delight of Essex and his jovial crew.’ And in allusion to the Earl’s conspiracy, the lower class of inns then and there are thus described: ‘From kens like the “Hart’s Horn” and the “Shipwreck Tavern,” haunts of the vilest refuse of a great city, the spawn of hells and stews, the vomit of Italian cloisters and Belgian camps, Blount, long familiar with the agents of disorder, unkennels in the Earl’s name a pack of needy ruffians eager for any device that seems to promise pay to their greed or licence to their lust.’ It has been justly remarked by Letitia Landon, that ‘after all, the English hostel owes much of its charm to Chaucer; our associations are of his haunting pictures—his delicate prioress, his comely young squire, with their pleasant interchange of tale and legend:’ still less remote and more personal associations endear and identify these landmarks of travel and sojourn in Great Britain. Scarcely a pleasant record of life or manners, during the last century, is destitute of one of these memorable resorts. Addison frequented the ‘White Horn,’ at the end of Holland House Lane. When Sir Walter Scott visited Wordsworth, he daily strolled to the ‘Swan,’ beyond Grasmere, to atone for the plain fare of the bard’s cottage. ‘We four,’ naïvely writes the Rev. Archibald Carlyle, speaking of his literary comrades, ‘frequently resorted to a small tavern at the corner of Cockspur Street, the “Golden Ball,” where we had a frugal supper and a little punch, as the finances of none of the company were in very good order; but we had rich enough conversation on literary subjects, enlivened by Smollett’s agreeable stories, which he told with peculiar grace.’ And his more than clerical zest for such a rendezvous is apparent in his notice of another favourite inn: ‘It was during this assembly that the inn at the lower end of the West Bow got into some credit, and was called the “Diversorium.” Thomas Nicholson was the man’s name, and his wife’s Nelly Douglas. Nelly was handsome, Thomas a rattling fellow.’ Here often met Robertson the historian, Horne the dramatist, Hume, Jardine, and other notable men of the Scotch metropolis. To facilitate their intercourse when in London, they also ‘established a club at a coffee-house in Saville Row, and dined together daily at three with Wedderburn and Jack Dalrymple.’ By the same candid autobiographer we are informed that, at a tavern ‘in Fleet Street, a physicians’ club met, had original papers laid before them, and always waited supper for Dr. Armstrong to order.’ These casual allusions indicate the essential convenience and social importance of the inn, before clubs had superseded them in Britain, and cafés on the Continent. A writer, whose Itinerary is dated 1617, thus describes entertainment at the English inns of his day: ‘As soone as a passenger comes to an inne, the servants run to him, and one takes his horse and walkes him about till he is cool, then rubs him down and gives him feed; another servant gives the passenger his private chamber, and kindles his fire; the third pulls off his bootes and makes them cleane; then the host and hostess visit him, and if he will eate with the hoste, or at a common table with the others, his meale will cost him sixpence, or, in some places, fourpence; but if he will eate in his own chamber, he commands what meat he will, according to his appetite; yea, the kitchen is open to him to order the meat to be dressed as he likes beste. After having eaten what he pleases, he may with credit set by a part for next day’s breakfast. His bill will then be written for him, and should he object to any charge, the host is ready to alter it.’ An Italian nobleman of our own day,[2] his appreciation of free discussion quickened by political exile, was much impressed with the influence and agency of the English inn in public affairs. ‘Taverns,’ he writes, ‘are the forum of the English; it was here that arose the triumph of Burdett when he left the Tower, and the curses of Castlereagh when he descended into the tomb; it is here that begins the censure or the approval of a new law.’
Charles Lamb delighted to smoke his pipe at the old ‘Queen’s Head,’ and to quaff ale from the tankard presented by one Master Cranch (a choice spirit) to a former host, and in the old oak-parlour where tradition says ‘the gallant Raleigh received full souse in his face the contents of a jolly black-jack from an affrighted clown, who, seeing clouds of tobacco smoke curling from the knight’s mouth and nose, thought he was all on fire.’
‘A relic of old London is fast disappearing,’ says a journal of that city—‘the “Blue Boar Inn,” or the “George and Blue Boar,” as it came to be called later, in Holborn. For more than two hundred years this was one of the famous coaching-houses, where stages arrived from the Northern and Midland counties. It is more famous still as being the place—if Lord Orrery’s chaplain, Morrice, may be credited—where Cromwell and Ireton, disguised as troopers, cut from the saddle-flap of a messenger a letter which they knew to be there, from Charles the First to Henrietta Maria.’
The ‘Peacock,’ at Matlock on the Derwent, was long the chosen resort of artists, botanists, geologists, lawyers, and anglers; and perhaps at no rural English inn of modern times has there been more varied and gifted society than occasionally convened in this romantic district, under its roof.
The ‘Hotel Gibbon,’ at Lausanne, suggests to one familiar with English literature the life of that historian, so naïvely described by himself, and keeps alive the associations of his elaborate work in the scene of its production; and nightly colloquies, that are embalmed and embodied in genial literature, immortalize the ‘sky-blue parlour’ at Ambrose’s ‘Edinburgh Tavern.’
Few historical novelists have more completely mastered the details of costume, architecture, and social habits in the old times of England, than James; and his description of the inns of Queen Anne’s day is as elaborate as it is complete: ‘Landlords in England at that time—I mean, of course, in country towns—were very different in many respects, and of a different class, from what they are at present. In the first place, they were not fine gentlemen; in the next place, they were not discharged valets-de-chambre or butlers, who, having cheated their masters handsomely, and perhaps laid them under contribution in many ways, retire to enjoy the fat things at their ease in their native town. Then, again, they were on terms of familiar intercourse with two or three classes, completely separate and distinct from each other—a sort of connecting link between them. At their door, the justice of the peace, the knight of the shire, the great man of the neighbourhood, dismounted from his horse, and had his chat with mine host. There came the village lawyer, when he gained a cause, or won a large fee, or had been paid a long bill, to indulge in his pint of sherry, and gossiped as he drank it of all the affairs of his clients. There sneaked in the doctor to get his glass of eau-de-vie, or plague-water, or aqua mirabilis, or strong spirits, in short, of any other denomination, and tell little dirty anecdotes of his cases and his patients. There the alderman, the wealthy shopkeeper, and the small proprietor, or the large farmer, came to take his cheerful cup on Saturdays, or on market-day. But, besides these, the inn was the resort—though approached by another door—of a lower and a poorer class, with whom the landlord was still upon as good terms as with the others. The wagoner, the carter, the lawyer’s and the banker’s clerk, the shopman, the porter even, all came there; the landlord was civil, and familiar, and chatty with them all.’
Geoffrey Crayon’s ‘Shakspearian Research’ culminated at the ‘Boar Head,’ Eastcheap; his story of the ‘Spectre Bridegroom’ was appropriately related in the kitchen of the ‘Pomme d’Or,’ in the Netherlands; and he makes Rip’s congenial retreat from his virago spouse, the ‘coin of vantage’ in front of the village inn. Irving’s own appreciation of these vagabond shrines and accidental homes is emphatic; he commends the ‘honest bursts of laughter in which a man indulges in that temple of true liberty, an inn,’ and quotes zestfully the maxim that ‘a tavern is the rendezvous, the exchange, the staple of good fellows.’ His personal testimony is characteristic: ‘To a homeless man there is a momentary feeling of independence, as he stretches himself before an inn fire: the arm-chair is his throne, the poker is his sceptre, and the little parlour his undisputed empire.’ How little did the modest author imagine, when he thus wrote, that the poker with which he stirred the fire in the parlour-grate of the ‘Red Lion’ would become a sacred literary relic wherewith his partial countrymen are beguiled of extra fees, while the bard of Avon and the gentleman of Sunnyside mingle in the reverie of fond reminiscence.
‘I went by an indirect route to Lichfield,’ writes Hawthorne, in his English sketches, ‘and put up at the “Black Swan.” Had I known where to find it, I would rather have established myself at the inn kept by Mr. Boniface, and so famous for its ale in Farquhar’s time.’ Gossip and gaiety, the poor man’s arena and the ‘breathing-time of day’ of genius, thus give to the inn a kind of humane scope. Beethoven, wearied of his palace-home and courtly patronage, and the ‘stately houses open to him in town and country, often forsook all for solitude in obscure inns, escaping from all conventionalities to be alone with himself.’ ‘Nous voyons,’ says Brillat-Savarin, ‘que les villageois font toutes les affaires au cabaret;’ Rousseau delighted in the frugal liberty thereof; and the last days of Elia are associated with the inn which was the goal of his daily promenade. ‘After Isola married,’ writes one of his friends, ‘and Mary was infirm, he took his lonely walk along the London road, as far as the “Bell of Edmonton;” and one day tripped over a stone and slightly wounded his forehead; erysipelas set in, and he died.’ Somewhat of the attractiveness of the inn to the philosopher is that its temporary and casual shelter and solace accord with the counsel of Sydney Smith, ‘to take short views,’ and Goëthe’s, to ‘cast ourselves into the sea of accidents;’ and a less amiable reason for the partiality has been suggested in ‘the wide capability of finding fault which an inn affords.’ A genial picture of one is thus drawn by a modern poet:—
‘This cosy hostelrie a visit craves;
Here will I sit awhile,
And watch the heavenly sunshine smile
Upon the village graves.
Strange is this little room in which I wait,
With its old table, rough with rustic names.
’Tis summer now; instead of blinking flames,
Sweet-smelling ferns are hanging o’er the grate.
With curious eyes I pore
Upon the mantel-piece, with precious wares;
Glazed Scripture prints, in black, lugubrious frames,
Filled with old Bible lore:
The whale is casting Jonah on the shore;
Pharaoh is drowning in the curly wave;
And to Elijah, sitting at his cave,
The hospitable ravens fly in pairs,
Celestial food within their horny beaks;
On a slim David, with great pinky cheeks,
A towered Goliath stares.
Here will I sit at peace,
While, piercing through the window’s ivy veil,
A slip of sunshine smites the amber ale;
And as the wreaths of fragrant smoke increase,
I’ll read the letter which came down to-day.’[3]
As a contrast to this, take Longfellow’s ‘Wayside Inn,’ at Sudbury, Massachusetts:—
‘As ancient is this hostelry
As any in the land may be,
Built in the old colonial day,
When men lived in a grander way,
With ampler hospitality;
A kind of old Hobgoblin hall,
Now somewhat fallen to decay,
With weather-stains upon the wall,
And stairways worn, and crazy doors,
And creaking and uneven floors,
And chimneys huge and tiled and tall.
A region of repose it seems,
A place of slumber and of dreams,
Remote among the wooded hills!’
The facilities of modern travel and its vast increase, while they have modified the characteristic features of the inn, have given it new economical importance; and, not long since, the American hotel-system was earnestly discussed in the English and French journals, as a substitute for the European: the method by which all the wants of the traveller are supplied at an established price per diem, instead of the details of expense and the grades of accommodation in vogue abroad. In Paris, London, some of the West India Islands, and elsewhere, the American hotel has, in a measure, succeeded. But it is in its historical and social aspect that we find the interest of the subject; as regards convenience, economy, and comfort, the question can perhaps only be met in an eclectic spirit, each country having its own merits and demerits as regards the provision for public entertainment of man and beast. The inns of Switzerland will bear the test of reminiscence better than those of any other part of the Continent; the solitary system of the English inn is objectionable; discomfort is proverbial in Havannah hotels; the garden-tables and music in the German hostels are pleasant social features; and, with all their frugal resources, the farm-stations in Norway boast the charm of a candid and naïve hospitality which sweetens the humble porridge of the weary traveller. ‘It is scarcely credible,’ says an ‘unprotected female,’ in her record of travel there, ‘that such pre-adamite simplicity of heart still exists on earth.’ In pictures and diaries, the German landlord is always light-haired, and holds a beer tankard; and the hotels in the British West Indies, according to a recent traveller, are always kept by ‘fat, middle-aged, coloured ladies, who have no husbands.’ Rose, writing to Hallam from Italy, hints the union of romantic and classical associations which some of the inns conserve and inspire; that of ‘Civita Castellana,’ he remarks, ‘is on the classic route from Rome to Florence, and is a type of the large Italian inns, such as one finds in romances: balconies, terraces, flowers of the south, large courts open for post-chaises—nothing is wanting.’ When Heine visited Germany, he tells us how the conservative habits of his fatherland newly impressed him in the familiar and old-fashioned dishes, ‘sour-krout, stuffed chestnuts in green cabbages, stockfish swimming in butter, eggs and bloaters, sausages, fieldfares, roasted angels with apple-sauce, and goose.’
In mediæval times, in that part of Europe, from the isolation of inns they were emphatically the places to find an epitome of the age—soldiers, monks, noblemen, and peasants surrounded the same stove, shared the contents of the same pot, and often the straw which formed their common bed; the proverb was, ‘Inns are not built for one.’ The salutations, benisons, and curses; the motley guests, the lack of privacy, the trinkgeld and stirrup-cup, the murders and amours, the converse and precautions, the orgies and charities thereof; were each and all characteristic of the unsettled state of society, the diversities of rank, the common necessities, and the priestly, military, and boorish elements of life and manners. But the rarity of any public-house, as we understand the term, is more characteristic of those times than the incongruous elements therein occasionally exhibited. ‘There seems,’ says an ancient historian, ‘to have been no inns or houses of entertainment for the reception of travellers during the middle ages. This is a proof of the little intercourse which took place between different nations. The duty of hospitality was so necessary in that state of society, that it was enforced by statutes; it abounded, and secured the stranger a kind reception under any roof where he chose to take shelter.’[4]
On first entering an inn at Havre-de-Grace, I found the landlady taking leave of the captain of an American packet ship. He had paid his bill, not without some remonstrance, and his smiling hostess, with true French tact, was now in the act of bidding so pleasing a farewell as would lure him to take up his quarters there on the return voyage. She had purchased at the market a handsome bouquet, and tied it up jauntily with ribbons. The ruddy sea-dog face of the captain was half turned aside with a look of impatience at the idea of being inveigled into good-nature after her extortion; but she, not a whit discouraged, held her flowers up to him, and smiling, with her fair hand on his rough dread-naught overcoat, turned full to his eye a sprig of yellow blossom, and with irresistible naïveté whispered,—‘Mon cher Capitaine, c’est immortel comme mon attachement pour vous.’ It was a little scene worthy of Sterne, and brought the agreeableness and the imposition of the innkeepers of the Continent at once before me. One evening, in Florence, I was sent for by a countryman, who lodged at the most famous hotel in that city, and found him perambulating his apartment under strong excitement of mind. He told me, with much emotion, that the last time he had visited Florence was twenty years before, with his young and beautiful wife. The belle of the season that winter was the Marchesa ——. She gave a magnificent ball, and in the midst of the festivities took the young American couple into her boudoir, and sung to them with her harp. Her vocal talent was celebrated, but it was a rare favour to hear her, and this attention was prized accordingly. ‘You know,’ added my friend, ‘that I came abroad to recover the health which grief at my wife’s death so seriously impaired; and you know how unavailing has proved the experiment. On my arrival here I inquired for the best inn, and was directed hither; upon entering this chamber, which was assigned me, something in the frescoes and tiles struck me as familiar; they awoke the most vivid associations, and at last I remembered that this is the very room to which the beautiful Marchesa brought us to hear her sing on that memorable evening; the family are dispersed, and her palace is rented for an hotel; hence this coincidence.’
Among the minor local associations to be enjoyed at Rome, not the least common and suggestive are those which belong to the old ‘Bear Inn,’ where Montaigne lodged. Not only the vicissitudes but the present fortunes of European towns are indicated by the inns. I arrived at ancient Syracuse at sunset on a spring afternoon, and dismounted at an inn that looked like an episcopal residence or government house, so lofty and broad were the dimensions of the edifice; but not a person was visible in the spacious court, and as I wandered up the staircases and along the corridors, no sound but the echo of my steps was audible. At length a meagre attendant emerged from an obscure chamber, and explained that this grand pile was erected in anticipation of the American squadron in the Mediterranean making their winter quarters in the harbour of Syracuse: a project abandoned at the earnest request of the King of Naples, who dreaded the example of a republican marine in his realm; and then so rarely did a visitor appear, that the poor lonely waiter was thrown into a fit of surprise, from which he did not recover during my stay.
To the stranger, no more characteristic evidence of our material prosperity and gregarious habits can be imagined than that afforded by the large, showy, and thronged hotels of our principal cities. They are epitomes of the whole country; at a glance they reveal the era of upholstery, the love of ostentation, the tendency to live in herds, and the absence of a subdued and harmonious tone of life and manners. The large mirrors and bright carpets which decorate these resorts are entirely incongruous—the brilliancy of the sunshine and the stimulating nature of the climate demand within doors a predominance of neutral tints to relieve and freshen the eye and nerves. It is characteristic of that devotion to the immediate which De Tocqueville ascribes to republican institutions, that these extravagant and gregarious establishments in our country are so often named after living celebrities in the mercantile, literary, and political world. This custom gives those who enjoy this distinction while living ‘the freedom of the house.’ It greatly amused the friends of our modest Geoffery Crayon, when, encouraged by his affectionate kinswoman and his friend Kennedy to ‘travel on his capital,’ under the pressure of necessity he once thus desperately claimed the privileges of his honoured name, wherefrom his sensitive nature habitually shrunk. ‘I arrived in town safe,’ he writes from New York to his niece, ‘and proceeded to the “Irving House,” where I asked for a room. What party had I with me? None. Had I not a lady with me? No; I was alone. I saw my chance was a bad one, and I feared to be put in a dungeon as I was on a former occasion. I bethought myself of your advice; and so, when the book was presented to me, wrote my name at full length—“from Sunnyside.” I was ushered into an apartment on the first floor, furnished with rosewood, yellow damask, and pier-glasses, with a bed large enough for an alderman and his wife, a bath-room adjoining. In a word, I was accommodated completely en prince. The negro waiters all call me by name, and vie with each other in waiting on me. The chambermaid has been at uncommon pains to put my room in first-rate order; and if she had been pretty, I absolutely should have kissed her; but as she was not, I shall reward her in sordid coin. Henceforth I abjure all modesty with hotel-keepers, and will get as much for my name as it will fetch. Kennedy calls it travelling on one’s capital.’
The extravagant scale upon which these establishments are conducted is another national feature, at once indicating the comparative ease with which money is acquired in the New World, and the passion that exists here for keeping up appearances. It would be useful to investigate the influence of hotel life in this country upon manners: whatever may be the result as to the coarser sex, its effect upon women and children is lamentable—lowering the tone, compromising the taste, and yielding incessant and promiscuous excitement to the love of admiration; the change in the very nature of young girls, thus exposed to an indiscriminate crowd, is rapid and complete; modesty and refinement are soon lost in over-consciousness and moral hardihood. But, perhaps, the most singular trait in the American hotel is the deference paid to the landlord: instead of being the servant of the public, he is apparently the master; and a traveller who makes the now rapid transition from a New York to a Liverpool hotel, might think himself among a different race; the courteous devotion, almost subserviency, in the one case, being in total contrast with the nonchalance and even despotism of the other. The prosperous security of the host with us, and the dependence of his guest for any choice of accommodation, is doubtless the most obvious reason for this anomaly; but it is also, in a degree at least, to be referred to the familiarity with which even gentlemen treat the innkeepers. To use a vulgar phrase, they descend to curry favour and minister to the self-esteem of a class of men in whom it is already pampered beyond endurable bounds. No formula of republican equality justifies this behaviour; and it usually reacts unfavourably for the self-respect of the individual. Some foreigner remarked, with as much truth as irony, that our aristocracy consisted of hotel-keepers and steamboat captains; and appearances certainly warrant the sarcasm. It was not always thus. When Washington lodged at the old Walton Mansion-house, which had been converted to an inn, the old negro who kept it was the ideal of a host; an air of dignity as well as comfort pervaded the house; through the open upper half of the broad door played the sunshine upon the sanded threshold; at the head of the long easy staircase ticked the old-fashioned clock; full-length portraits, by Copley, graced the parlour wall; the old Dutch stoop looked the emblem of hospitality; no angular figures were ranged to squirt tobacco-juice; no pert clerks lorded it from behind a mahogany barricade; but the glow of the windows at night, the alacrity of the sedate waiter, the few but respectable guests, and the prolonged meals, of which but two or three partook, gave to the inn the character of a home. Lafayette wrote to his wife in 1777, while descanting with enthusiasm upon the simplicity of manners in this country: ‘The very inns are different from those in Europe; the host and hostess sit at table with you, and do the honours of a comfortable meal; and, on going away, you pay your fare without higgling.’ An English traveller, who visited this country soon after the Revolutionary War, speaks of the ‘uncomplying temper of the landlords of the country inns in America.’ ‘They will not,’ says another, ‘bear the treatment we too often give ours at home. They feel themselves in some degree independent of travellers, as all of them have other occupations to follow; nor will they put themselves into a bustle on your account; but with good language they are very civil, and will accommodate you as well as they can. The general custom of having two or three beds in a room, to be sure, is very disagreeable; it arises from the great increase of travelling within the last few years, and the smallness of their houses, which were not built for houses of entertainment.’
It is a most significant indication of our devotion to the external, that ovations at which the legislators of the land discourse, and eulogies that fill the columns of the best journals, celebrate the opening of a new tavern, or the retirement of a publican. The confined and altitudinous cells into which so many of the complacent victims of these potentates are stowed, and their habits of subserviency to the rules of the house which are perked up on their chamber-walls, induced a Sicilian friend of mine to complain that sojourners at inns in this land of liberty were treated like friars. The gorgeous luxury of the metropolitan inns is reversed in the small towns, where, without the picturesque situation, we often find the discomfort of the Continent.
Under date of March 4, 1634, John Winthrop, first governor of Massachusetts, records in his journal: ‘Samuel Cole set up the first house of common entertainment’ in Boston. According to the famous literary ruse of Irving and Wirt, Knickerbocker’s facetious history and the Letters of a British Spy were found in the inn-chamber of a departed traveller. Of old, the American inn, or tavern as it was called, subserved a great variety of purposes. One of New England’s local historians says:—
‘The taverns of olden time were the places of resort for gentlemen; and one consequence was, good suppers and deep drinking. They also performed the office of newspapers. The names posted on the several tavern-doors were a sufficient notice for jurors. Saturday afternoon was the time when men came from all quarters of the town to see and hear all they could at the tavern, where politics and theology, trade, barter, and taxes, were all mixed up together over hot flip and strong toddy.
‘The taverns served also as places for marketing. During most of the winter they were filled every night with farmers, who had brought their pork, butter, grain, seeds, and poultry to market. Most families supplied themselves through these opportunities, and purchased the best articles at moderate prices.
‘Landlords could not grow rich very fast on country custom. The travelling farmer brought all his food for himself in a box, and that for his horse in a bag. He therefore paid only twelve cents for his bed, and as much for horse-keeping. It was not uncommon to have six days’ expenses amount only to two dollars. Auctions, theatricals, legerdemain, caucuses, military drills, balls, and dancing-schools, all came in place at the tavern. Especially, sleigh-riding parties found them convenient.’[5]
‘You will not go into one,’ wrote Brissot in 1788, ‘without meeting with neatness, decency, and dignity. The table is served by a maiden, well-dressed and pretty, by a pleasant mother whose age has not effaced the agreeableness of her features, and by men who have that air of respectability which is inspired by the idea of equality, and are not ignoble and base, like the greater part of our own tavern-keepers.’ In 1792, Wansey, the commercial traveller already cited, tells us he lodged at the ‘Bunch of Grapes,’ in Boston, and paid five shillings a day, including a pint of Madeira. He had an interview with Citizen Genet and Dr. Priestley at the ‘Tontine,’ near the Battery in New York; and saw Frenchmen with tricolour cockades at the ‘Indian Queen,’ on the Boston road;—trivial data for his journal then, and yet now suggestive of the political and economical condition of the land, whereof even tavern bills and company are no inadequate test. A sagacious reminiscent informs us that ‘the taverns of Boston were the original business exchanges: they combined the Counting-house, the Exchange-office, the Reading-room, and the Bank; each represented a locality. To the “Lamb Tavern,” called by the sailors “sheep’s baby,” people went to “see a man from Dedham”—it was the resort of Norfolk County; the old “Eastern Stage-house,” in Ann Street, was frequented by “down-easters,” captains of vessels, formerly from the Penobscot and Kennebec; there were to be seen groups of sturdy men seated round an enormous fireplace, chalking down the price of bark and lumber, and skippers bringing in a vagrant tarpaulin to “sign the articles.” To the “Exchange Coffee-house” resorted the nabobs of Essex County; here those aristocratic eastern towns, Newburyport and Portsmouth, were represented by shipowners and shipbuilders, merchants of the first class. Dealers in butter and cheese went to the “City Tavern,” in Brattle Street—a favourite sojourn of “members of the General Court,”—its court-yard crowded with teams loaded with the best pork from Vermont and Western Massachusetts, and the “wooden notions” of Yankee rustics. The last of the old Boston taverns was the once famous “Elm-street House,” a rendezvous of stage-coaches, teams, and transient boarders, which was kept up in the old style until fairly drawn from the field by “modern improvements.”’ Indeed, this slight mention of the functions and fortunes of inns in the New England metropolis hints, more than a volume of statistics, the progress of her growth and the cause of her social transitions; locomotion has completely done away with the local affinities of the past, and emigration modified the individuality of class and character which of old gave such special interest to the inn; we are too gregarious, luxurious, and hurried to indulge in these primitive expedients.
At the old ‘Raleigh Tavern,’ in Virginia—not long since destroyed by fire,—Patrick Henry lodged when he made his memorable début, as a patriotic orator, in the House of Burgesses; and it was in a chamber of this inn that he prepared his speeches, and that the great leading men of the Revolution, in that State, assembled to consult. Some of the inns in Canada are named after the Indian chiefs mentioned in the earliest records of exploration by Cartier. At the ‘Frauncis Tavern,’ in New York, Washington took leave of his officers, and the ‘Social Club,’ still famous in the annals of the city, met. Military men appreciate good inns; Washington wrote to Frauncis, and Lafayette praised him. One of the latest of memorable associations connected with the inns of New York, is that which identifies the ‘City Hotel’ with the naval victories of the last war with England. No one who listened to the musical voice of the late Ogden Hoffman, as he related to the St. Nicholas Society at their annual banquet his personal memories of that favourite hotel, will fail to realize the possible dramatic and romantic interest which may attach to such a resort, even in our unromantic times and in the heart of a commercial city. Visions of naval heroes, of belles in the dance, witty coteries and distinguished strangers, political crises and social triumphs, flitted vividly before the mind as the genial reminiscent called up the men, women, fêtes, and follies there known. A recent English traveller in the United States, in alluding to the resemblance he discovered to what was familiar at home, speaks of one relic which has caught the eye of few as suggestive of the old country. ‘There is,’ he observes, ‘in Baltimore an old inn, with an old sign, standing at the corner of Eutaw and Franklin streets, just such as may still be seen in the towns of Somersetshire; and before it are to be seen old wagons, covered and soiled and battered, about to return from the city to the country, just as the wagons do in our own agricultural counties.’[6]
How near to us the record of ‘baiting at an inn’ brings the renowned! ‘After dinner,’ writes Washington in the diary of his second visit to New England, ‘through frequent showers we proceeded to the tavern of a Mrs. Haviland, at Rye, who keeps a very neat and decent inn.’ Mendelssohn, ideal as was his tone of mind, wrote zestfully to his sister:—‘A neat, civil Frenchwoman keeps the inn on the summit of the Simplon; and it would not be easy to describe the sensation of satisfaction caused by its thrifty cleanliness, which is nowhere to be found in Italy.’ Lockhart, when an assiduous Oxford scholar, found his choicest recreation in ‘a quiet row on the river, and a fish-dinner at Godstow;’ and there is not one of his surviving associates, says his biographer, ‘who fails to look back at this moment, with melancholy pleasure, on the brilliant wit, the merry song, and the grave discussion which gave to the sanded parlour of the village alehouse the air of the Palæstra at Tusculum, or the Amaltheum of Cumæ.’
It is impossible to conceive any house of entertainment more dreary than some of the stage-houses, as they were called in New England; the bar-room with an odour of stale rum, the parlour with its everlasting sampler over the fireplace, weeping willow, tombstone, and inscription; the peacock’s feathers or asparagus boughs in the chimney, as if in cheerful mockery; the looking-glass that reflects every feature awry, the cross-lights of the windows, inquisitive loungers, pie-crust like leather, and cheese of mollified oak,—all defied both the senses and digestion, and made the crack of the coachman’s whip a joyful alarum.
The inns near famous localities identify themselves to the memory with the most attractive objects of travel; thus the inn, so rural and neat, at Edensor, with the marvels of Chatsworth; the ‘Red Horse,’ at Stratford-on-Avon, with Shakspeare’s tomb; and the ‘Nag’s Head,’ at Uttoxeter, with Johnson’s penance. It was while ‘waiting for the train,’ at an inn of Coventry, that Tennyson so gracefully paraphrased the legend of Godiva; and the sign of the ‘Flitch’ is associated with the famous bequest of the traditional patron of conjugal harmony. ‘A wayside inn at which we tarried, in Derbyshire, I fancied must have sheltered Moreland or Gainsborough, when caught in the rain, while sketching in that region. The landlady had grenadier proportions and red cheeks; a few peasants were drinking ale beneath a roof whence depended flitches of bacon, and with the frocks, the yellow hair, and the full, ruddy features we see in their pictures; the windows of the best room had little diamond-shaped panes, in which sprigs of holly were stuck. There were several ancient engravings in quaint-looking frames on the wall; the chairs and desk were of dark-veined wood that shone with the polish of many a year’s friction; a great fire blazed in the chimney, and the liquor was served in vessels only seen on this other side of the water, in venerable prints. It was an hostel where you would not be surprised to hear the crack of Tony Lumpkin’s whip, or to see the Vicar of Wakefield rush in, in search of Olivia—an alehouse that, you knew at once, had often given “an hour’s importance to the poor man’s heart,” and where Parson Adams or Squire Western would have felt themselves entirely at home.’[7]
Goldsmith has genially celebrated the humble, rustic inn in the Deserted Village, and his own habits confirmed the early predilection. ‘His favourite festivity,’ says one of his biographers, ‘his holiday of holidays, was to have three or four intimate friends to breakfast with him at ten, to start at eleven for a walk through the fields to Highbury Barn, where they dined at an ordinary, frequented by authors, templars, and retired citizens, for tenpence a head; to return at six to “White’s,” Conduit Street, and to end the evening with a supper at the “Grecian,” or “Temple Exchange Coffee-house.” The whole of the expense of the day’s fête never exceeded a crown, for which the party obtained “good air, good living, and good conversation.”’ ‘He, Goldsmith, however,’ adds Foster, ‘would leave a tavern if his jokes were not rewarded with a roar.’ One of Ben Jonson’s best comedies is the New Inn, and Southey’s most popular ballad is Mary of the Inn. Chaucer makes his Canterbury pilgrims set out from an inn at Southwark. We all remember the inns described by Scott. Elliston’s ‘larks’ at the ‘White Hart’ and ‘Red Cow’ were comical episodes, that read like a vaudeville. She Stoops to Conquer, L’Auberge Pleine, and The Double-bedded Room, are a few of the countless standard plays of which an inn is the scene. ‘What befell them at the Inn,’ is the heading of Don Quixote’s best chapters, for the knight always mistook inns for castles. Grammont’s adventures frequently boast the same scene, and it was ‘in the worst room of the worst inn’ that the accomplished, and dissolute Villiers died. Foote frequented the ‘Bedford’ in Covent Garden, and old Macklin doffed the buskin for the apron and carver. Philosophers, from Horace at the inn of Brundusium, to Montaigne noting the furniture, dishes, and prices at the inns where he rested on his journey into Italy, have found this a most suggestive and characteristic theme.
In German university towns, the professors frequent the ‘Hereditary Prince,’ or some other inn, at evening, to drink beer, smoke pipes, and discuss metaphysics. The jocose reproof which Lamb administers to the sentimental donor of Cœlebs was—
