Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?
FALSTAFF.
DURING a journey that I once made through the Netherlands, I had arrived
one evening at the Pomme d’Or, the principal inn of a small Flemish
village. It was after the hour of the table d’hote, so that I was
obliged to make a solitary supper from the relics of its ampler board.
The weather was chilly; I was seated alone in one end of a great gloomy
dining-room, and, my repast being over, I had the prospect before me
of a long dull evening, without any visible means of enlivening it. I
summoned mine host and requested something to read; he brought me the
whole literary stock of his household, a Dutch family Bible, an almanac
in the same language, and a number of old Paris newspapers. As I sat
dozing over one of the latter, reading old news and stale criticisms,
my ear was now and then struck with bursts of laughter which seemed to
proceed from the kitchen. Every one that has travelled on the Continent
must know how favorite a resort the kitchen of a country inn is to the
middle and inferior order of travellers, particularly in that equivocal
kind of weather when a fire becomes agreeable toward evening. I threw
aside the newspaper and explored my way to the kitchen, to take a peep
at the group that appeared to be so merry. It was composed partly of
travellers who had arrived some hours before in a diligence, and partly
of the usual attendants and hangers-on of inns. They were seated round
a great burnished stove, that might have been mistaken for an altar at
which they were worshipping. It was covered with various kitchen vessels
of resplendent brightness, among which steamed and hissed a huge copper
tea-kettle. A large lamp threw a strong mass of light upon the group,
bringing out many odd features in strong relief. Its yellow rays
partially illumined the spacious kitchen, dying duskily away into remote
corners, except where they settled in mellow radiance on the broad side
of a flitch of bacon or were reflected back from well-scoured utensils
that gleamed from the midst of obscurity. A strapping Flemish lass,
with long golden pendants in her ears and a necklace with a golden heart
suspended to it, was the presiding priestess of the temple.
Many of the company were furnished with pipes, and most of them with
some kind of evening potation. I found their mirth was occasioned by
anecdotes which a little swarthy Frenchman, with a dry weazen face and
large whiskers, was giving of his love-adventures; at the end of each of
which there was one of those bursts of honest unceremonious laughter in
which a man indulges in that temple of true liberty, an inn.
As I had no better mode of getting through a tedious blustering evening,
I took my seat near the stove, and listened to a variety of travellers’
tales, some very extravagant and most very dull. All of them, however,
have faded from my treacherous memory except one, which I will endeavor
to relate. I fear, however, it derived its chief zest from the manner in
which it was told, and the peculiar air and appearance of the narrator.
He was a corpulent old Swiss, who had the look of a veteran traveller.
He was dressed in a tarnished green travelling-jacket, with a broad belt
round his waist, and a pair of overalls with buttons from the hips to
the ankles. He was of a full rubicund countenance, with a double chin,
aquiline nose, and a pleasant twinkling eye. His hair was light, and
curled from under an old green velvet travelling-cap stuck on one side
of his head. He was interrupted more than once by the arrival of guests
or the remarks of his auditors, and paused now and then to replenish his
pipe; at which times he had generally a roguish leer and a sly joke for
the buxom kitchen-maid.
I wish my readers could imagine the old fellow lolling in a huge
arm-chair, one arm a-kimbo, the other holding a curiously twisted
tobacco-pipe formed of genuine ecume de mer, decorated with silver chain
and silken tassel, his head cocked on one side, and a whimsical cut of
the eye occasionally as he related the following story.