The other evening we went with Titania to a ramshackle country hotel
which calls itself _The Mansion House_, looking forward to a fine
robust meal. It was a transparent, sunny, cool evening, and when we
saw on the bill of fare _half broiled chicken_, we innocently
supposed that the word _half_ was an adjective modifying the
compound noun, _broiled-chicken_. Instead, to our sorrow and
disappointment, it proved to be an adverb modifying _broiled_ (we
hope we parse the matter correctly). At any rate, the wretched fowl
was blue and pallid, a little smoked on the exterior, raw and sinewy
within, and an affront to the whole profession of innkeeping.
Whereupon, in the days that followed, looking back at our fine mood
of expectancy as we entered that hostelry, and its pitiable collapse
when the miserable travesty of victuals was laid before us, we fell
to thinking about some of the inns we had known of old time where
we had feasted not without good heart.
To speak merely by sudden memory, for instance, there was the fine
old hotel in Burlington, Vermont--is it called the _Van Ness
House_?--where we remember a line of cane-bottomed chairs on a long
shady veranda, where one could look out and see the town simmering
in that waft of hot and dazzling sunshine that pours across Lake
Champlain in the late afternoon: and _The Black Lion_, Lavenham,
Suffolk; where (unless we confuse it with a pub in Bury St. Edmunds
where we had lunch), there was, in the hallway, a very fine old
engraving called "Pirates Decoying a Merchantman," in which one
pirate, dressed in woman's clothes, stood up above the bulwarks
waving for assistance, while the cutlassed ruffians crouched below
ready to do their bloody work when the other ship came near enough.
Nor have we forgotten _The Saracen's Head_, at Ware, whence we went
exploring down the little river Lea on Izaak Walton's trail; nor
_The Swan_ at Bibury in Gloucestershire, hard by that clear green
water the Colne; nor another _Swan_ at Tetsworth in Oxfordshire,
which one reaches after bicycling over the beechy slope of the
Chilterns, and where, in the narrow taproom, occurred the fabled
encounter between a Texas Rhodes Scholar logged with port wine and
seven Oxfordshire yokels who made merry over his power of carrying
the red blood of the grape.
Our friend C.F.B., while we were meditating these golden matters,
wrote to us that he is going on a walking or bicycling trip in
England next summer, and asks for suggestions. We advise him to get
a copy of Muirhead's "England" (the best general guidebook we have
seen) and look up his favourite authors in the index. That will
refer him to the places associated with them, and he can have rare
sport in hunting them out. There is no way of pilgrimage so pleasant
as to follow the spoor of a well-loved writer. Referring to our
black note-book, in which we keep memoranda of a modest pilgrimage
we once made to places mentioned by two of our heroes, viz., Boswell
and R.L.S., we think that if we were in C.F.B.'s shoes, one of the
regions we would be most anxious to revisit would be Dove Dale, in
Derbyshire. This exquisite little valley is reached from Ashbourne,
where we commend the _Green Man Inn_ (visited more than once by
Doctor Johnson and Boswell). This neighbourhood also has memories of
George Eliot, and of Izaak Walton, who used to go fishing in the
little river Dove; his fishing house is still there. Unfortunately,
when we were in those parts we did not have sense enough to see the
Manyfold, a curious stream (a tributary of the Dove) which by its
habit of running underground caused Johnson and Boswell to argue
about miracles.
Muirhead's book will give C.F.B. sound counsel about the inns of
that district, which are many and good. The whole region of the
Derbyshire Peak is rarely visited by the foreign tourist. Of it,
Doctor Johnson, with his sturdy prejudice, said: "He who has seen
Dove Dale has no need to visit the Highlands." The metropolis of
this moorland is Buxton: unhappily we did not make a note of the inn
we visited in that town; but we have a clear recollection of
claret, candlelight, and reading "Weir of Hermiston" in bed; also a
bathroom with hot water, not too common in the cheap hostelries we
frequented.
We can only wish for the good C.F.B. as happy an evening as we spent
(with our eccentric friend Mifflin McGill) bicycling from the
_Newhaven Inn_ in a July twilight. The _Newhaven Inn_, which is only
a vile kind of meagre roadhouse at a lonely fork in the way (where
one arm of the signpost carries the romantic legend "To Haddon
Hall"), lies between Ashbourne and Buxton. But it is marked on all
the maps, so perhaps it has an honourable history. The sun was dying
in red embers over the Derbyshire hills as we pedalled along. Life,
liquor, and literature lay all before us; certes, we had no thought
of ever writing a daily column! And finally, after our small
lanterns were lit and cast their little fans of brightness along the
flowing road, we ascended a rise and saw Buxton in the valley below,
twinkling with lights--
"_And when even dies, the million-tinted,
And the night has come, and planets glinted
Lo, the valley hollow
Lamp-bestarred!_"
Nor were all these ancient inns (to which our heart wistfully
returns) on British soil. There was the _Hotel de la Tour_, in
Montjoie, a quaint small town somewhere in that hilly region of the
Ardennes along the border between Luxemburg and Belgium. Our memory
is rather vague as to Montjoie, for we got there late one evening,
after more than seventy up-and-down miles on a bicycle, hypnotic
with weariness and the smell of pine trees and a great warm wind
that had buffeted us all day. But we have a dim, comfortable
remembrance of a large clean bedroom, unlighted, in which we duskily
groped and found no less than three huge beds among which we had to
choose; and we can see also a dining room brilliantly papered in
scarlet, with good old prints on the walls and great wooden beams
overhead. Two bottles of ice-cold beer linger in our thought: and
there was some excellent work done on a large pancake, one of those
durable fleshy German _Pfannkuchen_. For the odd part of it was
(unless our memory is wholly amiss) Montjoie was then (1912)
supposed to be part of Germany, and they pronounced it Mon-yowey.
But the Reich must have felt that this was not permanent, for they
had not Germanized either the name of the town or of the hostelry.
And let us add, in this affectionate summary, _The Lion_--(_Hotel
zum Löwen_)--at Sigmaringen, that delicious little haunt on the
upper Danube, where the castle sits on a stony jut overlooking the
river. Algernon Blackwood, in one of his superb tales of fantasy (in
the volume called "The Listener") has told a fascinating gruesome
story of the Danube, describing a sedgy, sandy, desolate region
below the Hungarian border where malevolent inhuman forces were
apparent and resented mortal intrusion. But we cannot testify to
anything sinister in the bright water of the Danube in the flow of
its lovely youth, above Sigmaringen. And if there were any evil
influences, surely at Sigmaringen (the ancient home and origin of
the Hohenzollerns, we believe) they would have shown themselves. In
those exhilarating miles of valley, bicycled in company with a
blithe vagabond who is now a professor at Cornell, we learned why
the waltz was called "The Blue Danube." So heavenly a tint of
transparent blue-green we have never seen elsewhere, the hurrying
current sliding under steep crags of gray and yellow stone, whitened
upon sudden shallows into long terraces of broken water. There was a
wayside chapel with painted frescoes and Latin inscriptions (why
didn't we make a note of them, we wonder?) and before it a cold gush
sluicing from a lion's mouth into a stone basin. A blue crockery mug
stood on the rim, and the bowl was spotted with floating petals from
pink and white rose-bushes. We can still see our companion, tilting
a thirsty bearded face as he drank, outlined on such a backdrop of
pure romantic beauty as only enriches irresponsible youth in its
commerce with the world. The river bends sharply to the left under a
prodigious cliff, where is some ancient castle or religious house.
There he stands, excellent fellow, forever (in our memory) holding
that blue mug against a Maxfield Parrish scene.
Just around that bend, if you are discreet, a bathe can be
accomplished, and you will reach the _Lion_ by supper time, vowing
the Danube the loveliest of all streams.
Of the _Lion_ itself, now that we compress the gland of memory more
closely, we have little to report save a general sensation of
cheerful comfort. That in itself is favourable: the bad inns are
always accurately tabled in mind. But stay--here is a picture that
unexpectedly presents itself. On that evening (it was July 15, 1912)
there was a glorious little girl, about ten years old, taking supper
at the _Lion_ with her parents. Through the yellow shine of the
lamps she suddenly reappears to us, across the dining room--rather a
more luxurious dining room than the two wayfarers were accustomed to
visit. We can see her straight white frock, her plump brown legs in
socks (not reaching the floor as she sat), her tawny golden hair
with a red ribbon. The two dusty vagabonds watched her, and her
important-looking adults, from afar. We have only the vaguest
impression of her father: he was erect and handsome and not
untouched with pride. (Heavens, were they some minor offshoot of the
Hohenzollern tribe?) We can see the head waiter smirking near their
table. Across nine years and thousands of miles they still radiate
to us a faint sense of prosperity and breeding; and the child was
like a princess in a fairy-tale. Ah, if only it had all been a
fairy-tale. Could we but turn back the clock to that summer evening
when the dim pine-alleys smelled so resinous on the Muehlberg, turn
back the flow of that quick blue river, turn back history itself and
rewrite it in chapters fit for the clear eyes of that child we saw.
Well, we are growing grievous: it is time to go out and have some
cider. There are many other admirable inns we might soliloquize--The
_Seven Stars_ in Rotterdam (Molensteeg 19, "nabij het Postkantoor");
_Gibson's Hotel_, Rutland Square, Edinburgh ("Well adapted for
Marriages," says its card); the _Hotel Davenport_, Stamford,
Connecticut, where so many palpitating playwrights have sat
nervously waiting for the opening performance; the _Tannhäuser
Hotel_ in Heidelberg, notable for the affability of the
chambermaids. Perhaps you will permit us to close by quoting a
description of an old Irish tavern, from that queer book "The Life
of John Buncle, Esq." (1756). This inn bore the curious name _The
Conniving House_:
The _Conniving-House_ (as the gentlemen of Trinity called it in
my time, and long after) was a little public house, kept by
_Jack Macklean_, about a quarter of a mile beyond Rings-end, on
the top of the beach, within a few yards of the sea. Here we
used to have the finest fish at all times; and in the season,
green peas, and all the most excellent vegetables. The ale here
was always extraordinary, and everything the best; which, with
its delightful situation, rendered it a delightful place of a
summer's evening. Many a delightful evening have I passed in
this pretty thatched house with the famous _Larrey Grogan_, who
played on the bagpipes extreme well; dear _Jack Lattin_,
matchless on the fiddle, and the most agreeable of companions;
that ever charming young fellow, _Jack Wall_ ... and many other
delightful fellows; who went in the days of their youth to the
shades of eternity. When I think of them and their evening
songs--_We will go to Johnny Macklean's--to try if his ale be
good or no_, etc., and that years and infirmities begin to
oppress me--What is life!
There is a fine, easy, mellow manner of writing, worthy the subject.
And we--we conclude with honest regret. Even to write down the
names of all the inns where we have been happy would be the
pleasantest possible way of spending an afternoon. But we advise you
to be cautious in adopting our favourites as stopping places. Some
of them are very humble.
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