WHAT IS A LIEN?
As we turned to leave the premises to hasten back to our respective
wives, leaving our Jehu to bring the carriage and horses, we were
accosted by a most dilapidated specimen of the genus “seedy,” who
appeared to be a kind of stable-boy or hostler not overstocked with
brains. Judging from a cursory glance, his pants had parted in
irreconcilable anger from his boots, and had cautiously shrunk well up
to the knees--as if apprehensive of a kick from the big toe which was
well enough to be outside the remains of the boots; here and there
patches of bare skin peeped out through his tattered set-upons, as if
pleased to see daylight and have a little fresh air. Yet of such varied
hues were they, that the most profound ethnologist would be perplexed to
decide whether the man should be classed among the Caucasian, Mongolian,
Malay, Indian, or Negro race, or whether he was a hybrid compound of all
five. His coat, in colors, would have rivaled Joseph’s, and made the
teeth of his naughty brethren water with tenfold jealousy. His hat might
have for generations been used in winter to exclude the rains and snows
from a broken window, in summer for the breeding place of barn-door
fowls. The countenance of this tatterdemalion seemed as empty as his
pockets, and his brain as disordered as his long yellow hair; his
breath as alcoholic as the store-room of a distillery; his _tout
ensemble_ anything but suggestive of the “is he not a man and a brother”
sentiment.
In piteous tones this wreck of what, perchance, was once a mother’s
darling, a father’s pride, asked:
“Be you a liyur, sur?”
“Yes. What do you want?” I returned.
“Well, sur, I’m a poor man, with not a cint to bliss myself wid; and I
come here one day and got a bite of vittals, and bedad, sur, the ould
landlord seized me for rint, and said, says he, that he had a lane upon
me for those same scraps of cold food; and says he, I must stay here and
work for him until I can pay up. Now, kin he do that same, yur honor?”
“No, most certainly not. He has no right to keep you or any other man
for such a reason.[358] So you had better be off.”
“Long life to your honor, and may the holy saints--but kin he,” and
again the voice sank into a wail, “kin he kape me clothes?”
“Nothing that you have on,”[359] I replied, as I turned away, thinking
that I could hear the scratch of the recording angel’s pen as he scored
another to the number of my good deeds.
“Was it not considered at one time that an innkeeper had the right to
detain the persons of his guests for the payment of their bills?”
queried De Gex.
“Yes, old Bacon so lays it down,[360] and so did one Judge Eyres,[361]
long since gone to his account; and in some of the old text-books the
same view is taken. But the idea was exploded forty years ago by the
combined effort of Lord Abinger, C. B., and his _puisnés_, Barons Parke,
Bolland, and Gurney.”
“On what occasion?”
“A man of the name of Sunbolf sued an innkeeper for assaulting and
beating him, shaking and pulling him about, stripping and pulling off
his coat, carrying it away and converting it to his own use.”
“That was rather rough of him.”
“It was, but the innkeeper, Alford, replied that he kept a common inn
for the reception, lodging and entertainment of travelers and others;
and that just before the time when he did all those things complained
of, Sunbolf and divers other persons in company with him came into the
inn as guests; and that he then found and provided them, at their
request, with divers quantities of tea and other victuals; and that
Sunbolf and the other persons thereupon, and just before the committing
of the grievances, became and were indebted to him in a certain small
sum of money, to wit, eleven shillings and three pence, for the said tea
and victuals; and thereupon he, the innkeeper, just before he did the
things of which he was accused, required and demanded of Sunbolf and the
others, payment by them, or some or one of them, of the said sum, or
some security or pledge for the payment thereof; but Sunbolf and the
others wholly refused then, or at any other time, to pay to him the said
sum, or leave with or give to him any security or pledge for the payment
of the same; and before he did the acts spoken of, Sunbolf persisted in
leaving, and would have departed and left the said inn, against the
innkeeper’s will and consent, without paying the said sum of eleven
shillings and three pence, so due as aforesaid, had not he, A., kept and
detained him, Sunbolf, or some other of the said persons, or their goods
and chattels, or some of them, until they paid it; and because Sunbolf
and the others would go and depart from the said inn without paying, and
refused to pay that sum to him, and because the sum remained wholly due
to him, and because Sunbolf and the others would not, and refused to
leave with or give any pledge or security whatever to him for the
payment of that sum, and he (that is, Alford) could not procure or
obtain from them, or any or either of them, any other pledge or security
than the said coat mentioned, he, (the said Alford) at the time
mentioned, did gently lay his hands on Sunbolf to prevent him going and
departing from the said inn without his or the other persons paying the
said eleven shillings and three pence, or giving him some pledge or
security for the payment of it; and he did then, for the purpose of
acquiring such security or pledge, to a gentle and necessary degree, lay
his hands upon Sunbolf, and strip and pull the said coat from and off of
him, the same being a reasonable pledge or security in that behalf, and
then placed the same in the said inn wherein he had thence thitherto
kept and detained the same as such pledge and security, for the said
debt of eleven shillings and three pence, being wholly due and unpaid to
him; and, therefore, he (Alford) suffered and permitted Sunbolf and the
others to go and depart from the said inn; and on the occasion aforesaid
he necessarily and unavoidably, to a small degree, shook and pulled
about Sunbolf; and these were the acts complained of.”
“Well said the wise man of old, ‘_Audi alteram partem_,” said my friend.
“Alford’s story gives quite a different aspect to the whole affair.”
“It gives you, at any rate, an idea of the longwinded pleadings in vogue
in the year of grace 1838.”
“Was A.’s explanation satisfactory to the court?”
“Oh, dear, no! Parke, B., asked, during the argument, if an innkeeper
had a right to turn his guest out without a coat; or if he had a right
to take off all his clothes, and send him away naked; and afterwards, in
giving judgment, he clearly and distinctly answered his own queries, and
said that an innkeeper had no power to strip a guest of his clothes; for
if he had, then, if the innkeeper took the coat off his back, and that
proved an insufficient pledge, he might go on and strip him naked, and
that would apply either to a male or female----”
“That would be shocking!”
“The learned baron merely considered it utterly absurd, and that the
idea could not be entertained for a moment. Another of the judges said
that he had always understood the law to be that the clothes on the
person of a man, and in his possession at the time, are not to be
considered as goods to which the right of lien can properly apply; that
the consequence of holding otherwise might be to subject parties to
disgrace and duress in order to compel them to pay a trifling debt
which, after all, was not due, and which the innkeeper had no pretence
for demanding.”
“But, my dear fellow, we were speaking of the right of a landlord to
keep the body of his guest.”
“To be sure we were. The Chief Baron said that if an innkeeper had a
right to detain a guest for the non-payment of his bill, he had a right
to detain him until the bill was paid, which might be for years or might
be for aye; so that by the common law, a man who owed a small debt, for
which he could not be imprisoned by legal process, might yet be detained
by an innkeeper for life. Such a proposition my Lord Chief Baron said
was monstrous, and, according to my lord Baron Parke, was
startling.”[362]
“For my part, I think it is high time we rejoined the ladies,” said De
Gex, with the air of a man satisfied with what he had heard.
“All right; throw law to the dogs, to improve upon the immortal bard.”
* * * * *
Our return drive was as pleasant as that of the preceding day, except
that we might well have exclaimed, in the words of the poet:
“How the dashed dry dust,
Nebulous nothing,
Nettled our nasal
Nostrils, you noodles!”
_En route_, we stopped at a little wayside inn for luncheon. On the
table the _pièce de resistance_ was beefsteak.
“I never,” observed De G., “see beefsteak but I think of poor old George
III.”
“Had he a particular _penchant_ for it?” I asked.
“Not that. But once, when his intellect was sadly clouded, he was
breakfasting at Kew, and the conversation turned on the great scarcity
of beef in England. ‘Why don’t the people plant more beef?’ asked his
majesty. Of course he was told that beef could not be raised from seed
or slips; but he seemed incredulous, and, taking some pieces of steak,
he went out into the garden and planted them. Next morning he visited
the spot to see if the beef had sprouted, and finding some snails
crawling about, he took them for small oxen, and joyfully exclaimed to
his wife: ‘Here they are; here they are, Charlotte--horns and all!’”
“Poor fellow--poor fellow!”
By and by, apple dumplings appeared. “Ha!” I exclaimed, “here are more
reminders of the poor old king! How his Britannic majesty used to puzzle
over the problem of how the apples got inside the pastry.”
“The Chinese cooks would have bewildered him still more with some of
their ingenious performances,” remarked De Gex.
“In what respect?” queried the ladies.
“At a recent banquet in San Francisco, an orange was placed beside the
plate of each guest. The fruit, to an ordinary observer, appeared like
any other oranges; but, on being cut open, they were found to contain,
_mirabile dictu_----”
“What?” asked my wife.
“Excuse me, I should not have quoted Latin. They were found to contain
five different kinds of delicate jellies. Of course, every one was
puzzled, first of all, to find how the jelly got in; and giving up that
as a conundrum too difficult to be solved, he found himself in a worse
quandary over the problem as to how the pulpy part of the orange got
out. Colored eggs were served up, and inside of them were found nuts,
jellies, meats, and confectionery.”
“Wonderful men those Celestials!” I exclaimed. “They must have got such
notions from the banqueting table of Jove himself.”
“I thought they indulged in nothing nicer than cats or dogs, rats or
mice, with an occasional dash of bird’s-nest soup,” said Mrs. De Gex.
“Altogether a mistaken notion,” returned her husband.
Tea was the beverage. I nearly upset the table as I reached over for the
teapot, whereupon my comrade exclaimed in the words of Cibber’s
rhapsody:
“Tea, thou soft, thou sober, sage and venerable liquid; thou female
tongue-running, smile-smoothing, heart-opening, wink-tipping cordial, to
whose glorious insipidity we owe the happiest moments of our lives, let
me fall prostrate.”
“Time’s up,” I said, as straightening myself I swallowed another cupful.
* * * * *
When we were again fairly under way and the ladies were quietly talking
some scandal, _sotto voce_, I said to De Gex: “Referring again to the
innkeeper’s lien----”
“Let us have no more about it,” he replied promptly. “Honestly, I must
say that you are not a Paganini and cannot please by always playing upon
one string.”
“Perhaps not, but as rare old Ben Jonson remarked, ‘when I take the
humor of a thing once, I am like a tailor’s needle--I go through,’ and a
little more information on that important subject may prove useful to
you some day.”
“If you will talk on that dry subject, kindly inform me why publicans
have a lien at all,” said my friend.
“Well, you know that a lien is the right of a man to whom any chattel is
given to detain it until some pecuniary demand upon or in respect of it
has been satisfied by the owner, and as the law treats an innkeeper as a
public servant, and imposes upon him certain duties--making him, for
example, receive all guests who are willing and able to pay, and are
unobjectionable on moral, pecuniary, or hygienic grounds, and bestow on
the preservation of their goods an extraordinary amount of care--so, to
compensate him for this obligation, the law gives him the power of
detaining his guest’s goods, (except such as are in the visitor’s actual
possession and custody, in his hand for example,) until he pays for the
entertainment afforded, including, of course, remuneration for the care
of those goods. The lien extends to all the goods and chattels of the
guest, even those especially handed over to the host and placed by him
apart from the personal goods of his visitor.”[363]
“Then, I suppose an innkeeper has a lien upon the goods of a guest
only.”
“Exactly so; so that if he receive the person as a friend, or a
boarder,[364] or under any special agreement,[365] or an arrangement to
pay at a future time,[366] he has no lien upon the goods, for he has no
responsibility with regard to them. In one case, however, it was decided
that if a man came to an hotel as a guest, his subsequently arranging to
board by the week would not alter the character in which he was
originally received, nor take away the host’s right of lien.”[367]
“Suppose things are brought which the innkeeper is not bound to
receive--what then?”
“Where he actually takes in goods for a guest, whether he were legally
bound to do so or not, he is responsible for their safety, and so has a
lien upon them.[368] But if anything is left with him, merely to take
care of, by one who does not himself put up at the house, the poor
innkeeper has no right to keep them until paid for his trouble;[369]
unless, indeed, it is a horse, or other animal, out of the keep of which
he can receive a benefit.[370] And you heard old Blackstone say, this
A.M., that the proprietor is not bound to inquire whether or not the
guest is the real owner of the goods;[371] and if the guest turns out a
thief, still the true owner cannot get back his property without paying
the charges upon it.[372] In Georgia, however, it has been held that the
innkeeper has no lien against the true owner, except for the charges
upon the specific article on which the lien is claimed.”[373]
“But supposing he really knows that the guest is not the owner?” said my
companion.
“Then he has no lien. Broadwood, the celebrated piano manufacturer,
loaned a piano to M. Hababier, who was staying at a hotel. The court
held that, as it was furnished to the guest for his temporary use by a
third party and the innkeeper knew it belonged to such party, and as
Hababier had not brought it to the place as his own, either upon his
coming to or while staying at the inn, the proprietor had no lien upon
it.[374] But of course, if a servant, or an agent, in the course of his
employment, come to an inn and runs up a bill, the proprietor has a lien
upon his master’s goods in the servant’s custody.”[375]
“How long does this right last?”
“Only so long as the goods remain in the inn. If the guest goes away and
then comes back again, the publican cannot retain them for the prior
debt.[376] If, however, the unsophisticated landlord is beguiled into
letting them go by a fraudulent representation, his right remains;[377]
and if they are taken away, he may follow them if he does not
loiter.[378] Delays are always dangerous, except in cases of matrimony.
Of course, a tender of the money claimed extinguishes the lien;[379] but
it must be a valid tender. Tossing down a lot of money on a table, and
offering it if the innkeeper will take it in full of the bill, is not a
proper tender.[380] Sometimes, if too much is claimed, or the claim is
on a wrong account, a tender may not be necessary.”[381]
“Must the man say why he refuses to give up the goods?”
“If he gives a reason for detaining them other than his right of lien,
he waives that, and it is gone; still, merely omitting to mention it
when the goods are demanded will not prevent him enforcing it.”[382]
“Could not a guest get off by paying a small sum on account?”
“No; for then a farthing in cash would destroy the right;[383] but
taking a note payable at a future day will put a stop to it.”[384]
“I believe that the landlord cannot sell the goods seized,” suggested my
comrade.
“No, except by consent or operation of law.”[385]
“Is there no limit to the amount for which the lien can exist?”
“That point was disposed of in a case where a young fellow’s mother
asked a hotel-keeper not to allow her son, who was a guest in the house,
more than a certain quantity of brandy and water per diem, yet mine host
supplied the youth with considerably more of that beverage than was
named. When the bill was disputed, the judge held that a landlord was
not bound to examine the nature of the articles ordered by a guest
before he supplied them; but might furnish whatever was ordered, and
that the guest was bound to pay for them, provided he was possessed of
reason, and not an infant.”[386]
“Oh, then, a juvenile’s goods and chattels cannot be kept for his little
hotel bill? Another privilege gone forever with the happy days of
childhood,” said De Gex.
“I am not quite so sure. In Kentucky, it was held that they could be, if
the entertainment was furnished in good faith, without the knowledge
that the youngster was acting improperly and contrary to the wishes of
his guardian; and it was even held that the innkeeper had a lien for
money given to the boy and expended by him for necessaries,”[387] I
remarked.
“I trust,” said my companion, “that there is not very much more to be
said on the subject. I feel that I am growing thin, and will soon
require a lean-to to support me.”
“You are like the rest of the world, ingrate and thankless. Here I have
been giving you freely of what has cost me long, weary hours of study
and gallons of petroleum, and still you grumble. Only two points more
would I endeavor to impress upon your memory, the knowledge of which may
prove to be worth to you fully the cost of this drive of ours.”
“Well, I will restrain myself and lend a listening ear.”
“In the first place, if an innkeeper should retain your trunks for your
hotel bill, you need pay him nothing for his trouble in taking care of
them thereafter; when you are flush again, you may call, and on paying
the original amount due, demand your traps.[388] In that way, you see,
you may sometimes get rid of the trouble of carrying your baggage about
with you. Then, again, whenever possible, travel in company, with all
the baggage in one trunk; let the one who owns the trunk pay his bill,
and then all may go on their way rejoicing; for where a paterfamilias
took his daughters to an hotel and the board of all was charged to the
old man, (who afterward became insolvent) it was well decided that the
trunks of one of the girls could not be detained for the whole amount
due by the party. Every man for himself, seems to be the rule.”[389]
“What are you two men gossiping about?” suddenly broke in Mrs. Lawyer,
she and her companion having fully exhausted their stock of chit-chat.
“Gossiping!” said De Gex; “no indeed; as Sir Boyle Roche would say, I
deny the allegation, and defy the allegator.”
“None with a properly constituted mind would indulge in such a thing;
for George Eliot well defines gossip to be ‘a sort of smoke which comes
from the dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it,’ and remarks that
it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker,” I added.
The ladies seemed conscience-stricken, for neither replied, and for some
time we all sat in silence, enjoying the delicious coolness of eventide;
each was busied in private castle-building, or “watching out the light
of sunset, and the opening of that beadroll which some oriental poet
describes as God’s call to the little stars, who each answer, ‘Here am
I!’”