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.'