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 _Coelebs_ was--
'If ever I marry a wife,
I'll marry a landlord's daughter,
And sit in the bar all day,
And drink cold brandy and water.'
Quaintly pious is the allusion of John Winthrop, in a letter--more than
two centuries old--to his father, the first governor of Massachusetts,
when the project of immigration was about to be realized: 'For the
business of New England, I can say no other thing but that I believe
confidently that the whole disposition thereof is from the Lord; and, for
myself, I have seen so much of the vanity of the world, that I esteem no
more of the diversities of countries than as so many inns, whereof the
traveller that hath lodged in the best or in the worst findeth no
difference when he cometh to his journey's end.'[8]
It has been said of Socrates that he 'looked upon himself as a traveller
who halts at the public inn of the Earth.' 'Was I in a condition to
stipulate with death,' writes Sterne, 'I should certainly declare against
submitting to it before my friends, and therefore I never seriously think
upon the mode and the manner of this great catastrophe, but I constantly
draw the curtain across it with this wish, that the Disposer of all things
may so order it, that it happen not to me in my own house, but rather in
some decent inn.' Aaron Burr realized in a forlorn manner Yorick's desire
when, after years of social ostracism, he expired at a tavern on Staten
Island.
The beautiful significance of the first incident in the life of Christ is
seldom realized, offering, as it does, so wonderful and affecting a
contrast between the humblest mortal vicissitudes in the outward
circumstances of birth and the highest glory of a spiritual advent: they
'laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.' It
was to an inn that the Good Samaritan carried the traveller who had
'fallen among thieves.' Joseph's brethren rested at an inn on their way to
Egypt; and it was at the 'Three Taverns,' in the suburbs of Rome, that
Paul was met by the brethren. Venerable as are these allusions in sacred
history, the visible token of the antiquity of inns that strikes our
imagination most vividly is the wine-stains on the marble counter in
Pompeii.
Falstaff absolutely requires the frame of an inn to make his portrait
intelligible, with the buxom figure of Mrs. Quickly in the background; and
it may safely be asserted that no public house of entertainment has
afforded such world-wide mirth as the 'Boar's Head,' Eastcheap. The freaks
of Tony Lumpkin have their natural scope at an alehouse; and Goldoni's
_Locandiera_ is a fine colloquial piece of real life; even the most
eloquent of England's historians cites the superior inns that existed in
the range of travel there, during the early part of the seventeenth
century, as a reliable evidence of the prosperity and civil advancement of
the nation. These inns are, in fact, the original retreats for 'freedom
and comfort,' whence our pleasant ideas on the subject are derived; they
still exist in some of the rural districts of the kingdom; and the
cleanliness, good fare, and retirement of the old-fashioned English inn,
as well as the freshness and urbanity of the host, wholly justify their
renown. The exigencies of the climate, and the domestic habits of the
people, explain this superiority; where so much enjoyment is sought within
doors, and the national character is reserved and individual, better
provision is naturally made both for the physical well-being and the
privacy of the wayfarer than is required under less inclement skies, and
among a more vivacious and social race.
A most characteristic note of Boswell's is that which records his idol's
hearty encomiums on a tavern, while dining at one in London. Both the man
and the place then combined to realize the perfection of the idea, for
that dim and multitudinous city invites to secluded conviviality; and that
irritable, dogmatic, yet epicurean sage required the liberty of speech, an
absolute deference, and the solid physical comforts so easily obtained at
a London tavern. There he could make 'inarticulate, animal noises over his
food' without restraint; there he could bring only such companions as
would bear to be contradicted, and there he could refresh body and mind
without fear of intrusion from a printer's devil or needy author. Bores
and duns away, a good listener by, surrounded with pleasant viands and a
cheerful blaze, a man so organized and situated might, without
extravagance, call a tavern-chair the throne of human felicity, and quote
Shenstone's praise of inns with rapture. Beneath this jovial appreciation,
however, there lurks a sad inference; it argues a homeless lot, for lonely
or ungenial must be the residence, contrast with which renders an inn so
attractive; and we must bear in mind that the winsome aspect they wear in
English literature is based on their casual and temporary enjoyment; it is
as recreative, not abiding places, that they are usually introduced; and,
in an imaginative point of view, our sense of the appropriate is gratified
by these landmarks of our precarious destiny, for we are but 'pilgrims and
sojourners on the earth.' Jeremy Taylor compared human life to an inn, and
Archbishop Leighton used to say he would prefer to die in one.
AUTHORS.
'High is our calling, friend! Creative Art,
Whether the instrument of words she use,
Or pencil pregnant with ethereal hues,
Demands the service of a mind and heart,
Though sensitive, yet in their weakest part
Heroically fashioned--to infuse
Faith in the whispers of the lonely muse,
While the whole world seems adverse to desert.'
WORDSWORTH.
Some of the fondest illusions of our student-life and companionship were
based on literary fame. The only individuals, of the male gender, who then
seemed to us (indiscriminate and mutual lovers of literature) worthy of
admiration and sympathy, were authors. Our ideal of felicity was the
consciousness of distributing ideas of vital significance, and causing
multitudes to share a sentiment born in a lonely heart. The most real and
permanent sway of which man is capable we imagined that of ruling and
cheering the minds of others through the medium of literature. Our herbals
were made up of flowers from the graves of authors; their signatures were
our only autographs. The visions that haunted us were little else than a
boundless panorama that displayed scenes in their lives. We used
continually to see, in fancy, Petrarch beside a fountain, under a laurel,
with the sweet _penseroso_-look visible in his portraits; Dante in the
corridor of a monastery, his palm laid on a friar's breast, and his stern
features softened as he craved the only blessing life retained for
him--_peace_; rustic Burns, with his dark eye proudly meeting the curious
stare of an Edinburgh coterie; Camoens breasting the waves with the
_Lusiad_ between his teeth; Johnson appalling Boswell with his emphatic
'_Sir_;' Milton--his head like that of a saint encircled with rays--seated
at the organ; Shakspeare walking serenely, and with a benign and majestic
countenance, beside the Avon; Steele jocosely presiding at table with
liveried bailiffs to pass the dishes; the bright face of Pope looming up
from his deformed body in the cool twilight of a grotto; Voltaire's sneer
withering an auditor through a cloud of snuff; Molière reading his new
comedy to the old woman; Landor standing in the ilex path of a Tuscan
villa; Savage asleep on a bulk at midnight, in one of the London parks;
Dryden seated in oracular dignity in his coffee-house arm-chair;
Metastasio comparing notes with a handsome _prima donna_ at Vienna;
Alfieri with a magnificent steed in the midst of the Alps; Swift stealing
an interview with Miss Johnson, or chuckling over a chapter of _Gulliver_;
the funeral pyre of Shelley lighting up a solitary crag on the shores of
the Mediterranean; and Byron, with marble brow and rolling eye, guiding
the helm of a storm-tossed boat on the Lake of Geneva! Such were a few
only of the _tableaux_ that haunted our imagination. We echoed heartily
Akenside's protest against the sermon on Glory:
'Come, then, tell me, sage divine,
Is it an offence to own
That our bosoms e'er incline
Towards immortal glory's throne?
For with me nor pomp nor pleasure,
Bourbon's might, Braganza's treasure,
So can fancy's dream rejoice,
So conciliate reason's choice,
As one approving word of her impartial voice.
'If to spurn at noble praise
Be the passport to thy heaven;
Follow thou those gloomy ways;
No such law to me was given;
Nor, I trust, shall I deplore me,
Faring like my friends before me;
Nor a holier place desire
Than Timoleon's arms acquire,
And Tully's curule chair, and Milton's golden lyre.'
In our passion for native authors we revered the memory of Brockden Brown,
and detected in his romantic studies the germs of the supernatural school
of fiction; we nearly suffocated ourselves in the crowded gallery of the
old church at Cambridge, listening to Sprague's _Phi Beta Kappa_ poem; and
often watched the spiritual figure of the 'Idle Man,' and gazed on the
white locks of our venerable painter, with his 'Monaldi' and 'Paint King'
vividly remembered. We wearied an old friend of Brainard's by making him
repeat anecdotes of the poet; and have spent hours in the French
coffee-house which Halleck once frequented, eliciting from him criticisms,
anecdotes, or recitations of Campbell. New Haven people that came in our
way were obliged to tell all they could remember of the vagaries of
Percival, and the elegant hospitality of Hillhouse. We have followed Judge
Hopkinson through the rectangular streets of his native metropolis, with
the tune of _Hail, Columbia!_ humming in our ears; and kept a curious eye
on Howard Payne through a whole evening party, fondly cognizant of _Sweet
Home_. Beaumont and Fletcher were our Damon and Pythias. The memorable
occurrence of our childhood was the advent of a new Waverley novel, and of
our youth a fresh _Edinburgh Review_. We loved plum-colour because poor
Goldy was vain of his coat of that hue; and champagne, partly because
Schiller used to drink it when writing; we saved orange-peel because the
author of _The Rambler_ liked it; and put ourselves on a course of
tar-water, in imitation of Berkeley. Roast pig had a double relish for us
after we had read Elia's dissertation thereon. We associated goldfish and
china jars with Gray, skulls with Dr. Young, the leap of a sturgeon in the
Hudson with Drake's 'Culprit Fay,' pine-trees with Ossian, stained-glass
windows with Keats (who set one in an immortal verse), fortifications with
Uncle Toby, literary breakfasts with Rogers, waterfowl with Bryant,
foundlings with Rousseau, letter-writing with Madame de Sévigné, bread and
butter with the author of _Werther_, daisies with Burns, and primroses
with Wordsworth. Mrs. Thrale's acceptance of Piozzi was a serious trouble
to our minds; and whether 'little Burney' would be happy after her
marriage with the noble _emigré_ was a problem that made us really anxious
until the second part of her _Diary_ was procurable and relieved our
solicitude. An unpatriotic antipathy to the Pilgrim Fathers was quelled by
the melodious pæan of Mrs. Hemans; and we kept vigils before a portrait of
Mrs. Norton, at an artist's studio, with a chivalric desire to avenge her
wrongs.