THE EVOLUTION OF A COUNTRY INN
It was called simply the “Bear” inn, and had no idea of styling itself
“hotel.” Embowered in trees, it stood well back from the road, for it was
modest and shy. A besom was placed outside the door, and on it the yokels
who were the inn’s chief customers scraped off the sticky clay of the
ploughlands they had been tramping all day. The entrance-passage was
floored with great stone flags. On one side you saw the tap, its floor
sprinkled with sawdust, and on the other was a kind of sacred “best
parlour,” furnished with a round table loaded with the impossible,
unreadable books of more than half a century ago, and a number of chairs
and a sofa, upholstered in horse-hair. In the rear was the family kitchen,
“keeping-room,” and drawing-room, all in one.
The cyclist of thirty-odd years ago--only he was a “bicyclist”
then--sprang lightly off his giraffe-like steed of steel, and, leaning it
against the white-washed wall, called for food and drink. The landlady, a
smiling, simple, motherly woman, in answer to his inquiry, told him that
she and her family were just sitting down to dinner, and he could have
some of it, if he wished. No need to tell him what it was: for there was
a scent of hot roast beef which seemed to him, who had breakfasted light
and early, the most desirable thing on earth for a hungry man.
The landlady was for clearing the table in the sacred parlour and placing
his dinner there, but our early bicyclist was a man of the world--a kind
of secular St. Paul, “all things to all men”--and he suggested that, if
she didn’t mind, and it was no intrusion, he would as soon have dinner
with the family. “Well, sir,” said she, “you’re very welcome, I’m sure,”
and so he sat him down in company with two fresh-coloured daughters in
neat print dresses, and a silent, but not unamiable, son in corduroys and
an ancient jacket.
That was a memorable dinner. There was good ale, in its native pewter, and
the roast beef was followed by a strange but delightful dish--whortleberry
tart--and that by a very Daniel Lambert of a cheese, of majestic
proportions and mellow taste. The talk at table was of crops and the
likelihood of the squire coming back to live in the long-deserted
neighbouring mansion.
When he rose to go, and asked what he owed, the landlady, with much
diffidence, “for you see, sir, we ain’t used to seeing many strangers,”
thought perhaps tenpence would not be too much. That early tourist paid
the modest sum with enthusiasm.
Preparing to mount his high bicycle again, the whole family must needs
come to see him off. They had never before set eyes upon such a
contrivance, and wondered how it could be kept upright. “Come thirty miles
on it to-day!” exclaimed the landlady: “well, I’m sure! You’ll never catch
me on one of ’em.”
The bicyclist glanced whimsically at the stout, middle-aged matron, and
suppressed a smile at the thought.
The next season saw that early wheelman upon the road again. He was now
not the only one who straddled across the top of some fifty inches of
wheel, and, as the novelty of such things had worn off, the cottagers no
longer rushed to doors and windows to gaze after him. Perhaps he did not
mind that so very much.
He came again to the inn, and there he found subtle changes. Ploughmen and
clodhoppers in general were obviously now discouraged, for the besom had
disappeared. There was, too, a something of sufficiency in the manner of
the landlady, and one no longer would have desired to sit down to table
with her--nor she possibly have agreed, for the parlour had now lost
something of its sacramental detachedness, and had become a sort of
dining-room. Again roast beef, but cold, and whortleberry tart--with fewer
berries and more crust--and instead of the cheese that invited you to cut
and come again, a mere slice; while pewter was obviously reckoned vulgar,
for a glass was provided instead. The price had risen to one and six.
“Many bicycliss’ calls here now,” said the landlady. Behind a newly
constructed bar stood her son. His cords were more baggy at the hips and
tighter at the knees, and he obviously knew a thing or two: beside him was
one of the daughters, garishly apparelled.
In another year or so the village itself had changed. There was an
epidemic of mineral waters, and every aforetime simple cottager sold them,
professing to know nothing of the old-fashioned “stone bottle”
ginger-beer. The inn had now got a new window, something in the “Queen
Anne” way, that projected beyond the general building-line of the house
and converted what had been the tap into a “saloon” where two
golden-haired barmaids presided. The landlady had by this time got a black
satin dress, and was plentifully hung with gold chains. A highly varnished
suite of unreliable furniture from Curtain Road filled the dining-room,
whose walls were hung with the advertisements of pushful distillery
companies’ latest liqueurs. “Lunch,” consisting of a plate of indifferent
cold beef, some doubtful salad, bottled beer, a fossil roll, and a small
piece of American cheese, cost half a crown.
One phase alone remains of this “strange, eventful history.” The old-time
bicyclist, long since shorn of his first syllable--and of much else in
this vale of tears--comes now to his ancient haunt along a road thickly
overhung with dust-fog created by swift motor-cars, and finds a new wing
built, with--in the odd spirit of contradiction--an elaborate wrought-iron
sign projecting from it, proclaiming this to be “Ye Old Beare.” He
further learns that it has “Accommodation for Motorists,” sells petrol,
and boasts a “Garage and Inspection Pit.” An ostler, or a something black
and greasy in the mechanic line, leads his cycle away in custody into the
yard.
The landlady has now risen to the dignity of diamond rings, and the
dining-room to that of separate round tables, menus, serviettes and a
depressed and dingy waiter. Lager-beer, and something vinegary of the
claret order afford an indifferent choice, and if the house still
possesses a pewter tankard, it probably is cherished on some shelf as a
curious relic of savage times. The house professes to supply luncheons at
three shillings, but sweets and “attendance” are “extras.”