INNKEEPERS’ EPITAPHS
In the long, long pages of the large collections of curious epitaphs that
have been printed from time to time, we find innkeepers celebrated, no
less than those of other trades and professions. The irreverent wags who
made light of all ills, and turned every calling into a jest had, it may
well be supposed, a fine subject to their hands in the landlords of the
village ale-houses.
To Richard Philpots (appropriate name!) of the “Bell” inn, Bell End, who
died in 1766, we find an elaborate stone in the churchyard of
Belbroughton, near Kidderminster, with these verses:
To tell a merry or a wonderous tale
Over a chearful glass of nappy Ale,
In harmless mirth, was his supreme delight,
To please his Guests or Friends by Day or Night;
But no fine tale, how well soever told,
Could make the tyrant Death his stroak withold;
That fatal Stroak has laid him here in dust,
To rise again once more with Joy, we trust.
On the upper portion of this Christian monument are carved, in high
relief, a punch-bowl and a flagon: emblems, presumably, of those pots
that Mr. Philpots delighted to fill. The inscription is fast becoming
obliterated, but the fine old “Bell” inn stands as well as ever it did, on
the coach-road between Stourbridge and Bromsgrove, with the sign of a bell
hanging picturesquely from it.
Collectors of epitaphs are, however, a credulous and uncritical race, and
are content to collect from irresponsible sources. All is fish that comes
to their net, and, so only the thing be in some way unusual, it finds a
place in their note-books, without their having taken the trouble to
search on the spot and verify. Thus, at Upton-on-Severn, Gloucestershire,
is supposed to be the following:
Beneath this stone, in hopes of Zion
Doth lie the landlord of the “Lion.”
His son keeps on the business still,
Resigned unto the heavenly will.
Vain is the search of the conscientious historian for that gem, or for its
variant:
Here lies the body of Matilda Brown,
Who, while alive, was hostess of the “Crown,”
Resigned unto the heavenly will,
Her son keeps on the business still.
It would, perhaps, be too much to say there was never such an epitaph at
Upton, but certainly there is not one of the kind there now.
[Illustration: INGLE-NOOK, “LYGON ARMS,” BROADWAY.]
A publican whose name was Pepper is commemorated by an odd epitaph in the
churchyard of St. John’s, Stamford. None of the funny dogs who indulged
in mortuary japes and quips and cranks could have resisted the temptation
of the name “Pepper,” and thus we find:
Hot by name, but mild by nature,
He brewed good ale for every creature;
He brewed good ale, and sold it too,
And unto each man gave his due.
In Pannal churchyard, between Wakefield and Harrogate, is the terse
inscription on Joseph Thackerey, who died November 26th, 1791:
In the year of our Lord 1740
I came to the “Crown”;
In 1791 they laid me down.
Presumably the idea the writer here intended to convey was that this
landlord of the “Crown” was “laid down” after the manner of wine in bins,
to mature.
At St. John’s, Leeds, are said to be the following lines, dated 1793, that
have a lilt somewhat anticipatory of the _Bab Ballads_ metres, on one who
was originally a clothier:
Hic jacet, sure the fattest man
That Yorkshire stingo made,
He was a lover of his can,
A clothier by his trade.
His waist did measure three yards round,
He weighed almost three hundred pound.
His flesh did weigh full twenty stone:
His flesh, I say,--he had no bone,
At least, ’tis said he had none.
The next, at Northallerton, seems to be by way of warning to innkeepers
at all disposed to drinking their stock:
Hic jacet Walter Gun,
Sometime Landlord of the “Sun”;
Sic transit gloria mundi,
He drank hard upon Friday,
That being a high day,
Then took to his bed and died upon Sunday.
Why did he, according to the epitaph, merely “die”? Surely, from the point
of view of an incorrigibly eccentric epitaph-writer, a man not only named
Gun, but spelling his name with one “n,” and dying so suddenly, should
have “gone off.” We are sadly compelled to acknowledge this particular wag
to be an incompetent.
If Mr. Walter Gun had been more careful and abstemious, he might have
emulated the subject of our next example, and completed a half-century of
inn-keeping, as did John Wigglesworth, of Whalley, who, as under, seems to
have been a burning and a shining light and exemplar:
HERE LIES THE BODY OF
JOHN WIGGLESWORTH,
More than fifty years he was the perpetual innkeeper in this Town.
Notwithstanding the temptations of that dangerous calling, he
maintained good order in his House, kept the Sabbath Day Holy,
frequented the Public Worship with his family, induced his guests to
do the same, and regularly partook of the Holy Communion. He was also
bountiful to the Poor, in private, as well as in public, and by the
blessings of Providence on a life so spent, died possessed of
competent Wealth,
Feb. 28, 1813,
Aged 77 years.
This was written by Dr. Whittaker, the historian of Whalley, who seems,
according to the last line of this tremendous effort, to have been
considerably impressed by the innkeeper’s “competent wealth,” even to the
extent of reckoning it among the virtues.
At Barnwell All Saints, near Oundle, Northants, we read this epitaph on an
innkeeper:
Man’s life is like a winter’s day,
Some only breakfast, and away;
Others to dinner stay, and are full fed:
The oldest man but sups, and goes to bed.
Large is his debt who lingers out the day,
Who goes the soonest has the least to pay.
Death is the waiter, some few run on tick,
And some, alas! must pay the bill to Nick!
Tho’ I owed much, I hope long trust is given,
And truly mean to pay all debts in heaven.
Worldly creditors might well look askance at such a resolution as that
expressed in the last line, for there is no parting there.
In the churchyard of the deserted old church of Stockbridge, Hampshire,
the curious may still, with some difficulty, find the whimsical epitaph of
John Bucket, landlord of the “King’s Head” in that little town, who died,
aged 67, in 1802:
And is, alas! poor Bucket gone?
Farewell, convivial honest John.
Oft at the well, by fatal stroke,
Buckets, like pitchers, must be broke.
In this same motley, shifting scene,
How various have thy fortunes been.
Now lifting high, now sinking low,
To-day the brim would overflow.
Thy bounty then would all supply,
To fill, and drink, and leave thee dry,
To-morrow sunk as in a well,
Content, unseen, with Truth to dwell.
But high or low, or wet or dry,
No rotten stave could malice spy.
Then rise, immortal Bucket, rise,
And claim thy station in the skies;
’Twixt Amphora and Pisces shine,
Still guarding Stockbridge with thy sign.
Lawrence, the great proprietor of the “Lion” at Shrewsbury, lies in the
churchyard of St. Julian, hard by his old inn, and on the south wall of
the church may yet be read his epitaph: “Sacred to the memory of Mr.
Robert Lawrence, for many years proprietor of the ‘Raven’ and ‘Lion’ inns
in this town, to whose public spirit and unremitting exertions for upwards
of thirty years, in opening the great road through Wales between the
United Kingdoms, as also for establishing the first mail coach to this
town, the public in general have been greatly indebted, and will long have
to regret his loss. Died III September MDCCCVI, in the LVII year of his
age.”
Not an innkeeper, but a brewer, was Thomas Tipper, whose alliterative name
is boldly carved on his remarkable tombstone in the windy little
churchyard of Newhaven. I make no sort of apology or excuse for including
Tipper’s epitaph in this chapter, for if he did not, in fact, keep an inn,
he at any rate kept many inns supplied with his “stingo,” and his brew was
a favourite with the immortal Mrs. Gamp, an acknowledged connoisseur in
curious liquors. A “pint of the celebrated staggering ale or Real Old
Brighton Tipper,” was her little whack at supper-time.
[Illustration: TIPPER’S EPITAPH, NEWHAVEN.]
Tipper was by way of being an Admirable Crichton, as by his epitaph,
written by T. Clio Rickman, you perceive; but his claim upon the world’s
gratitude was, and is, the production of good beer. Is, I say, because
although Tipper himself has gone to amuse the gods with the interminable
cantos of _Hudibras_, and to tickle them in the ribs with his own
comicality, his ale is still brewed at Newhaven, by Messrs. Towner Bros.,
and keeps to this day that pleasantly sharp taste, which is said to come
from the well whence the water for it is drawn having some communication
with the sea. This sharpness conferred upon it the “stingo” title. It is,
to all intents and purposes, identical with the “humming ale,” and the
“nappy” strong ale, so frequently mentioned by the Elizabethan and
Jacobean dramatists.
The carving in low relief at the head of Tipper’s tombstone, with vaguely
defined clouds and winged cherubs’ heads in the background, is a
representation of old Newhaven Bridge, that formerly crossed the Ouse.
Attached to the church of St. Magnus the Martyr, whose tall and beautiful
tower forms so striking an object in views of London Bridge, is a grim
little plot of land, once a churchyard green with grass and open to the
sunshine, but now only to be reached through the vestry, and hemmed in by
tall buildings to such an extent that sunshine will not reach down there,
and the earth is bare and dark. There stands the well-preserved stone to
the memory of Robert Preston, once “drawer”--that is to say, a
“barman”--at the famous “Boar’s Head,” Eastcheap. The stone was removed
from the churchyard of St. Michael, Paternoster Royal. Planted doubtless
by some sentimental person, a small vine-tree grows at the foot of the
stone.
[Illustration: PRESTON’S EPITAPH, ST. MAGNUS-THE-MARTYR.]
Among minor epitaphs that may be noticed to persons in some way engaged in
the licensed victualling trade, is that in the churchyard of Capel Curig,
on the Holyhead Road, to Jonathan Jackson, who died in 1848, and was “for
many years a most confidential waiter at Capel Curig inn.”