Stage-coach and Tavern Days. Earle Alice Morse

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СКАЧАТЬ Boston Post made this tavern its headquarters, but its glory of popularity was waning and soon was wholly gone.

      At the junction of 51st and 52d streets with the post-road stood Cato’s Road House, built in 1712. Cato was a negro slave who had so mastered various specialties in cooking that he was able to earn enough money to buy his freedom from his South Carolina master. He kept this inn for forty-eight years. Those who tasted his okra soup, his terrapin, fried chicken, curried oysters, roast duck, or drank his New York brandy-punch, his Virginia egg-nogg, or South Carolina milk-punch, wondered how any one who owned him ever could sell him even to himself. Alongside his road house he built a ballroom which would let thirty couple swing widely in energetic reels and quadrilles. When Christmas sleighing set in, the Knickerbocker braves and belles drove out there to dance; and there was always sleighing at Christmas in old New York – all octogenarians will tell you so. Cato’s egg-nogg was mixed in single relays by the barrelful. He knew precisely the mystic time when the separated white and yolk was beaten enough, he knew the exact modicum of sugar, he could count with precision the grains of nutmeg that should fleck the compound, he could top to exactness the white egg foam. A picture of this old road house, taken from a print, is here given. It seems but a shabby building to have held so many gay scenes.

      The better class of old-time taverns always had a parlor. This was used as a sitting room for women travellers, or might be hired for the exclusive use of some wealthy person or family. It was not so jovial a room as the taproom, though in winter a glowing fire in the open fireplace gave to the formal furnishings that look of good cheer and warmth and welcome which is ever present, even in the meanest apartment, when from the great logs the flames shot up and “the old rude-furnished room burst flower-like into rosy bloom.” We are more comfortable now, with our modern ways of house-heating, but our rooms do not look as warm as when we had open fires. In the summer time the fireplace still was an object of interest. A poet writes: —

      “’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 curling wave.

      And to Elijah sitting at his cave

      The hospitable ravens fly in pairs

      Celestial food within their horny beaks.”

      The walls of one tavern parlor which I have seen were painted with scenes from a tropical forest. On either side of the fireplace sprang a tall palm tree. Coiled serpents, crouching tigers, monkeys, a white elephant, and every form of vivid-colored bird and insect crowded each other on the walls of this Vermont tavern. On the parlor of the Washington Tavern at Westfield, Massachusetts, is a fine wallpaper with scenes of a fox-chase. This tavern is shown on the opposite page; also on page 45 one of the fine hand-wrought iron door-latches used on its doors. These were made in England a century and a half ago.

      The taproom was usually the largest room of the tavern. It had universally a great fireplace, a bare, sanded floor, and ample seats and chairs. Usually there was a tall, rather rude writing-desk, at which a traveller might write a letter, or sign a contract, and where the landlord made out his bills and kept his books. The bar was the most interesting furnishing of this room. It was commonly made with a sort of portcullis grate, which could be closed if necessary. But few of these bars remain; nearly all have been removed, even if the tavern still stands. The taproom of the Wayside Inn at Sudbury, Massachusetts, is shown on page 19. It is a typical example of a room such as existed in hundreds of taverns a century ago. Another taproom may still be seen in the Wadsworth Inn. This well-built, fine old house, shown on page 47, is a good specimen of the better class of old taverns. It is three miles from Hartford, Connecticut, on the old Albany turnpike. It was one of twenty-one taverns within a distance of twenty miles on that pike. It was not a staging inn for every passing coach, but enjoyed an aristocratic patronage. The property has been in the same family for five generations, but the present building was erected by Elisha Wadsworth in 1828. It is not as old as the member of the Wadsworth family who now lives in it, Miss Lucy Wadsworth, born in 1801. Its old taproom is shown on page 51. This tavern was a public house till the year 1862.

      Some of the furnishings of the taproom of the old Mowry Inn still are owned by Landlord Mowry’s descendants, and a group of them is shown on page 7. Two heavy glass beakers brought from Holland, decorated with vitrifiable colors like the Bristol glass, are unusual pieces. The wooden tankard, certainly two centuries old, has the curious ancient lid hinge. The Bellarmine jug was brought to America filled with fine old gin from Holland by Mayor Willet, the first Mayor of New York City. The bowl is one of the old Indian knot bowls. It has been broken and neatly repaired by sewing the cracks together with waxed thread. The sign-board of this old inn is shown on page 57. The house stood on the post-road between Woonsocket and Providence, in a little village known as Lime Rock. As it was a relay house for coaches, it had an importance beyond the size of the settlement around it.

      Sometimes the taproom was decorated with broad hints to dilatory customers. Such verses as this were hung over the bar: —

      “I’ve trusted many to my sorrow.

      Pay to-day. I’ll trust to-morrow.”

      Another ran: —

      “My liquor’s good, my measure just;

      But, honest Sirs, I will not trust.”

      Another showed a dead cat with this motto: —

      “Care killed this Cat.

      Trust kills the Landlord.”

      Still another: —

      “If Trust,

      I must,

      My ale,

      Will pale.”

      The old Phillips farm-house at Wickford, Rhode Island, was at one time used as a tavern. It has a splendid chimney over twenty feet square. So much room does this occupy that there is no central staircase, and little winding stairs ascend at three corners of the house. On each chimney-piece are hooks to hang firearms, and at one side curious little drawers are set for pipes and tobacco. I have seen these tobacco drawers in several old taverns. In some Dutch houses in New York these tobacco shelves are found in an unusual and seemingly ill-chosen place, namely, in the entry over the front door; and a narrow flight of three or four steps leads up to them. Hanging on a nail alongside the tobacco drawer or shelf would usually be seen a pipe-tongs – or smoking tongs. They were slender little tongs, usually of iron or steel; with them the smoker lifted a coal from the fireplace to light his pipe. Sometimes the handle of the tongs had one end elongated, knobbed, and ingeniously bent S-shaped into convenient form to press down the tobacco into the bowl of the pipe. Other old-time pipe-tongs were in the form of a lazy-tongs. A companion of the pipe-tongs on the mantel was what was known as a comfortier; a little brazier of metal in which small coals could be handed about for pipe lighting. An unusual luxury was a comfortier of silver, which were found among the wealthy Dutch settlers.

      Two old taverns of East Poultney, Vermont, are shown on page 59. Both sheltered Horace Greeley in his sojourn there. The upper house, the Pine Tree, is a “sun-line” house, facing due north, with its ends pointing east and west. Throughout a century the other house, the Eagle Tavern, has never lost its calling; now it is the only place in the village where the tourist may find shelter for the night unless he takes advantage of the kindness СКАЧАТЬ