The Old Inns of England (Vol. 1&2). Charles G. Harper

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      CHAPTER IV

       Table of Contents

      THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

      The inns of old time, serving as they did the varied functions of clubs and assembly-rooms and places of general resort, in addition to that of hotel, were often, at times when controversies ran high, very turbulent places.

      The manners and customs prevailing in the beginning of the eighteenth century may be imagined from an affray which befell at the “Raven,” Shrewsbury, in 1716, when two officers of the Dragoons insisted in the public room of the inn, upon a Mr. Andrew Swift and a Mr. Robert Wood, apothecary, drinking “King George, and Damnation to the Jacobites.” The civilians refused, whereupon those military men drew their swords, but—swords notwithstanding—they were very handsomely thrashed, and one was placed upon the fire, and not only had his breeches burnt through in a conspicuous place, but had his person toasted. The officers then, we learn, “went off, leaving their hatts, wigs and swords (which were broke) behind them.”

      One did not, it will be gathered from the above, easily in those times lead the Quiet Life; but that was a heated occasion, and we were then really upon the threshold of that fine era when inns, taverns, and coffee-houses were the resort, not merely of travellers or of thirsty souls, but of wits and the great figures of eighteenth-century literature, who were convivial as well as literary. It was a great, and, as it seems to the present century, a curious, time; when men of the calibre of Addison, of Goldsmith and of Johnson, acknowledged masters in classic and modern literature, smoked and drank to excess in the public parlours of inns. But those were the clubs of that age, and that was an age in which, although the producers of literature were miserably rewarded, their company and conversation were sought and listened to with respect.

      When Dr. Johnson declared that a seat in a tavern chair was the height of human felicity, his saying carried a special significance, lost upon the present age. He was thinking, not only of a comfortable sanded parlour, a roaring fire, and plenty of good cheer and good company, but also of the circle of humbly appreciative auditors who gathered round an accepted wit, hung upon his words, offered themselves as butts for his ironic or satiric humour, and—stood treat. The great wits of the eighteenth century expected subservience in their admirers, and only began to coruscate, to utter words of wisdom or inspired nonsense, or to scatter sparkling quips and jests, when well primed with liquor—at the expense of others. The felicity of Johnson found in a tavern chair was derived, therefore, chiefly from the homage of his attendant humble Boswells, and from the fact that they paid the reckoning; and was, perhaps, to some modern ideas, a rather shameful idea of happiness.

      Johnson, who did not love the country, and thought one green field very like another green field, when he spoke of a tavern chair was of course thinking of London taverns. He would have found no sufficient audience in its wayside fellow, which indeed was apt, in his time and for long after, to be somewhat rough and ready, and, when you had travelled a little far afield, became a very primitive and indeed barbarous place.

      At Llannon, in 1797, those sketching and note-taking friends, Rowlandson and Wigstead, touring North and South Wales in search of the picturesque, found it, not unmixed with dirt and discomfort, at the inns. Indeed, it was only at one town in Wales—the town of Neath—that Wigstead found himself able to declare, “with strict propriety,” that the house was comfortable. Comfort and decency fled the inn at Llannon, abashed. This, according to Wigstead, was the way of it: “The cook on our arrival was in the suds, and, with unwiped hands, reached down a fragment of mutton for our repast: a piece of ham was lost, but after long search was found amongst the worsted stockings and sheets on the board.”

      Then “a little child was sprawling in a dripping-pan which seemed recently taken from the fire: the fat in this was destined to fry our eggs in. Hunger itself even was blunted,” and the travellers left those delicacies almost untouched. Not even the bread was without its surprises. “I devoted my attention to a brown loaf,” says Wigstead, “but on cutting into it was surprised to find a ball of carroty-coloured wool; and to what animal it had belonged I was at a loss to determine. Our table-cloth had served the family for at least a month, and our sitting-room was everywhere decorated with the elegant relics of a last night’s smoking society, as yet unremoved.”

      All this was pretty bad, but perhaps even the baby in the dripping-pan, the month-old table-cloth, and the hank of wool in the loaf were to be preferred to what they had experienced at Festiniog. They had not at first purposed to make a halt at that place, having planned to stay the night at Tan-y-Bwlch, where the inn commanded a view over a lovely wooded vale. The perils and the inconveniences of the vile road by which they had come faded into insignificance when they drew near, and they began to reckon upon the comforts of a good supper and good beds at Tan-y-Bwlch. They even disputed whether the supper should be chickens or chops, but all such vain arguments and contentions faded away when they drew near and a stony-faced landlord declared he had no room for them.

      We can easily sympathise here with those travellers in search of the picturesque, for we have all met with the like strokes of Fate. No doubt the beauties of the view suddenly obscured themselves, as will happen when you can get nothing to eat or drink; and probably they thought of Dr. Johnson, who a few years earlier had held the most beautiful landscape capable of being improved by a good inn in the foreground. But a good inn where they cannot or will not receive you, is, in such a situation, sorrow’s crown of sorrow, an aggravation and a mockery.

      It was a tragical position, and down the sounding alleys of time vibrates strange chords of reminiscence in the breasts of even modern tourists of any experience. We too, have suffered; and many an one may say, with much tragical meaning, “et ego in Arcadia vixit.”

      Alas! for the frustrated purpose of Messrs. Rowlandson and Wigstead, Tan-y-Bwlch could not, or would not, receive them, and they had no choice but to journey three more long Welsh miles to Festiniog in the rain. It sometimes rains in Wales, and when it does, it rarely knows when to leave off.

      Arrived there, they almost passed the inn, in the gathering darkness, mistaking it for a barn or an outhouse; and when they made to enter, they were confronted by an extraordinary landlady with the appearance of one of the three witches in Macbeth.

      “Could they have beds?”

      Reluctantly she said they could, telling them (what we know to be true enough) that she supposed they only came there because there was no accommodation at Tan-y-Bwlch.

      The travellers made no reply to that damning accusation, and hid their incriminating blushes in the congenial gloom of the fast-falling night. It was a situation in which, if you come to consider it, no СКАЧАТЬ