THE INNS OF LITERATURE AND ART
John Ball, shut up in the Archbishop’s prison at Canterbury, fell a’longing for “the green fields and the whitethorn bushes, and the lark singing over the corn, and the talk of good fellows round the alehouse bench.” The same craving for the real things of life comes to every creative genius fretting against class restrictions. Sir Walter Scott, when staying with Wordsworth at Grassmere, usually managed to give his host the slip in order to spend an hour or two in the Swan beyond the village; just as Addison had fled the splendid state of Holland House for the Old White Horse in Kensington Road. Either this wayside inn or the Red Lion at Hampton, was the scene of the historic drinking bout between Addison and Pope, which so upset the latter’s digestion and sense of dignity that he ever afterwards described the great essayist as a terrible drunkard. The Bull and Bush, in North End Hampstead, now chiefly patronised by holiday makers on account of its attractive tea-gardens, was another resort where Addison, Dryden, Steele, and the rest of the famous galaxy of wits loved to gather. It is said also to have once been the country seat of Hogarth.
The Falstaff, Canterbury
More temperate in their devotion to the flowing bowl, but scarcely less brilliant in their abilities, were the company who fifty years ago used to visit the Bull at Woodbridge. George Borrow, the gipsy wanderer; Edward Fitzgerald, the translator of “Omar Khayyam,” and Charles Keene, the Punch Artist, were among the number. Old John Grout, who kept the house, was himself an odd character. When Lord Tennyson came to stay with Fitzgerald, at Woodbridge, the latter remarked to Grout that the town ought to feel itself honoured. John was not a student of poetry, and inquired of Mr. Groome (whose son tells the story in “Two Suffolk Friends”) who was the gentleman that Mr. Fitzgerald had been talking of. “Mr. Tennyson, the poet-laureate,” was the reply. “Dissay,” said John, hazily; “anyhow, he didn’t fare to know much about hosses when I showed him over my stables!” In these stables there is a tomb to the memory of George Carlow, who was buried there in 1738, at his own special desire.
Many, who afterwards rose to eminence in the world of art and letters were born at inns. David Garrick’s birthplace was at the Raven at Hereford; at the Garrick Theatre, hard by, Kitty Clive, Mrs. Siddons and Kemble made some of their early successes. William Cobbett was born at the Jolly Farmer at Farnham; while at the little Wheatsheaf in Kelvedon, now disused, but still retaining the wrought-iron bracket from which the sign used to swing, Charles Spurgeon, the famous preacher, first saw the light. Cardinal Wolsey’s father is generally described as a butcher, but he was also a tavern-keeper at Ipswich. Like dear old Tom Hughes, who kept the Black Lion at Walsingham, a few years ago, he combined with his inn, branch shops for the sale of bread and meat. It was at the Black Bear at Devizes, then kept by his father, that Sir Thomas Lawrence first discovered his talent as a painter. We may add that a personage with an entirely different kind of reputation—Dick Turpin—was born at the Crown, Hempstead, Essex.
A very large number of inns all over England are dedicated to the memory of Shakespeare; in fact, a print dated 1823 shows the chief portion of the house where the Bard was born at Stratford-on-Avon, as a very picturesque inn—the Swan and Maiden Head—with a portly, good-humoured landlord standing in the doorway and inviting visitors to enter and drink a bumper. Of Shakespeare’s characters, the one best known on the signboards is Sir John Falstaff. There are three Falstaff inns on the Dover road. The first is that on Gad’s Hill, the scene of the hero’s most glorious exploit, and incidentally connecting him with his prototype, Sir John Oldcastle. At Canterbury, just outside the West Gate, the Falstaff is a fine old-fashioned comfortable house with some very good linen-fold panelling. But we love best to linger over the Sir John Falstaff at Newington, near Sittingbourne. The projecting upper storey, bracketed out on grinning satyrs, the excellent portrait of the fat knight on the signboard, the noble cornice, and the rakish lines of the great red-tiled roof all give the distinctive character of the best Jacobean work. Standing amid its homelier neighbours in the village street, it looks like a rollicking cavalier who has come down in the world and is just a little bit ashamed of being seen in such company. His finery is sadly faded; he is obliged now to shift for himself and pick up what he can among these common people. If we wait awhile, he will take us aside, and confide in us about his doings, when he could share in the gay monarch’s revels with the best of them. Ben Jonson, Garrick, and Dr. Syntax, are almost the only other literary or dramatic signs that are at all common.
Sir John Falstaff, Newington
The Three Pigeons at Brentford was, in all likelihood, one of the haunts of Shakespeare, and was certainly frequented by Ben Jonson, who mentions it in the “Alchymist,” as also does Thomas Middleton in “The Roaring Girl.” At this time the landlord was John Lowin, of the Globe Theatre, said to have been the original creator of Falstaff in the “Merry Wives of Windsor,” and of the part of Henry VIII. He died in great poverty during the Commonwealth and the inn has lately been rebuilt.
Whether the Bell at Edmonton is really the house at which John Gilpin ought to have dined is a controversial point, in spite of the graphic portrait of the hero on his mettlesome steed. More authentic is the fact that, at the Bell, Charles Lamb was in the habit of taking a parting glass with his friends before seeing them off by the London coach.
The White Swan at Henley-in-Arden, and the Red Lion at Henley, dispute the claim to having inspired William Shenstone’s poem “Written at an Inn.” Dr. Johnson decided in favour of the latter, and would repeat with emotion the concluding verse which was scratched in the inn window:
“Whoe’er has travelled life’s dull round
Where’er his stages may have been,
May sigh to think he still has found
The warmest welcome at an inn.”
By way of antithesis we subjoin the following poem on a window in the Star and Garter at Brighton:
“Wm. Vear
Slept Here
October the 1st
Last Year.”
In the earlier chapters of “The Cloister and the Hearth,” a variety of characteristic mediÆval inns are described, with much archÆological accuracy and also with a sly satirical humour. “Like Father, like Son,” is a proverb very true in the unchanging byways of Central Europe. Charles Reade is for ever giving us graphic touches regarding the eccentricities and shortcomings of Black Forest and Burgundian inns of our own time. Delightful, too, is the scene at the Pied Merlin in Conan Doyle’s “White Company,” and we appreciate it none the less that some of the appointments at Dame Eliza’s hostelry were scarcely likely to be found in a New Forest inn so early as the reign of Edward III.
For the coaching inns recourse must be had to the pages of “Joseph Andrews,” “Tom Jones,” and “Pickwick,” and for the smaller class of inns, “The Old Curiosity Shop.” Fielding and Dickens are each inimitable in their way; the earlier novelist concentrates on humanity in its many sorts and conditions; Dickens, on the contrary, revels in surrounding details. He loves to dally with every smoke-stained beam, lattice-window, or row of battered pewter pots and blue mugs, before ushering in the motley throng who gather round the tap-room fire, or the fine lady and gentleman in the smartly-appointed chaise whom the landlord receives so obsequiously.
Many of the best scenes in old comedies are laid in the inns. When they were a general place of resort for all classes, including men of rank and fortune, they naturally lent themselves to the unexpected meetings and odd blunders which serve to make up a farcical plot. County, racing and hunting balls were all held in the principal inn of a town; just the opportunity for a needy adventurer to introduce himself by impersonation or otherwise. The details of the scheme are arranged in the Coffee Room; and landlord or waiter supply the necessary information enabling the lover to pose successfully as Simon Pure. Then, again, the audience were familiar with the surroundings and were easily drawn into sympathetic interest. Waiter, boots, and ostler were all valuable properties to be utilized in supplying the humorous element as occasion served.
George Colman, the younger, chose for much of the action of his play, “John Bull, or the Englishman’s Fireside,” a little wayside inn on the Cornish border. Sir Walter Scott praised this comedy as “by far the best example of our later comic drama. The scenes of broad humour are executed in the best possible taste; and the whimsical, yet native characters, reflect the manners of real life.” Not the least pleasing of these is Denis Brulgruddery, the warm-hearted impulsive landlord of the Red Cow. And so it ever is. We associate the inn with genial comfort and old English hospitality; the sight of it kindles every good sentiment of human kindness within us, and we hail with enthusiasm the reconciliation of father and child, the union of two constant lovers, and happiness restored all round. There is nothing so successful on the stage as an inn scene.
Artists have also shared in the making of the inns. A host of signboards are attributed to Hogarth or that eccentric and profligate genius, George Morland. Isaac Fuller was another eminent painter who turned his talents in this direction. The Royal Oak sign at Bettws-y-Coed, now in the possession of the Willoughby d’Eresby family, was painted by David Cox, the George and Dragon at Hayes, in Kent, by Millais. Outside the King’s Head at Chigwell—the Maypole of “Barnaby Rudge”—hangs a portrait of Charles I, by Miss Herring, while the sign of the George and Dragon at Wargrave is the work of Mr. George Leslie, R.A. St. George is depicted as taking refreshment after the battle out of a tankard of respectable size. The old inn by the bridge at Brandon on the Little Ouse, and the Old Swan at Fittleworth on the Arun, are full of paintings by modern artists; the latter has one room ornamented with panel pictures by various hands, and the sign (too delicate to hang outside) was painted by Caton Woodville. There was at Horncastle, in Lincolnshire, a signboard painted by Hilton, the Royal Academician, which hung over the inn door for over forty years, finally being taken down and sold, on a change of tenancy.
Mr. J. F. Herring, the animal painter, used to relate how he once painted a signboard for a carpenter employed by him. The carpenter afterwards took a beer shop and put the sign, which represented the “Flying Dutchman,” over the door. Eventually he sold it for £50, and with the money emigrated to Australia.Most old inns contain pictures more or less valuable, or at least old sporting prints. Few can compare in this respect with the George at Aylesbury, rebuilt about 1810, which from time immemorial has possessed a remarkable collection of good pictures; portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds and Mytens, besides some well executed copies of Rubens, Raphael and others. It is supposed to have been brought from Eythorpe House, demolished in the early years of the nineteenth century.
