Charles G. Harper

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.

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:

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:

The next, at Northallerton, seems to be by way of warning to innkeepers at all disposed to drinking their stock:

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:

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:

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:

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.

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.

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.”