"Into an old inn did this equipage roll,
At a town they call Hodsdon, the sign of the Bull,
Near a nymph with an urn that divides the highway,
And into a puddle throws mother of tea."
Nymph and urn and puddle are gone long since, and where they were placed there stands at this day the ugly modern building that Hoddesdon folk call the "Clock House": really a fire-engine house with a clock-tower; the tower surmounted by a weather-vane oddly conjoining the characteristics of a fiddler, a sagittarius, and a dolphin. Inquiry fails to discover what it symbolises. Before ever the nymph or the present building occupied this site, there stood here the wayside chapel of St. Catherine, whose ancient bell hangs in the clock-tower.
HODDESDON.
Prior writes as though the Bull had long been familiar to him, but his intimate touches of the life and character of an inn came, doubtless, from his own youthful observation; for his uncle had been landlord of the Rummer at Charing Cross, where as a boy he had been a waiter and general help. Doubtless he had heard many an old frequenter of the Rummer put questions similar to these he asks:—
"'Come here, my sweet landlady! how do you do?
Where's Cic'ly so cleanly, and Prudence, and Sue?
And where is the widow that lived here below?
And the other that sang, about eight years ago?
And where is your sister, so mild and so dear,
Whose voice to her maids like a trumpet was clear?'
'By my troth,' she replies, 'you grow younger, I think.
And pray, sir, what wine does the gentleman drink?
But now, let me die, sir, or live upon trust,
If I know to which question to answer you first,
For things since I saw you most strangely have varied—
The ostler is hanged, and the widow is married;
And Prue left a child for the parish to nurse;
And Cic'ly went off with a gentleman's purse;
And as to my sister, so mild and so dear,
She has lain in the churchyard full many a year.'"
What a sorry catalogue of changes and disasters!