THE “RED LION,” HAMPTON-ON-THAMES.
The “Green Man” at Ashbourne, in Derbyshire, has a sign of this stamp. That fine old inn, which has added the sign of the “Black’s Head,” since the purchase of a house of that name, is of a size and a respectable mellowed red-brick frontage eminently suited to a road of the ancient importance of that leading from London to Manchester and Glasgow, on which Ashbourne stands. The inn figures in the writings of Boswell as a very good house, and its landlady as “a mighty civil gentlewoman.” She and her establishment no doubt earned the patronising praise of the self-sufficient Laird of Auchinleck by the humble curtsey she gave him when he hired a post-chaise here to convey him home to Scotland, and by an engraving of her house she handed him, on which she had written:
“M. Kilingley’s duty waits upon Mr. Boswell, is exceedingly obliged to him for this favour; whenever he comes this way, hopes for the continuance of the same. Would Mr. Boswell name this house to his extensive acquaintance, it would be a singular favour conferred on one who has it not in her power to make any other return but her most grateful thanks and sincerest prayers for his happiness in time and in blessed eternity. Tuesday morn.”
Alas! wishes for his worldly and eternal welfare no longer speed the parting guest, especially if he “tips” insufficiently. As for “M. Kilingley,” surely she and her inn must have been doing very badly, for Boswell’s patronage to have turned on so much eloquence at the main.
CHAPTER VIII
SIGNS PAINTED BY ARTISTS
In the “good old days,” when an artist was supposed to be drunken and dissolute in proportion to his genius, and when a very large number of them accordingly lived up to that supposition, either in self-defence or out of their own natural depravity, it was no uncommon thing to see the wayside ale-house sporting a sign that to the eye of instructed travellers displayed merits of draughtsmanship and colour of an order entirely different from those commonly associated with mere sign-boards.
Fresh from perusing the domestic records of the eighteenth century, you have a confused mental picture of artists poor in pocket but rich in genius, pervading the country, hoofing it muzzily along the roads, and boozing in every village ale-house. You see such an one, penniless, offering to settle a trivial score by painting a new sign or retouching an old one, and you very vividly picture mine host ungraciously accepting the offer, because he has no choice. Then, behold, the artist goes his way, like the Prodigal Son, to his husks and his harlots, to run up more scores and liquidate them in the like manner; and presently there enters, to your mental vision, a traveller whose educated eye perceives that sign, and discovers in its yet undried and tacky oils the touch of a master. He buys that masterpiece for golden guineas from the gaping and unappreciative innkeeper, whose score was but a matter of silver shillings; and he—he is a Duke or something in the Personage way—takes that “Barley Mow” or “Ship and Seven Stars,” or whatever the subject may be, tenderly home to his palace and places it, suitably framed, among his ancestral Titians, Raphaels, or Botticellis.