THE “RUNNING HORSE,” MERROW.
Surrey lies too near London and all that tremendous fact implies for very many of its ancient rural inns to have survived, but among those that remain but little altered the “Running Horse” at Merrow stands out with distinction. It was built, as the date over the great window of the centre gable shows, in 1615, and, in unusual fashion for a country inn, in a situation where ground space is plentiful, runs to height, rather than to length.
The frontispiece to this volume, “A Mug of Cider,” showing a picturesquely gabled and white-faced village inn, is a representation of the “White Hart” at Castle Combe, Wiltshire, without doubt the most old-world village in the county, where every house is in keeping, and the modern builder has never gained a footing. It is one of the dozen or so villages that might be bracketed together for first place in any competition as to which is the “most picturesque village in England.”
CHAPTER XI
THE EVOLUTION OF A COUNTRY INN
It was called simply the “Bear” inn, and had no idea of styling itself “hotel.” Embowered in trees, it stood well back from the road, for it was modest and shy. A besom was placed outside the door, and on it the yokels who were the inn’s chief customers scraped off the sticky clay of the ploughlands they had been tramping all day. The entrance-passage was floored with great stone flags. On one side you saw the tap, its floor sprinkled with sawdust, and on the other was a kind of sacred “best parlour,” furnished with a round table loaded with the impossible, unreadable books of more than half a century ago, and a number of chairs and a sofa, upholstered in horse-hair. In the rear was the family kitchen, “keeping-room,” and drawing-room, all in one.
The cyclist of thirty-odd years ago—only he was a “bicyclist” then—sprang lightly off his giraffe-like steed of steel, and, leaning it against the white-washed wall, called for food and drink. The landlady, a smiling, simple, motherly woman, in answer to his inquiry, told him that she and her family were just sitting down to dinner, and he could have some of it, if he wished. No need to tell him what it was: for there was a scent of hot roast beef which seemed to him, who had breakfasted light and early, the most desirable thing on earth for a hungry man.
The landlady was for clearing the table in the sacred parlour and placing his dinner there, but our early bicyclist was a man of the world—a kind of secular St. Paul, “all things to all men”—and he suggested that, if she didn’t mind, and it was no intrusion, he would as soon have dinner with the family. “Well, sir,” said she, “you’re very welcome, I’m sure,” and so he sat him down in company with two fresh-coloured daughters in neat print dresses, and a silent, but not unamiable, son in corduroys and an ancient jacket.