Washington Irving thought as highly of inns as did Dr. Johnson. “To a homeless man, who has no spot on this wide world which he can truly call his own,” he says, in a memorable passage, “there is a momentary feeling of something like independence and territorial consequence when, after a weary day’s travel, he kicks off his boots, thrusts his feet into slippers, and stretches himself before an inn fire. Let the world without go as it may; let kingdoms rise or fall, so long as he has the wherewithal to pay his bill, he is, for the time being, the very monarch of all he surveys. The armchair is his throne, the poker his sceptre, and the little parlour, some twelve feet square, his undisputed empire. It is a morsel of certainty, snatched from the midst of the uncertainties of life; it is a sunny moment gleaming out kindly on a cloudy day; and he who has advanced some way on the pilgrimage of existence knows the importance of husbanding even morsels and moments of enjoyment. ‘Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?’ thought I, as I gave the fire a stir, lolled back in my elbow-chair, and cast a complacent look about the little parlour of the ‘Red Horse,’ at Stratford-on-Avon.”
He was very speedily answered, No! for at that instant the chimes preluded the stroke of midnight, and at the same time “a gentle tap came at the door, and a pretty chambermaid, putting in her smiling face, inquired, with a hesitating air,” whether that momentary monarch of all he surveyed had rung. Of course she knew perfectly well he had not rung, and the humbled autocrat of those twelve square feet was quite correct when he “understood it as a modest hint that it was time to retire.” The Emperor of the Inn Parlour accordingly abdicated immediately, lest a worse thing—i.e., the possible turning off the gas at the meter—should befall; and, his dream of absolute dominion at an end, went off to bed, like a good boy, rather than the Crowned Head he had fancied himself.
WASHINGTON IRVING’S “THRONE” AND “SCEPTRE.”
The “Red Horse”—the name is taken from the Vale of Red Horse in which the town of Stratford-on-Avon stands—is still in being, and the “Washington Irving Room” is even yet a shrine, of sorts. A shrine, however, none too easy for the casual worshipper of heroes, or the amateur of literary landmarks, to come to, for it is generally used as a private sitting-room; and not the most sympathetic and easy-going of guests who has hired it for that purpose is content to receive all day a stream of strangers bubbling over with real, or affected, interest. It is a small room, measuring some ten feet by fifteen, looking out upon Bridge Street. Nowadays the walls of it are hung with portraits of Irving himself, of Longfellow, and others, together with old views of the town; and a framed letter written by Irving, and a silhouette of “Sally Garner,” daughter of the landlord of that time, bring the place closely into touch with the Sketch Book. The “Sexton’s Clock” stands beside the door, with a suitably inscribed brass plate; but no longer may you wield that poker which was Irving’s “sceptre,” nor sit in the chair that was, in his fancy, a throne; for the poker is kept in the office of the hotel, and the chair, also with an inscribed brass plate, is locked within a cupboard, through whose glass doors you may see where it is jealously retired from touch. In short, every thing that will harbour an inscription has one, not excepting the poker itself, which has been engraved with the legend, “Geoffrey Crayon’s Sceptre.”
The chambermaid who so obliquely suggested that it was time to go to bed, and no doubt preceded him to Number 15, with candle and warming-pan, was, we are told, “pretty Hannah Cuppage,” and we wish he had told us more about her, instead of writing so much very thin description of antiquities.
Poets—Southey apart, with his tragical Mary, the Maid of the Inn—have not sung so frequently as might have been expected of the fair maids at inns. Of this type of minstrelsy, Gay’s ballad on Molly Mog, daughter of the landlord at the “Rose,” Wokingham, is best known:
Says my Uncle, I pray you discover
What hath been the cause of your woes;
Why you pine and you whine like a lover?
—I have seen Molly Mog, of the “Rose.”
O Nephew! your grief is but folly,
In town you may find better prog;
Half a crown there will get you a Molly,
A Molly much better than Mog.
But he will not hear anything of the kind:
I know that by wits ’tis recited
That women are best at a clog:
But I am not so easily frighted
From loving of sweet Molly Mog.