VISITORS’ BOOKS
The Visitors’ Book is no new thing. In 1466, when a distinguished Bohemian traveller, one Baron Leo von Rozmital, dined with the Knights of Windsor, his hosts, after dinner, produced what they called their “missal,” and asked for his autograph “in memoriam” of him. A little daunted, perhaps, by so ill-omened an expression, but still courteous, the Baron complied with the request, and wrote, “Lwyk z Rozmitala a z Blatnie.” This uncouth autograph was not unnaturally looked upon with suspicion, and the Baron, on leaving Windsor, found himself followed by the Knights, who made inquiries of his retinue as to his real name. They suspected him to be some impostor, or at the least considered him guilty of that kind of foolishness which nowadays induces a certain class of visitor to sign himself “Kruger” or the “King of the Cannibal Islands,” or, worse still, to write down the name of the latest notorious criminal.
Foolishness is expected in a Visitors’ Book, and is not often wanting. In the present writer’s own experience, when two friends who, oddly enough, were named Rands and Sands, wrote their names in such a volume, the waiter who read them there, half-apologetically, said, “No: your real names, please, gentlemen.” Argument and assertion could not convince, and in the end they wrote “Jones” and “Robinson,” which duly satisfied.
The Visitors’ Book of an inn usually contains little else than fulsome praise of the establishment and a somewhat revolting appreciation of its good cheer. Would-be wit and offensive scurrility are, as a rule, the only other characteristics; but from all this heap of chaff and rubbish it is possible to extract a residuum of fun and sprightly fancy. Many modern tourists in the Lake District have, for instance, been amused—after their own experiences around the steeps of Langdale Pikes—to read in the Visitors’ Book of the “Salutation” at Ambleside the following piece of poignant observation:
Little bits of Langdales,
Little bits of pikes,
Make the little tourists
Walk their little bikes.
Of the “Swan,” at Thames Ditton, Theodore Hook wrote, but whether in a book there, or not, does not appear:
The “Swan,” snug inn, good fare affords,
As table e’er was put on;
And worthier quite of loftier boards,
Its poultry, fish, and mutton.
And while sound wine mine host supplies,
With beer of Meux or Tritton,
Mine hostess, with her bright blue eyes,
Invites to stay at Ditton.
Among the severe epigrams that guests have left behind them, none other is so witty as that by Quin, written at the once famed “Pelican” inn, a favourite Bath Road hostelry at Speenhamland, Newbury:
The famous inn at Speenhamland,
That stands beneath the hill,
May well be called the Pelican,
From its enormous bill.
Its monumental charges were long since ended, and where the “Pelican” stood there are now only stables and a veterinary establishment.