Whether the Bell at Edmonton is really the house at which John Gilpin ought to have dined is a controversial point, in spite of the graphic portrait of the hero on his mettlesome steed. More authentic is the fact that, at the Bell, Charles Lamb was in the habit of taking a parting glass with his friends before seeing them off by the London coach.
The White Swan at Henley-in-Arden, and the Red Lion at Henley, dispute the claim to having inspired William Shenstone’s poem “Written at an Inn.” Dr. Johnson decided in favour of the latter, and would repeat with emotion the concluding verse which was scratched in the inn window:
“Whoe’er has travelled life’s dull round
Where’er his stages may have been,
May sigh to think he still has found
The warmest welcome at an inn.”
By way of antithesis we subjoin the following poem on a window in the Star and Garter at Brighton:
“Wm. Vear
Slept Here
October the 1st
Last Year.”
In the earlier chapters of “The Cloister and the Hearth,” a variety of characteristic mediæval inns are described, with much archæological accuracy and also with a sly satirical humour. “Like Father, like Son,” is a proverb very true in the unchanging byways of Central Europe. Charles Reade is for ever giving us graphic touches regarding the eccentricities and shortcomings of Black Forest and Burgundian inns of our own time. Delightful, too, is the scene at the Pied Merlin in Conan Doyle’s “White Company,” and we appreciate it none the less that some of the appointments at Dame Eliza’s hostelry were scarcely likely to be found in a New Forest inn so early as the reign of Edward III.
For the coaching inns recourse must be had to the pages of “Joseph Andrews,” “Tom Jones,” and “Pickwick,” and for the smaller class of inns, “The Old Curiosity Shop.” Fielding and Dickens are each inimitable in their way; the earlier novelist concentrates on humanity in its many sorts and conditions; Dickens, on the contrary, revels in surrounding details. He loves to dally with every smoke-stained beam, lattice-window, or row of battered pewter pots and blue mugs, before ushering in the motley throng who gather round the tap-room fire, or the fine lady and gentleman in the smartly-appointed chaise whom the landlord receives so obsequiously.
Many of the best scenes in old comedies are laid in the inns. When they were a general place of resort for all classes, including men of rank and fortune, they naturally lent themselves to the unexpected meetings and odd blunders which serve to make up a farcical plot. County, racing and hunting balls were all held in the principal inn of a town; just the opportunity for a needy adventurer to introduce himself by impersonation or otherwise. The details of the scheme are arranged in the Coffee Room; and landlord or waiter supply the necessary information enabling the lover to pose successfully as Simon Pure. Then, again, the audience were familiar with the surroundings and were easily drawn into sympathetic interest. Waiter, boots, and ostler were all valuable properties to be utilized in supplying the humorous element as occasion served.
George Colman, the younger, chose for much of the action of his play, “John Bull, or the Englishman’s Fireside,” a little wayside inn on the Cornish border. Sir Walter Scott praised this comedy as “by far the best example of our later comic drama. The scenes of broad humour are executed in the best possible taste; and the whimsical, yet native characters, reflect the manners of real life.” Not the least pleasing of these is Denis Brulgruddery, the warm-hearted impulsive landlord of the Red Cow. And so it ever is. We associate the inn with genial comfort and old English hospitality; the sight of it kindles every good sentiment of human kindness within us, and we hail with enthusiasm the reconciliation of father and child, the union of two constant lovers, and happiness restored all round. There is nothing so successful on the stage as an inn scene.
Artists have also shared in the making of the inns. A host of signboards are attributed to Hogarth or that eccentric and profligate genius, George Morland. Isaac Fuller was another eminent painter who turned his talents in this direction. The Royal Oak sign at Bettws-y-Coed, now in the possession of the Willoughby d’Eresby family, was painted by David Cox, the George and Dragon at Hayes, in Kent, by Millais. Outside the King’s Head at Chigwell—the Maypole of “Barnaby Rudge”—hangs a portrait of Charles I, by Miss Herring, while the sign of the George and Dragon at Wargrave is the work of Mr. George Leslie, R.A. St. George is depicted as taking refreshment after the battle out of a tankard of respectable size. The old inn by the bridge at Brandon on the Little Ouse, and the Old Swan at Fittleworth on the Arun, are full of paintings by modern artists; the latter has one room ornamented with panel pictures by various hands, and the sign (too delicate to hang outside) was painted by Caton Woodville. There was at Horncastle, in Lincolnshire, a signboard painted by Hilton, the Royal Academician, which hung over the inn door for over forty years, finally being taken down and sold, on a change of tenancy.