We no longer send innkeepers to Parliament, nor do members of Parliament, as a rule, undertake the personal superintendence of hotels, as they often did in the fourteenth century. But the type of innkeeper portrayed as Harry Bailey of the Tabard, in Southwark, is by no means extinct. You may find him if you search well under many an old gable or Queen Anne cornice—sometimes even in a smart new red-brick hotel. Nor is he lacking on the great ancient trade routes that run right through Europe—not even in those establishments recommended by Baedeker or Bradshaw—though the new races of purse-proud tourists and Cook’s excursionists are fast expelling him in favour of the servile and mercenary business manager. In a humbler way, the village and wayside inns contain good men and true who follow in the footsteps of Harry Bailey. Such inns, often kept by retired tradesmen, blacksmiths or farmers, are a boon and a blessing to the neighbourhood. They are not only a centre of recreation for the village labourer; they tend also to educate and uplift him, ridiculous as the assertion may seem to those who have never put on an old coat and tramped through the by-ways into Arcady.
Diverse and sundry are the concerns in which the village innkeeper is called upon to give advice. He is the arbitrator in disputes, he solves weighty problems of rural etiquette. He knows the inner secrets of every home and can weigh the respective merits of his clientele to a nicety. To him it is that each one comes for help in trouble, social or financial, and his charity is given irrespective of politics or creed, given considerately as becomes a man of affairs, and without stint. The parish clergy know him as a valuable ally, and it is not unusual to find him acting as churchwarden. Nay, only the other day we saw a procession headed by the worthy village publican carrying the cross, and a manful and decorous crossbearer he proved himself.
It is surprising what good fellows innkeepers generally are, when one considers all the difficulties surrounding their occupation. They are the legitimate prey of every tax and rate collector. We know of one middle-class beerhouse where the rent charged by the brewers is only £50 a year, but which is rated at more than double that amount. The innkeeper, for the purpose of taxation, is merged in the licensed victualler. He is told that his business of selling fermented liquors is a valuable monopoly, and a very heavy licensed duty is exacted for the privilege. Yet he is expected to view with equanimity the dozens of bottles of beer, wine and spirits passing his door in the trucks of the grocer, who by virtue of a nominal licence can easily undersell him. Long after the hour when he is bound by law to close, he hears the shouts of the bibulous in the neighbouring political club; on Sunday mornings he sees a procession of jugs and bottles issuing from this same untaxed establishment. Blackmailed by the police, and spied upon by the hirelings of all kinds of busybody societies, he goes to the Brewster Sessions in each year in fear and trembling. The licensing justices must by law have no interest whatever either in a brewery or a licensed house of any description, but they may be, and frequently are, teetotallers. Every other subject of his Majesty is entitled to plead his cause before his peers. The licensed victualler, alone of all Englishmen since the days of Magna Charta, has to submit to be tried by enemies who have sworn his ruin.
How we all love to see, on the stage, at least, if not in real life, jovial, hearty old souls like Mine Host who entertained Falstaff at the Garter, or old Will Boniface (first landlord to be so dubbed) of the Beaux Stratagem. It is disappointing that Farquhar was such a wronghead dramatist as to make all his interesting characters vicious. We cannot believe this fat and pompous host with a wholesome faith in the virtues of his brew could really have been a scoundrel or capable of conspiring with footpads. No! Julius Cæsar was a better judge of fat human nature than Farquhar! Depend upon it, Boniface slept after his potations the sleep of an honest man. Just listen to him:
Sir, you shall taste my Anno Domini, I have lived in Lichfield, man and boy, above eight-and-fifty years, and I believe have not consumed eight-and-fifty ounces of meat.
Aimwell. At a meal, you mean, if one may guess your sense by your bulk.
Boniface. Not in my life, Sir; I have fed purely upon ale; I have ate my ale, drank my ale, and I always sleep upon ale.
Enter tapster with a Tankard.
Now, sir, you shall see; your worship’s health; Ha! delicious, delicious—fancy it Burgundy, only fancy it, and ’tis worth ten shillings a quart.
Aimwell (drinks). ’Tis confounded strong.