‘The gentry to the King’s Head,
The nobles to the Crown,
The knights unto the Golden Fleece,
And to the Plough the clown;
The churchman to the Mitre,
The shepherd to the Star,
The gardener hies him to the Rose,
To the Drum the man of war;
To the Feathers, ladies, you; the Globe
The seamen do not scorn;
The usurer to the Devil, and
The townsman to the Horn;
The huntsman to the White Hart,
To the Ship the merchants go,
But you that do the Muses love
The sign called River Po;
The bankrupt to the World’s End,
The fool to the Fortune hie,
Unto the Mouth the oyster-wife,
The fiddler to the Pie;
······
The drunkard to the Vine,
The beggar to the Bush, then meet
And with Sir Humphrey dine.’
Inn signs are indeed historical landmarks: in the Middle Ages, the ‘Cross Keys,’ the ‘Three Kings,’ and ‘St. Francis,’ abounded; the Puritans substituted for ‘Angel and Lady,’ the ‘Soldier and Citizen;’ the ‘Saracen’s Head’ was a device of the Crusades; and before the ‘Coach and Horses’ was the sign of the ‘Packhorse,’ indicative of the days of equestrian travel. Many current anecdotes attest the virtue of an old, and the hazards of a new inn sign; as when the loyal host substituted the head of George the Fourth for the ancient ass, which latter effigy being successfully adopted by a neighbouring innkeeper, his discomfited rival had inscribed under the royal effigy, ‘This is the real ass.’ Thackeray cites an inn sign as illustrative of Scotch egotism: ‘In Cupar-Fife,’ he writes, ‘there’s a little inn called the “Battle of Waterloo,” and what do you think the sign is? The “Battle of Waterloo” is one broad Scotchman laying about him with a broadsword.’
The coffee-room of the best class of English inns, carpeted and curtained, the dark rich hue of the old mahogany, the ancient plate, the four-post bed, the sirloin or mutton joint, the tea, muffins, Cheshire and Stilton, the ale, the coal-fire, and The Times, form an epitome of England; and it is only requisite to ponder well the associations and history of each of these items, to arrive at what is essential in English history and character. The impassable divisions of society are shown in the difference between the ‘commercial’ and the ‘coffee-room;’ the time-worn aspect of the furniture is eloquent of conservatism; the richness of the meats and strength of the ale explain the bone and sinew of the race; the tea is fragrant with Cowper’s memory, and suggestive of East India conquests; the cheese proclaims a thrifty agriculture, the bed and draperies comfort, the coal-fire manufactures; while The Times is the chart of English enterprise, division of labour, wealth, self-esteem, politics, trade, court-life, ‘inaccessibility to ideas,’ and bullyism.
The national subserviency to rank is as plainly evinced by the plates on chamber-doors at the provincial inns, setting forth that therein on a memorable night slept a certain scion of nobility. And from the visitor at the great house of a neighbourhood, when sojourning at the inn thereof, is expected a double fee. As an instance of the inappropriate, of that stolid insensibility to taste and tact which belongs to the nation, consider the English waiter. His costume is that of a clergyman, or a gentleman dressed for company, and in ridiculous contrast with his menial obeisance; perhaps it is the self-importance nourished by this costume which renders him such a machine, incapable of an idea beyond the routine of handing a dish and receiving a sixpence.
Old Hobson, whose name is proverbially familiar, went with his wain from Cambridge to the ‘Bull Inn,’ Bishopsgate Street, London. ‘Clement’s Inn’ tavern was the scene of that memorable dialogue between Shallow and Sir John; at the ‘Cock,’ in Bond Street, Sir Charles Sedley got scandalously drunk. ‘Will’s Coffee-house’ was formerly called the ‘Rose;’ hence the line—
‘Supper and friends expect me at the Rose.’
‘Button’s,’ so long frequented by the wits of Queen Anne’s time, was kept by a former servant of Lady Warwick; and there the author of Cato fraternized with Garth, Armstrong, and other contemporary writers. Ben Jonson held his club at the ‘Devil Tavern,’ and Shakspeare and Beaumont used to meet him at the ‘Mermaid;’ the same inn is spoken of by Pope, and Swift writes ‘Stella’ of his dinner there. Beaumont thus reveals to Ben Jonson their convivial talk:—
‘What things have we seen
Done at the “Mermaid”! heard words that have been
So nimble and so full of subtle fire,
As if that every one from whom they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
And had resolved to live a fool the rest
Of his dull life.’
The author of Peter Wilkins was a frequent visitor at an hostel near Clifford’s Inn, and Dr. Johnson frequented all the taverns in Fleet Street. Old Slaughter’s coffee-house, in St. Martin’s Lane, was the favourite resort of Hogarth; the house where Jeremy Taylor was born is now an inn; and Prior’s uncle kept an inn in London, where the poet was seen, when a boy, reading Horace. This incident is made use of by Johnson, in his Lives of the Poets, in a very caustic manner; for, after relating it, he observes of Prior, that ‘in his private relaxations he revived the tavern, and in his amorous pedantry he exhibited the college.’
There is no city in Europe where an imaginative mood can be so indefinitely prolonged as at Venice; and in the early summer, the traveller, after gliding about all day in a gondola, and thinking of Barbarossa, Faliero, Titian, and the creations of Shakspeare, Otway, Byron, and Cooper, at evening, from under the arches of St. Mark’s Square, watches the picturesque, and sometimes mysterious figures, and then, between moss-grown palaces and over lone canals, returns to his locanda to find its aspect perfectly in accordance with his reverie; at least, such was my experience at the ‘Golden Lion.’ The immense salle-à-manger was dimly lighted, and the table for two or three guests set in a corner and half surrounded by a screen; when I raised my eyes from my first dinner there, they fell on a large painting of the Death of Seneca, a print of which had been familiar to my childhood; and thus memory was ever invoked in Venice, and her dissolving views reflected in the mirror of the mind, unbroken by the interruptions from passing life that elsewhere render them so brief. The mere fact of disembarking at the weedy steps, the utter silence of the canal, invaded only by the plash of the gondolier’s oar, or his warning cry at the angle, the tessellated pavement and quaintly-carved furniture of the bedroom, and a certain noiseless step and secretive gravity observable in the attendants, render the Venetian inn memorable and distinct in reminiscence, and in perfect harmony with the place and its associations.