During the late revolutionary era in Europe, the inn tables of Germany afforded the most reliable index of political opinion; the free discussion which was there indulged brought out every variety of sentiment and theory, as it included all classes, with a due sprinkling of foreigners. From the old novel to the new farce, indeed, the extremes of public opinion and the average tone of manners, the laughable contre-temps and the delightful adventure, are made to reveal themselves at inns, so that political sects and all vocations are identified with them. To Rip Van Winkle, the most astonishing change he discovered in his native village, after his long nap, was the substitution of Washington’s likeness for that of King George on the tavern sign.
The dark staircase, rising from the mule stable of a posada, the bare chambers, wool-knotted mattresses, odour of garlic, and vegetables swimming in oil, are items of the Spanish inn not likely to be forgotten by the epicurean traveller. But good beds and excellent chocolate are to be found at the most uninviting Spanish inns; and the imaginative traveller enjoys the privilege of sojourning at the very one where Don Quixote was knighted. In highly-civilized lands, inns have not only a national, but a professional character; the sign, the pictures on the wall, and the company, have a certain individuality,—marine in sailors’ inns, pugilistic in sporting ones, and picturesque in those haunted by artists; the lines of demarcation are as visible as those which separate newspapers and shops; in the grand division of labour that signalizes modern life, the inn also has thus become an organ and a symbol. Even their mottoes and symbols give traditional suggestions, or emblazon phases of opinion; natural history has been exhausted in supplying effigies; mythology has yielded up all her deities and institutions; heroes and localities are kept fresh in the traveller’s imagination by their association with ‘creature comforts.’ Thus he dreams of Cromwell at the ‘Tumble-down Dick,’ and of the Stuarts at the ‘King Charles in the Oak,’ the days of chivalry at the ‘Star and Garter’ or the ‘Croix de Malta,’ of brilliant campaigns at the ‘Wagram and Montmorency,’ of woman’s love at the ‘Petrarch and Laura,’ and of man’s at the ‘Freemasons’ Tavern.’[1]
My host at Ravenna had been Byron’s purveyor during the poet’s residence there; and he was never weary of descanting upon his character and the incidents of his sojourn; in fact, upon discovering my interest in the subject, he forgot the landlord in the cicerone, and gave no small part of a day to accompanying me to the haunts of the bard. Our first visit was to the Guiccioli Palace, and here he described his lordship’s dinners with the precision and enthusiasm of an antiquarian certifying a document or medal; then he took me to the Pine Forest, and pointed out the track where Byron used to wheel his horse at full gallop, and discharge his pistol at a bottle placed on a stump—exercises preparatory to his Grecian campaign. At a particular flagstone, in the main street, my guide suddenly paused; ‘Signore,’ said he ‘just as milord had reached this spot one evening, he heard the report of a musket, and saw an officer fall a few rods in advance; dismounting, he rushed to his side, and found him to be a familiar acquaintance, an agent of the government, who had thus become the victim to private vengeance. Byron had him conveyed to his own apartment and placed on a bed, where in half an hour he expired. This event made a deep impression on his mind; he was dispirited for a week, and wrote a description of death from a shot, which you will find in his poems, derived from this scene.’ With such local anecdotes my Byronic host entertained me so well, that the departed bard ever since has seemed to live in my remembrance rather than my fancy.
Whoever has eaten trout caught in the Arno at the little inn at Tivoli, or been detained by stress of weather in that of Albano, will not forget the evidences the walls of both exhibit that rollicking artists have felt at home there. Such heads and landscapes, caricatures and grotesque animals, as are there improvised, baffle description.
A well is the inn of the desert. ‘The dragoman usually looks out for some place of shelter,’ says the author of Over the Lebanon to Balbek; ‘the shadow of a ruin or the covering of a grove of fig-trees is the most common, and, if possible, near a well or stream. The first of all considerations is to reach a spot where you can get water; so that throughout the East the well answers to the old English “Half-way House,” and road-side “Accommodation for Man and Beast,” which gave their cheerful welcome to the “Tally Ho” and “Red Rover” that flourished before this age of iron.’
The pedestrian in Wales sometimes encounters a snug and beautifully-situated hostel (perhaps the ‘Angler’s Rest’), where five minutes beside the parlour fire, and a chat with the landlady or her pretty daughter, give him so complete a home feeling that it is with painful reluctance he again straps on his knapsack; at liberty to muse by the ever-singing tea-kettle if the weather is unpropitious, stroll out in view of a noble mountain or a fairy lake in the warm sunset, or hear the news from the last wayfarer in the travellers’ room; and there is thus mingled a sense of personal independence, comfort, and solitude, which is rarely experienced even in the most favoured domain of hospitality. An equally winsome but more romantic charm holds the roaming artist who stops at Albano or Volterra, where the dreamy campagna or Etruscan ruins alternate with groups of sunburnt contadini, lighted up by the charcoal’s glow in a way to fascinate Salvator, before his contented gaze; his portfolio fills up with miraculous rapidity; and the still life is agreeably varied by the scenic costumes and figures which grace the vintage or a festa. Some humble Champollion could easily add to the curiosities of literature by a volume gleaned among inn inscriptions—from the marble tablet announcing the sojourn of a royal personage, to the rude caricature on the whitewashed wall, and the sentimental couplet on the window-pane; to say nothing of the albums which enshrine so many tributes to Etna and the White Mountains—the heirlooms of Abbaté, the famous padrone of Catania, and Crawford of the Notch.
Sicily is famous for the absence of inns, and the intolerable discomfort of those that do exist; but mine host of Catania was the prince of landlords. A fine specimen of manly beauty, and with the manners of a gentleman, he seemed to think his guests entitled to all the courtesy which should follow an invitation; he made formal calls upon them, and gave sage advice as to the best way to pass the time; fitted them out with hospitable skill and experienced counsels for the ascent of Etna, and brought home choice game from his hunting excursions, as a present to the ‘stranger within his gates.’ His discourse, too, was of the most bland and entertaining description; he was ‘a fellow of infinite wit, of most excellent fancy;’ and these ministrations derived a memorable charm from a certain gracefulness and winsome cordiality. No wonder his scrap-book is filled with eulogiums, and that the traveller in Sicily, by the mere force of contrast, records in hyperboles the merits of the ‘Corona d’Oro.’ Alas for the mutability of inns and their worthy hosts! Abbaté was killed by an accidental shot, during an émeute in Catania, in 1848.
The waxed floor, light curtains, and gay paper of a Parisian bedroom, however cheerful, are the reverse of snug; but in the provincial inns of the Continent, with less of comfort there is often more historical interest than in those of England; the stone staircases and floors, and the scanty furniture are forlorn; and the exuberance of the host’s civility is often in ludicrous contrast with the poverty of his larder. An hour or two in the dreary salle-à-manger of a provincial French inn on a rainy day is the acme of a voyageur’s depression. The restaurant and café have superseded the French inns, of whose gastronomic renown and scenes of intrigue and violence we read in Dumas’s historical novels; romance and tragedy, the convivial and the culinary associations, are equally prominent. ‘Suburban cabarets,’ observes a popular writer, ‘were long dangerous rendezvous for Parisians;’ before and during the Grand Monarque’s reign the French taverns were representative, the army, court, men of letters, and even ecclesiastics having their favourite haunt: Molière went to the ‘Croix de Lorraine,’ and Racine to the ‘Mouton Blanc;’ the actors met at ‘Les Deux Faisans;’ one of the last of the old-school Parisian landladies—she who kept the ‘Maison Rouge’—is celebrated in Béranger’s Madame Gregoire; Ravaillac went from a tavern to assassinate Henry the Fourth; and fashionable orgies were carried on in the ‘Temple Cellars.’ It is not uncommon to find ourselves in a friar’s dormitory, the large hotels in the minor towns having frequently been erected as convents; and in Italy, such an inn as that of Terracina, with its legends of banditti and its romantic site, the waves of the Mediterranean moaning under its lofty windows, infallibly recalls Mrs. Radcliffe. In the cities many of the hotels are palaces where noble families have dwelt for centuries, and about them are perceptible the traces of decayed magnificence and the spell of traditional glory and crime. To an imaginative traveller these fanciful attractions often compensate for the absence of substantial merit, and there is something mysterious and winsome in the obsolete architecture and fallen grandeur of these edifices;—huge shadows glide along the high cornices, the mouldy frescoes look as if they had witnessed strange vicissitudes, and the imagination readily wanders through a series of wonderful experiences of which these old palazzi have been the scene. Here, as elsewhere in the land, it is the romantic element, the charm of antiquity, that is the redeeming feature. For picturesque beauty of situation, neatness, and rural comfort, some of the inns of Switzerland are the most delightful on the Continent, inviting the stranger to linger amid the clear, fresh, and glorious landscape, and relish the sweet butter, white bread, and unrivalled honey and eggs, served so neatly every morning by a fair mountaineer with snowy cap and gay bodice.
I am a lover of the woods, and sometimes cross the bay, with a friend, to Long Island, and pass a few hours in the strip of forest that protected our fugitive army at the Battle of Flatbush; there are devious and shadowy paths intersecting it, and in spring and autumn the wild flowers, radiant leaves, and balmy stillness cheer the mind and senses, fresh from the dust and bustle of the city. Often after one of these woodland excursions we have emerged upon a quiet road, with farm-houses at long intervals, and orchards and grain-fields adjacent, and followed its course to a village, whose gable-roofed domicile and ancient graveyard indicate an old settlement; and here is a little inn which recalls our idea of the primitive English alehouse. It has a little Dutch porch, a sunny garden, the liquor is served from the square bottles of Holland, the back parlour is retired and neat, and the landlady sits all day in the window at her sewing, and, when a little acquainted, will tell you all about the love-affairs of the village; the cheese and sour-krout at dinner suggest a Flemish origin.
The old sign that hangs at the road-side was brought to this country by an English publican, when the fine arts were supposed to be at so low a stage as to furnish no Dick Tinto equal to such an achievement. It represents the arms of Great Britain, and doubtless beguiled many a trooper of his Majesty when Long Island was occupied by the English; no sooner, however, had they retreated, than the republican villagers forced the landlord to have an American eagle painted above the king’s escutcheon. Indeed, it is characteristic of inns that they perpetuate local associations: put your head into an Italian boarding-house in New York, and the garlic, macaroni, and red wine lead you to think yourself at Naples; the snuff, dominoes, and gazettes mark a French café all the world over; in Montreal you wake up in a room like that you occupied at Marseilles; and at Halifax the malt liquor is as English as the currency.