There certainly was a nice, fresh, cool country air about the old roadside inns that was particularly grateful and refreshing on a fine evening after emerging from the roasting and stewing of a long London season. The twining roses, the sweet-scented jasmine, the fragrant honeysuckle, the bright evergreens, the flowers and fruit in the trim gardens; above all, the real rich country cream, fresh butter, and new-laid eggs. These—the inns—are now mere matter of history; and the Irishman who travelled with his eggs "because he liked them fresh" is no longer a subject of ridicule. Moreover, these inns were often prettily situated—some by the side of gliding rivers, others near rushing dams, or overlooking ancient bridges, or commanding views over extensive ranges of rich country scenery—very honeymoonish sort of places some of them were: witness the "White Hart," Cranford Bridge; the "Castle," at Salt-hill; the "Salutation," Ambleside; the "White Horse," Haslemere; the "Talbot," Ripley; the "Saracen's Head," Beaconsfield; "Royal Oak," Ivy Bridge; the "Bush," at Staines; "White Lion," Hartford Bridge, Hants; the "Swan," at Chertsey; the "Castle," Speen Hill; "Sugar-Loaf," Dunstable; and last, not least, the "Saracen's Head," Dunmow, suggestive of "The Flitch of Bacon" and the duties of matrimony—
"To fools a torment, but a lasting boon
To those who wisely keep their honeymoon."
Happily a few are still kept for happy couples on their wedding tour. The bill was generally the only disagreeable feature about these rural caravansaries; and some of the innkeepers were uncommonly exorbitant. Nevertheless, the majority of the victims were in a favourable mood for imposition. Going to London, they had all the bright prospect of a season's gaiety before them, and under that impression people—wise people at least—were inclined to give the reins of the purse a little license, and not criticise charges too severely.
Happy is the man who can pass through life in this easy, reins-on-the-neck sort of way, not suffering a slight imposition to mar the general pleasure of his journey!
Returning from the metropolis, the country innkeeper had the advantage of having his bill contrasted with a London one—an ordeal that none but a real land shark would wish to shrink from. A comparison of inn charges throughout England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, for the same style of entertainment, would be curious if not instructive. They would show (what, however, almost every other line of life shows) that one often pays double for nearly the same thing by going to different places for it. Take a bottle of soda-water, for instance. Walk into a large, fashionable hotel, and desire the waiter to bring you one. You drink it, and ask,
"What's to pay?"
"A shilling, if you please, Sir," (or ninepence—which is the same thing), waiters at large hotels never having any coppers. If you were to go to the next chemist's you would get it for fourpence—very likely of the same quality. But the great impositions were, after all, the charges for wax-lights and breakfasts.
Gas has now superseded the former, but breakfasts were and are still charged too high. "Breakfast, with eggs and bacon, three shillings and sixpence," was and is the charge at fashionable hotels; at less pretentious ones you may get the same for two shillings, or at most half-a-crown.