'THE FLYING INN'
Chesterton is once more a laughing prophet in this book, and he has as sad a state of things to prophesy as had Jeremiah to the Israelites, those people who, if it were not that they find a place in the sacred writings, would be the most silly and futile race of ancient history.
The scene of the story is England, and the last inn is there. We are to imagine that the non-drinking wine dogma of Islam has permeated England. It is a sorry state of things when—
'The wicked old women who feel well-bred,
Have turned to a teashop the Saracen's Head.'
The great charm of the book is the poetry that the Irish captain recites to Pump, the innkeeper, the gallant innkeeper who, against all opposition, keeps the flag flying and the flagon full. If the book is a little overdrawn it is, no doubt, because the subject is slightly farcical; the arguments of the Oriental are well put, and, if the discussion of the merits of vegetarianism are a little wearisome, the poetry of a vegetarian is splendid:
'For I stuff away for life
Shoving peas in with a knife,
Because I am at heart a vegetarian.'
Thus, if we observe queer manners at Eustace Miles we shall know the reason.
No doubt the adventures of the last innkeeper in England would be wonderful; there would be half-day trips to see him; bishops would flock to gaze upon the last relic of a pagan England; the Poet Laureate might so forget himself as to write an 'Epic of the Last Innkeeper'; editors would be sending lady reporters to give the feminine view of the finish of drinking; publishers would fall over one another in their eagerness to secure the 'Memoirs of the Last Publican'; the Salvation Army would put the last drunkard in the British Museum as a prehistoric specimen; on the death of this National Hero, the Dean of Westminster would politely offer the Abbey for a memorial service, with no tickets for the best places.
Chesterton gives other adventures to this last innkeeper. He is, we hope, a false prophet for this once. Were there to be no beer perhaps not even the pen of Chesterton would be able to describe the scenes that would take place in England.
'THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY'