A history of inns would be curious. It is not out of the way to observe, that the old inns of the metropolis are daily undergoing alterations that will soon destroy their original character. “Courts with bedchambers, below and around the old inns, occur in the middle age, and are probably of Roman fashion; for they resemble the barracks at Tivoli.”[267] There are specimens of this inn-architecture still remaining to be observed at the Bell Savage, Ludgate-hill; the Saracen’s Head, Snow-hill; the George, and the Ram, in Smithfield; the Bull and Mouth; the Swan and two necks;[268] the Green Dragon, Bishopsgate-street, and a few others; not forgetting the Talbot inn, in the Borough, from whence Chaucer’s pilgrims set out to the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket, at Canterbury; of which there is a modern painting placed in front of one of its galleries facing the street entrance. Stow, in his time, calls it, under the name of the “Tabard,” “the most ancient” of the inns on the Surrey side of London. In Southwark, he says, “bee many faire innes for receit of travellers—amongst the which, the most ancient is the Tabard, so called of the signe, which as wee now terme it, is of a jacket, or sleevelesse coate, whole before, open on both sides, with a square collar, winged at the shoulders; a stately garment, of old time commonly worne of noblemen and others, both at home and abroad in the wars; but then (to wit, in the warres,) their armes embroidered, or otherwise depict upon them, that every man by his coat of armes might bee knowne from others: but now these tabards are onely worne by the heralds, and bee called their coats of armes in service.” Stowe then quotes Chaucer in commendation of the “Inne of the Tabard:”—
It befelle in that season, on a day
In Southwerk, at the Tabard as I lay
Ready to wend on my pilgrimage
To Canterbury with devout courage;
That night was come into that hostelrie
Well nine and twenty in a compagnie
Of sundry folke, by aventure yfalle
In felawsship, and pilgrimes were they alle,
That toward Canterbury wolden ride.
The chambers and stables weren wide, &c.
Chaucer, whom it pleases to Stowe to call “the most famous poet of England,” relates
———— shortly in a clause
Th’ estat, th’ araie, the nombre, and eke the cause,
Why that assembled was this compagnie
In Southwerk, at this gentil hostelrie,
That hight the Tabard, faste by the Bell.
In course of time the original name of the sign seems to have been lost, and its meaning forgotten. The “Tabard” is corrupted or perverted into the “Talbot” inn; and as already, through Stowe, I have shown the meaning of the Tabard, some readers perhaps may excuse me for adding, that the Talbot, which is now only a term for an armorial bearing, is figured in heraldry as a dog, a blood-hound, or hunting hound.[269]
William Blake, Ostler at Keston Cross.
After thus beating up inns and public-houses generally, we will return for a moment to “Keston Cross.” To this pleasant house there is attached a delightful little flower and fruit-garden, with paddocks, poultry-yard, outhouses, and every requisite for private or public use; all well-stocked, and, by the order wherein all are kept, bespeaking the well-ordered economy of the occupant’s mind. The stabling for his own and visitors’ horses is under the management of an ostler of long service: and it must not be forgotten, that the rooms in the house are marked by its owner’s attachment to horses and field-sports. In the common parlour, opposite the door, is a coloured print of the burial of a huntsman—the attendants in “full cry” over the grave—with verses descriptive of the ceremony. A parlour for the accommodation of private parties has an oil painting of the old duke of Bolton, capitally mounted, in the yard of his own mansion, going out, attended by his huntsman and dogs. There are other pictures in the same taste, particularly a portrait of one of Mr. Young’s horses.