1737-1783.] THE POST-INNS. 93 reform in the conveyance of letters by the post. The letter-bags were carried by boys on horseback. If a bag reached its destination in safety, without being rifled, it was more by a happy chance than by any care of the post-office authorities for the prevention of robbery. As to accelerating the conveyance of letters that was an impossibility. The post that left London on Monday night reached Worcester, Birmingham, Norwich, Bath, on the Wednesday afternoon. A letter from London to Glasgow was only five days. on the road. What more could be done? The manager of the Bath theatre proposed a plan for bringing the letter-bags from Bath to London, in sixteen or eighteen hours. Great was the merriment at so wild a scheme amongst the wise officials. Mr. Palmer persevered; and he had the support of a more vigorous power than that of the salaried haters of innovation. Mr. Pitt took the project under his care; and in 1784 the first mail-coach left London. There was an end of robberies of the mail-of the system under which "the mail is generally entrusted to some idle boy without character, mounted on a worn-out hack, and who, so far from being able to defend himself, or escape from a robber, is much more likely to be in league with him." The letters went safely, and they went at twice or thrice their former speed. Inns. Half a century ago the inns of a small English "Borough" were described by Crabbe. More than half a century before Crabbe, Fielding and Smollett had shown us the inns of their time. Much of the poet's description is now of things passed away. The hostelries described by the novelists are as obsolete as the old signs over the London shops. We now rarely find the "Head Inn" of the time when the world travelled in carriages with post-horses; when the ready chaise and smart driver were to be had in five minutes; when the ample yard contained "buildings where order and distinction reign;" when the lordly host bent in his pride to the parting guest; when the lady hostess governed the bar and schooled the kitchen. t According to Fielding, "it was the dusk of the evening when a grave person rode into an inn, and, committing his horse to the ostler, went directly into the kitchen, and, calling for a pipe of tobacco, took his place by the fireside, where several other persons were likewise assembled." The grave person was Parson Adams, a clergyman of much learning, but humble means; who had been accustomed to take his cup of ale in the kitchen of the squire who had given him his curacy of twenty-five pounds a-year, and whose lady did not think his dress good enough for the gentry at her table. It is true that in a nobler apartment of this inn there was another clergyman, named Barnabas, who had condescended to administer ghostly consolation to a poor man supposed to be dying; but "proceeded to prayer with all the expedition he was master of, some company then waiting for him below in the parlour, where the ingredients for punch were all in readiness, but no one would squeeze the oranges till he came." Select as the company in the parlour might be, there was no distinction in the kitchen. The next day, in that general temple of good cheer, the reverend punch-maker, the surgeon, and the exciseman, "were smoking their pipes over some cider-ale ;" and Parson Palmer's plan-presented to Mr. Pitt. + Crabbe-The Borough." 94 INNS-PUBLIC REFRESHMENT PLACES OF LONDON. [1737-1783. Barnabas having learnt the profession of Parson Adams (for his cassock had been tied up when he arrived) invited him to adjourn, with the doctor and the exciseman, to another room, and partake of a bowl of punch. This libation finished, Barnabas takes his seat upon a bench in the inn yard, to smoke his pipe. This inn-the great coach inn-was a very different affair to the little public-house on the side of the highway described by Smollett: "The kitchen was the only room for entertainment in the house, paved with red bricks, remarkably clean, furnished with three or four Windsor chairs, adorned with shining plates of pewter and copper saucepans, nicely scoured, that even dazzled the eyes of the beholder."* In this description there is nothing obsolete; nor have the "parlour splendours" of Goldsmith's Auburn inn passed away-"the royal game of goose "-the "broken tea cups wisely kept for show." It was proper that corporal Trim should take his seat in the kitchen of the village inn; and natural that the sick lieutenant's son should make at the kitchen fire a piece of thin toast that his father fancied with a glass of sack. But Parson Adams, and Parson Barnabas, and the surgeon, and the exciseman, drinking in the kitchen, is a scene of other times. Forty years later, landlords and landladies were growing exclusive, and despised vulgar company. The Lutheran clergyman, Moritz, set out upon a pedestrian tour to Oxford and the midland counties. Walking seems to have been considered in those days only fit for the poorest. The tired and hungry German enters an inn at Eton, and with difficulty obtains something to eat, and a bed-room that much resembled a prison for malefactors. "Whatever I got, they seemed to give me with such an air as showed too plainly they considered me a beggar. I must do them the justice to own, however, that they suffered me to pay like a gentleman." He was rejected when he applied for a bed, even at common ale-houses. At last he obtained a place of refuge at Nettlebed. "They showed me into the kitchen, and set me down to sup at the same table with some soldiers and the servants. I for the first time, found myself in one of those kitchens I had so often read of in Fielding's fine novels; and which certainly gave me, on the whole, a very accurate idea of English manners." The next day, being Sunday, the pedestrian, having put on clean linen, was shown into the parlour; and "was now addressed by the most respectful term, sir; whereas the evening before I had been called only master." now, Of the infinite diversities of the Public Refreshment life of London, there are ample materials for a full description if our space would afford any such elaboration. The kindly Scot who let a lodging to Roderick Random over his chandler's shop, told him, "there are two ways of eating in this town for men of your condition-the one more creditable and expensive than the other; the first is to dine at an eating-house, frequented by well dressed people only; and the other is called diving, practised by those who are either obliged or inclined to live frugally." The young surgeon was disposed to try the diving, if it were not infamous. His landlord gave him convincing proof of its propriety: "I have seen many a pretty gentleman, with a laced waistcoat, dine in that manner very comfortably for threepence halfpenny, and go afterwards to the coffee-house, where he made a figure with "Sir Launce'ot Greaves." 1737-1783.] PUBLIC REFRESHMENT PLACES OF LONDON. 95 the best lord in the land." The experiment is determined on, and the hero of the novel dines luxuriously off shin of beef, "surrounded by a company of hackney-coachmen, chairmen, draymen, and a few footmen out of place or on board wages." When he is become more ambitious, he dines at an "Ordinary"-a mode very different from the French tablefd' hôte, and never quite naturalized in London. The ordinary had more success in the suburbs --such as Goldsmith frequented. "There was a very good ordinary of two dishes and a pastry, kept at this time at Highbury-barn, at tenpence per head, including a penny to the waiter; and the company generally consisted of literary characters, a few Templars, and some citizens who had left off trade."* The chop-houses were more popular than the ordinaries. "In these common refectories you may always find the jemmy attorney's clerk, the prim curate, the walking physician, the captain upon half-pay."+ The tavern life of Dr. Johnson is as familiar to us as his rusty wig. The houses of entertainment which he frequented are as famous as the Devil Tavern of his dramatic namesake. We know by common fame, as well as from Boswell, of "the Mitre Tavern in Fleet-street, where he loved to sit up late "-the "old rendezvous" where grave divines and smart lawyers came to listen to his violent politics, his one-sided criticism, his displays of learning, his indignation against vice and meanness, his banter of Goldsmith, and his insolence to Boswell. Johnson maintained that 66 a tavern chair was the throne of human felicity." "There is nothing," he affirmed, "which has been yet contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn;"-and then he repeated, "with great emotion," Shenstone's lines: "Whoe'er has travell'd life's dull round, Where'er his stages may have been, May sigh to think he still has found When Goldsmith, to complete what he called "a shoemaker's holiday," had finished his refection at Highbury-barn, he and his companions, about six o'clock in the evening, "adjourned to White Conduit-house to drink tea; and concluded by supping at the Grecian or Temple-exchange coffeehouse, or at the Globe in Fleet-street." White Conduit-house, near Islington, was an especial resort of the citizens. The coffee-houses, although frequented by peculiar classes, were open to all men. The "Connoisseur " has described the coffee-houses of 1754. Garraway's, frequented by stockbrokers; the Chapter, by booksellers; the Bedford, "crowded every night with men of parts," who echoed jokes and bon-mots from box to box; White's, where persons of quality resorted, who do not trouble themselves with literary debates, as at the Bedford. They employ themselves more fashionably at whist for the trifle of a thousand pounds the rubber, or by making bets on the lie of the day." The fashionable coffee-houses were gradually transformed into exclusive clubs, of which form of social life we Quoted from "The European Magazine" in Forster's "Life and Times of Oliver Goldsmith," book iv. 96 RANELAGH-VAUXHALL. [1737-1783. shall have presently to speak. The more plebeian coffee-houses had sometimes to endure intruders, who asserted the independence which Englishmen sturdily maintained in the last century. Dr. Thomas Campbell, in 1775, strolled into the Chapter coffee-house, which he heard was remarkable for a large collection of books, and a reading society. "Here I saw a specimen of English freedom. A whitesmith in his apron, and some of his saws under his arm, came in, sat down, and called for his glass of punch and the paper, both which he used with as much ease as a lord. Such a man, in Ireland, and I suppose in France too, or almost any other country, would not have shown himself with his hat on, nor any way, unless sent for by some gentleman: now really every other person in the room was well dressed." The Irish Dr. Campbell must have indeed been surprised at the contrast between England and Ireland, where, according to Arthur Young, nothing satisfies a landlord but unlimited submission. "Disrespect, or anything tending towards sauciness, he may punish with his cane or his horsewhip with the most perfect security." + "Such places of pleasure as are totally set apart for the use of the great world I meddle not with." Thus writes Fielding, in his capacity of magistrate. He goes on to say, "though Ranelagh and Vauxhall, by reason of their price, are not entirely appropriated to the people of fashion, yet they are seldom frequented by any below the middle rank." Ranelagh was opened in 1742: "The prince, princess, duke, and much nobility, and much mob besides, were there," according to Walpole. In two years Ranelagh had "totally beat Vauxhall." The usual amusement was to parade round and round the Rotunda. The dullness was occasionally relieved by the depravity of the masquerade. Nevertheless, on ordinary nights, the dazzling illumi "Diary of a Visit to England, in 1775." "The Edinburgh Review" (October, 1859) gives an interesting article on this curious book, published at Sydney in 1854. The Reviewer supposes that his copy is "the only one on this side of the equator." The author of this History inet with a copy at the French Exhibition of 1855; and seeing its peculiar value wrote several notices of it, during his visit to Paris, in an English journal, in which he had an interest, "The Town and Country Newspaper." "Tour in Ireland," vol. ii. p. 127. "Causes of the Increase of Robberies;" section i. 97 nation of the building; the music; the cheap refreshments (half-a-crown entrance included tea, coffee, or punch); the opportunity of looking upon lords with stars and ladies with hoops,-these attractions drew a motley group to Ranelagh, who were either genteel or affected gentility. The landlady of the Prussian clergyman, a tailor's widow, told him that she always fixed on one day of the year in which, without fail, she hired a coach and drove to Ranelagh. Johnson moralises upon this scene: "When I first entered Ranelagh it gave an expansion and gay sensation to my mind, such as I never experienced anywhere else. But, as Xerxes wept when he viewed his immense army, and considered that not one of that great multitude would be alive a hundred years afterwards, so it went to my heart to consider that there was not one in all that brilliant circle that was not afraid to go home and think."+ Vauxhall was cheaper than Ranelagh in its price of admission, but far more costly in its refreshments. The citizen takes his wife and two daughters to the garden; grumbles over a chicken, no bigger than a partridge, which costs half-a-crown, and vows that the ham is a shilling an ounce. As he leaves the lamp-lit walks, he moralises also: "It would not have cost me above fourpence-halfpenny to have spent my evening at Sot's Hole; and what with the coach-hire, and all together, here's almost a pound gone, and nothing to show for it." There was a great deal of good com Moritz, "Travels through England." Boswell, 1777. VOL VII. H |