The Old Inns
The Old Inns of England. By A. E. Richardson, F.S.A., F.R.I.B.A. With a Foreword by Sir Edwin Lutyens, R.A. (Batsford. 7s. thL)
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A MAN- seeking comfort in the full human sense, which ..includes both tradition and liberty, will make his way; if he can, towards the old English inn : just as he will flee, Ithowling with horror and panic, from .Ye Olde. English Inne. It is of the nature of this noble institution that it is ruined by sham archaism as much as by showy modern novelty. Perhaps it is the only disadvantage (for it can hardly be called a fault) in Mr. A. E. Richardson's most interesting book, with Mr. Brian Cook's beautiful drawings and many photographs almost as artistic as any drawings, that the :illustrations do slightly. deflect, if -not falsify, the study which they illustrate. It would be absurd to object to pictures .because they are picturesque. But it is quite possible to put the wrong emphasis on old inns by merely insisting that they are picturesque. Some of themare too picturesque to be inns ; soineof -them too picturesque to be old ; but none of them need. be too picturesque to make pleasing studies for the artist or the artistic photographer. And there . is always a -shade of- danger, in thus pleasantly presenting such things first to the eye, and only afterwards to the mind ; the danger of suggesting that old inns are old in the sense of dead ; that they are ruins to be visited by moonlight, like Stonehenge -or the-Colosseum. -The only being who is a shade more wicked than the man who destroys an inn, is the man who resurrects an inn.; in- a spirit vaguely suggesting that he has dug up • a -dolmen. or a pyramid. Tradition is not even traditional, unless it is modern as well as ancient. The truly traditional thing is that which has been alive all the time ; and is alive still. There are still such ancient inns alive in England ; but it does not follow that the inn which is the most worth drawing is the most worth drinking in ; and any good artist can do something with a black-timbered front or a quaint -heraldic, sign ; even though he might find it more difficult to make a mystic and imaginative design of the soul of a good innkeeper. . - - -
Subject to this inevitable clash of considerations, there is nothing but praise to be given to both the aspects of the work. I have no pretensions to the learning required to check all Mr. Richardson's suggestions about the origin of some of the inn names ; but I am glad to see that he avoids some deriva- tions that have been given before now in works of reference, which have always seemed to me very far-fetched and pedan- tic. He seems to be doubtful about the notion that " The Devil and Bag o Nails " stands for a satyr with bacchanals ; and it certainly seems to me that common country folk would be familiar with the devil and with bags and nails, as common incidents of our mortal life ; whereas the Bacchic pageant could only have got on to an inn sign by some curious and unique accident. He seems equally doubtful about the similar alleged connexion between " The Goat and. Compasses " and
the devout ejaculation of " God Encompasseth Us." The compasses are more likely to be masonic, and ' The Glove and Compasses,' still found, is possibly derived from the Joiners' arms." But I have seen in some popular encyclopaedia or other, examples of this ingenious avoidance of the obvious, which he does not mention at all ; possibly because he thinks they are not worth mentioning. I have seen the statement that " The Cat and the Fiddle " was a popular perversion of ,Caton Piddle, accompanied with a portrait of Faithful Cato, _presumably so depicted as to resemble either a fiddle or a cat. It is possible that such learned interpretations -may be correct ; I have admitted that I have not the learning to correct them. -But considering that the Cat and the Fiddle are the first , figures mentioned in a perfectly familiar English nursery rhyme, it seems rather easier to connect them with an English public-house, than to imagine the simple publican so inflamed with enthusiasm for the Stoic ideals of an Ancient Roman Senator (of all people) that he felt impelled to write a eulogy of him, in French, on the sign inviting the villager to have a pot of beer.
In any case, the more popular forms of the names, whether they are original or derived, are full of the spirit of the ancient inn and the comedy of English country life. It was a life of cats and fiddles and bags and nails and goats and, I need
hardly add, devils. And that life, as it was lived in the inn, .or discussed in the inn, or joked about or lied about in the inn, was the jolly and genuinely human life that is the spring of all our national literature. When all is said, the inside of an inn is more important than the outside of an inn ; and that is the only warning that need be added to the work done here by the author and the artist. The interior facts, that make for the genuineness of a good inn, nearly all resolve themselves into one principle. The difference between an inn and a mere hotel, like the huge hotels of America, is that an inn is also a home ; the home of the innkeeper. The rooted popular habit even now refers to it as a " house." And it belongs, or rather it ought to belong, to the man who " keeps the house" ; I need not dwell here on the detestable economic evils which in modern times have turned that master into a servant. His public hospitality, like private hospitality, should be an extension of domesticity. There should be a family as the -heart a the house, even if its body is as big as an hotel. That is why it is not unimportant that it should have a cat—and, Under reasonable control, a fiddle.
G. K. QIESTERTON.
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