CHAPTER LXII

BURTON ST. LEGER

BURTON ST. LEGER was a large place, or rather a small one stretched out into a large one, just as a goldbeater hammers a small piece of the precious metal into a large circumference, or a little moth of a woman distends herself into a hay-stack with crinoline. It was a longitudinal square, bisected with gravelly cross-roads, round whose spacious green area some spirited individual had planted unhappy-looking limes, in hopes of seeing them emulate the large oaks and elms with which the town, or rather village, outskirts was surrounded. These were now made more visible in leafless winter by the spars and thorns with which their stems were encased to protect them from the cattle and idle boys. The town being purely agricultural, the houses and cottages stood at respectful distances from each other; each seeming to be what the villa agents call “self-contained,” instead of huddled together, dependent on one another for support. There cannot perhaps be a greater contrast to the now thatched, now blue-roofed, now stone-slated miscellany of houses and cottages constituting a real straggling country village than the long monotonous repetitions of dwellings containing a window, a numbered door, and a peep-hole, peculiar to a mining one. The former always look healthy and nice, while the latter too often present a combination of mud, tawdry squalor, and unbecoming finery. Burton St. Leger was a real country place, where the women wore bedgowns and went to the well themselves, instead of sending those wretched children-servants the mining population so delight to employ.

After the pear-tree covered parsonage, and the red brick fox-hunting farmer, Mr. Buckwheat’s residence, the Lord Cornwallis Inn was decidedly the most imposing-looking house in the place, being bow-windowed and blue-roofed, with white rails set in the stone coping of a low wall in front. Here on a summer’s evening the rural parliament would assemble and talk over matters quite as important to them as those that are discussed at St. Stephen’s—how Mrs. Manby managed her husband; how Luke Brown had been out poaching again; how Giles Summerbell had got forty shillings for his barley, while Tom Crosier had “nabbut getten” thirty-eight, and other equally important rural and agricultural matters. In the old ploughing days of posting, the Lord Cornwallis Inn was a sleeping house, and many great people have reposed in its old tapestried state apartment; but when roads began to mend, people found they could run through from Highgreen to Mayfield, and the Marquisate business began to decline. First his lordship’s cocked hat and wig on the sign went, then his coat, and lastly the effigy, like the marquisate itself, disappeared altogether. The name of the house, at the time of our tale, was only represented by a once sparkling blue board, having on it the following inscription in somewhat lack-lustre letters:—

MATTHEW MULDOON,

Licensed Victualler, Job and Post Master.

Neat Wines, Neat Postchaises, &c.

But though the name of the master appeared on the sign, the business of the house was in fact entirely conducted by his wife, Mrs. Muldoon, Matty having long retired from business and devoted himself entirely to drinking—being always to be found at the receipt of custom in the bar, with his clay-pipe, ready to give or take glasses with any one. The taste for giving “glasses” among the lower orders seems to correspond with that of giving dinners among the higher ones, many people being willing to give glasses and dinners who would be very sorry to give the other party the money the glasses or dinners would cost. The dinners we can understand, because there is the gratification of display; but what pleasure there can be in seeing human beings reduce themselves to a level with the animal creation, by gulping down glass after glass of liquid fire, does seem to us to be rather incomprehensible. Nevertheless, Matty was always at it: never incapacitated by the quantity he had taken, but as ready to accept the hospitality of the last man as he had been of the first. Thus he had gone on year after year for many years, and though his corporation had increased and his legs spindled, while his face had assumed a more mulberry-like hue, yet people said the drink did him “ne harm,” he was “se used to it;” and as the doctrine was a convenient one, Matty thought not either. So he sotted and drank for the good of the house and the bad of himself—a practice not so common now as it was a few years since.

Taking the general range of country inns, however, we may say that the same division into which the old butler threw his master’s malt liquor, and we threw the lawyer’s, may describe the whole range of them, namely, ale, table, and lamentable. The George at Melton, the Station at York, the Bedford at Brighton, and a few others that do not immediately occur to us, are ale, but by far the greater number are only “table,” and very, very many “lamentable.” In fact there is no branch of our rural economy that requires more revision and amendment than the country inns; in fact there is no economy about them at all. The large comfortable old posting-houses that existed prior to railways have all disappeared or been converted into schools or convents, or such like purposes. At one of these a man with his horses could live very comfortably during the hunting season. The landlords were generally sportsmen themselves, and also large farmers, so that there was a stroll over the farm at all events, if not a little shooting to occupy a non-hunting day, while the constant expectation of travellers, the tinkle, tinkle, tinkle of the ostler’s bell, with the commotion consequent on the long traces, the handing up of the smoking glass to the green-veiled maid in the rumble, with the grand aërial sweep of the landlord’s hat as the quickly-changed ploughmen post-boys climbed on to their horses and whipped away with their cargoes, with the commentaries of the now left-behind ones on the travellers’ liberality, all helped to beguile the tedium of the time. Those houses have all disappeared, or if any remain, are dragging out miserable existences, with weak worn-out establishments, women waiters, and either antediluvian ostlers or ignorant hobbledehoys, fresh at each quarter, who hardly know how to put on a bridle, and who, after staring at a stranger on horseback, ask him if he wants him “put oop.” Then to see them whip off the saddle, let the horse be ever so hot, and dash in the corn as quick as they can get it—giving him what they call “a lick and a promise,” instead of cleaning him—all irritate the man who knows how a horse should be attended to. And here we may observe that ostlers are generally either very quick clever men, or very slow useless ones; we seldom meet a medium man in the situation of ostler, though we meet with a great many brandy-nosed bad ones. Some of the good ones are marvellously active in their habits. In the old coaching days we knew a man who looked after twenty-five coach-horses and harness, with the aid of only one helper, and did the general stable business of the house into the bargain. But then he was a man who was always at work, never lounging at street corners or popping into the inn-bar to see what o’clock it was. Third-rate country inns in England are deplorable places. Keen must be the British sportsman, or desperately in love the man who can stay long at one of these gristly, tough mutton houses for the purpose of hunting or courting, or even for a combination of both. There is no resemblance to civilisation in anything about them, save the bill, that is generally a famous one. Six shillings a bottle, or rather three-quarters of a bottle, of the earthiest sherry; eight shillings a bushel for oats; and servants’ keep, out of all comprehension. A master should always put his servant on extra board-wages before going to an inn, or he will pay double for what the man would himself get for one-half. Considering that the rule is for the groom to have a bed for nothing where there are horses, very little extra should do it, seeing that an innkeeper can victual a party of servants at two shillings a day each, or three shillings a day where there is only one. Of course there are some innkeepers who will exclaim on reading this, “it can’t be done, some one has written this who knows nothing of the requirements of gentlemen’s servants;” but we beg to say that we had the information from one of themselves, therefore it may be taken to be true. If they cannot board grooms for a guinea a week, how, let us ask, does it happen that a farm-hind will board a stout ploughman for six shillings a week, and make money by it too? It is no advantage to a master to have his servant eating veal-cutlets or lamb’s fry for breakfast; he wants him fed like his horses for useful work, and the man would not order such dainties if he was paying for himself; he would have his money’s worth of good wholesome food, and if the innkeeper would not supply him at reasonable prices, he would soon find plenty of people about who would. The groom would thus pocket something a week for himself, and the master would also save by the arrangement, for if he gives the groom his head he will soon eat him a couple of pounds a week at innkeepers’ prices. Horses, too, are terribly overcharged at inns, which prevents sportsmen going to them if they can by any possibility avoid it. We have before us two bills, one for three horses for a week at a country inn, amounting to 4l. 12s. 3d., exclusive of the expectations of the ostler; the other for the cost of two horses standing ten weeks in a private stable, amounting to 5l. 14s. 8d. A gentleman of our acquaintance, being presented with his stable-bill on the morning of his departure from an inn, intending to hunt his way home, was surprised to find that his horses had eaten four bushels of oats a week each, exclusive of hay, bran, beans, and other et ceteras, making the bill up to about double what he expected, 13l. 1s. 6d., whereupon he had a long conference with the Boniface, who at length generously agreed to take off the odd eighteen-pence; whereupon our sportsman proceeded to the meet, and had the satisfaction of hearing that the hounds had found their fox immediately and gone right away, nobody knew where. So he saved his eighteen-pence and lost his hunt.

Still sportsmen like touring, and would tour very considerably if they could only get moderately housed at anything like reasonable rates; but the present system is almost a bar to locomotion. It is not that sportsmen object to paying inn bills where the accommodation is good, but that they object to pay the price of good accommodation for very bad. Nevertheless we must bring our friend Mr. Bunting down from the elegancies of the Polyanthus Club to take his chance at the Marquis of Cornwallis Hotel and Posting-house at Burton St. Leger. But first we must get his stud there.