Among the various inns mentioned in Thomas Hardy's novels, the "White Horse" at Maiden Newton was exceptionally picturesque. "Was," and is not, for already, in the little while between the writing of _Tess of the D'Urbervilles_ and now, that fine old stone hostelry of the seventeenth century has been pulled down, to make way for a smart new red-brick house, all show and glitter. The old house was the original of the inn at "Chalk-Newton," where Tess breakfasted, on the way to Flintcomb Ash.
The "Carnarvon Arms," Bloomsbury, in Besant and Rice's _Golden Butterfly_, to which the dog "Cæsar" leads Phillis so early in the morning, is the "Guildford Arms," at the corner of Guildford and Brunswick Streets: "The door ... hung half open by means of a leathern strap.... A smell of stale beer and stale tobacco hanging about the room smote her senses, and made her sick and faint.... She was in a tavern--that is, she thought, a 'place where workmen spend their earnings and leave their families to starve.'"
Similarly, the "Birch Tree Tavern," of the same authors' _Seamy Side_, is the "Bay Tree," St. Swithin's Lane. It is described in those pages as the resort, in the quieter hours of the afternoon, when all the hungry diners were gone, of Mr. Bunter Baker and a coterie of needy company-promoters, always seeking to float impossible companies and impracticable inventions, and so unfortunate as to be, themselves, convinced of the commercial value of their preposterous projects.
The Visitors' Book is no new thing. In 1466, when a distinguished Bohemian traveller, one Baron Leo von Rozmital, dined with the Knights of Windsor, his hosts, after dinner, produced what they called their "missal," and asked for his autograph "in memoriam" of him. A little daunted, perhaps, by so ill-omened an expression, but still courteous, the Baron complied with the request, and wrote, "Lwyk z Rozmitala a z Blatnie." This uncouth autograph was not unnaturally looked upon with suspicion, and the Baron, on leaving Windsor, found himself followed by the Knights, who made inquiries of his retinue as to his real name. They suspected him to be some impostor, or at the least considered him guilty of that kind of foolishness which nowadays induces a certain class of visitor to sign himself "Kruger" or the "King of the Cannibal Islands," or, worse still, to write down the name of the latest notorious criminal.