The chambermaid who so obliquely suggested that it was time to go to bed, and no doubt preceded him to Number 15, with candle and warming-pan, was, we are told, "pretty Hannah Cuppage," and we wish he had told us more about her, instead of writing so much very thin description of antiquities.
Poets--Southey apart, with his tragical _Mary, the Maid of the Inn_--have not sung so frequently as might have been expected of the fair maids at inns. Of this type of minstrelsy, Gay's ballad on Molly Mog, daughter of the landlord at the "Rose," Wokingham, is best known:
Says my Uncle, I pray you discover What hath been the cause of your woes; Why you pine and you whine like a lover? --I have seen Molly Mog, of the "Rose."
O Nephew! your grief is but folly, In town you may find better prog; Half a crown there will get you a Molly, A Molly much better than Mog.
But he will not hear anything of the kind:
I know that by wits 'tis recited That women are best at a clog: But I am not so easily frighted From loving of sweet Molly Mog.
And so forth, for twelve more verses; when, having exhausted all possible rhymes to "Mog," he concludes, not before we are heartily tired of him and Molly too.
The ballad was composed in the company of Swift, Pope, and Arbuthnot, the four friends whiling away the dull hours of a rainy day at the inn by capping verses in praise of Molly, "with pluvial patter for refrain."
The verses were supposed to be the lament of the love-lorn young Squire of Arborfield, the last of the Standens, who died through an unrequited affection for her.
The beautiful Molly lived to the age of sixty-seven, and died a spinster, in 1766. It should be added that the present "Rose" inn at Wokingham, although itself of great age, and not unpicturesque, and an inn centuries before coy Molly herself was thought of, has only in modern times adopted the sign. The old "Rose" is the plain red-brick house opposite, now occupied partly as an ironmonger's shop.
Another Mary, maid--barmaid--of the inn, is sung in the modern song, "The Belle of the 'Rose and Crown'"; but no one would accuse that of being poetry. How does it go?--
I'm saving 'em all for Mary, she shall have ev'ry one, I'm saving 'em all for Mary, she shall have lots of fun. They know me well at the County Bank, Cash is better than fame or rank. So, happy-go-lucky, I'll marry my ducky, The Belle of the "Rose and Crown."