More temperate in their devotion to the flowing bowl, but scarcely less brilliant in their abilities, were the company who fifty years ago used to visit the _Bull_ at Woodbridge. George Borrow, the gipsy wanderer; Edward Fitzgerald, the translator of “Omar Khayyam,” and Charles Keene, the _Punch_ Artist, were among the number. Old John Grout, who kept the house, was himself an odd character. When Lord Tennyson came to stay with Fitzgerald, at Woodbridge, the latter remarked to Grout that the town ought to feel itself honoured. John was not a student of poetry, and inquired of Mr. Groome (whose son tells the story in “Two Suffolk Friends”) who was the gentleman that Mr. Fitzgerald had been talking of. “Mr. Tennyson, the poet-laureate,” was the reply. “Dissay,” said John, hazily; “anyhow, he didn’t fare to know much about hosses when I showed him over my stables!” In these stables there is a tomb to the memory of George Carlow, who was buried there in 1738, at his own special desire.
Many, who afterwards rose to eminence in the world of art and letters were born at inns. David Garrick’s birthplace was at the _Raven_ at Hereford; at the Garrick Theatre, hard by, Kitty Clive, Mrs. Siddons and Kemble made some of their early successes. William Cobbett was born at the _Jolly Farmer_ at Farnham; while at the little _Wheatsheaf_ in Kelvedon, now disused, but still retaining the wrought-iron bracket from which the sign used to swing, Charles Spurgeon, the famous preacher, first saw the light. Cardinal Wolsey’s father is generally described as a butcher, but he was also a tavern-keeper at Ipswich. Like dear old Tom Hughes, who kept the _Black Lion_ at Walsingham, a few years ago, he combined with his inn, branch shops for the sale of bread and meat. It was at the _Black Bear_ at Devizes, then kept by his father, that Sir Thomas Lawrence first discovered his talent as a painter. We may add that a personage with an entirely different kind of reputation--Dick Turpin--was born at the _Crown_, Hempstead, Essex.
A very large number of inns all over England are dedicated to the memory of Shakespeare; in fact, a print dated 1823 shows the chief portion of the house where the Bard was born at Stratford-on-Avon, as a very picturesque inn--the _Swan and Maiden Head_--with a portly, good-humoured landlord standing in the doorway and inviting visitors to enter and drink a bumper. Of Shakespeare’s characters, the one best known on the signboards is Sir John Falstaff. There are three _Falstaff_ inns on the Dover road. The first is that on Gad’s Hill, the scene of the hero’s most glorious exploit, and incidentally connecting him with his prototype, Sir John Oldcastle. At Canterbury, just outside the West Gate, the _Falstaff_ is a fine old-fashioned comfortable house with some very good linen-fold panelling. But we love best to linger over the _Sir John Falstaff_ at Newington, near Sittingbourne. The projecting upper storey, bracketed out on grinning satyrs, the excellent portrait of the fat knight on the signboard, the noble cornice, and the rakish lines of the great red-tiled roof all give the distinctive character of the best Jacobean work. Standing amid its homelier neighbours in the village street, it looks like a rollicking cavalier who has come down in the world and is just a little bit ashamed of being seen in such company. His finery is sadly faded; he is obliged now to shift for himself and pick up what he can among these common people. If we wait awhile, he will take us aside, and confide in us about his doings, when he could share in the gay monarch’s revels with the best of them. _Ben Jonson_, _Garrick_, and _Dr. Syntax_, are almost the only other literary or dramatic signs that are at all common.