But all this is beside our subject. We have only to record another feature of vanishing England, the gradual disappearance of many of its ancient and historic inns, and to describe some of the fortunate survivors. Many of them are very old, and cannot long contend against the fiery eloquence of the young temperance orator, the newly fledged justice of the peace, or the budding member of Parliament who tries to win votes by pulling things down.
We have, however, still some of these old hostelries left; medieval pilgrim inns redolent of the memories of the not very pious companies of men and women who wended their way to visit the shrines of St. Thomas of Canterbury or Our Lady at Walsingham; historic inns wherein some of the great events in the annals of England have occurred; inns associated with old romances or frequented by notorious highwaymen, or that recall the adventures of Mr. Pickwick and other heroes and villains of Dickensian tales. It is well that we should try to depict some of these before they altogether vanish.
There was nothing vulgar or disgraceful about an inn a century ago. From Elizabethan times to the early part of the nineteenth century they were frequented by most of the leading spirits of each generation. Archbishop Leighton, who died in 1684, often used to say to Bishop Burnet that "if he were to choose a place to die in it should be an inn; it looked like a pilgrim's going home, to whom this world was all as an Inn, and who was weary of the noise and confusion of it." His desire was fulfilled. He died at the old Bell Inn in Warwick Lane, London, an old galleried hostel which was not demolished until 1865. Dr. Johnson, when delighting in the comfort of the Shakespeare's Head Inn, between Worcester and Lichfield, exclaimed: "No, sir, there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is provided as by a good tavern or inn." This oft-quoted saying the learned Doctor uttered at the Chapel House Inn, near King's Norton; its glory has departed; it is now a simple country-house by the roadside. Shakespeare, who doubtless had many opportunities of testing the comforts of the famous inns at Southwark, makes Falstaff say: "Shall I not take mine ease at mine inn?"; and Shenstone wrote the well-known rhymes on a window of the old Red Lion at Henley-on-Thames:--
