The record-union., 1891-06-27
WAKEMAN'O WANDERINGS.
The Different Kinds of Inns in
England and Scotland.
Comprehensive Study of an Interest,"
ing Subject, the Outgrowth of Per-
sonal Experience and Observations
Places Where Extortion Reigns.
Irregular Correspondence of RECoKD-UNIoN.
Copyright, 1911


Copyright, 1891
LONDON, June is, 1891.
There are two classes of inns in Eng
land and Scotland in which the guests
find comfort. One class comprises the
great hotels of such cities as London,
Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh,
which have become comfortable, during
the past quarter of a century, ia proper
ton to their adoption of American hotel
manners and improvements. The other
class is the humble and simple hotels of
remote villages, of almost unknown dales
and glens, of bonnie old Scotch clachans
and of frose-embowered English hamlets,
where one thanks God, ifhe have come
by design or accident, for the tender re-
pose and blest rest to be found among
them.
There is another class. Its inns are the
hostels the average traveller, commercial
or uncommercial, is compelled to patron
ize, and which lay in wait for the doomed
tourist from Lands End to John
O'GrOat's. They are simply places
where one for necessary period resigns
himself to captivity, surveillance and eX-
GOrtiOn. The unfeigned and tremendous
surprise and Indignation evinced at pro-
humor in the situation, if those may eX-
ist where there seems only opportunity
tOr downright despair.
The effuSiyeneSS of your welcome at
one of these inns is alarming. The next
instant you have cause for alarm, for
with a Queens warrant you could. not
find a shred Of that gaumy, greasy, gas
eous welcome. From a dozen to a score
OF grinning, jumping, wriggling, vocifer-
Ous beings grab and gasp and gurgle at
you until you are inside the door and
outside the law, and your belongings
have been wrenched from you, and your
self left as lone as is silence between the
stars. Then If you find them, or any
body that, without ransom, will acknowl-
edge to having ever before seen them or
you in that blessed inn, you possess
genius and great, brave and patient
soul.
If you have come to the inn by carriage
and been mulcted by the station porters
for bringing your baggage to the door, by
other porterS who grab 1t and carry it to
some other place, by other porterS who
now seize it and deposit it near your car
rlage, and by still other porters who as
siSt the Scornful coachman in getting
things to rights and under way; or if you
have walked and carried a portmanteau
or two, and been haunted and taunted by
Street-pOrterS and urChinS for your Mig
gardness ana efforts to destroy the Gus
toms of the country; you Will find them
all there, these Shiny, slippery human
tentacles of the concrete British inn devil
tlsh, separate and distinct notifications
of the life-blOOd sappings you viii be
called upon in spirit and in pocket to en-
dure.
There is the landlord, riotous in OBJ
sequiOusneSs; the landlady, beaming
with smiles, but measuring capacity for
imposition with unerring accuracy: the
=
usually German-trench adYenturer
IN full dress, who performs. all offices
with scOrn, but now standing there with
bland permissibility in his face for your
coming trial; the porter and the second
porter, who grin at YOU this once to ever
after grind; boots" that sodden, grimy
slave who never sleeps and who
is ever at war with all other
souls within the place: q but
TONS" in uniform as to clothing, but in
permanent gloom as To face, save when
you arrive and he lights up with JOY at
the misery he alone can cause
you; half dozen odorous stable
men, who each watch their chance
to leer and pull their forelockS at you
III effort TO establish secret recognition of
what you may expect ii you do not pla-
cate them; the barmaid, who knows,
you know, that it is she alone who sup
plies the awful voluminousness and mi
nuteness of that inevitable bill, and who
elggles and gyratcs as she sees your
own writing recognition of what is to
come; and a number of muscular cattle
called chambermaids, who in a trice have
settled the manner in which YOU shall be
racked and wrecked within the precincts
OF the dark, clammy den to which you
are certain To be consigned.
IN moment the cold realism of your
situation has come. \ ou are inside a
low, dark, narrow hall and alone. At
one side Is the bar, an affair constructed
like an American railway-station news
stand, which is shut ont from sight when
ever the barmaid wishes to yawn, the
landlady desires to abuse her Boniface,
or your own obiurgations become too
numerous and decisive. Opposite is the
"Cotlee-Room," a long, low, cheerless
place, with long, low. cheerless table.
spread with cloth ever dec
GRATED with misplaced matter If
you have the good fortune to finally get
anything to eat in the place, you will
have to partake Of it with a blowSv
tourist possessing one sofa, a drunken
guest snoring upon another. a crowd
Of drovers, OF politicians or of the con-
stabGlary or military, swigging ale
or stout beside you, and the
whole room as blue as a channel-fog with
the smoke of tobacco. Directly your are
in the prison-like hall. The head waiter
is gone; the porter has grabbed your lug
SdSt anu tiSdp DtesiGti, DootS' ana put
tons have vanished; landlord, landlady
and barmaid have been swallowed up in
tho incOnceiVablc somewhere behind the
bar; stablemen and cham bermaids are
whisked into undiscoverable retreats.
Great, gloomy doors, black, mouldy
walls, hard. forbidding ceilings, alone
confront you. You bang your knuckles
against the bar-window. Landlord, land
lady or barmaid by and by appears.
giving you a look Of paincd surprise. and
then disappears. You call 'Portorp'
There is not even reproving glance now
IN answer. You call and bang some
more. This time echo alone reproves
you. Cropping about the place, you snatch
at bell-cord, big as your wrist, with a
tlssel Is big rs your head. This YOU
tug at very violently. The clang and
clamor, of the bell which you
cannot locate, fill the whole
place. The bar-window comes up with n
slam. goes down with slam, and an ex-
preston of disgust and dismay is caught
escaping between the slams. Then, peer
ing up from dark stairWays, and peering
out OF quickly opened doors, arc seen
faces full of grave surprise; you hear all
about you eNclamatlons OF disgust and
dismay, and in another instant all these
faces are gone and you are again alone.
Then you talk out loud to yourself for q
while in rude American words
Strengthened, you return 10 the big
bell-cord. You jerk and jerk at that
You find other bell-cords and Jerk at
them. Nearly all of them ring bells.
bells Of such awful size and sound and.
in instances, such startling nearness,
that you are scared at your own dire
work and are rather relieved that nobody
appears to avenge your calamitous pro-