Pub

“ A couple of patient, ungroomed hacks are probably standing outside the pub, while their masters are inside having a drink—several drinks. Also it’s safe to draw a sundowner sitting listlessly on a bench on the veranda, reading the Bulletin. The Railway Stores seem to exist only in the shadow of the pub, and it is impossible to conceive either as being independent of the other. ”

“ You are never satisfied. You collect in the evening at the tap-room of the pub, and growl there over your beer until closing time, and you, Stiles, are a great deal to blame for stirring up trouble among a contented people. ”

“ And ashore was a pub—there were other pubs, plenty of them—but to this one particular pub [143] came bunches of these cargo captains to forget things. (Without wishing to offend any prohibition advocate, I have to report that knocking around the world a man cannot help noticing that men who face peril regularly do sometimes take a drink to ease off things.)
A barmaid, answering to the name of Phyllis, presided over this pub, a blond, square-built, capable person, who had always about three or four of these captains standing on their heads. ”

“ And we'll turn our aspirations to a city life and beer, And we'll slip across to England—it's a nicer place than here; For there's not much risk of hardship where all comforts are in store, And the theatres are plenty and the pubs are more and more. ”

“ Great Queen Street is quite a Masonic quarter, for opposite to the Tavern are two shops in which there is a brave show of Masonic jewellery, great candelabra, pillars, swords, highly-coloured pictures, and other adjuncts of Masonry. A humble house of refreshment, which also appeals to Freemasons for custom, faces the Tavern. The Tavern is not what the name implies. It is a restaurant, with a public dining-room, with a fine ballroom, and with many private dining-rooms. Its outside is imposing. ”

“ Brewers are very fond of buying up inns, to prevent, I suppose, other people supplying the public with bad beer, wishing to have that privilege themselves. The unexpected demands for accommodation at this now famed place obliged the industrious landlord to immediately convert his parlour into a coffee-room, the bar into a parlour, the kitchen into a bar, the stable into a kitchen, the pig-sty 171into a stable, and tents into straw bedrooms by night, and dining-rooms by day. ”

“ Good puzzle would be cross Dublin without passing a pub. ”

“ They are not especially related to the possums of North and South America, other than being marsupials. Public/Pub.: The traditional pub. in Australia was a hotel with a “public” bar—hence the name. The modern pub has often (not always) dispensed with the lodging, and concentrated on the bar. Push: A group of people sharing something in common ”

“ Bar-rooms are annexed to every species of public building,—in the theatres, in the hotels, in the bath-houses, on board the steam-boats,—and there are even temporary buildings which serve this purpose erected at certain distances along the rail-roads. Though the gentlemen drink more than any other gentlemen, the lower orders here are more temperate than with us. The appearance of a drunken man in the streets is comparatively rare here ”

“ In the good old days men did not go into a public-house to drown their wits in gin, but to buy each other good wholesome ale in Christian fellowship. And as every man went to church—of course, there had to be many alehouses!”
We have since discovered a less picturesque though much more plausible origin of these superfluous inns which will be given in another chapter. Nevertheless, allowing for our good friend’s flamboyant enthusiasm, there is an element of truth in his contention. Wherever there is a church we may be certain of finding an old inn hard by. ”

“ When he had perfected his taverns and inns, perfected them, that is, according to the light of the olden time, he set to work evolving a new species of public resort in the coffee-house. That type of establishment appears to have been responsible for the development of the club, another substitute for the home. ”

“ Hotels and Inns.—It has been conjectured (though probably in excess of the truth) that at all times there are 150,000 strangers residing for a few days only in the metropolis; and to accommodate this numerous transient population, there is a vast number of lodging and boarding-houses, hotels, and other places of accommodation. There are upwards of 500 better-class hotels, inns, and taverns. There are about 120 private hotels not licensed, and therefore do not keep exciseable liquors for sale. There are about 5,200 public-houses licensed to sell wines, spirits, and malt liquors. ”

“ The bar is one of the most—if not the most—important departments in the hotel; comparatively nothing is drunk at dinner, but the moment the meal is over, the bar becomes assailed by applicants; moreover, from morning to midnight, there is a continuous succession of customers; not merely the lodgers and their friends, but any parties passing along the street, who feel disposed, walk into the bar of any hotel, and get "a drink." The money taken at a popular bar in the course of a day is, I believe, perfectly fabulous. ”

“ Bishop Earle, whose Microcosmography is accounted a faithful delineation of characters as they existed in the seventeenth century, has bequeathed the following account of a tavern of his date:—‘A tavern is a degree, or (if you will) a pair of stairs above an ale-house, where men are drunk with more credit and apology. If the vintner’s nose be at the door, it is a sign sufficient, but the absence of this is supplied by the ivy-bush. It is a broacher of more news than hogsheads, and more jests than news, which are sucked up here by some spongy brain, and from thence squeezed into a comedy. ”

“ But that humbler type of hostelry so often represented in sketches of English rural life and scenery—the little, cozy, one-story, wayside, or hamlet inn, with its thatched roof, checker-work window, low door, and with a loaded hay-cart standing in front of it, while the driver, in his round, wool hat, and in his smock-frock, is drinking at a pewter mug of beer, with one hand on his horse’s neck—this the hand of modern improvements has not yet reached. ”

“ I could not well dine at a club without evening clothes, and a smart restaurant was equally out of the question, for I felt, being in the state of humiliation which weariness and London grime bring one to, that I could not have held my own as to the choice of a table or the ordering of a dinner against even the least determined maître d'hôtel. ”

“ Three practical men went strolling West,
Out into the West as the Bar came down;
Each said to the workmen, “May you be blest,
For moving this obstacle out of the town!
For cabs still crawl, and ’busses still creep—
While stultified aldermen vainly weep,
Their ancient Bar bemoaning.”
Three barmaids stood in their gas-lit bower,
And filled each glass as the Bar came down;
And the practical gentlemen looked at the shower,
And the mud that was rolling up slimy and brown,
For men will drink, and women must keep
Replenishing beakers, while potions deep
Are quaffed to the Bar and its “boning.” ”

“ When one had to meet a friend, a tavern was an expensive place; "in an ale-house you must gorge yourself with pot after pot, sit dully alone, or be drawn in to club for others' reckonings." Not so at the coffee-house: "Here, for a penny or two, you may spend two or three hours, have the shelter of a house, the warmth of a fire, the diversion of company ”

“ Take that old gentleman who has just emerged from the Café de l'Europe in the Haymarket, where he has been dining at the expense of the young man upon town with whom he shakes hands as they part at the door of the tavern. The affected warmth of that shake of the hand, the courteous nod, the obvious recollection of the dinner, the savoury flavour of which still hangs upon his lips, are all characteristics of his great prototype. He hobbles away humming an opera tune, and twirling his cane to and fro, with affected carelessness. ”

“ I departed thence, as a matter of course, to other German Inns, where all the eatables are soddened down to the same flavour, and where the mind is disturbed by the apparition of hot puddings, and boiled cherries, sweet and slab, at awfully unexpected periods of the repast. After a draught of sparkling beer from a foaming glass jug, and a glance of recognition through the windows of the student beer-houses at Heidelberg and elsewhere, I put out to sea for the Inns of America, with their four hundred beds apiece, and their eight or nine hundred ladies and gentlemen at dinner every day. ”

“ As usual, every one you look at puts out the hand to beg. The tavern where we stopped to dine seemed more like a great barn, or cavern, than any thing else. We go groping along perfectly dark stone passages, stumbling up a stone staircase, and gaining light only when the door of a kind of reception room opens upon us—a long, rough-looking room, without any carpet, furnished with a table, and some chairs, and a rude sofa. ”

“ The amateurs of the higher classes have gone back to dignified country-houses, as courteous hosts or favored guests. The professional speculators of a lower grade have poured back into the country town, and inns and taverns are crowded. Drink is hotly called for at reeking bars; waiters and chambermaids pass to and fro, with dishes, and tankards, and bottles, in their hands. All is noise and bustle, and eating and swilling, and disputation and slang, wild glee and wilder despair among those who come back from the race-course to the inns in the county town. ”

“ Before we left the old-fashioned house, about which the steam of saddles of mutton seems to cling, we looked in on the Knights of the Round Table, who have their club-room at Simpson's, who possess a wonderful collection of portraits of past worthies of the club, and a unique book of playbills, whose motto is, "I will go eat with thee and see your Knights," and who once a week dine together off plain English food at the round table, one piece of mahogany, from which they draw their name. ”

“ An exception is the bar, which, of course, was a fixture and part of the inn structure. Our modern bar with its almost invariable ugliness, its row of vertical handles for drawing beer, and its aggressive [Pg 245] cash register, is a poor survival of the Jacobean bar, an example of which is still in existence at the Maid’s Head, Norwich. It is worthy of recollection that the high stools which enable one to sit at a bar are quite of modern origin. Bar lounging evidently did not become a habit until the nineteenth century. People sat down and had their refreshments at ease. ”

“ And the whole attitude of mind of the English Pharisee towards the inn and the tavern is the most incomprehensible affair to the average citizen. One would have thought that an endeavour would be made to have the inn a place of cleanliness, beauty, and good repute, where relaxation and bright amusement and music might be a God-send to hard-working people. But generations of magistrates have decreed that the workers are to have their drink surrounded by every discomfort. Magnificent hotels and restaurants with music and dancing are only for the rich. ”

“ At the hotel bar, you drink a glass of beer with the local celebrity and thus come into immediate touch with, the oldest inhabitant. After dinner, seated on a bench on the sidewalk, you smoke a pipe and discuss the affairs of the nation or of the town—usually the latter—with the man who in the morning offered to give you a lift and never will understand why you declined. Invariably you receive courteous replies and in kindly interest are met more than half way. ”

“ One crosses the threshold of this homely tavern, and in the twinkling of an eye is admitted to an intimacy with the rude comfort of the past. Brisk waiters were pouring sparkling ale into tankards, and placing before customers plates containing helpings generous enough to satisfy the appetite of a starving man. In the box in the corner, curtained off by a faded crimson frill from the rest of the room, were two vacant places, which Mrs. D. and I took, and from my seat there I could watch the gentleman in the morning coat who serves The Pudding. ”

“ Behind the bar, a bar which was always full of racing men, journalists, coaching men, men from the Stock Exchange, men about town—for those were the days when no man in the movement thought it undignified to be seen standing up in a place of refreshment—was the restaurant. ”

“ On the outside of the tavern, whither we betake ourselves to wash, are a tub of water, a basin and a towel, for all the guests; but as only one person can perform his ablutions at a time, it will be necessary for us to form ourselves in a line, and take our turn—the first comers being entitled to the front places. We are now ready to replenish the inner man. The bar is convenient for those who wish to imbibe. Breakfast is announced. We seat ourselves at the table. Before us is a reasonable quantity of beans, pork and flapjacks, served up in tin plates. ”

“ Several men of his own class were standing by him, and though early in the day, groups of gin-drinking men and women had assembled in the four compartments into which the bar was divided. The floor had been swept and covered with sawdust, which gave it a [131] comfortable appearance, while its spaciousness and highly-varnished hundred-gallon hogsheads, the gilded frame-work of the plate-glass panelling, the bright rows of wine and spirit bottles, and the active movements of the landlord and two barmen, rendered the place attractive and pleasant to the miserably clad customers. ”

“ The late quiet streets of Little Britain are overrun with an irruption of strange figures and faces; every tavern is a scene of rout and revel. The fiddle and the song are heard from the taproom morning, noon, and night; and at each window may be seen some group of boon companions, with half-shut eyes, hats on one side, pipe in mouth and tankard in hand, fondling and prosing, and singing maudlin songs over their liquor. Even the sober decorum of private families, which I must say is rigidly kept up at other times among my neighbors, is no proof against this saturnalia. ”