THE GEORGE INN

Greymouth Evening Star, 24 December 1934, Page 12

THE GEORGE INN

DEATH OF THE HOSTESS Miss Agnes Murray, who has just died, and the George Inn in the borough, can no more be dissevered in one’s mind than Old Joo Willett and the Maypole in “Barnaby Rudge,” says a London writer in the “Manchester Guardian.” (One cannot but think of Dickens in connection with this the last of the galleried inns of London, which was brother-inn to the White Hart in the Borough, where Mr. Pickwick found Mr. Weller). Miss Murray, who was eighty-one years old, had been in the George since her teens, and she ruled it with a firm, quiet hand. The hop trade kept it going, and at one time the old bedrooms, with their 1 four-post beds, were occupied every night, but that is long ago. They have been more like showplaces in an old castle for many years. I think Miss Murray discouraged guests for the night, just as she discouraged customers coming into the coffee-room for drinks at night, and always let the fire go out. Latterly, indeed, she discouraged all but the hop factors and others who came for the midday ordinary or the five or six select men who came into her little parlour, where the canary and the box of pressed hops and the old guards’ pistols and bullets were. Once a daring man tried to get her to make a lunch on Sunday for Mr. Scullin, the Premier of Australia, and some of his Cabinet, but she smiled the idea away. “I have only a small leg of mutton for myself and the staff,”' she said, “but if your friends come I'll be glad to give them a glass of good sherry.” She received them like a queen, wearing her cameo brooch, as she did on great occasions. She allowed a theatrical party to come every St. George’s Day to perform a Shakespeare scene on a wagon in the yard, while people went up on the two open galleries and looked down through the potted geraniums at the show, just as people had looked down from inn galleries long before there were theatres.

THE SILENT PARROT In recent years the George had got into the guide-books, and tourist parties, mostly for tea, came to the hostelry to be greeted, one fancied, with a faint derision in her welcome. But for many years she had American visitors that she valued, W. D. Howells, Parkinson Smith, Christopher Morley, and Van Lear Black amongst them. The last-named gave her a parrot chosen by H. M. Tomlinson himself in the Silver Street Market. It was installed in the little end room, along with a warrant from the dealer that he undertook to exchange Jackie for another parrot, if in three months he failed to talk. The term expired and Jackie said

never a word, black or white. The donor’s friends heard of this, came to Miss Murray, and suggested another parrot. “No.” said Miss Murray, “you won’t take away Jackie That parrot's brought good business to the house. Every man that thinks he can make a parrot speak comes and has a try. They come from Parley and even Brighton. Every one of them thinks he’s the man that can make a parrot speak. None of them can, but they all talk about him. That parrot that can’t .talk is the talk of the town!” Ultimately Jackie, who steadily refused to speak, was given by Miss Murray to someone up the river. Mr. E. V. Lucas, who was in Miss Murrays favour, has told part of Jackie’s story in print. It has been said that Miss Murray was a firm character. Everyone who went to the George knew that. A very particular man once brought a luncheon party there and with them a bottle of special port wine, explaining to Miss Murray that he had remembered being there before when she was short of port. Miss Murray accepted this with.her quiet smile. When the bill was made up it contained an item in her tall Italian hand —“Corkage 1/6.” Probably this was the last time “corkage” ever appeared in a London tavern bill. It may soon be the last time that any bill will be made out in the George Inn. The old sixteenth-century house, which is only a remnant of the whole inn, belongs to the railway company, which has rebuilt the rest of it and uses it for its horses and parcel deliveries. It deserves to live, for after the New Inn at Gloucester, it is surely the most authentically picturesque inn of any in England.