OLD LONDON INNS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XLVIII, Issue XLVIII, 19 March 1913, Page 3

OLD LONDON INNS

THE RESORTS OF CULTURE. There has always been a certain glamour of romance surrounding ancient hostels in whatever country they might he, but the old London taverns naturally take the first place with all Englishspeaking nations, for the good reason that some of them have been the resorts of many of the most famous wits, poets, and philosophers of former days. There was at one time in Fleet-street an old hostelry known as "The Devil." It stood close to Temple Bar, on the south side of the street, the spot occupied later by Child's Bank. It was patronised to a great extent by lawyers and wits, and when these gentlemen sallied from their chambers to "quaff the foaming bowl," it was their habit to place outside their doors a placard bearing the intimation that they had "Gone to the Devil!" The sign'of the Devil Tavern bore an effigy of St. Dunstan seizing by the nose the fallen angel when he came to tempt him as he was at work in the goldsmith's forge, and this legend was aho depicted on the inn tokens, which were issued early in the reign .of Charles 11. Ben Jonson brought the inn ing fame, and Aubrey says ;hr.t:--" 3en 1 Jonson, to be near the lkv'„ laverr lived without Temple Bar at a eomJmaker's shop." It was lu*ye thafc Jo son founded his Apollo Club. A ver celebrated tavern was the Mermaid, . which stood in Cheapside, behind the houses between Bread-street and Fuiday street. Close by was the Mitre, aji hostelry renowned for its good cheer; and nearly opposite was the Nag's Head, the inn where, it was at one time averred, Parker, the first Protestant Archbishop., was consecrated. To the Mermaid there resorted the members of a club founded in 1603 by Sir Walter Raleigh, and •numbering amongst them -"the noblest names-in English authorship—Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Seiden, Fletcher, and Beaumont, to mention a few. In the vear 1661 Charles IT. proceeded in state from the Tower to Westminster on the day before he was crowned. The arches raised for the occasion stood for a vear, and in commemoration a tavern was erected at Charing Cross, calling itself the Pageant Tavern, or the Triumphal Tavern. Pepys mentions visiting the place shortly after it was built, for the purpose apparently of inspecting the Portuguese -maids ol honour who came to England with Catherine o£ Braganza, He was not pleased with his visit, for he speaks of j the ladies as "sufficiently unagreeable. | A ROYAL ROMANCE. j There stood on the Southwark side of | Londfcn Bridge an inn renowned for several hundred years—the Bear at the Bridge-foot. Travellers who wished to go by tilt-boat to Gravesend—a two days journey at that time —used to stay there, and w'hen in 1633 other taverns were closed, the Bear was allowed to remain 1 open "for the convenience of passengers to Greenwich." It was here that the Duke of Richmond made arrangement? for the fair Frances Stewart, cousin o. the King, to join him, apd we are told that "a coach was ready, and they stole wav into Kent without the Kings leave " In a poem written in 1691, called "The Last Search After Claret in Southwark," the ancient date of the house is shown in the lines: We-came to the Bear, which we understood was the first house in Southwark built after the Flood," In Ea-rtcheap -was the Boar's Head, made immortal by Shakespere as the scene of Falstaff's buffonerie», and patronised by the poet and his friend*. Destroyed in the Great Fire of London, the inn was afterwards rebuilt, and a boar's head carved in stone wa* placed over the entrance, bearing thp date 1668. When the tavern was pulled' down to allow the approach i • Lndon Bridge jo be made, this boar s head was placed In the. Guildhall Library, It is said to have been very j nlwsane and it is shown In all the ! FuSSSSSadSiOT* of Izaak Walton's j •'•Compleat Angler," for the angler l.yeo beneath it. the tavern rooms being on the firstfloor' Walton used to advertise his Angler as to be "sold at his shorn, in Fleete Street, under the King s Head , Tavern." Near by was Dick s Tavern. | and facing it the Cock, made famous by Tennyson in "Will Waterproofs Lyrical Monologue." Even yet those , who search diligently will find some pic uresnue old ale houses and taverns tucked . away in the most unlikely places, their quaint facades and old-world a:r most unlike the flamboyant "gin-palaces ot to-day. It is to be hoped that the few which,remain will be carefully preserved for their very atmosphere is fuH ol , strange mvstery, unwritten history.