234 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



chop or the uneatable cold roast beef of new England, 

 and then charge the same sum for the best part of a duck- 

 ling and cheese and a pint of ale ? I once asked the most 

 enterprising publisher in London whether he would print 

 a book that should tell the sober truth about some of our 

 English inns, and he said that he dared not do anything 

 so horrible. For fear of ruining my publisher I will not 

 mention names, but simply say that at nine inns out of 

 ten the charges are incalculable and excessive unless the 

 traveller makes a point of asking beforehand what they 

 are going to be, a course that provokes discomfort in his 

 relation to the host outweighing what is saved. The tea 

 room, on the other hand, is inexpensive. It lies behind a 

 shop and there is a slaughter-house adjacent — even now 

 the butcher can be heard parting the warm hide from the 

 flesh. Inside, the room is green and the little light and 

 the rain also come sickly through windows of stained 

 glass and fall upon a piano, a bicycle, an embroidered 

 deck chair, vases of dead grass on a marble-topped table, 

 a screen pasted over with scraps from the newspapers, 

 and, upon the walls, a calendar from the butcher depicting 

 a well-dressed love scene, a text or two, pictures of well- 

 dressed children and their animals, and upon the floor, 

 oilcloth odorous and wet. Here, as at the inns, the adorn- 

 ments are dictated by a taste begotten by the union of 

 peasant taste and town taste, and are entirely pretentious 

 and unrelated to the needs of the host or of the guests. 



