I05 



CHAPTER XI 



Old inns — Politics — Inn signs and their origin — Posting and coaching 

 — The ' White Hart ' at Aylesbury — The extensive gardens, the 

 offices, and appointments of the ' White Hart ' — County importance 

 of the grand old inn — Names of the rooms — The ' Old Bell ' in 

 Holborn — Customs of the dinner-table — To Drury Lane Theatre 

 after dinner — Other old inns — Rise of the modern hotel — Bacon's 

 Hotel, Great Queen Street — Railway hotels — Present managers 

 and past proprietors contrasted. 



It has often struck me that an interesting chapter 

 might be written upon ancient or well-known Inns. 

 I use this old English name in contradiction to that 

 modern Frenchified word Hotel, which was scarcely 

 known in England prior to the battle of Waterloo. 

 People living in the present day fail to thoroughly 

 comprehend the immense influence possessed in the 

 country by these well-known establishments at that 

 period. In politics, the inns, and their keepers, 

 were a powerful institution, and I can never under- 

 stand why these generally prosperous, well-to-do 

 traders should in the present day be looked down 

 on, or in any wise despised in their vocation, by 

 people who could but little know mine host or the 

 members of his family. In my youth, the power of 

 the coach proprietors and post-masters in country 

 districts were paramount in their localities. The 

 immense capital employed by them can scarcely be 



