CHAPTER VI

INNS

_Servus._ ... Però con licentia, quando quierese ir vuessa merced?

Sed bona venia, quando vult recedere T. D.?

_Viator._ Mañana, plaziendo à Dios, en caso que pueda madrugar

Cras, si Deo placet, si possim diluculo surgere.

_Servus._ Paraque no se queda aqui aun algunos dias?

Quare non manet hic adhuc per aliquot dies?

_Viator._ El huesped y el pesce en tres dias hiede

Hospes et piscis post triduum foetent.

Müller, "Linguæ Hispanicæ Institutio," 1630.

It is a most unsatisfactory thing—reading about what you would like to see; but if seeing sixteenth-century Europe implied spending the nights in sixteenth-century inns there is much to be said for preferring the experience in print only. Luxury of a kind certainly was to be had. At the "Vasa d'Oro" at Rome were gorgeous beds, hung with silk and cloth of gold, worth four to five hundred crowns each; at the "Ecu" at Châlons silken bedding, too; and Germany occasionally provided sheets trimmed with lace four-fingers'-breadth wide in panelled rooms, while by 1652 Amsterdam possessed a hotel reckoned the best in Europe, every room in which was floored with black and white marble and hung with pictures, with one room containing an organ and decorated with gilded leather in place of tapestries. But these superfluities did not imply that a comfortable medium was easily found. In any case, accommodation divided itself into bedroom and dining-room; of anything approaching a sitting-room there is rarely a word. The chief exception to this is the five or six halls, decorated and furnished like those of a rich gentleman, at the inn outside Sinigaglia. This was the finest hotel in Italy when built, shortly before 1578, by the Duke of Urbino, who allowed no other there. Its forty bedrooms, with no more than two beds in each, all opened on to one long gallery by separate doors.[93]

The Italian host the traveller would often see before the inn came in sight; sometimes the latter would have touts as far away as seven or eight leagues to buttonhole foreigners, carry their luggage, promise anything and behave with the utmost servility—till the morning of departure. But with all this to expect them to provide clean sheets was expecting too much, and as the nation was grievously afflicted with the itch, it was desirable for the visitor to carry his own bedding. In many cases, too, we find the tourist sleeping on a table in his clothes to avoid the dirtiness of the bed, or the vermin. Still, in Italy, you shared your bed with these permanent occupants only, as a rule; in Spain you were sure to do so; one man, one bed, was the custom there—a result of the enforcement of the penalty of burning alive for sodomy. In Germany the custom was just the reverse; in fact, if the tourist did not find a companion for himself, the host chose for him, and his bedfellow might be a gentleman, or he might be a carter; all that could safely be prophesied about him was that he would be drunk when he came to bed. The bed would be one of several in a room; the covering a quilt, warm enough to be too warm for summer, and narrow enough to leave one side of each person exposed in winter. This is supposing there were beds: in northern Germany rest for the night would be on a bench in a "stove," as they called the room, because the stove was so invariably part of the furniture that the words "room" and "stove" became synonymous. Windows were never opened at night, to retain the heat in the room; all the travellers lay there, men and women, gentlemen and "rammish clowns," as near the stove as they could manage. The heat was such that the effect on one unaccustomed to it was "as if a snake was twining about his legs." Further, if several met together, says a Frenchman, one might as well try to sleep in a market-place on market-day. In upper Germany, the bedrooms were separate, without fires or the means of making one, and the change from the one temperature to the other was very trying. As many beds were put in a room as the room would hold; fairly clean ones, however, as the Germans treated them with some disinfectant. In Saxony there were no beds, no benches, no stove, even. All lay in the straw among the cows, the chief disadvantage of which was that your pillow was liable to be eaten in the night. So in Poland, too, where it meant a cold and dangerous night, in the country parts, at least, for any one who did not adapt himself to the custom of the country by using the long coat lined with wolfskins which served the Pole as cloak by day and bedding by night.

As a relief from the general statements, a particular instance may be quoted to exemplify a night by the way in Poland. The sleeping-room struck the writer as something between a stable and a subterranean furnace. Six soldiers lay on the ground as if dead; the peasant-tenant, his wife, children, and servants, lay on benches round the walls, with coverings of straw and feathers; in one corner slept a Calvinist, a baron's secretary; in another, on the peasant's straw pallet, an ambassador's chaplain, a Roman Catholic; and between the two, to save each, it seemed, from the heels of the other, was lying a huge Tartar, a captain in the Polish army, who had made up a bed of hay for himself. About the room were dogs, geese, pigs, fowls; while the corner by the oven was conceded to a woman who had just given birth to a child. The baby cried, the mother moaned, the tired servants and soldiers snored; and early in the morning the writer rose from the shelf he was sharing with some leggings, spurs, and muskets, and escaped.[94]

Speaking generally, there were no beds to be found in the North. In Muscovy everything had to be carried along; without a hatchet, tinder-box, and kettle there was no hot food for the wayfarer till he reached a monastery or a town, much less shelter; unless by chance he came across somebody's one-story cabin which would have no outlet for the smoke except the door, and accommodation below the level of the average stable, one room shared between the family, visitors, and live-stock. When Sir Jerome Horsey was at Arensberg, in the island of Oesel, near the gulf of Riga, in 1580, snakes crept about bed and table and the hens came and pecked at them in the flour and the milk.

Crossing over to Sweden the absence of inns was equally noticeable, but no disadvantage, for one of the conditions on which the parson held his living was that of showing hospitality to those in need of it. In Denmark, too, while taverns existed for supplying victuals, the wayfarer was dependent on the citizen for lodging, again not to his loss; he was sure of decent food, a clean bed, and a welcome. Foreigners in England are singularly reticent about the inns, except for reviling Gravesend for swindling; which may, perhaps, be taken as confirming Moryson's opinion that the English inn was the best in Europe. As to Ireland, there is the usual diversity of opinion; the absence of inns is accounted for by the traditional idea that the possession of an inn was a disgrace to a town, a slur on the hospitality of its inhabitants; yet the hospitality itself was most uncertain, since the natives were not in a position to believe in the neutrality of a visitor.

The _personnel_ question, of course, is one that has to be allowed for throughout. It was in France that this method of discounting dissatisfaction was most in use, but it is in a dialogue printed in the Low Countries, a conversational guide for travellers in seven languages, that the following (an excerpt from the English version) occurs:[95]

"My she-friend, is the bed made? is it good?"

"Yea, sir; it is a good feather-bed; the sheets be very clean."

"Pull off my hosen and warm my bed; draw the curtains and pin them with a pin. My she-friend, kiss me once and I shall sleep the better.... I thank you, fair maiden."

The German host was too apt to think that a heavy meal and honesty were all that could be expected from him. The honesty was indeed remarkable; more than one stranger was astonished by the recovery of property mislaid; sent after him, sometimes, before he had discovered his loss and no reward taken; but it was paid for dearly indirectly through the insolence born of virtue in a class that is naturally below the Ten-Commandment standard. The customer was made to feel that the favour was to, not from, him. An exception to this is the experience of Van Buchell, who found German hosts sending hot water up to a traveller's bedroom, if it was noticed he was tired, with herbs in the water, such as camomile, for strengthening the feet; and this even at Frankfurt a/M. in Fair-time as well as elsewhere. But there was no such thing as hastening on, or delaying, a meal-time, or dissatisfaction with the food; the bill must be paid without question, not a farthing abated.

And generally, indeed, the help of the law did not seem to avail against the innkeeper. Tourists speak of successful appeals to the law on other points and curse the inns without ceasing, but a successful tourist's lawsuit against his host remains to be found. In Tyrol, in fact, the plaintiff would find the defendant not only on, but controlling, the bench; and in Spain most innkeepers were officers of the "Santa Hermandad," a "Holy Brotherhood" whose forgotten ideal and raison d'être was that of acting as country police, with the result that the complainant would probably be arrested at the next stopping-place on some trumped-up charge. Neither was the local authority of assistance so far as prices were concerned in spite of the latter being fixed by it and posted up; because the local authority was open to bribery, and the innkeeper had known that as long as he had been in business. In short, when the bill came to one hundred per cent too much in Spain, the cheapest way was to pay it.

Of all the ill-feeling that the tourists harboured against Spain, the bitterest was on account of the inns; from the earliest, Andrew Boorde, who says "hogs shall be under your feet at the table, and lice in your beds," and another who relates how he preferred to hire three Moors to hold him in their arms while he slept. Those who come midway through the period tell the same tale; at Galleretta, on the border of Castile, a German finds the stable, the bedroom, the kitchen, the dining-room, the pigsty, one and the same room, and a Papal envoy sleeps on straw one snowy night without a fire. The latest writes that the sight of the inns was more than enough. There was but one way to reconcile one's self to the wayside inn of Spain; and that was—trying those of Portugal.

Over all these inns the Turkish "khan" had this advantage, that there was no host. A "khan" was a building which some compare to a barn, and one to a tennis-court, with a platform running round inside the walls about four feet broad and usually three to four feet high, but sometimes ten. At intervals of about eight feet were chimneys. The platform was for the travellers; the inner space for their beasts; the chimneys for each party to cook food at. That was the normal form, seeming to an uninstructed traveller just a stable, in which idea he would be confirmed by the scents in the early morning. The average Christian found that the noises and the lights prevented sleep, but the Turk carried a rug to sleep on, used his saddle as a pillow and his great rain-cloak as a covering and found it comfortable enough till daybreak, when he thought it suitable to get up, greatly to the disgust of the Christians present. Or if the moon was very bright, he might arise earlier by mistake; for he carried no watch, nor believed one when he saw it. Even in the ordinary "khan" there was often a room over the door to which the traveller might retire if he chose, but the Turk seldom used this, preferring to keep an eye on his beasts; and the Frank consequently might remain unaware that there existed any escape from the camels. Most "khans," built of hewn stone roofed with lead, would accommodate from eighty beasts to one hundred and fifty; and practically always had their fountains for the washings prescribed by the Turks' religion: but as time went on, far more magnificent places arose, with covered ways leading to mosques across the road, and many rooms, capable of holding nearly one thousand travellers and their belongings. The finest lay along the road leading from Constantinople to Christendom. The fact that "khan" is indiscriminately applied to all by most Franks is evidence that they were not on speaking terms with the natives, to whom many were known as "Imaret," those, that is, which provided food free. All lodgings were a form of good works among the richer Turks, a practical attempt to disarm the customary suspicions of the Grand Signor or the well-justified wrath of Allah; and free food was an extension of this appeal. The food was barley porridge mostly, or of some other grain, with meat in it; and bread, and sometimes honey; nor was there any idea of poverty associated with taking it; Jew and viceroy alike were recipients. Of all the marvellous provision for travellers, and even for the care of stray animals, in Constantinople, free food, free lodging, free medical attendance for men of all creeds, as unfolded in detail by the Turk traveller, Awliyáí Efendí, there is no need to dwell on, since the Frank knew of its existence but rarely and dimly, by hearsay only, for he would be lodging over the water at Pera with his nation's ambassador.

The Turk himself never travelled alone. Had he done so, he would have found the non-existence of the innkeeper troublesome. Near Constantinople there was a "khan" for every stage of every journey; but not so farther away; from Aleppo to Damascus was nine days' journey and only five "khans" on the way. But accompanying the caravan, he was taken care of; a quadrangle was formed, the travellers inside, among the waggons; the lines of the square formed by the beasts, their heads tethered inward; and at night-time was an outer line of fires; by the side of the fires, the watch; outside the fires, the patrol, until the three loud strokes on the drum which gave the signal for starting.

For out-of-door lodging, "at the sign of the Moon," as their phrase ran, there was much to be said; but then, how about food? Their guns were short in range; inaccurate within their range; and how much ran about that they might not touch on pain of death. The deer in Germany knew their immunity so well that they would lie in the road and have to be persuaded to leave room for the waggon; and to keep your hand from picking and stealing was an effective commandment where an economical duke of Florence lived who had planted those mulberry trees by the wayside and looked for profits. And so we return to the inns, leaving the bedroom to consider the fare.

But first—how to find them? By the sign when there was one; but supposing there was none? In most parts of Germany inns were distinguished solely by the coats of arms which visitors had put up to commemorate their progresses. The best inns could show, inside and out, as many as three hundred or more. For the signs themselves, it may be interesting to know what were the commonest signs and what were the exceptions. Out of a total of three hundred and fifty-eight different inns which these travellers mention by their signs, the "Crown" occurs most frequently (thirty-two times), mainly as a result of "Ecu de France" being so favourite a name in France. "White Horses" and "Golden Lions" seem to have been about as popular then as now; where changes have taken place is rather in connection with ecclesiastical signs. The "Cross" occurs twenty-two times, eleven of which are "White"; the "Three Kings" (fourteen) and the "Red Hat" or its equivalents, the "Cardinal's Hat" or the "Cardinal" (seven), are other examples; but of saints there are no more than twenty-five altogether, including five of "Our Lady." Barbara (three), Magdalen, Christopher, and John are the only other names that are used more than once. Among those who have but one of the three hundred and fifty-eight inns dedicated to him or her, is St. Martha, the patroness of those who stay at inns. The only form that is found coming into fashion is that of "Town of ——" a fashion set, apparently, by Paris during the first quarter of the seventeenth century, to establish a special clientèle: the "Ville de Brissac," there, for instance, catered for Protestants, the "Ville de Hambourg" for Germans. But there existed at many towns inns which specialized in this way under ordinary names. At Lübeck were English inns; at Calais the "Petit St. Jean" was a meeting-place for Scotchmen; and Germans in Italy were directed to the "White Lion" and "Black Eagle" at Venice, the "Two Swords" at Rome, and the "Black Eagle" at Naples. Signs which occur but once and have something picturesque about them are the "Scarlet Siren" ("Serena Ostriata") at Venice, the "Mille Moyens" at Antwerp, the "Good Friend" at Leghorn, the "Fish Cart" of Cologne, the "Bacchus" at Cracow, the "Nereids" at Noyon; Paris had a "Four Winds" and a "Pineapple," Boulogne a "Tin Pot." Neither should "St. François de la Grande Barbe" at Agen be forgotten, if only on account of the host, who never slept there; every night he was taken away to prison for debt, says the Pole Gölnitz. It is curious, too, that in only one case out of so many should a name come up with any reference to the heroes of romance ("Les Quatre Fils d'Aymon"), which suggests that the acquaintance with them was less common among the lower classes than is generally supposed.

Next, since in nine cases out of ten a sign-board spells a drink, consider drinks. Spaniards and Turks drank water; the rest of Europe thought it unhealthy; in fact, as often as not cleaned their teeth with wine. Still drinking-fountains were not unknown; at Paris Zinzerling sampled sixteen. The consumption of cider, wines, and light beer, and heavy beer seems to have been localized with no material difference from to-day. The Turks alone had coffee and sherbet; and only the Spaniards chocolate, drinking which, however, was no more than a recently introduced fashion for its supposed medicinal qualities; it was only to be had where the most expensive kind of business was done. Among spirits, Irish was reckoned the best whiskey, but was seldom found outside Ireland, where it was known as the "King of Spain's Daughter." In Muscovy aqua-vitæ was the favourite drink; every meal began and ended with it; but for quantity consumed hydromel came first, with mead second. Besides being prepared plain, hydromel was often to be had made with water in which cherries, strawberries, mulberries or raspberries had been soaked for twenty-four hours or more; if aqua-vitæ had been substituted for water with the raspberries, the taste is recommended as marvellous.

For wines, each one was practically confined to the district that grew it. The export trade seems to have been for private buyers, little to inns with the exceptions of Muscovy, where Spanish wine was well known, of Poland (Spanish and Levant) and of Venetian territory, in the various parts of which a considerable variety of wines were grown and between which there had grown up the habit of interchange of products which extended to inn-custom. To be deducted from this is the fact that Greek wine was the name of a kind cultivated as much, perhaps more, outside Greece than within it.

As to the relative quality of sixteenth-century wines there are many independent opinions to be had, and they all agree—Italy was first in that, too. Among Italian wines, preëminent was the Lagrime di Christo ("tears of Christ"), concerning which a Dutchman was heard to lament greatly that Christ had not wept in his country; what has just been said concerning the localization of wines should be modified with regard to this kind which was to be found in many Italian inns outside its native Liguria. Second may be counted Montefiascone, with the help, maybe, of its own particular anecdote, which illustrates the second-hand character of travellers' information, since no two versions of the epitaph agree, and yet most accounts read as if the traveller had read the original. The tale is of a bishop who loved wine, was going to Rome, and had a servant whose taste was to be trusted. The bishop sent him in advance to test the wine at each inn and chalk the door-post with "Est" where the wine was good. When the servant arrived at Montefiascone he chalked "Est, Est, Est"; and so thought the bishop, for he drank till he died. And the servant wrote his epitaph.

"'Est, Est, Est;' propter nimium Est Dominus meus mortuus est."

Drunkenness was infinitely more common than to-day, especially in Germany. Laws had, it is true, been passed, more stringent, during the past century, a result of the victories of the teetotal Turks; but there was no one to enforce them. Every German's conversation was punctuated with "I drink to you" "as regularly as every psalm ends in a 'Gloria,'" says Moryson, and among a number of princes whom he saw at a funeral feast, not one was sober. He queries—what would they have done at a wedding? adding that during the year and a half he spent there, attending churches regularly, he never heard a clergyman say a word against intemperance. The national reputation abroad was to match; even, when once some Germans halted at a village in Spain, there was a riot; the peasants were really afraid, beforehand, that the price of wine would go up!

Turning to meals, we find breakfast less of an established custom than it is at present. In France it was more, in Germany less, usual than elsewhere. In fact, in Germany it was not taken at the inn, but bought in the shape of "brannt-wein" and gingerbread at shops, existing partly for that purpose, at the town gates. French customs generally were more considerate towards the new-comer; something to go on with would often be brought him as he dismounted and water for a wash, just as in Flanders a bright-faced girl would frequently be ready at the door with beer or wine, very ready, too, to drink at his expense and to start first; whereas elsewhere he would be expected to wait till dinner as dusty, inside and outside, as he came in. A French breakfast consisted of a glass of wine and just a mouthful of bread; sometimes, as in Normandy, buttered toast, sometimes even meat was kept ready; but the sole instance of a traveller finding himself expected to eat a substantial meal first thing in the morning was at the inn of St. Sebastian, "the best inn," says Gölnitz, "on the Paris-Lyons road," kept by a mother and two daughters. The English custom of its being taken for granted that the guest saved some of his supper to serve as breakfast next morning, does not seem to have been in use abroad. In Italy it was ordinary to begin the day at a wine-tavern, where boys waited to serve cakes as well as wine, on which foundation the economical Italian would many days last till supper.

Practically, eating resolved itself into two meals a day, just what they were used to at home, and very fortunate it was they were used to it; to us it seems like alternately starving and over-eating. In Germany the latter extreme was the more common; in fact, it is not easy to see how the second meal was fitted in, considering the time one took, three to four hours. At Berne there was a law against sitting at table more than five hours; at Bâle 10 A. M. to 6 P. M. was the maximum, but the town council were unable to practise their own counsels of perfection and on great occasions finished in private. In Saxony the innkeeper was forbidden to serve more than four dishes at a meal; and there public opinion was perhaps some check, inasmuch as the common saying was to compare the Saxon dishes, served as they were, one by one, to the tyrants of Sicily, each one of whom was a more fearful monster than his predecessor.

Their neighbours, on the contrary, set all on the table at once in a two-decker on three iron feet; in the top story was the inevitable sauerkraut and beneath, roast meat, poultry, puddings, and whatever else was to be had; so that an Englishman likened this two-decker to Noah's ark, as containing all kinds of creatures. As to these German "puddings" there is no hard-and-fast rule to be drawn between them and sausages; and accordingly one cannot say for sure whether it was pudding or sausage which was the food Moryson had for supper one night near Erfurt; but the description is of no importance compared with the size, for it was as big as a man's leg, conforming to the phrase in which the German expressed his idea of happiness, "Lange Würsten, Kurz Predigen" (long sausages, short sermons). One who journeyed through Hessen describes his diet as "mostly coleworts," but a Saxony dinner ordinarily began with stewed cherries or prunes, continued with poultry or meat, the pot for which was set on the fire but once a week; and concluded with bacon to fill up the corners, as important a consideration for the host as any one, for there was no greater reproach to hurl at the host than "Ich hab' mich da nicht satt gefressen" ("I didn't eat my belly-full there").

Bacon was of great account in Germany, so great that the owners were wont to bless their pigs when the latter trotted out of a morning, to ensure their safe return; and told off a servant to wash them as they passed the fountain on their way back, which they took of their own accord. But while a well-fattened sow commanded a fancy price—as much as the equivalent of fifty pounds was paid at Heidelberg in 1593 for one who had become unable to eat a whole raw egg at a meal—sucking pigs were unknown as eatables; an Englishman who bought one for food was forced to kill and prepare it himself on account of the unwillingness of the servants to touch it. What Saxony did lack was everything that was dependent on the yield of a cow; throughout Germany there was little cheese except that made from goat's milk.

A common hors d'œuvre was what were called "Neun Augen"—little lampreys that had nine eyes. Birds other than poultry were unusual: of veal and beef there was a moderate supply, of dried venison rather too much, as was the case at Hamburg with salmon. Dried fish you might expect, with many sauces, all designed to create thirst; fresh fish was expected to be on view alive beforehand in the kitchen; no German inn lacked a wooden fish-tank, kept under lock and key and supplied with running water. Supposing, however, that the sauces failed of their effect, the thirst was sure to come at the end of the meal with the help of little bits of bread, sprinkled with pepper and salt. Fruits were preserved habitually; especially apples and pears, which they halved, dried in the oven, and served up with cinnamon and butter. Black cherries they put in a brass pot, mixed with the best pears cut into small pieces and boiled and stirred till the contents were thick; then pressure was applied which sent the juice through holes in the bottom of the pot; it cooled solid, kept well, and was in every-day use as sauce for meat after it had been liquefied again.

Italians had a sauce of their own, according to Moryson (who has also supplied all the above German recipes), made of bread steeped in broth, walnuts, some leaves of marjoram pounded in a mortar, and gooseberry juice. Much need they had of a sauce, too, for by the "lex Foscarini" it was forbidden to kill an ox until he was unfit for work in the fields. It may be suggested that it is time the "lex Foscarini" was repealed. In the north was plenty of mutton and veal; variety of fish and poultry, mushrooms, snails, and frogs; in Tuscany, kid and boar. First and last everywhere came butter and cheese; everywhere, that is, where any pretence was made of catering for tourists; at Carrara Moryson found the inns only fit for labourers, and dined on herbs, eggs, and chestnuts, while Peter Mundy, near Turin, had to pay the equivalent of six shillings for "an egg and a frog and bad wine." De Thou, moreover, using a main road, that from Naples to Rome, became so done up through the badness of the inns as to seem to have completed a long and troublesome illness rather than a journey. But something might be said for the average Italian inn as seen from the street. Through the great open windows—really open, for there was rarely glass in Italian windows except at Venice—the tables were in view, always spread with white cloths, strewn with flowers and fig-leaves and fruits, with glasses set filled with different coloured wines; during summer, the glasses would be floating in an earthen vessel, for coolness.

In France, for some reason, Normandy seems to have made foreigners more comfortable than elsewhere, yet Picardy, so little distant, was just the opposite. Picardy, however, at this time was stamped with the character of border-country more disastrously than any other district of France. Nothing remained, indeed, to the country as a whole, as regards cooking, but a reputation for entrées, or, as they were called then, "quelques-choses." "A hard bed and an empty kitchen" was a common experience in different districts; one party arrived at Antibes, on the Riviera, in 1606, to find one melon constituting all the provisions of the only inn.

Comparison of the fare in the various countries of Europe shows no more striking inequalities of supply than is the case with butter: in Poland so plentiful as to be used for greasing cart-wheels; in France so scarce and so bad that English ambassadors used to import theirs from home; in Spain still scarcer, except in cow-breeding Estremadura. A German, when he wanted to buy butter, was directed to an apothecary, who produced a little, and that much rancid, preserved in a she-goat's bladder for use as an ingredient in salves, telling him there was not such another quantity in all Castile.

It was not merely on account of the sleeping accommodation that those who had been to Spain thanked God for their return and wondered at it. The wine, they said, was undrinkable, owing to the flavour imparted to it by the skins that held it; and as for eatables, all had to be bought separately by the traveller and cooked by him when he was tired. A still greater trouble was to find any to buy. One complains that his stomach roared for want of victuals and had to be answered with nothing but roast onions; and so on. But here again can be traced the effects of their buying their experience in the north: what the south thought of the north may be guessed from the Andalusian hero of a picaresque tale recollecting how the food of a Catalan acquaintance of his consisted of hard bread once every three days. The force of prejudice may be exemplified by a note or two from the journal of a courtier[96] who followed after Prince Charles when the latter went incognito to Madrid. His chief complaints as to food are: At the first stopping-place past Santander, whither notice of their coming had been sent a fortnight earlier, they had a plank instead of a table, a few eggs, half a kid burnt black, and no table linen. At a tavern in a wood, the woman laid a cloth on a stool by way of a table, and placed two loaves on it while she fried eggs and bacon for them: enter, from the wood, two black swine who knock the stool over and depart with a loaf each. And yet, although he has noted having enjoyed a good fat turkey at one place and very good hens at another, when he lands at Weymouth he says that there was more meat on the table than he had seen in two hundred miles riding in Spain.

But even in the north different tales are told sometimes. Charles II, when in exile, writes from Saragossa,[97] "But I am very much deceived in the travelling in Spain, for, by all reports, I did expect ill cheer and worse living, and hitherto we have found both the beds, and especially the meat very good.... God keep you, and send you to eat as good mutton as we have every meal." Lady Fanshawe is more detailed. "I find it a received opinion that Spain affords not food either good or plentiful; true it is that strangers who have neither skill to choose, nor money to buy, will find themselves at a loss: but there is not in the Christian world better wines than their midland wines are especially, besides sherry and canary. Their water tastes like milk; their corn white to a miracle, and their wheat makes the sweetest and best bread in the world; bacon beyond belief good; the Segovia veal much larger and fatter than ours; mutton most excellent; capons much better than ours.... They have the best partridges I ever eat, and the best sausages; and salmons, pikes, and sea-breams which they send up in pickle to Madrid, and dolphins, which are excellent meat and carps, and many other sorts of fish. The cream, called 'nata,' is much sweeter and thicker than any I ever saw in England; their eggs much exceed ours; and so all sorts of salads and roots and fruits. What I most admired are melons, peaches, burgamot pears, grapes, oranges, lemons, citrons, figs, pomegranates; besides that I have eaten many sorts of biscuits, cakes, cheese, and excellent sweetmeats I have not here mentioned."

Both these quotations, it is true, refer to the middle of the seventeenth century.

England was a land of plenty in these days; Poland no less so. The sum of the experience of those who had first-hand means of comparison suggests that Poland was as great an importer of luxuries as any country in Europe. Muscovy did not import, but was well off, nevertheless; plenty of beef, mutton, pork, and veal, and all the more of them for foreigners seeing that, with fast-days so numerous as they were, the natives had become so used to salt fish that they ate little meat, although the salt fish, insufficiently salted, was often in a state like that of the fish which the good angel provided for Tobit to protect him from a demon, the scent whereof was so terrible that it drove the fiend into the uttermost parts of Egypt. In Lent butter was replaced by caviare. An ambassador's secretary has a pleasant picture to draw of wayside fare; when they reached a village, the local priest would appear with gooseberries, or fish, or a hen, or some eggs, as a present; was rewarded with aqua-vitæ, and generally went home drunk.

As for food at sea, on small boats no fires were allowed. Then you were limited, in the Mediterranean, to biscuit, onions, garlic, and dried fish. On the bigger ships there was garlic again, to roast which and call it "pigeon" was a stock joke with the Greek sailors. On an Italian ship of nine hundred tons one traveller fared well: there were two table-d'hôte rates; he chose the higher one: knife, spoon, fork, and a glass to himself were provided, fresh bread for three days after leaving a harbour, fresh meat at first and afterwards salt meat, and on fast days, eggs, fish, vegetables, and fruit. An English idea[98] of victualling a ship included wheat, rice, currants, sugar, prunes, cinnamon, ginger, pepper, cloves, oil, old cheese, wine, vinegar, canary sack, aqua-vitæ, water, lemon juice, biscuit, oatmeal, bacon, dried neats' tongues, roast beef preserved in vinegar, and legs of mutton minced and stewed and packed in butter in earthen pots; together with a few luxuries, such as marmalade and almonds.

Finally, there is the food to be met with in Ireland, concerning which it is enough to quote:[99] "Your diet shall be more welcome and plentiful than cleanly and handsome; for although they did never see you before, they will make you the best cheer their country yieldeth for two or three days and take not anything therefor."

Except in Italy, fingers invariably did the work of forks; and often of knives, too. The French were the only people who were in the habit of washing before they sat down to table; but this is by no means so much to their credit as it seems at first sight, for it was the result of their getting into such a state previously as to render them intolerable even to themselves. Except for the effects of drunkenness, the Germans appear to have been the pleasantest table companions, in spite of all sitting at one round table; or rather, because of it, for men were the more careful of behaving in a way to which they would have no objection if their neighbours imitated it. Moreover Germans made a practice of having a bath every Saturday night. From this common table no one was excluded in Germany except the hangman, for whose exclusive use a separate table was reserved. The rest of the dining-room furniture consisted of a leather-covered couch for those who were too drunk to do anything but lie down.

As to plates and vessels, no general statement would serve, not even for one country, owing to the rapidity with which the supply of silver increased during these centuries. In 1517 an Italian[100] notes of Flanders that all their vessels, of the church, the kitchen, and the bedroom, were of English brass, but that statement no one confirms later. Wood was common in proportion to the unpretentiousness of the inn; except in Muscovy, where it was almost invariable through the frequency and thoroughness of destruction by fires which caused the use of the most easily replaceable material; the few silver tankards they possessed were rendered unattractive by their custom of cleaning drinking vessels but once a year.

The transition from pewter to silver is most clearly marked in France. The former was in general use as late as Montaigne's time; even he, who owns to making himself in a horrid mess at meal-times, was glad to escape from its greasiness. By the middle of the next century an Italian priest notes that the inn-utensils were mostly of silver, although the chalices which he was given for mass were mostly tin; and De Gourville, in his autobiography, mentions that, on being asked by the government for an estimate of the total amount of silver in France, gave a higher estimate than the other experts because he based his on what he had noticed in the course of his frequent journeys about the provinces, in the middle of the seventeenth century, how every tavern had spoons and forks of silver and some a basin and ewer. And as silver drinking-vessels were common among the English middle-classes earlier than this, it may be assumed that inns were so provided, too; in fact, in England silver was considered somewhat vulgar for drinking purposes, gentlemen preferring Venetian glass. The Venetians themselves used glass, as did other Italians; likewise the French; Germans drank from pewter or stone, and their plates were often of wood, when they had any; it would give an altogether too high idea of sixteenth-century luxury to imagine that every one was given a plate. Certainly no one had more than one at a meal, though there is nothing to show that he might not turn it over to use the clean side—unless he was at sea, in which case he would risk being thrown overboard, because every sailor knew that a plate upside down signified shipwreck.

Inseparable from the inns are the bathing-places; in most cases the baths formed part of the inn premises. At Abano, near Padua, the chief bathing resort of Italy, were private rooms with a "guarderobbe"[101] adjoining, through which latter a stream of the water could be turned on. Baden in Switzerland was exceptional in having baths under public control, for poor as well as for rich, besides those in private hands. The inn Montaigne stayed at had eleven kitchens, three hundred persons were catered for each day, one hundred and seventy-seven beds made, and every one could reach his room without passing through any one else's. His party engaged four rooms, containing no more than nine beds; two of the rooms had stoves; and a private bath adjoined. Swiss Baden possessed sixty baths, German Baden three hundred. Spa was much visited, but most of the watering-places have been practically forgotten, so far as the water is concerned, Pougues-les-Eaux, the chief centre in France, for instance, and Aachen, where there existed forty baths outside the town, although the chief ones were within.

The object of the visitors was as much medicinal nominally and as little so really, as might be expected. "Many come thither with no disease but that of love: and many times find remedy."[102] The conditions seem somewhat free and easy: in Rome it was customary to go accompanied by a lady friend in spite of the masseurs being male; of Plombières Montaigne says that it was reckoned indecent for men to bathe naked or for women to wear less than a chemise; from which it may be gathered what ordinary conditions were. The bathing there was "mixed," as at the German baths where these restrictions were not in force and where, consequently, the sight of scores of young couples and parties, some family parties, some not, in a state of nature, or very nearly so, amusing themselves with games played at floating tables, or without any help at all, excited the shame, the interest, and the participation of foreigners from all quarters. Ladies, however, who needed baths and preferred decency, were provided for at Swiss Baden, where private baths were for hire, well lighted by glazed windows, painted, panelled, and clean, with conveniences for reading. The building of Turkish baths seemed to Della Valle to afford more likelihood of a chill than the Italian; but it was, he says, all one could expect for the price, which was much lower. How much lower is not clear, but evidently considerably so, the result of a difference of habit; in Italy the poor did not bathe, in Turkey the rich bathed at home.

Quite apart from bathing customs, however, the position of the lady traveller must frequently have been embarrassing. Many a nephew, perhaps, may disbelieve that they ever did travel in the days when no hot-water bottles existed; but that would be a mistake; there is record of at least two substitutes: (1) a bag of semolina, or millet, heated, (2) a dog. A more serious objection is that the privacy of the bedroom was not respected. Even in France, a murderer was lodged in Gölnitz's room for the night together with the six guardians who were escorting him to the place of trial, and in Picardy bedrooms were merely partitioned off; doors and windows lying open all night with no means of fastening them. But a permanently open window would have been welcome on occasions; as when in 1652 Mademoiselle de Montpensier lodged at an inn in Franche-Comté with no window at all in her room, and consequently had to do her hair at the door.

Again, respectable women would not be travelling alone, and as bedrooms were so few they would always have to be prepared to share the room with their escort, even if with no other man, a condition which persisted up to far more recent times. In 1762, writes M. Babeau, a lawyer, travelling through Périgord with a lady client, her son, and a girl, had to put up at an inn which owned but two beds and those both in one room. This room, by the way, possessed two doors, one opening on a meadow, and with joinery so imperfect that a dog could have crept in underneath it; no dog took the chance, it is true, but the wind did. In the previous century was often reprinted a "Traité de la civilité qui se pratique parmi les honnêtes gens" which established the procedure to be followed in these embarrassing circumstances. The escort must allow the lady to undress and get into bed first, and, for himself, take care to undress at a distance from her bed and remain "tranquille et paisible" through the night. In the morning he ought to be well advanced with his dressing before she awoke. But this book was evidently unknown to Sterne when he pursued his "Sentimental Journey," for when he had to share his room with a lady who was a total stranger, they drew up a special treaty which both promised to observe and which each accused the other of breaking.

Of lodgings and "pensions" and houses for hire, it is unnecessary to speak, because apart from the conditions of living that have already been indicated there is nothing to distinguish them from those of to-day; "pensions" are doubtless still to be found in the same variety now as two hundred and fifty years ago at Blois—"dainty, magnificent, dirty, pretty fair, and stinking."

Supervision over the inns was far stricter than at present, especially in Italy. At Lucca and Florence all the inns were in a single street; and in many towns the new arrival was taken before the authorities by the guard at the gates previous to choosing his inn, to which he would be conducted by a soldier. At Lucca, too, was a department of the judiciary, called "della loggia," which was specially concerned with strangers, and to this the innkeepers had to send a daily report on each guest. Yet to judge by the tourists' accounts, the supervision might well have been carried further and reports on the innkeepers required from the tourists. Such a system of double reports would have been a check on the murdering innkeeper, to whom there are occasional references; one had been detected at Poictiers shortly before Lauder's arrival, and at Stralesund, another's tale runs, eight hundred (!) persons had disappeared at one inn. They had reappeared, it is true—pickled. Another kind of innkeeper who ran less risk but was equally dangerous was he who was in league with robbers; it was common enough, if travellers may be believed, for robbers to have spies in the inns. At Acciaruolo, near Naples, another device was practised by the keeper of an atrocious inn. He had an understanding with the captains of coasting-vessels, the result of which was that the latter found it impossible to get any further that night or to let the passengers sleep in the boat.

It must have occurred to the reader that this is a most one-sided chapter: the tourist has been having his say so uninterruptedly that even a clergyman in the pulpit might envy him. What of the innkeepers' side of the question? Fortunately that can be presented, too, with the help of a manuscript so unique that it must be described now instead of being buried in the bibliography. It is nothing less than an account of an Innkeepers' Congress in 1610, written by a delegate. At least, an expert palæographer (whose name I am not permitted to give for fear of another expert palæographer) affirms it to be in a fairly recent commercial script; and it certainly is in English. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt as to its genuineness. There is no inn, for example, of the three hundred and fifty-eight referred to above which is not mentioned in it; neither is there any inn that is so mentioned that is not to be found among the said three hundred and fifty-eight. Subjective tests, moreover, however dangerous, have their value, and it will appear that the wealth, and, so far as it can be checked, the accuracy of detail, the turns of phrase and of mind, equally characteristic of the innkeeper and the sixteenth century, leave no more room for doubt here than, to take a report of a meeting, in the case of the account of the sayings and doings of the agriculturists in session of which Flaubert made such instructive use in his biography of the late Madame Bovary.

The congress was held at Rothenburg on the Tauber, not so very far from Nuremberg, that town being chosen because no tourist was ever known to go there, any more then than now; and consequently none was better adapted to prevent more than one side of the question being heard,—which, as every one knows, means life or death to a congress.

London was represented by Paolo Lucchese, and four Englishmen were also present, the four who saw most of foreigners who had been to England and of Englishmen who had been abroad: namely, William Cooke of Douay, the host of the "Golden Head" at Calais, another of Dieppe whose name and whose sign are alike illegible, and lastly the notorious Zacharias of Genoa, who told how he had been wrecked in West Indian seas and had swum twenty-two leagues with the ship's carpenter, pushing the latter's tool-chest before him, and how the tinder-box which he put in his hair did not even get wet; all just as he told it to Evelyn years afterwards, until every one got tired of him. The only Scot was Miltoun of the "Croix de Fer" at Paris (Rue St. Martin).

From France the delegates were Robert Buquet of Rouen, Du Peyrat of Loudun, Parracan of Arles, whose inn had no sign because his wine was so good that it needed none, Christopher Prezel of the "Lion d'Or de la Lanterne" of Lyons—but a full list is, after all, of no great interest. It is sufficient to say, to give some idea of the value that attaches to the report of the proceedings, that almost every delegate was a host in himself. For the rest, genealogists in the employ of American millionaires can have access direct to the manuscript; such things are best left in private hands.

The ladies, however, must not be omitted. Old Donna Justina of Venice was there, in spite of its being as much as thirty years earlier that De Thou had been recommended to her as the only innkeeper of the city in whose house none but respectable women were to be found. Berenguela de Rebolledo likewise attended, lady-in-waiting at an inn at Madrid, cheerful, inquisitive, and a flirt, just as Pablos de Segovia knew her, with a bit of a lisp, scared of mice, vain of her hands, and a blush-rose and gloire-de-Dijon complexion. Then there was Marie Beltram, who ran the "venta" the other side of Yrun, and the girl harpist who played at the inns at Brussels, of whom the appropriate remark to make was to quote,—

Haec habiles agili praetentat pollice chordas: Tam doctas quis non possit amare manus?

Two elderly parties were likewise present who, thirty years earlier, had been the two pretty daughters of the one-eyed host of the "Red Lion" at Dordrecht, the same host who warned Van Buchell, the antiquary, when a youngster, against French girls. They were given, he said, to making advances; once one kissed him, and for a long time afterwards he did not think he could live without her.

But the belle of the congress seems to have been the daughter of the innkeeper at Bourgoin, the second post-house this side of Chambéry, since there is a marginal note against her name, evidently retained from the original, "Ista capit biscottum." This confirms the account given of her by Lord Herbert of Cherbury in his autobiography; his friends had told him she was the most beautiful girl they had ever seen, so he rode over from Lyons to see her, "and after about an hour's stay departed thence without offering so much as the least incivility." Finally there was a widow from Tours; the one from the "Three Kings," known as "La Gogueline"; the other widow of Tours, of the "Three Moors," stayed at home, fearing to endanger her reputation as the "mother of the Germans" by so long an absence. Widow Gogueline, however, told the writer that the other was better known as their stepmother and that there was a rhyme which ran:—

Quand vostre bourse est trop pleine Allez aux 'Mores' en Touraine: Je vous jure que vous serez En peu de temps en deschargez.

It was taken for granted that the president must be an Italian; and Francisco Marco of Venice was chosen for that geniality of his that in years to come was to charm James Howell. He opened the proceedings with some graceful presidential irrelevancies, commenting on the antiquity and fame of Rothenburg and so forth, and then explained the purposes of this Innkeepers' Congress as twofold. Its primary object, he said, was the advancement of God's glory; secondly, the furtherance of the interests of innkeepers and their customers, which, he added, were at bottom identical. The committee had invited certain of the delegates who were especially well acquainted with foreigners to explain, or refute, what visitors found objectionable. The assembled innkeepers could then return able to inform, each one his own countrymen, before the latter's departure, what must be looked for in the parts he was travelling towards, and how unavoidable, and even desirable, those characteristics were. The president therefore called upon Messer Bevigliano ("Chiavi d'Oro," Florence) to speak for Italy.

Three things, said Messer Bevigliano, hinder us Italians from doing our best for the community: the licensing system, 'tied-houses,' and labour difficulties. I should be the last to suggest the abolition of our picturesque custom in use when an inn is to be let. At the auction a candle is lighted: the highest bid before the candle goes out wins the business. But the periods of tenancy, one and six years, alternately, in Florentine territory, are inconvenient. Far worse, however, are the prices extorted, especially from those who keep inns outside the gates of towns, the use of which is so necessary to such as are compelled to arrive late, or wish to leave early. Even apart from these, the majority pay 100-150 crowns (£150-£225 present value) for their licenses; some 500 or 600. At Venice wine-shops and inns pay 1000 crowns. The proportion this bears to the rent may be judged from the case of an old widow I know 8 miles from Florence whose rent was 23 crowns and whose license was 56. Another inn, kept by a shoemaker, a freehold house worth 6 crowns a year, pays 20 crowns for license, while the other license, for shoemaking, only costs a Giulio and a half.

What I mean by a 'tied' house is one which belongs to the owner of a large estate who allows nothing to be sold there except the produce of that estate.

Lastly, as to labour, the custom of the country is against the use of women-servants, against even the host's wife and daughter assisting him. What, Messer Bevigliano concluded, apart from ordinary routine-work, would happen to your Fair at Mülhausen if there were no girls to serve the drinks?

Next came Francisco Marques of Alicante, well known to sailors of every nationality. What he laid most stress on has in the main been anticipated by Charles II and Lady Fanshawe, but he supplemented it as follows: In the towns clean and comfortable beds were to be had, with meals ready. Many _posadas_, he admitted, provided nothing but utensils, table-linen, oil, salt, vinegar; yet travellers were then neither better nor worse off than in Poland, Bohemia, and Picardy, where the custom was likewise. As for the wayside inns which gave nothing but a roof and horse-provender, they barely existed outside Castile and Aragon, and there the wayfarer should prepare accordingly, as the Spaniard did, who journeyed with a bag full of provisions on each side of the saddle and a bottle of wine to each bag. As to the supposed lack of meat, he went on, most Spaniards are vegetarians; and considering the achievements of the Spanish infantry, I do not think any one can find fault with the principle. Neither does this apply to the lower classes only, for we have a rhyme which says:—

Unas Azeytunas, una Salada, y Revanillos Son comida de Caballeros;

and so far from altering our ways, the ancient rule that a gentleman who has partaken of onions shall absent himself from court for eight days has fallen into abeyance. For those who prefer meat, there is plenty. Fowls, I know, are scarce, and you are so used to fowls that you think "no fowls, no meat"; and yet, I remember when I was a small boy and Queen Anne arrived at Santander to marry good King Philip II, she was presented there with two hundred fowls and a calf. As to sheep, ask the eight Germans who recently ate a whole one between them; besides, does not the famous Lazarillo de Tormes tell us that it is the regular thing at Maqueda to eat sheep's heads on Saturdays at three maravedis apiece? and on fast days we have special permission to eat cow-heels and sucking pigs. Now, how can these things be if we have no sheep nor cows nor little pigs? On the contrary, you Germans, who take so well justified a pride in your bacon at home, how is it you say nothing about it after a week or so with us? Why, we have an author, Lope da Vega Carpio, who will soon be recognised as the greatest writer since Seneca, who always takes a rasher of our bacon before starting to write, as a stimulant!

But I can quote something better than your own experience—the words of the King and of St. Michael. Charles V advised the great Alonzo de Guzman against going to Italy, "Better stay at home and kill rabbits on your own hills and eat them than be killed by the sea and be eaten by the fishes": and when the said Alonzo dreamed that he was dead, St. Michael appeared and sentenced him to return to earth for his misdeeds and eat roast meat and be content; and Alonzo found himself able to arrange for roast duck in summertime and an "olla" keeping hot in the chimney in winter. If I say nothing as to wild boar and partridge, it is merely because it is getting late. But I will just add this in confidence, that people, we find, pay more willingly when the bill is accompanied by a cheerful "Y haga les buen provecho."

The Muscovy delegate, "Cologne Jimmy" of Nerva, had drawn the third place; but being temporarily bereft of his faculties by the number of drinks new to him, a discussion was substituted at the instance of M. Petit, who enjoyed most of the French custom at Rome, on the evil of free board and lodging which various institutions provided, a most demoralising custom and very hard on those who wished to gain an honest living. At Seville and Montserrat, he had heard, things had come to well-to-do people being given fish as well as bread, and at Amsterdam foundations were even being instituted on a secular basis. That they might be in a better position to take action, it was proposed to form an Innkeepers' Association, but when an Irish waiter from Madrid suggested as a motto, "Pediculus pro comite jucundo," recriminations ensued which soon rendered adjournment necessary.

Nevertheless, at the banquet in the evening all passed off happily in the traditional way.

In principio est silentium, In medio stridor dentium, Et in fine rumor gentium.

The next day began well too, with the speech of Jean Busson ("Le Fardeau" Dieppe), who excused the faults of the French host as attributable to the civil wars, and said that whether or no religion was "reformed," cookery certainly was, and that in future the traditions of Guillot's of Amiens would be upheld. At the same time he felt he would be next door to a traitor if he owned to any serious faults, for supposing that such were imagined, French chambermaids could be trusted to keep the visitors happy (great applause). But he had a proposal to bring forward. He found they had a custom in Germany, which was also used at Bourges, which deserved extension. He referred to the watchmen who lived at the top of the town belfry and signalled the approach of travellers to those below by means of flags; at Ferrara and Bruges and elsewhere, the signalling was done with bells. Now this ought to be customary everywhere, and whereas here in Germany the watchmen descended at meal-times and made a collection at the inns, surely the municipal authorities ought to pay them. A resolution to this effect was passed unanimously.

The Low Country delegates caused considerable dissatisfaction by their memorial insisting that nobody had complaints to make of their inns, nor would there be any anywhere if pains were taken to be up-to-date and, above all things, clean. But their brethren were grateful for the warning that it was becoming the custom with travellers to slip leaden bullets into the cheese, where they found the custom in vogue of charging for it according to the difference in weight before and after it was set on the table; and agreed with them when they pointed out that the system of putting up a list of things customers might not do and fining them when these rules were transgressed, was breaking down. An innkeeper from Augsburg gave an instance; his request, he said, not to foul the walls was so far from being heeded that he kept one man at work cleaning them.

It was this member from Augsburg who brought about the unhappy ending of the Congress, for, in commenting on the Low Countrymen's strictures, he tactlessly quoted the Italian proverb "Dal hoste nuovo e dalla putana vecchia, Dio ci guarda," and then went on to lay it down as irrefutable that nobody grumbled unless he thought he had been done. This was easily avoided, he said; treat all alike; no man ever grumbled in Germany except new-comers and unreasonable people. Why? because Germans had fixed prices; the only system which was conformable with God's law. By this time the interpreters fairly trembled as they translated, but when, speaking as he did in Latin, he went on to apply to the system of variable charges the adjectives that were in daily use in theological controversy, the others understood without help and a battle ensued. First in words, beginning with shouts of "Pese al diablo," "Voto á Dios," and other Spanish expressions, of which, together with all the Italian, not even the initial letters could be printed, answered with "Bey Gott den Herrn," "Meine Seele," "Der Teufel hole dich," "Gottes Kranckheit," without, curiously enough, the use of a single one of those employed by historical novelists. To words succeeded blows; and there the Congress ended.