The English of a certain class were always ready to turn an evil eye on all new drinks, and coffee had to take its share of abuse. It was called “syrup of soot,” and “essence of old shoes,” etc.; and the keeper of the Rainbow Coffee-house was punished as a nuisance “for making and selling of a drink called coffee whereby in making the same he annoyeth his neighbours by evil smells.” Soon, however, the smell of coffee was not deemed evil, but became beloved; and every profession, trade, class, and party had its coffee-house. The parsons met at one, “cits” at another; soldiers did not drink coffee with lawyers, nor gamesters with politicians. A penny was paid at the bar at entering, which covered newspaper and lights; twopence paid for a dish of coffee. Coffee-houses sprang up everywhere in America as in London. In 1752 in New York the New or Royal Exchange was held to be so laudable an undertaking that £100 was voted toward its construction by the Common Council. It was built like the English exchanges, raised on brick arches, and was opened as a coffee-room in 1754. The name of the Merchant’s Coffee-house – on the southeast corner of Wall and Water streets – appears in every old newspaper. It was a centre of trade. Ships, cargoes, lands, houses, negroes, and varied merchandise were “vendued” at this coffee-house. It also served as an insurance office. Alexander Macraby wrote in 1768 in New York: —
“They have a vile practice here, which is peculiar to this city; I mean that of playing back-gammon (a noise I detest) which is going forward in the public coffee-houses from morning till night, frequently ten or a dozen tables at a time.”
From this it will be seen that the English sin of gaming with cards did not exist in New York coffee-houses.
The London Coffee-house was famous in the history of Philadelphia. On April 15, 1754, the printer, Bradford, put a notice in his journal for subscribers to the coffee-house to meet at the court-house on the 19th to choose trustees. Bradford applied for a license to the Governor and Council thus: —
“Having been advised to keep a Coffee-House for the benefit of merchants and traders, and as some people may be desirous at times to be furnished with other liquors besides coffee, your petitioner apprehends that it is necessary to have the government license.”
The coffee-house was duly opened; Bradford’s account for opening day was £9 6s. The trustees also lent him £259 of the £350 of subscriptions, and this coffee-house became a factor in American history. The building, erected about 1702, stood on the corner of Front and Market streets, on land which had been given by Penn to his daughter Letitia. Bradford was a grandson of the first printer Bradford, and father of the Attorney-General of the United States under Washington. His standing at once gave the house prestige and much custom. Westcott says “it was the headquarters of life and action, the pulsating heart of excitement, enterprise, and patriotism.” Soldiers and merchants here met; slaves here were sold; strangers resorted for news; captains sold cargoes; sheriffs held “vandues.”
The Exchange Coffee-house of Boston was one of the most remarkable of all these houses. It was a mammoth affair for its day, being seven stories in height. It was completed in 1808, having been nearly three years in building, and having cost half a million dollars. The principal floor was an exchange. It ruined many of the workmen who helped to build it. During the glorious days of stage-coach travel, its successor, built after it was burnt in 1818, had a brilliant career as a staging tavern, for it had over two hundred bedrooms, and was in the centre of the city. At this Coffee-house Exchange was kept a register of marine news, arrivals, departures, etc., and many distinguished naval officers were registered there. At a sumptuous dinner given to President Monroe, who had rooms there, in July, 1817, there were present Commodores Bainbridge, Hull, and Perry; ex-President John Adams; Generals Swift, Dearborn, Cobb, and Humphreys; Judges Story, Parker, Davis, Adams, and Jackson; Governor Brooks, Governor Phillips, and many other distinguished men.
It would be a curious and entertaining study to trace the evolution of our great hotels, from the cheerful taverns and country inns, beloved of all travellers, to more pretentious road houses, to coffee-houses, then to great crowded hotels. We could see the growth of these vast hotels, especially those of summer resorts, and also their decay. In many fashionable watering-places great hotels have been torn down within a few years to furnish space for lawns and grounds around a splendid private residence. Many others are deserted and closed, some flourish in exceptional localities which are in isolated or remote parts of the country, such as southern Florida, the Virginia mountains, etc.; many have been forced to build so-called cottages where families can have a little retirement and privacy between meals, which are still eaten in a vast common dining room. But the average American of means in the Northern states, whose parents never left the city till after the 4th of July, and then spent a few weeks in the middle of the summer in a big hotel at Saratoga, or Niagara Falls, or Far Rockaway, or in the White Mountains, now spends as many months in his own country home. A few extraordinary exceptions in hotel life in America remain prosperous, however, the chief examples on our Eastern coast being at Atlantic City and Old Point Comfort.
The study of tavern history often brings to light much evidence of sad domestic changes. Many a cherished and beautiful home, rich in annals of family prosperity and private hospitality, ended its days as a tavern. Many a stately building of historic note was turned into an inn in its later career. The Indian Queen in Philadelphia had been at various times the home of Sir Richard Penn, the headquarters of General Howe and of General Benedict, the home of Robert Morris and Presidents Washington and Adams. Benjamin Franklin’s home became a tavern; so also did the splendid Bingham mansion, which was built in 1790 by the richest man of his day. Governor Lloyd’s house became the Cross Trees Inn. Boston mansions had the same fate. That historic building – the Province House – served its term as a tavern.
Sometimes an old-time tavern had a special petty charm of its own, some peculiarity of furnishing or fare. One of these was the Fountain Inn of Medford, Massachusetts. It was built in 1725 and soon became vastly frequented. No town could afford a better site for inns than Medford. All the land travel to Boston from Maine, eastern New Hampshire, and northeastern Massachusetts poured along the main road through Medford, which was just distant enough from Boston centre to insure the halting and patronage of every passer-by. The Fountain Inn bustled with constant customers, and I can well believe that all wanderers gladly stopped to board and bait at this hospitable tavern. For I know nothing more attractive, “under the notion of an inn,” than this old tavern must have been, especially through the long summer months. It was a road house and stood close to the country road, so was never quiet; yet it afforded nevertheless a charming and restful retreat for weary and heated wanderers. For on either side of the front dooryard grew vast low-spreading trees, and in their heavy branches platforms were built and little bridges connected tree to tree, and both to the house. Perhaps the happy memories of hours and days of my childhood spent in a like tree nest built in an old apple tree, endow these tree rooms of the Fountain Inn with charms which cannot be equally endorsed and appreciated by all who read of them; but to me they form an ideal traveller’s joy. To sit there through the long afternoon or in the early twilight, cool and half remote among the tree branches, drinking a dish of tea; watching horsemen and cartmen and sturdy pedestrians come and go, and the dashing mail-coach rattle up, a flash of color and noise and life, and pour out its motley passengers, and speedily roll away with renewed patrons and splendor – why, it was like a scene in a light opera.
The tree abodes and the bridges fell slowly in pieces, and one great tree died; but its companion lived till 1879, when it, too, was cut down and the bald old commonplace building crowded on the dusty street stood bare and ugly, without a vestige or suggestion of past glory around it. Now that, too, is gone, and only the picture on the opposite page, of the tavern in its dying poverty, remains to show what was once the scene of so much bustle and good cheer.
The State House Inn of Philadelphia was built in 1693, and was long known as Clark’s Inn. It was a poor little building which stood in a yard, not green with grass, but white with oysters and clam shells. Its proximity to the State House gave it the custom of the members and hangers-on of the colonial assemblies. William Penn often smoked his pipe on its porch. Clark had a sign-board, the Coach and Horses, and he had something else which was as common perhaps in Philadelphia as tavern sign-boards, namely, turnspit dogs – little patient creatures, long-bodied and crook-legged, whose lives were spent in the exquisite tantalization of helping to cook the meat, whose appetizing odors of roasting they sniffed for hours without any realization of tasting at the end of their labors.
Dr. Caius, founder of the college at Cambridge, England, that bears his name, is the earliest English writer upon the dog, and he tells thus of turnspits: “Certain dogs in kitchen service excellent. When meat is to be roasted they go into a wheel, where, turning about with the weight of their bodies they so diligently look to their business that no drudge or scullion can do the feat more cunningly.” The Philadelphia landlord says in his advertisement of dogs for sale, “No clock or jack so cunningly.” The summary and inhuman mode of teaching these turnspits their humble duties is described in a book of anecdotes published at Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1809. The dog was put in the wheel. A burning coal was placed with him. If he stopped, his legs were burned. That was all. He soon learned his lesson. It was hard work, for often the great piece of beef was twice the weight of the dog, and took at least three long hours’ roasting. I am glad to know that these hard-working turn-broches usually grew shrewd with age; learned to vanish at the approach of the cook or the appearance of the wheel. At one old-time tavern in New York little brown Jesse listened daily at the kitchen doorstep while the orders were detailed to the kitchen maids, and he could never be found till nightfall on roast-meat days; nay, more, he, as was the custom of dogs in that day, went with his mistress to meeting and lay at her feet in the pew. And when the parson one Sunday chose to read and expound from the first chapter of Ezekiel, Jesse fled with silent step and slunken tail and drooping ears at the unpleasant verse, “And when the living creatures went, the wheels went by them; and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up.” Naturally Jesse never suspected that these Biblical wheels were only parts of innocent allegorical chariots, but deemed them instead a very untimely and unkind reminder on a day of rest of his own hated turnspit wheel.
One of the sweetest of all tales of an inn is that begun by Professor Reichel and ended by Mr. John W. Jordan of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; it is called “A Red Rose from the Olden Time.” It is a story of Der neue Gasthof or “The Tavern behind Nazareth,” as it was modestly called, the tavern of the Moravian settlement at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. It was a substantial building, “quartered, brick-nogged, and snugly weatherboarded, with a yard looking North and a Garden looking South.” In 1754, under the regency of its first ruler, one Schaub, the cooper, and Divert Mary, his faithful wife, it bore a sign-board charged with a full-blown rose, and was ever after known as the Rose. This was not because the walls were coated with Spanish red; this rose bloomed with a life derived from sentiment and history, for it was built on land released by William Penn on an annual payment as rental of ONE RED ROSE.
There is something most restful and beautiful in the story of this old inn. Perhaps part of the hidden charm comes from the Biblical names of the towns. For, without our direct consciousness, there is ever something impressive in Biblical association; there is a magical power in Biblical comparison, a tenderness in the use of Biblical words and terms which we feel without actively noting. So this Red Rose of Nazareth seems built on the road to Paradise. An inventory was made of the homely contents of the Rose in 1765, when a new landlord entered therein; and they smack of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Ample store was there of rum, both of New England and the West Indies, of Lisbon wine, of cider and madigolum, which may have been metheglin. Punch-bowls, tumblers, decanters, funnels, black bottles, and nutmeg-graters and nutmegs also. Feather-beds and pillows were there in abundance, and blankets and coverlets, much pewter and little china, ample kitchen supplies of all sorts. In war and peace its record was of interest, and its solid walls stood still colored a deep red till our own day.
The night-watch went his rounds in many of our colonial towns, and called the hour and the weather. Stumbling along with his long staff and his dim horn-lantern, he formed no very formidable figure either to affright marauders or warn honest citizens that they tarried too long in the taproom. But his voice gave a certain sense of protection to all who chanced to wake in the night, a knowledge that a friend was near. All who dwelt in the old towns of Bethlehem and Nazareth in Pennsylvania could listen and be truly cheered by the sound of the beautiful verses written for the night watchman by Count Zinzendorf. In winter the watchman began his rounds at eight o’clock, in summer at nine. No scenes of brawling or tippling could have prevailed at the Rose Inn when these words of peace and piety rang out: —
Eight o’clock:
The clock is eight! To Bethlehem all is told,
How Noah and his seven were saved of old.
Nine o’clock:
Hear, Brethren, hear! The hour of nine is come;
Keep pure each heart and chasten every home.
Ten o’clock:
Hear, Brethren, hear! Now ten the hour-hand shows;
They only rest who long for night’s repose.
Eleven o’clock:
The clock’s eleven! And ye have heard it all,
How in that hour the mighty God did call.
Twelve o’clock:
It’s midnight now! And at that hour ye know
With lamps to meet the bridegroom we must go.
One o’clock:
The hour is one! Through darkness steals the day.
Shines in your hearts the morning star’s first ray?
Two o’clock:
The clock is two! Who comes to meet the day,
And to the Lord of Days his homage pay?
Three o’clock:
The clock is three! The three in one above
Let body, soul, and spirit truly love.
Four o’clock:
The clock is four! Where’er on earth are three,
The Lord has promised He the fourth will be.
Five o’clock:
The clock is five! While five away were sent,
Five other virgins to the marriage went.
Six o’clock:
The clock is six! And from the watch I’m free,
And every one may his own watchman be.
CHAPTER III
THE TAVERN LANDLORD
The landlord of colonial days may not have been the greatest man in town, but he was certainly the best-known, often the most popular, and ever the most picturesque and cheerful figure. Travellers did not fail to note him and his virtues in their accounts of their sojourns. In 1686 a gossiping London bookseller and author, named John Dunton, made a cheerful visit to Boston. He did not omit to pay tribute in his story of colonial life to colonial landlords. He thus pictures George Monk, the landlord of the Blue Anchor of Boston: —
“A person so remarkable that, had I not been acquainted with him, it would be a hard matter to make any New England man believe I had been in Boston; for there was no one house in all the town more noted, or where a man might meet with better accommodation. Besides, he was a brisk and jolly man, whose conversation was coveted by all his guests as the life and spirit of the company.”
This picture of an old-time publican seems more suited to English atmosphere than to the stern air of New England Puritanism.
Grave and respectable citizens were chosen to keep the early ordinaries and sell liquor. The first “house of intertainment” at Cambridge, Massachusetts, was kept by a deacon of the church, afterward Steward of Harvard College. The first license in that town to sell wine and strong water was to Nicholas Danforth, a selectman, and Representative to the General Court. In the Plymouth Colony Mr. William Collier and Mr. Constant Southworth, one of the honored Deputies, sold wine to their neighbors. These sober and discreet citizens were men of ample means, who took the duty of wine-selling to aid the colony rather than their own incomes.
The first ordinary in the town of Duxbury was kept by one Francis Sprague, said by a local chronicler to be of “ardent temperament.” His license was granted October 1, 1638, “to keep a victualling on Duxburrow side.” His ardent temperament shaped him into a somewhat gay reveller, and his license was withdrawn. It was regranted and again recalled in 1666. His son succeeded him, another jovial fellow. Duxbury folk were circumspect and sober, and desired innkeepers of cooler blood. Mr. Seabury, one of the tavern inspectors, was granted in 1678 “to sell liquors unto such sober-minded neighbours as hee shall thinke meet; soe as hee sell not lesse than the quantie of a gallon att a tyme to one pson, and not in smaller quantities by retaile to the occationing of drunkeness.”
The license to sell liquor and keep a tavern explained clearly the limitations placed on a tavern-keeper. The one given the Andover landlord in 1692 ran thus: —
“The Condition of this Obligation is sent. That Whereas the above said William Chandler is admitted and allowed by their Majesties’ Justices at a General Sessions of the Peace to keep a common Home of Entertainment and to use common selling of Ale, Beer, Syder, etc., till the General Session of Peace next, in the now-Dwelling house of said Chandler in Andover, commonly known by the sign of the Horse Shoe and no other, if therefore the said William Chandler, during the time of keeping a Publick House shall not permit, suffer, or have any playing at Dice, Cards, Tables, Quoits, Loggets, Bowls, Ninepins, Billiards, or any other unlawful Game or Games in his House, yard, Garden, or Backside, nor shall suffer to be or remain in his House any person or persons not being of his own family upon Saturday nights after it is Dark, nor any time on the Sabbath Day or Evening after the Sabbath, nor shall suffer any person to lodge or stay in his House above one Day or Night, but such whose Name and Surname he shall deliver to some one of the Selectmen or Constables or some one of the Officers of the Town, unless they be such as he very well knoweth, and will answer for his or their forthcoming: nor shall sell any Wine or Liquors to any Indians or Negroes nor suffer any apprentices or servants or any other persons to remain in his house tippling or drinking after nine of the Clock in the night time; nor buy or take to Pawn any stolen goods, nor willingly Harbor in his said House, Barn, Stable, or Otherwhere any Rogues, Vagabonds, Thieves, nor other notorious offenders whatsoever, nor shall suffer any person or persons to sell or utter any ale, beer, syder, etc., by Deputation or by colour of this License, and also keep the true assize and measure in his Pots, Bread and otherwise in uttering of ale, beer, syder, rum, wine, &c., and the same sell by sealed measure. And in his said house shall and do use and maintain good order and Rule: Then this present Obligation to be either void, or else to stand in full Force, Power, and Virtue.”
Dr. Dwight in his Travels said that Englishmen often laughed at the fact that inns in New England were kept by men of consequence. He says: —
“Our ancestors considered the inn a place where corruption might naturally arise and easily spread; also as a place where travellers must trust themselves, their horses, baggage, and money, and where women must not be subjected to disagreeable experiences. To provide for safety and comfort and against danger and mischief they took particular pains in their laws to prevent inns from being kept by unprincipled or worthless men. Every innkeeper in Connecticut must be recommended by the selectmen and civil authorities, constables and grand jurors of the town in which he resides, and then licensed at the discretion of the Court of Common Pleas. It was substantially the same in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.”
Lieutenant Francis Hall, travelling through America in 1817, wrote: —
“The innkeepers of America are in most villages what we call vulgarly, topping men – field officers of militia, with good farms attached to their taverns, so that they are apt to think what, perhaps, in a newly settled country is not very wide of the truth, that travellers rather receive than confer a favour by being accommodated at their houses. The daughters of the host officiate at tea and breakfast and generally wait at dinner.”
An English traveller who visited this country shortly after the Revolution speaks in no uncertain terms of “the uncomplying temper of the landlords of the country inns in America.” Another adds this testimony: —
“They will not bear the treatment we too often give ours at home. They feel themselves in some degree independent of travellers, as all of them have other occupations to follow; nor will they put themselves into a bustle on your account; but with good language, they are very civil, and will accommodate you as well as they can.”
Brissot comprehended the reason for this appearance of independence; he wrote in 1788: —
“You will not go into one without meeting neatness, decency, and dignity. The table is served by a maiden well-dressed and pretty; by a pleasant mother whose age has not effaced the agreeableness of her features; and by men who have that air of respectability which is inspired by the idea of equality, and are not ignoble and base like the greater part of our own tavern-keepers.”
Captain Basil Hall, a much-quoted English traveller who came to America in 1827, designated a Salem landlord as the person who most pleased him in his extended visit. Sad to say he gives neither the name of the tavern nor the host who was “so devoid of prejudice, so willing to take all matters on their favourable side, so well informed about everything in his own and other countries, so ready to impart his knowledge to others; had such mirthfulness of fancy, such genuine heartiness of good-humour,” etc.
In 1828 a series of very instructive and entertaining letters on the United States was published under the title, Notions of the Americans. They are accredited to James Fenimore Cooper, and were addressed to various foreigners of distinction. The travels took place in 1824, at the same time as the visit of Lafayette, and frequently in his company. Naturally inns, hotels, and modes of travel receive much attention. He speaks thus lucidly and pleasantly of the landlords: —
“The innkeeper of Old England and the innkeeper of New England form the very extremes of their class. The former is obsequious to the rich; the other unmoved and often apparently cold. The first seems to calculate at a glance the amount of profit you are likely to leave behind you, while his opposite appears to calculate only in what manner he can most contribute to your comfort without materially impairing his own… He is often a magistrate, the chief of a battalion of militia or even a member of a state legislature. He is almost always a man of character, for it is difficult for any other to obtain a license to exercise the calling.”
John Adams thus described the host and hostess of the Ipswich Inn: —
“Landlord and landlady are some of the grandest people alive, landlady is the great-granddaughter of Governor Endicott and has all the notions of high family that you find in the Winslows, Hutchinsons, Quincys, Saltonstalls, Chandlers, Otises, Learneds, and as you might find with more propriety in the Winthrops. As to landlord, he is as happy and as big, as proud, as conceited, as any nobleman in England, always calm and good-natured and lazy, but the contemplation of his farm and his sons, his house and pasture and cows, his sound judgment as he thinks, and his great holiness as well as that of his wife, keep him as erect in his thoughts as a noble or a prince.”
The curiosity and inquisitiveness of many landlords was a standing jest.
“I have heard Dr. Franklin relate with great pleasantry,” said one of his friends, “that in travelling when he was young, the first step he took for his tranquillity and to obtain immediate attention at the inns, was to anticipate inquiry by saying, ‘My name is Benjamin Franklin. I was born in Boston. I am a printer by profession, am travelling to Philadelphia, shall have to return at such a time, and have no news. Now, what can you give me for dinner?’”
The landlord was usually a politician, sometimes a rank demagogue. He often held public office, was selectman, road commissioner, tax assessor, tax collector, constable, or town moderator; occasionally he performed all these duties. John Adams wrote bitterly that at public houses men sat drinking heavily while “plotting with the landlord to get him at the next town-meeting an election either for selectman or representative.”
They were most frequently soldiers, either officers in the militia or brave fighters who had served in the army. It was a favorite calling for Revolutionary soldiers who lived till times of peace. They were usually cheerful men; a gloomy landlord made customers disappear like flowers before a frost. And these cheery hosts were fond of practical jokes.
One of the old hotels with the long piazza across the entire front was owned by a jesting landlord who never failed to spring an April-fool joke on his forgetful customers each year. The tavern had two doors, and every winter these were protected by portable storm porches the width of the door and about four feet deep. On the first day of April the landlord moved the porches a few feet down the piazza, so they opened upon the blank wall of the house. The house and piazza sat at such an angle with the walk from the street that the uncovered front doors were not visible to the visitor, so the delusion was complete. Grocerymen, butchers, bakers, travellers, even the tavern servants, invariably fell into the trap, thrust open the door, which swung with a slam and left them facing the blank wall. Any tavern frequenter, caught early in the day, was always ready to tole in a group of victims. As they walked up the steps he would say, “Come, boys, let’s all pile into the office in a bunch and holler, ‘Hullo, old Jed,’ all together.” All agreed and charged with a rush into the 4 x 6 storm box, while the plotter of the trick went in the real door and sat coolly sipping a rum punch as the confused and angry contingent came in with battered hats and bruised elbows, after its scuffle in the trap.
One landlord had the name of frequently tricking travellers who stopped for a single meal by having the driver call out “Stage is ready” before they could eat the dinner they had ordered and paid for. A Yankee passenger disregarded this hasty summons and leisurely ate his dinner while the stage drove off without him. He finished the roast and called at last for a bowl of bread and milk to top off with as dessert. Not a spoon could be found for this dish, though plenty of silver spoons had been on the table when the stage stopped. To the distracted landlord the Yankee drawled out, “Do you think them passengers was going away without something for their money? I could p’int out the man that took them spoons.” A stable boy on a fleet horse was promptly despatched after the stage, and overtook it two miles down the road. A low-spoken explanation and request to the driver caused him to turn quickly around and drive back to the tavern door with all the angry protesting passengers. The excited landlord called out to the Yankee as the coach stopped, “You just p’int out the man that took them spoons.” – “Sartainly, Squire,” said he, as he climbed into the coach, “I’ll p’int him out. I took ’em myself. You’ll find ’em all in the big coffee pot on the table. Hurry up, driver, I’ve had my dinner. All aboard.”
Grant Thorburn quaintly tells of this custom at another tavern: —
“At Providence coaches were ready: on flew through the dust and sweat of the day like Jehus. At the tavern dinner was ready, but there was no contract for time to eat; after grace from Dr. Cox (too long for the occasion) we begun to eat. Scarcely had I swallowed half my first course when in came driver hallowing “All ready.” I thought there was a stable-yard understanding between him and the landlord, for while we were brushing the dust from our clothes, mustering and saying grace, he was eating and drinking as fast as he could, and I did not observe that he paid anything. We arrived at the Eagle Tavern (Boston) about sundown; the ladies’ hats and frocks which had shewed colours enough to have decked fifteen rainbows were now one, viz.: ashes on ashes and dust on dust.”
The graceless modern reader might suspect that the “stable-yard understanding” included the parson.
A very amusing and original landlord was “Devil” Dave Miller, of the old General Washington Tavern which stood on East King Street, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He was very stout and was generally seen in public bestriding an unusually small horse, which he would ride into his barroom to get a drink for both. When he wished to dismount, he rode to the doorway and hung on the frame of the door with his hands. The horse would walk from under him and go unguided to the stable. An old print of this tavern marked D. Miller’s Hotel, is shown on page 73. The various vehicles standing in front of the hotel are interesting in shape, – old chaises, chairs, and a coach.