Of Little Pubs
E.A. Barton
Of Little Pubs
E.A. Barton laments the passing of an era
The enjoyment derived from a day’s angling should never terminate with the day but should linger in the memory like a pleasant taste, to be reconstructed with but the smallest effort of will at times when there is little else to distract. Over the fire on winter evenings, when one’s book is finished, or with a friend in retrospective mood, one reverts back to those great days spent together by open loch or quiet river . . .
Amongst this collection I find pictures of many little inns and hostels, whence one started hopefully to the river in the morning to return happily to rest after the long day. Some were in the centre of country towns, the details of most of which have faded, while others are tiny pubs packed here and there in some restful dreamy valley, through which the river wound to the inevitable mill, below which was generally a bridge. This gave us the excuse to loiter and to throw scraps to the bloated trout below, who indecently fought and jostled one another, regardless of our waving arms above.
I recall one such inn framed in memory of sumptuous days spent in that divine valley of the Test. It was the only real building in that tiny village amongst the few thatched cottages, the scent from whose gardens across the road drifted in at my lattice window during the night. The host had been a footman in Kensington, and with unusual perspicacity had wedded the cook, the resulting combination being ideal as far as comfort went for those fortunates who occupied the inn. What service! What cooking! - little things in themselves, but meaning so much: lavender sheets, real hot water, tea on being called, and everything specklessly clean. One would almost have liked to dress for dinner, and decency always prevented our entering the house even in gum boots, much less waders.
The only fly in this precious nard consisted in the fact that it was infested with rats, so much so that when engaging a room I always had to arrange that I was not given what we called ‘the rats’ Piccadilly.’ This was a room in which the rats seemed separated from my head by only the thickness of the paper. Perhaps they were, but the squeakings and scufflings, the scamperings and alarums, were not conducive to peaceful nights, though I understand that all this is now past, and the rats have been exorcised with something stronger than holy water.
I think that it was here that one of our party came down one morning, his face dabbed over with bits of cotton wool. He had cut himself shaving as a result of laughing during the performance. And the source of his joy lay in a conversation overheard beneath his window during the process between the innkeeper and a voice. The innkeeper, dropping into dialect, was heard to say, ‘Well, Jarge, ’ow be ’e?’ to which a high-pitched senile voice replied, ‘Well, Zur, Oi be better than what Oi were, but Oi beant so well as Oi were before Oi be as bad as Oi be now.’ He at once wrote it down lest he forget such a superbly cryptic bulletin. He puzzled over it all breakfast time, and I have a notion that it interfered with his fishing during the day, for at times he would spike his rod, pull out his notebook, and scratch his head.
Then there is another that comes to mind: a red-tiled old house, almost buried in pines and heather. Here, in the kitchen, the hams hung from the ceiling along with dry bundles of sweet herbs, which used to swing back and forth in the draught. There were no gas cookers, no gas, much less electricity, and a joint would revolve in front of a blazing fire, first in one direction, then in the reverse, according as the bottle-jack from which it hung clacked its change once a minute. Basting was done with a long-handled iron spoon, and the gravy and dripping fell into a huge metal tray sloping to a depression in the middle of it to form a well. The house was low, with twisty rambling passages, and even though shown to one’s bedroom in daylight, it was often difficult to be sure of the exact room by candlelight at night.
Amongst this collection I find pictures of many little inns and hostels, whence one started hopefully to the river in the morning to return happily to rest after the long day. Some were in the centre of country towns, the details of most of which have faded, while others are tiny pubs packed here and there in some restful dreamy valley, through which the river wound to the inevitable mill, below which was generally a bridge. This gave us the excuse to loiter and to throw scraps to the bloated trout below, who indecently fought and jostled one another, regardless of our waving arms above.
I recall one such inn framed in memory of sumptuous days spent in that divine valley of the Test. It was the only real building in that tiny village amongst the few thatched cottages, the scent from whose gardens across the road drifted in at my lattice window during the night. The host had been a footman in Kensington, and with unusual perspicacity had wedded the cook, the resulting combination being ideal as far as comfort went for those fortunates who occupied the inn. What service! What cooking! - little things in themselves, but meaning so much: lavender sheets, real hot water, tea on being called, and everything specklessly clean. One would almost have liked to dress for dinner, and decency always prevented our entering the house even in gum boots, much less waders.
The only fly in this precious nard consisted in the fact that it was infested with rats, so much so that when engaging a room I always had to arrange that I was not given what we called ‘the rats’ Piccadilly.’ This was a room in which the rats seemed separated from my head by only the thickness of the paper. Perhaps they were, but the squeakings and scufflings, the scamperings and alarums, were not conducive to peaceful nights, though I understand that all this is now past, and the rats have been exorcised with something stronger than holy water.
I think that it was here that one of our party came down one morning, his face dabbed over with bits of cotton wool. He had cut himself shaving as a result of laughing during the performance. And the source of his joy lay in a conversation overheard beneath his window during the process between the innkeeper and a voice. The innkeeper, dropping into dialect, was heard to say, ‘Well, Jarge, ’ow be ’e?’ to which a high-pitched senile voice replied, ‘Well, Zur, Oi be better than what Oi were, but Oi beant so well as Oi were before Oi be as bad as Oi be now.’ He at once wrote it down lest he forget such a superbly cryptic bulletin. He puzzled over it all breakfast time, and I have a notion that it interfered with his fishing during the day, for at times he would spike his rod, pull out his notebook, and scratch his head.
Then there is another that comes to mind: a red-tiled old house, almost buried in pines and heather. Here, in the kitchen, the hams hung from the ceiling along with dry bundles of sweet herbs, which used to swing back and forth in the draught. There were no gas cookers, no gas, much less electricity, and a joint would revolve in front of a blazing fire, first in one direction, then in the reverse, according as the bottle-jack from which it hung clacked its change once a minute. Basting was done with a long-handled iron spoon, and the gravy and dripping fell into a huge metal tray sloping to a depression in the middle of it to form a well. The house was low, with twisty rambling passages, and even though shown to one’s bedroom in daylight, it was often difficult to be sure of the exact room by candlelight at night.
There were four of us, and on the first night we were playing cards till late - that is, late for the country folk. One of our party, and he the youngest, was of an exceptionally nervous temperament, and when our game was over said he was tired and would go to bed. He could not find his room, so we had to find it for him, finally leaving him in a large attic, with sloping sides under the roof, where the bed looked rather lost in space. Very shortly after, he returned to us with a white face, saying that there was a most unpleasant smell in his room which came in some volume from a long and deep coffin-looking chest by the window, which he had ventured to open. I went back to investigate, and sure enough there was a distinct smell of the dissecting room, not exactly a putrefactive odour but rather that of pickled flesh. It obviously came from the long chest, and I, then a medical student reading medical jurisprudence for examination, declared at once that there was a corpse in the chest. My nervous companion sat down on the bed quite suddenly, or he would have gone off. I opened the box wide and found it full of stink and sawdust, but diving both hands down deep I came at last on very cold and damp flesh. I got hold of what seemed to be part of a leg, and almost expected my suggestion to be true. I heaved and heaved, and at last threw on to the floor a side of very inefficiently cured bacon. My poor friend got quite hysterical, and I thought he would wake the house with his laughter, but one felt that in these out-of-the-way places anything might happen.
Another inn, far away in the heart of the Cotswolds, rises to mind, stone-fronted, stern, and whitewashed, to which I always used to go for the first weekend in May. Spring is late in those bleak hills, and the early apple blossoms are only just out at that date. The first time I stayed there my host’s wife said to me quite quietly, ‘You will sleep in Paradise tonight.’ I was a little taken a-back, but replied that I had no desire to change my present surroundings for Abraham’s, or indeed any other bosom. But my levity was evidently lost on her, as she said, ‘We call the new annexe “Paradise,” as we have made it so comfortable.’ Up some stairs of narrow and century-old stone I found a perfectly modern bedroom save for the lattice windows, which rattled all night; but the rooks in the elms which overshadowed the inn woke me to their pleasant calls at dawn and to the Magnificat of the song birds, which always thresholds the light in May in that lovely country.
But these sweet havens of refuge from the turmoil of town are passing, and the car has converted most of them into ‘hotels,’ with inferior accommodation at superior prices, rigid as to meal times, and with no elasticity for fishermen, who meal at all and irregular hours. But all things change, and we are seeing the last of fishing as it has been. In a very few years, as time is reckoned, the rivers now so full of fish and pleasure will be but offensive and sterile effluents from the factories and industrial buildings on their cemented banks.
Another inn, far away in the heart of the Cotswolds, rises to mind, stone-fronted, stern, and whitewashed, to which I always used to go for the first weekend in May. Spring is late in those bleak hills, and the early apple blossoms are only just out at that date. The first time I stayed there my host’s wife said to me quite quietly, ‘You will sleep in Paradise tonight.’ I was a little taken a-back, but replied that I had no desire to change my present surroundings for Abraham’s, or indeed any other bosom. But my levity was evidently lost on her, as she said, ‘We call the new annexe “Paradise,” as we have made it so comfortable.’ Up some stairs of narrow and century-old stone I found a perfectly modern bedroom save for the lattice windows, which rattled all night; but the rooks in the elms which overshadowed the inn woke me to their pleasant calls at dawn and to the Magnificat of the song birds, which always thresholds the light in May in that lovely country.
But these sweet havens of refuge from the turmoil of town are passing, and the car has converted most of them into ‘hotels,’ with inferior accommodation at superior prices, rigid as to meal times, and with no elasticity for fishermen, who meal at all and irregular hours. But all things change, and we are seeing the last of fishing as it has been. In a very few years, as time is reckoned, the rivers now so full of fish and pleasure will be but offensive and sterile effluents from the factories and industrial buildings on their cemented banks.
Read more (and see all the exquisite photographs)
by E.A. Barton in the beautiful new book
The Lost World of the Chalkstreams