University of Virginia Library

A WEST SUNDAY IN A COUNTRY INN.

It was a rainy Sunday, in the gloomy month of November.
I had been detained, in the course of a journey, by

a slight indisposition, from which I was recovering; but
I was still feverish, and was obliged to keep within doors
all day, in an inn of the small town of Derby. A wet
Sunday in a country inn! whoever has had the luck to
experience one can alone judge of my situation. The rain
pattered against the casements; the bells tolled for church
with melancholy sound. I went to the windows in quest
of something to amuse the eye; but it seemed as if I had
been placed completely out of the reach of all amusement.
The windows of my bed-room looked out among tiled
roofs and stacks of chimneys, while those of my sitting-room
commanded a full view of the stable-yard. I know
of nothing more calculated to make a man sick of this
world than a stable-yard on a rainy day. The place was
littered with wet straw that had been kicked about by
travellers and stable-boys. In one corner was a stagnant
pool of water, surrounding an island of muck; there
were several half-drowned fowls crowded together under
a cart, among which was a miserable crest-fallen cock,
drenched out of all life and spirit; his drooping tail matted,
as it were, into a single feather, along which the water
trickled from his back; near the cart was a half-dozing
cow, chewing the cud, and standing patiently to be rained
on, with wreaths of vapour rising from her recking hide;
a wall-eyed horse, tired of the loneliness of the stable,
was poking his spectral head out of a window, with
the rain dripping on it from the caves; an unhappy
cur, chained to a doghouse hard by, uttered something
every now and then, between a bark and a yelp; a drab
of a kitchen wench tramped backwards and forwards
through the yard in pattens, looking as sulky as the weather
itself; every thing, in short, was comfortless and
forlorn, excepting a crew of hard-drinking ducks, assembled
like boon companions round a puddle, and making
a riotous noise over their liquor.

I was lonely and listless, and wanted amusement.
My room soon became insupportable. I abandoned it,
and sought what is technically called the traveller's-room.
This is a public room set apart at most inns for the accommodation
of a class of wayfarers, called travellers, or
riders; a kind of commercial knights errant, who are incessantly
scouring the kingdom in gigs, on horseback, or
by coach. They are the only successors that I know of,
at the present day, to the knights errant of yore. They
lead the same kind of roving adventurous life, only changing

the lance for a driving-whip, the buckler for a pattern-card,
and the coat of mail for an upper Benjamin. Instead
of vindicating the charms of peerless beauty, they rove
about, spreading the fame and standing of some substantial
tradesman, or manufacturer, and are ready at
any time to bargain in his name; it being the fashion
now-a-days to trade, instead of fight, with one another.
As the room of the hostel, in the good old fighting times,
would be hung round at night with the armour of way-worn
warriors, such as coats of mail, falchions, and yawning
helmets; so the travellers' room is garnished with the
harnessing of their successors, with box coats, whips of
all kinds, spurs, gaiters, and oil cloth covered hats.

I was in hopes of finding some of these worthies to talk
with, but was disappointed. There were, indeed, two
or three in the room; but I could make nothing of them.
One was just finishing breakfast, quarrelling with his
bread and butter, and huffing the waiter; another buttoned
on a pair of gaiters, with many execrations at Boots
for not having cleaned his shoes well; a third sat drumming
on the table with his fingers, and looking at the
rain as it streamed down the window glass: they all appeared
infected by the weather, and disappeared, one
after the other, without exchanging a word.

I sauntered to the window and stood gazing at the
people, picking their way to the church, with petticoats
hoisted midleg high, and dripping umbrellas. The bell
ceased to toll, and the streets became silent. I then amused
myself with watching the daughters of a tradesman
opposite; who being confined to the house for fear of
wetting their Sunday finery, played off their charms at
the front windows, to fascinate the chance tenants of the
inn. They at length were summoned away by a vigilant
vinegar-faced mother, and I had nothing further
from without to amuse me.

What was I to do to pass away the long-lived day? I
was sadly nervous and lonely; and every thing about an
inn seems calculated to make a dull day ten times duller
Old newspapers, smelling of beer and tobacco smoke, and
which I had already read half a dozen times. Good for
nothing books, that were worse than rainy weather. I
bored myself to death with an old volume of the Lady's
Magazine. I read all the common-place names of ambitious
travellers scrawled on the panes of glass; the eternal
families of the Smiths and the Browns, and the Jacksons,

and the Johnsons, and all the other sons; and I
decyphered several scraps of fatiguing inn-window poetry,
which I have met with in all parts of the world.

The day continued lowering and gloomy; the slovenly,
ragged, spongy clouds drifted heavily along; there was no
variety even in the rain; it was one dull, continued, monotonous
patter—patter—patter, excepting that now and
then I was enlivened by the idea of a brisk shower, from
the rattling of the drops upon a passing umbrella.

It was quite refreshing (if I may be allowed a hackneyed
phrase of the day), when, in the course of the
morning, a horn blew, and a stage coach whirled through
the street, with outside passengers stuck all over it, cowering
under cotton umbrellas, and seethed together, and
reeking with the steams of wet box-coats and upper Benjamins.

The sound brought out from their lurking-places a
crew of vagabond boys, and vagabond dogs, and the carroty-headed
hostler, and that non-descript animal ycleped
Boots, and all the other vagabond race, that infest the
purlieus of an inn; but the bustle was transient; the
coach again whirled on its way; and boy and dog, hostler
and Boots, all slunk back again to their holes; the
street again became silent, and the rain continued to rain
on. In fact, there was no hope of its clearing up, the
barometer pointed to rainy weather; mine hostess's tortoise
shell cat sat by the fire washing her face, and rubbing
her paws over her ears; and, on referring to the
Almanack, I found a direful prediction stretching from
the top of the page to the bottom through the whole
month, “expect—much—rain—about—this—time!”