The Great British Saloon Series/Charles Dickens Got Crocked Here
Gold, Stephen V.
THE GREAT BRITISH SALOON SERIES CHARLES DICKENS GOT CROCKED HERE Let me tell you about The Spotted Cow. I met her on a muggy summer night in the heart of the English Midlands, after a hard...
...Nothing, however, that a pub can't cure...
...Crusaders on their way to the Holy Land became regular customers of Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem Inn at Nottingham after that five-pint pub opened its doors in 1189...
...A smooth pint of Theakston Old Peculiar brought us to the Battle of Britain, which led, with what at the time seemed perfect logic, to a pejorative judgment of French cuisine...
...q B efore we closed The Spotted Cow that evening a few summers back, my new-found English friend in the Peters jacket and county cap passed along a personal experience that captured, in a memorable vignette, the close attachment the British people feel to their country's past...
...We had had our evening at The Spotted Cow and there seemed nothing left to say...
...Few cities on the island, he said, could claim Coventry's rich heritage...
...At worst, after a few days of castle-hopping, their brains will simply short out...
...Reason enough to drop my gear in a guest room and head for the bar downstairs, where a gregarious member of Maggie Thatcher's proletariat, sporting a Peters jacket and traditional county cap, offered to buy a weary traveler a pint...
...Independent pubs, called "freehouses," sell any and all brands and brews, from pale yellow lagers and golden bitters to rich brown ales and thick black stouts...
...The Whittington Inn at Kinver, Staffordshire, began selling ale four years before Robert the Bruce made a fool of poor Edward II at Bannockburn (1314), while patrons of The Bells of Peover at Lower Peover, Cheshire, were spiritual witness to England's conquest of the neighboring Welsh (1282...
...Force-fed the standard tourist fare of battlefields, castles, and cathedrals, they will come away, at best, with a superficial understanding of British history...
...The city was my drinking companion's home, and it had been his family's home for centuries...
...To create a similar environment this side of the Atlantic, we would have to combine our pizza parlors, pool halls, social clubs, bars, and nightclubs, keeping only their finer qualities (and improving their beer...
...Other famed island warriors known to have spent their idle hours in pubs include Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh (The Exeter Inn, Ashburton, Devon), and Lord Nelson (The Angel Hotel, Ludlow, Shropshire...
...And the misty morning I climbed Arthur's Seat, the rugged cliff overlooking Edinburgh, and came face-to-face with a fellow Yank who wanted to relive that year's American League Championship Series...
...and his royal successor, Charles II, in flight after a trouncing at the Battle of Worcester, stopped for a pint or two at The George & Dragon in Hougtiton, West Sussex, then took shelter at the aptly named Royal Standard of England in Forty Green, Buckinghamshire...
...On the back of the cross they carved two words: Father Forgive...
...Then, he told me, on the night of November 14, 1940, German bombers wiped out the center of town and 1500 years of history, including the great cathedral...
...His father's business was destroyed...
...namely, that an American visitor can learn more about England in three hours spent in a public house than he can in three weeks' hard-marching through battlefields, castles, and cathedrals...
...It THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1989 37...
...No speeches were made the following morning...
...Robert Louis Stevenson took his pints in the comfort of The Cramond Inn, Edinburgh...
...but he was also known to stop off at Fleet Street's Ye Olde Cock Tavern, the East End's Prospect of Whitby (also a favorite of Turner and Whistler), Jack Straw's Castle in Hampstead, and the bar at the Morritt Arms Hotel, near Barnard Castle in Durham, where Dickens wrote his classic Nicholas Nickleby...
...The best pubs have a dog sleeping by the bar and a cat on the windowsill—sanitation sticklers and customers' allergies be damned...
...More than half are "tied" to a major brewery, meaning that they sell only the beer their owners offer—a practice the Thatcher government's Monopolies and Mergers Commission, over raucous protest from the breweries, is trying to change...
...There was the occasion, before my visit to The Spotted Cow, when I stood on York's medieval wall, admiring the city's famed minster, only to have my reverie broken by the sound of two American accents in a deep rap Stephen V Gold, a Washington writer, spends his summers in British pubs...
...We were talking about Coventry's fate during World War II...
...Picture Oliver Cromwell, the ultimate Puritan, using The Bull's Head in London as his headquarters, or holding a Roundhead council of war at The Reindeer in Banbury, Oxfordshire...
...Coventry was the place where Lady Godiva took her famous ride, watched by the original "Peeping Tom...
...Johnson's favorite was, of course, Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street, London...
...It's a fact, easily proven: Brits may toast the Queen three times a year and attend church twice, but the pub is the Establishment that truly holds their hearts...
...French bistros...
...By the Middle Ages, alehouses were being used by the Saxons for council meetings and legal tribunals...
...Not to say that all pubs, any more than all restaurants or hotels, offer their clientele equal value in victuals and atmosphere...
...Other pubs that trace their origin to the Middle Ages are steeped in battle lore...
...Which brings us to the special ingredient that makes for a five-pint pub— all of the above, plus the added element of history...
...by Stephen V. Gold rits have been gathering in ale].) houses and inns for a drink and friendly chat for more than two millennia, pre-dating the Roman invasion...
...A few more rounds, a few more topics, and we parted, never to see each other again but nonetheless lifelong buddies...
...Thousands of Americans will travel to the British Isles this summer in search of the culture their ancestors fled...
...There are memorable pubs and pubs of a lower order, but absent a Michelin, Mobilguide, or Duncan Hines, I've worked up my own rating system, one that operates on a scale of one to five...
...Walk into an American disco, for example, and you're apt to think (or feel you ought to think) you're John Travolta or Patrick Swayze...
...While living in the Bloomsbury area, Dickens frequented The Lamb...
...As for the Battle of Waterloo having been won on the playing fields at Eton, a more likely site was The Grenadier in Knightsbridge, London, where Arthur Wellesley spent a fair bit of time...
...When my companion finished his story we sat silent for awhile...
...All that remained was for the two of us, the gregarious midlander and the visiting Yank, to raise our empty mugs to the good people of Coventry...
...Nor was the Lord Protector-to-be beyond using a fivepint inn named The Royal Oak in 36 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1989 Whatcote, Warwickshire as a hiding place...
...Many public houses are tied by history to England's Civil War...
...not just the hearty ploughman's lunch or traditional cottage pie and chips, but regional specialties that will come as a pleasant surprise to American tourists brainwashed by horror stories about British gastronomy...
...Thus did the ubiquitous signboard of the public house become part of the British landscape...
...so was his uncle's...
...As for conviviality, if when you walk in the place goes silent and you think you hear a murmur of "bloody Yank," don't even stick around to ask directions...
...One Thwaites Best Bitter later, my friend and I were deep into the more arcane aspects of cricket and baseball...
...Still, Caesar's legions did leave their mark on the countryside in the custom of hanging bunches of ivy (symbol of the Bacchanalia) outside wine shops...
...Two rounds of Mild Ale and we were comparing notes on the domestic problems of the House of Windsor...
...My companion was five years old at the time...
...while Scotland's Burns did his ruminating about bonnie lassies, mice and men, at The Black Bull in the lowland village of Moffatt...
...On the contrary, my experience has been that, on the whole, we're fairly decent tourists—friendly, inquisitive, capable of digesting nearly anything...
...Look for oak-beamed ceilings, Windsor chairs, inglenooks, a dartboard (in use, not just for show), and animals...
...It defines the national culture in ways not to be found in any comparable American, German, or French institution...
...As he grew up, he watched the people of Coventry construct a new cathedral next to the charred ruins of the old one, then fashion a cross from the timbers of the old burnt roof and place it on the original altar...
...No grand rhetoric, no civic assemblies...
...I accepted and, per custom, returned the favor...
...Then there was the special case of the visiting economist, Karl Marx, who contemplated Hegel and the mysteries of Spencerian philosophy at London's Bloomsbury Museum Tavern...
...Roughly estimated, there are 70,000 public houses in Britain, at least one for every village and hamlet...
...High-rated pubs, on the other hand, feature patrons too busy enjoying themselves to care whether you're a regular or a tourist, along with bartenders who seem to go out of their way to make outsiders feel welcome...
...German beer is certainly good enough, but the German beer hall is large, loud, and better suited for spectator sport than a friendly conversation...
...had been founded in Saxon times and a Benedictine monastery was built there in the eleventh century...
...His nemesis, Charles I, surrendered to Scottish commissioners at The Saracen's Head in Southwell, Nottinghamshire...
...A four-star pub—more aptly, fourpint— should, in addition to a wide variety of beers and ales, offer the visitor character and conviviality...
...They're refined little places where, depending on the neighborhood, one can join or overhear subdued conversations on surrealism, cheese, and the future of Eurocommunism...
...His family and their neighbors simply went to work rebuilding their homes and their lives...
...Not to draw from these examples any sweeping conclusion about the ugly American abroad...
...The town's majestic cathedral was admired worldwide, as were its other fine medieval buildings...
...f all Britain's higher educational institutions, none can match the cultural significance of the public house...
...Many houses, both tied and free, have excellent kitchens that offer the visitor a generous assortment of snacks and meals...
...though the early Norman influence can still be found in pubs that were licensed in the days when the royal court spoke only French...
...keep to themselves...
...Though the original building is long gone, Ye Olde Ferry Boat Inn at Holywell, Cambridgeshire— a certified five-pint establishment— carries on the proud tradition of a sixth-century alehouse...
...about Black & Decker power tools...
...The Spotted Cow: it was there that I discovered not only a new methodology in the study of English history but the secret that official tour guides in the U.K...
...Indeed, by the time Caesar landed, the British taste for beer and ale was so ingrained that Roman efforts to convert the natives into wine-lovers failed miserably...
...British literary history is also rich in pub lore, with many (if not most) of the island's writers as notable for their proclivity to drink as their ability to put words on parchment...
...And while William the Conqueror co-opted much of the Saxon culture, the pub, rather than the continental sidewalk cafe, held its own as the center of British social, political, and literary life...
...American and continental drinking spots lack the simple warmth of the British public house...
...But enter a British pub and it's as if you've found a home, a place where you can be yourself...
...As for Charles Dickens, American visitors could map out an interesting tour of London and England based on his pub travels alone...
...That's because the pub neither has nor encourages pretense...
...I met her on a muggy summer night in the heart of the English Midlands, after a hard day's march through two battlefields, a castle, and a cathedral...
...But after an extended tour of Victorian mansions, especially during England's rainy season, many of us grow weary, even homesick...
Vol. 22 • August 1989 • No. 8
