CHAPTER VI
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY INNS
I
Once fairly started on his journey from city to city, the tourist's next most important interest, so far as material comfort went, was his food and lodging. Upon the eighteenth-century inns travelers have much to remark. Indeed, many of the older books of travel devote an inordinate amount of space to the various houses of entertainment — not in bestowing words of praise, but in enumerating the shortcomings of the table or the furnishings. When compared with the palaces now at the service of travelers in every part of the world, few of the inns of that day can be seriously considered as rivals: measured by eighteenth-century standards, some were palatial in their accommodations and quite good enough for guests of any rank. But on the road between towns travelers put up with such accommodations as they could get, and those were often miserably inadequate. Matters generally improved somewhat in the course of the eighteenth century, but the remarks of Eustace hold true for the entire period we are considering: "An English traveller must, the very instant he embarks for the Continent, resign many of the comforts and conveniencies which he enjoys at home. … Great will be his disappointment if, on his arrival, he expects a warm room, a newspaper, and a well-stored larder. These advantages are common enough at home, but they are not to be found in any inn on the Continent, not even Dessenes[1] at Calais or the Maison Rouge at Frankfort. But the principal and most offensive defect abroad is the want of cleanliness, a defect in a greater or less degree common to all parts of the Continent."[2]
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