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THE INN KITCHEN.
Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?
FALSTAFF.
DURING a journey that I once made through the Netherlands, I had
arrived one evening at the Pomme d'Or, the principal inn of a
small Flemish village. It was after the hour of the table d'hote,
so that I was obliged to make a solitary supper from the relics
of its ampler board. The weather was chilly; I was seated alone
in one end of a great gloomy dining-room, and, my repast being
over, I had the prospect before me of a long dull evening,
without any visible means of enlivening it. I summoned mine host
and requested something to read; he brought me the whole literary
stock of his household, a Dutch family Bible, an almanac in the
same language, and a number of old Paris newspapers. As I sat
dozing over one of the latter, reading old news and stale
criticisms, my ear was now and then struck with bursts of
laughter which seemed to proceed from the kitchen. Every one that
has travelled on the Continent must know how favorite a resort
the kitchen of a country inn is to the middle and inferior order
of travellers, particularly in that equivocal kind of weather
when a fire becomes agreeable toward evening. I threw aside the
newspaper and explored my way to the kitchen, to take a peep at
the group that appeared to be so merry. It was composed partly of
travellers who had arrived some hours before in a diligence, and
partly of the usual attendants and hangers-on of inns. They were
seated round a great burnished stove, that might have been
mistaken for an altar at which they were worshipping. It was
covered with various kitchen vessels of resplendent brightness,
among which steamed and hissed a huge copper tea-kettle. A large
lamp threw a strong mass of light upon the group, bringing out
many odd features in strong relief. Its yellow rays partially
illumined the spacious kitchen, dying duskily away into remote
corners, except where they settled in mellow radiance on the
broad side of a flitch of bacon or were reflected back from
well-scoured utensils that gleamed from the midst of obscurity. A
strapping Flemish lass, with long golden pendants in her ears and
a necklace with a golden heart suspended to it, was the presiding
priestess of the temple.
Many of the company were furnished with pipes, and most of them
with some kind of evening potation. I found their mirth was
occasioned by anecdotes which a little swarthy Frenchman, with a
dry weazen face and large whiskers, was giving of his
love-adventures; at the end of each of which there was one of
those bursts of honest unceremonious laughter in which a man
indulges in that temple of true liberty, an inn.
As I had no better mode of getting through a tedious blustering
evening, I took my seat near the stove, and listened to a variety
of travellers' tales, some very extravagant and most ver dull.
All of them, however, have faded from my treacherous memory
except one, which I will endeavor to relate. I fear, however, it
derived its chief zest from the manner in which it was told, and
the peculiar air and appearance of the narrator. He was a
corpulent old Swiss, who had the look of a veteran traveller. He
was dressed in a tarnished green travelling-jacket, with a broad
belt round his waist, and a pair of overalls with buttons from
the hips to the ankles. He was of a full rubicund countenance,
with a double chin, aquiline nose, and a pleasant twinkling eye.
His hair was light, and curled from under an old green velvet
travelling-cap stuck on one side of his head. He was interrupted
more than once by the arrival of guests or the remarks of his
auditors, and paused now and then to replenish his pipe; at which
times he had generally a roguish leer and a sly joke for the
buxom kitchen-maid.
I wish my readers could imagine the old fellow lolling in a huge
arm-chair, one arm a-kimbo, the other holding a curiously twisted
tobacco-pipe formed of genuine ecume de mer, decorated with
silver chain and silken tassel, his head cocked on one side, and
a whimsical cut of the eye occasionally as he related the
following story.
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