1819-20
THE SKETCH BOOK
THE INN KITCHEN
by Washington Irving
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 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 very 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 akimbo, 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.
THE END
PanavPaul