Inns and Taverns of Old London | Page 6

found himself the poorer by the
twenty-pence with which he had backed his own prowess. Under date
1633 there is an interesting reference which sets forth that, although
orders had been given to have all the back-doors to taverns on the
Thames closed up, owing to the fact that wrong-doers found them
convenient in evading the officers of the law, an exception was made in
the case of the Bear owing to the fact that it was the starting-place for
Greenwich.
[Illustration: BRIDGE-FOOT, SOUTHWARK. (Showing the Bear Inn
in 1616.)]
Evidence in abundance might be cited to show that the inn was a
favourite meeting place with the wits and gallants of the court of
Charles I and the Restoration. "The maddest of all the land came to bait
the Bear," is one testimony; "I stuffed myself with food and tipple till
the hoops were ready to burst," is another. There is one figure, however,
of the thirties of the seventeenth century which arrests the attention.
This is Sir John Suckling, that gifted and ill-fated poet and man of
fashion of whom it was said that he "had the peculiar happiness of
making everything that he did become him." His ready wit, his
strikingly handsome face and person, his wealth and generosity, his
skill in all fashionable pastimes made him a favourite with all. The
preferences of the man, his delight in the joys of the town as compared
with the pleasures of secluded study in the country, are clearly seen in

those sprightly lines in which he invited the learned John Hales, the
"walking library," to leave Eton and "come to town":
"There you shall find the wit and wine Flowing alike, and both divine:
Dishes, with names not known in books, And less among the
college-cooks; With sauce so pregnant, that you need Not stay till
hunger bids you feed. The sweat of learned Jonson's brain, And gentle
Shakespeare's eas'er strain, A hackney coach conveys you to, In spite of
all that rain can do: And for your eighteenpence you sit The lord and
judge of all fresh wit."
Nor was it in verse alone that Suckling celebrated the praises of wine.
Among the scanty remains of his prose there is that lively sally, written
at the Bear, and entitled: "The Wine-drinkers to the Water-drinkers."
After mockingly commiserating with the teetotalers over the sad plight
into which their habits had brought them, the address continues: "We
have had divers meetings at the Bear at the Bridge-foot, and now at
length have resolved to despatch to you one of our cabinet council,
Colonel Young, with some slight forces of canary, and some few of
sherry, which no doubt will stand you in good stead, if they do not
mutiny and grow too headstrong for their commander. Him Captain
Puff of Barton shall follow with all expedition, with two or three
regiments of claret; Monsieur de Granville, commonly called
Lieutenant Strutt, shall lead up the rear of Rhenish and white. These
succours, thus timely sent, we are confident will be sufficient to hold
the enemy in play, and, till we hear from you again, we shall not think
of a fresh supply.... Given under our hand at the Bear, this fourth of
July."
Somewhere about the date when this drollery was penned there
happened at the Bear an incident which might have furnished the
water-drinkers with an effective retort on their satirist. The Earl of
Buccleugh, just returned from military service abroad, on his way into
London, halted at the Bear to quaff a glass of sack with a friend. A few
minutes later he put off in a boat for the further shore of the Thames,
but ere the craft had gone many yards from land the earl exclaimed, "I
am deadly sick, row back; Lord have mercy upon me!" Those were his
last words, for he died that night.
Another picturesque figure of the seventeenth century is among the
shades that haunt the memory of the Bear, Samuel Pepys, that

irrepressible gadabout who was more intimately acquainted with the
inns and taverns of London than any man of his time. That
Thames-side hostelry was evidently a favourite resort of the diarist. On
both occasions of his visits to Southwark Pair he made the inn his base
of operations as it were, especially in 1668 when the puppet-show of
Whittington seemed "pretty to see," though he could not resist the
reflection "how that idle thing do work upon people that see it, and
even myself too!"
Pepys had other excitements that day. He was so mightily taken with
Jacob Hall's dancing on the ropes that on meeting that worthy at a
tavern he presented him with a bottle of wine. Having done justice to
all the sights of the fair, he