A TALE OF THE RIOTS OF 'EIGHTY
Chapter 1
In the year 1775, there stood upon the borders of Epping Forest, at a
distance of about twelve miles from London--measuring from the Standard
in Cornhill,' or rather from the spot on or near to which the Standard
used to be in days of yore--a house of public entertainment called the
Maypole; which fact was demonstrated to all such travellers as
could neither read nor write (and at that time a vast number both of
travellers and stay-at-homes were in this condition) by the emblem
reared on the roadside over against the house, which, if not of those
goodly proportions that Maypoles were wont to present in olden times,
was a fair young ash, thirty feet in height, and straight as any arrow
that ever English yeoman drew.
The Maypole--by which term from henceforth is meant the house, and not
its sign--the Maypole was an old building, with more gable ends than a
lazy man would care to count on a sunny day; huge zig-zag chimneys, out
of which it seemed as though even smoke could not choose but come in
more than naturally fantastic shapes, imparted to it in its tortuous
progress; and vast stables, gloomy, ruinous, and empty. The place was
said to have been built in the days of King Henry the Eighth; and there
was a legend, not only that Queen Elizabeth had slept there one night
while upon a hunting excursion, to wit, in a certain oak-panelled room
with a deep bay window, but that next morning, while standing on a
mounting block before the door with one foot in the stirrup, the virgin
monarch had then and there boxed and cuffed an unlucky page for some
neglect of duty. The matter-of-fact and doubtful folks, of whom there
were a few among the Maypole customers, as unluckily there always are
in every little community, were inclined to look upon this tradition as
rather apocryphal; but, whenever the landlord of that ancient hostelry
appealed to the mounting block itself as evidence, and triumphantly
pointed out that there it stood in the same place to that very day, the
doubters never failed to be put down by a large majority, and all true
believers exulted as in a victory.
Whether these, and many other stories of the like nature, were true or
untrue, the Maypole was really an old house, a very old house, perhaps
as old as it claimed to be, and perhaps older, which will sometimes
happen with houses of an uncertain, as with ladies of a certain, age.
Its windows were old diamond-pane lattices, its floors were sunken
and uneven, its ceilings blackened by the hand of time, and heavy with
massive beams. Over the doorway was an ancient porch, quaintly and
grotesquely carved; and here on summer evenings the more favoured
customers smoked and drank--ay, and sang many a good song too,
sometimes--reposing on two grim-looking high-backed settles, which,
like the twin dragons of some fairy tale, guarded the entrance to the
mansion.
In the chimneys of the disused rooms, swallows had built their nests
for many a long year, and from earliest spring to latest autumn whole
colonies of sparrows chirped and twittered in the eaves. There were more
pigeons about the dreary stable-yard and out-buildings than anybody
but the landlord could reckon up.
