A Night's Lodging in the Sixteenth Century

IT is a most unsatisfactory thing — reading about what you would like to see; but if seeing sixteenth-century Europe implied spending the nights in sixteenth-century inns, there is much to be said for preferring the experience in print only. Luxury of a kind certainly was to be had. At the Vasa d’Oro at Rome were gorgeous beds, hung with silk and cloth-of-gold, worth four hundred to five hundred crowns each; at the Ecu at Chalons, silken bedding, too; and Germany occasionally provided sheets trimmed with lace fourfingers’-breadth wide, in paneled rooms. By 1652 Amsterdam possessed a hotel reckoned the best in Europe, every room in which was floored with black and white marble and hung with pictures, with one room containing an organ and decorated with gilded leather in place of tapestries. But these superfluities did not imply that a comfortable abiding-place was easily found. In any case, accommodation divided itself into bedroom and dining-room ; of anything approaching a sitting-room there is rarely a word. The chief exception to this is the five or six halls, decorated and furnished like those of a rich gentleman, at the inn outside Sinigaglia. This was the finest hotel in Italy when, shortly before 1578, it was built by the Duke of Urbino, who allowed no other in the neighborhood. Its forty bedrooms, with no more than two beds in each, all opened by separate doors on one long gallery.

Often before the inn came in sight, the traveler would see his Italian host. Sometimes the host would have touts as far away as seven or eight leagues, to buttonhole foreigners, carry their luggage, promise anything, and behave with the utmost servility—till the morning of departure. But with all this, to expect them to provide clean sheets was to expect too much, and as the nation was grievously afflicted with the itch, it was desirable for the visitor to carry his own bedding. In many cases, we find the tourist sleeping on a table in his clothes to avoid the dirtiness or the vermin of the bed. Still, in Italy, as a rule, you shared your bed with these permanent occupants only. In Spain you were sure to do so: one man, one bed, was the custom there. In Germany the custom was just the reverse; in fact, if the tourist did not find a companion for himself, the host chose for him, and his bed-fellow might be a gentleman, or he might be a carter; all that could safely be prophesied about him was that when he came to bed he would be drunk. The bed would be one of several in a room; the covering, a quilt warm enough to be too warm for summer, and narrow enough to leave one side of each person exposed in winter. That is, supposing there were beds.

In northern Germany, rest for the night would be on a bench in a ‘stove,’ —as they called the room, because the stove was so invariably part of the furniture that the words ‘room’ and ‘stove’ became synonymous. To retain the heat, windows were never opened at night; all the travelers, women and men, gentlemen and ‘rammish clowns,’ lay as near the stove as they could manage. The heat was such that the effect on one unaccustomed to it was ’as if a snake was twining about his legs.’ Further, ' if several met together,’ says a Frenchman, ‘ one might as well try to sleep in the market-place on marketday.’ In upper Germany, the bedrooms were separate, without fire or the means of making one. As many beds were put in a room as the room could hold; fairly clean ones, however, as the Germans treated them with some disinfectant. In Saxony, there were no beds, no benches; not even a stove. The guests lay in the straw among the cows, the chief advantage of this state of affairs being that one’s pillow was liable to be eaten in the night. In Poland, the same conditions prevailed, and meant a cold and dangerous night, in the rural districts, at least, for any one who did not adapt himself to the custom of the country by using the long coat lined with wolf-skins which served the Pole as cloak by day and bedding by night.

As a relief from the general statements, a particular instance may be quoted to exemplify a night by the way in Poland. The sleeping-room struck the writer as something between a stable and a subterranean furnace. Six soldiers lay on the ground as if dead; the peasant-tenant, his wife, children, and servants, lay on benches round the walls, with coverings of straw and feathers; in one corner slept a Calvinist, a baron’s secretary; in another, on the peasant’s straw pallet, an ambassador’s chaplain, a Roman Catholic; and between the two, to save each, it seemed, from the heels of the other, was lying a huge Tartar, a captain in the Polish army, who had made up a bed of hay for himself. About the room were dogs, geese, pigs, fowls; while the corner by the oven was conceded to a woman who had just given birth to a child. The baby cried, the mother moaned, the tired servants and soldiers snored; and early in the morning the writer rose from the shelf he was sharing with some leggings, spurs, and muskets, and escaped.

Speaking generally, there were no beds to be found in the North. In Muscovy everything must be taken along; without a hatchet, tinder-box, and kettle, there was no hot food for the wayfarer till he reached a monastery or a town; nor was there shelter to be had unless he happened to come across somebody’s one-story cabin, which had no outlet for the smoke except the door, and accommodation below the level of the average stable: one room shared between the family, visitors, and live stock. When Sir Jerome Horsey was at Arensberg, in the island of Oesel, near the Gulf of Riga, in 1580, snakes crept about bed and table, and the hens came and pecked at them in the flour and the milk.

The German host was too apt to think that a heavy meal and honesty were all that could be expected from him. The honesty was indeed remarkable: more than one stranger was astonished by the recovery of property mislaid, — sent after him, sometimes, before he had discovered his loss, and no reward taken; but, indirectly, it was dearly paid for through the insolence born of virtue in a class that is naturally below the standard of the ten commandments. The customer was made to feel that the favor was to, not from, him. An exception to this is the experience of Van Buchell, the antiquary, who found German hosts sending hot water up to a traveler’s bedroom, if it were noticed he was tired; and there were herbs in the water, such as camomile, for strengthening the feet; and this even at Frankfurt-am-Main in Fair-time, as well as elsewhere. But there was no such thing as hastening on or delaying a meal-time, and no use in expressing dissatisfaction with the food: the bill must be paid without question, not a farthing abated.

And generally, indeed, the help of the law did not seem to avail against the innkeeper. Tourists speak of successful appeals to the law on other points and curse the inns without ceasing, but a successful tourist’s lawsuit against his host remains to be found. In the Tyrol, in fact, the plaintiff would find the defendant not only on, but controlling, the bench; and in Spain most innkeepers were officers of the ‘ Santa Hermandad,’ — a ' Holy Brotherhood ’ whose raison d’être was to act as country police, with the result that the complainant would probably be arrested at the next stopping-place on some trumped-up charge. In short, when the bill came to a hundred per cent too much in Spain, the cheapest way was to pay it.

Of all the ill-feeling that the tourists harbored against Spain, the bitterest was on account of the inns. From Andrew Boorde, in the middle of the century, we learn that ‘hogs shall be under your feet at the table, and lice in your beds’; while another traveler tells how he preferred to hire three Moors to hold him in their arms while he slept. Those who come later tell the same tale: at Galleretta, on the border of Castile, a German finds the stable, the bedroom, the kitchen, the dining-room, the pig-sty, one and the same room; and a Papal envoy sleeps on straw one snowy night without a fire. And from a traveler at the end of the century we learn that the sight of the inns was more than enough. There was but one way to reconcile one’s self to the wayside inn of Spain, and that was — to try those of Portugal.

Over all these inns the Turkish ‘ khan ’ had this advantage, that there was no host. A khan was a building which some compare to a barn, and one to a tennis-court, with a platform running round inside the walls about four feet broad and usually from three to four feet high, but sometimes ten. At intervals of about eight feet were chimneys. The platform was for the travelers; the inner space for their beasts; while the chimneys enabled each party to cook its food. Such was the normal form of the khan, seeming to an uninstructed traveler just a stable, in which idea he would be confirmed by the scents in the early morning. The average Christian found that the noises and the lights prevented sleep; but the Turk carried a rug to sleep on, used his saddle as a pillow, and his great rain-cloak as a covering, and found it comfortable enough till daybreak, when (greatly to the disgust of the Christians present) he thought it suitable to get up. Or, if the moon were very bright, he might arise earlier by mistake; for he carried no watch, nor believed one when he saw it.

But as time went on, far more magnificent places arose, capable of holding nearly a thousand travelers and their belongings, — with many rooms, and covered ways leading to mosques across the road. The finest of all lay along the road leading from Constantinople to Christendom. The fact that the term ‘ khan ’ is applied indiscriminately by most Franks to all inns, is evidence that they were not on speaking terms with the natives, to whom many of these rest-houses were known as ‘imaret,’ — those, that is, which provided food free. Among the richer Turks, all lodgings were a form of good works, a practical attempt to disarm the customary suspicions of the Grand Signor or the well-justified wrath of Allah; and free food was an extension of this appeal. The food was mostly barley porridge, or porridge of some other grain, with meat in it, and bread, and sometimes honey; nor was there any idea of poverty associated with taking it; Jew and viceroy were alike recipients. There is no need to dwell on the marvelous provision for travelers, and even for the care of stray animals, in Constantinople: the free food, free lodging, free medical attendance for men of all creeds, as unfolded in detail by the Turk traveler, Awliyáí Effendi, since the Frank knew of its existence but dimly and by hearsay only, for he would be lodging over the water at Pera with his nation’s ambassador.

The Turk himself never traveled alone. Had he done so, he would have found the non-existence of the innkeeper a nuisance. Near Constantinople there was a khan for each stage of every journey; but not so, farther away: from Aleppo to Damascus was a nine days’ journey, and there were only five khans on the way. Put the traveler who accompanied a caravan was well taken care of. At the end of the day’s journey, a quadrangle was formed, the travelers inside among the wagons; the lines of the square were formed by the beasts, their heads tethered inwards, and at night there was an outer line of fire; by the side of the fires, the watch; outside the fires, the patrol. Thus the night was spent until the three loud strokes on the drum which gave the signal for starting.

And so we return to the inns, leaving the bedroom, to consider the fare; and, since, in nine cases out of ten, a sign-board spells a drink, let us consider drinks first. Spaniards and Turks drank water; the rest of Europe thought it unhealthy; in fact, as often as not, people cleaned their teeth with wine. Still, drinking-fountains were not unknown; for we have a record of one German at Paris who sampled sixteen.

The consumption of cider, wines, and light and heavy beer, seems to have been localized, even as to-day. The Turks alone had coffee and sherbet, and only the Spaniards chocolate, the drinking of which, however, was a fashion recently introduced on account of its supposed medicinal results; but in the sixteenth century chocolate was to be had only where the most expensive kind of business was done. Among spirits, Irish was reckoned the best whiskey, but was seldom found outside Ireland, where it was known as the ‘ King of Spain’s daughter.’ In Muscovy, aqua vitœ was the favorite drink: every meal began and ended with it; but for quantity consumed, hydromel came first, with mead second. Besides being consumed neat, hydromel was often mixed with water in which cherries, strawberries, mulberries, or raspberries had been soaked for twentyfour hours or more; with aqua vitœ substituted for water, with raspberries, the drink is recommended as marvelous.

Drunkenness — especially in Germany— was infinitely more common than to-day. More stringent laws had, it is true, been passed, during the past century, as a result of the victories of the teetotal Turks; but there was no one to enforce them. Every German’s conversation was punctuated with ‘I drink to you,’ ‘ as regularly,’ says Fynes Moryson, ' as every psalm ends in a “Gloria”’; and among a number of princes whom he saw at a funeral feast, not one was sober. ‘ What would they have done at a wedding?’ he queries; adding that during the year and a half he spent in Germany, though he attended church regularly, he never heard a clergyman say a word against intemperance. When abroad they lived up to their reputation. We read that once when some Germans halted at a village in Spain, there was a riot; the peasants were really afraid, beforehand, that the price of wine would go up!

Turning our attention to meals, we find breakfast less of an established custom than it is at present. In France it was more, in Germany less, usual than elsewhere. In Germany, indeed, breakfast was not taken at the inn, but bought in the shape of ‘ branntwein ’ and gingerbread at shops, existing partly for that purpose, at the town gates. French customs generally were more considerate toward the new-comer; something to eat would often be brought him as he dismounted, and water for a wash; just as in Flanders a bright-faced girl would frequently be ready at the door with beer or wine, very ready to drink at the traveler’s expense and to start first; elsewhere he would be expected to wait till dinner, as dusty, inside and outside, as when he came in. A French breakfast consisted of a glass of wine and just a mouthful of bread; sometimes, as in Normandy, buttered toast, sometimes even meat, was kept ready; but the sole instance of a traveler finding himself expected to eat a substantial meal the first thing in the morning was at the inn of St. Sebastian, — ‘ the best inn on the Paris-Lyons road,’ says Golnitz, — kept by a mother and two daughters.

The English custom of taking for granted that the guest saved some of his supper to serve as breakfast next morning, does not seem to have been in use abroad. In Italy it was customary to begin the day at a wine-tavern where boys waited to serve cakes as well as wine, on which foundation the economical Italian would very often last till supper.

Practically, eating resolved itself into two meals a day, and this was in general what the travelers were used to at home. Very fortunate it was that they were used to it; to us it seems like alternately starving and over-eating. In Germany the starving was the more common; in fact, it is not easy to see how the second meal was fitted into the day. At Berne there was a law against sitting at table more than five hours; at Bâle, from 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. was the maximum permitted; but the town council was unable to practice its own counsels of perfection, and on great occasions finished in private. In Saxony the innkeeper was forbidden to serve more than four dishes at one meal; and there public opinion was some check, inasmuch as it was common to compare the Saxon dishes, served as they were, one by one, to the tyrants of Sicily, each one of whom was a more fearful monster than his predecessor.

The neighbors of the Saxons, on the contrary, set everything on the table at once in a ‘ two-decker ’ on three iron feet; in the top-story was the inevitable sauerkraut, and beneath, roast meat, poultry, puddings, and whatever else was to be had; a collection which an Englishman likened to Noah’s ark, as containing all kinds of creatures. As to these German ' puddings,’ there is no hard-and-fast rule to be drawn between them and sausages; and accordingly one cannot be sure whether it was pudding or sausage which Fynes Moryson had for supper one night near Erfurt; but the ingredients are of little importance compared with the size, for it was as big as a man’s leg, conforming to the phrase in which the German expressed his idea of happiness, Lange Würsten, kurz Predigen (long sausages and short sermons). One who journeyed through Hessen describes his diet as ‘mostly cole-worts ’; but a Saxony dinner ordinarily began with stewed cherries or prunes, continued with poultry or meat, the pot for which was set on the fire but once a week, and concluded with bacon to fill up the corners, a consideration as important for the host as for his guests, as there was no greater reproach to hurl at an inn than Ich hab’ mich da nicht satt gefressen (I did n’t eat my belly-full there).

Bacon was of great account in Germany, so great that the owners were wont to bless their pigs when the latter trotted out of a morning, to ensure their safe return; and a servant was told off to wash them as they passed the fountain on their way home. But while a well-fattened sow commanded a fancy price (as much as the equivalent of fifty pounds was paid at Heidelberg in 1593 for one which had become unable to eat a whole raw egg at a meal), sucking pigs were unknown as eatables; an Englishman who bought one for food was forced to kill and prepare it himself on account of the unwillingness of the servants to touch it. What Saxony really lacked was everything dependent on the yield of a cow; throughout Germany there was little cheese except that made from goat’s milk.

A common hors d’œuvre was what were called Neun Augen — little lampreys that had nine eyes. Birds other than poultry were unusual; of veal and beef there was a moderate supply, of dried venison rather too much, as was the case at Hamburg with salmon. Dried fish one might expect, with many sauces, all designed to create thirst. Fresh fish was commonly on view alive beforehand in the kitchen; no German inn lacked a wooden fish-tank, kept under lock and key and supplied with running water. In case the sauces failed of their effect, the desired thirst was sure to come at the end of the meal by the help of little bits of bread, sprinkled with pepper and salt. Fruits were habitually preserved, especially apples and pears, which were halved, dried in the oven, and served up with cinnnamon and butter. Black cherries were put in a brass pot, mixed with the best pears cut into small pieces and boiled and stirred till the contents were thick; then pressure was applied which sent the juice through holes in the bottom of the pot. This juice cooled solid, kept well, and after it had been liquefied again, was in every-day use as sauce for meat.

In France, for some reason, Normandy seems to have made foreigners more comfortable than other localities; yet Picardy, so little distant, did just the opposite. At this time, however, Picardy was stamped with the character of the border-country more disastrously than any other district of France. To the country as a whole, indeed, nothing remained, as regards cooking, but a reputation for entrées, or, as they were called then, quelqueschoses. ‘ A hard bed and an empty kitchen ’ was a common experience in different districts; a party arrived at Antibes, on the Riviera, in 1606, to find one melon constituting all the provisions of the only inn.

Comparison of the fare in the various countries of Europe shows striking variations in the butter-supply. In Poland, butter was so plentiful as to be used for greasing cart-wheels; in France, so scarce and so bad that English ambassadors used to import theirs from home. In Spain, it was still scarcer, except in cow-breeding Estremadura. A German who wanted to buy butter was directed to an apothecary. This man produced a small and very rancid supply, preserved in a she-goat’s bladder for use as an ingredient in salves; and informed his customer that there was not such another quantity in all Castile.

England was a land of plenty in those days; Poland no less so. The sum of the experience of those who had first-hand means of comparison suggests that Poland was as great an importer of luxuries as any country in Europe. Muscovy did not import, but was well off nevertheless, with plenty of beef, mutton, pork, and veal; and there was all the more of these good things for foreigners, since, on account of the numerous fastdays, the natives had become so used to salt fish that they ate little meat; although the salt fish, insufficiently salted, was often in a state like that of the fish which the good angel provided for Tobit to protect him from a demon, the scent whereof was so terrible that it drove the fiend into the uttermost parts of Egypt. During Lent, butter was replaced by caviare. An ambassador’s secretary has a pleasant picture to draw of wayside fare: whenever his party reached a village, the local priest would appear with gooseberries, or fish, or a hen, or some eggs, as a present. The good Father was rewarded with aqua vitœ, and generally went home drunk.

At sea, the food-question was complicated, for on small boats no fires were allowed. In the Mediterranean, one was limited to biscuit, onions, garlic, and dried fish. On the bigger ships there was garlic again, to roast which and call it ‘ pigeon ' was a stock joke with the Greek sailors. On an Italian ship of nine hundred tons one traveler of whom we have record fared well. There were two table-d’hôte rates; he chose the higher one. Knife, spoon, fork, and a glass to himself, were provided. Fresh bread was furnished for three days after leaving a harbor, fresh meat at first and afterwards salt meat, and on fastdays, eggs, fish, vegetables, and fruit. An English idea of victualing a ship included wheat, rice, currants, sugar, prunes, cinnamon, ginger, pepper, cloves, oil, old cheese, wine, vinegar, canary sack, aqua vitœ, water, lemon juice, biscuit, oatmeal, bacon, dried neats’ tongues, roast beef preserved in vinegar, and legs of mutton minced and stewed and packed in butter, in earthen pots; together with a few luxuries, such as marmalade and almonds.

Finally, there is the food to be met with in Ireland, concerning which it is enough to quote: ‘ Your diet shall be more welcome and plentiful than cleanly and handsome; for although they did never see you before, they will make you the best cheer their country yieldeth for two or three days, and take not anything therefor.’

Except in Italy, fingers invariably did the work of forks, and often of knives, too. The French were the only people in the habit of washing before they sat down to table; but this is by no means so much to their credit as it seems at first sight, for it was the result of their previously getting themselves into such a state as to render them intolerable even to themselves. Except for the effects of drunkenness, the Germans appear to have been the pleasantest table-companions, in spite of all sitting at one round table, or rather, because of it: for men were the more careful to behave in such fashion that they would have no objection if their neighbors imitated their own table-manners. Moreover, Germans made a practice of having a bath every Saturday night. From this common table no one in Germany was excluded except the hangman, for whose exclusive use a separate table was reserved. The rest of the dining-room furniture consisted of a leather-covered couch for those who were too drunk to do anything but lie down.

As to plates and vessels, no general statement would serve, even for a single country, owing to the rapidity with which the supply of silver increased during these centuries. In 1517 an Italian notes of the Flemish that all their vessels, of the church, the kitchen, and the bedroom, were of English brass; but that statement is confirmed by no later traveler. Wood was common in proportion to the unpretentiousness of the inn, except in Muscovy, where it was almost invariably made use of through the frequency of the destructive fires, which necessitated the use of the most easily replaceable material; the few silver tankards possessed by the Muscovites were rendered unattractive by the custom of cleaning drinking-vessels but once a year.

Inseparable from the inns are the bathing-places. In most cases the baths formed part of the premises of the inn. At Abano, near Padua, the chief bathing-resort of Italy, were private rooms with a guardaroba adjoining, through which latter a stream of the water could be turned on. Baden, in Switzerland, was exceptional in having baths under public control, for poor as well as for rich, besides those in private hands.

The inn at which Montaigne stayed had eleven kitchens; three hundred persons were catered for each day, one hundred and seventy-seven beds were made, and every one could reach his room without passing through any one’s else. Montaigne’s party engaged four rooms, containing no more than nine beds; two of the rooms had stoves; and a private bath adjoined. Swiss Baden possessed sixty baths, German Baden three hundred. Spa was much visited, but most of the watering-places have been practically forgotten, so far as the water is concerned: for instance, Pougues-les-Eaux, the chief centre in France; and Aachen, where there existed forty baths outside the town, although the chief ones were within.

The object of the visitors was nominally medicinal, but we read that ‘ Many come thither with no disease but that of love; and many times find remedy.’

Quite apart from bathing customs, however, decidedly free-and-easy as they were, the position of the lady traveler must frequently have been embarrassing. Many a husband, perhaps, may disbelieve that ladies ever did travel, in the days when no hot-water bottles existed; but that would be a mistake; there is record of at least two substitutes: one, a bag of heated semolina, or millet; the second, a dog. A more serious objection was that the privacy of the bedroom was not respected. Even in France, a murderer was lodged in Gölnitz’s room for the night, together with the six guardians who were escorting him to the place of trial; and in Picardy, bedrooms were merely partitioned off, doors and windows lying open all night with no means of fastening them. But a permanently open window would have been welcome on occasion: as when, in 1652, Mademoiselle de Montpensier lodged at an inn in Franche-Comté with no window at all in her room, and consequently had to do her hair at the door.

Again, respectable women would not be traveling alone, and as bedrooms were so few, they would always have to be prepared to share the room with their escort, even if no other man were admitted; a condition which persisted up to far more recent times. In 1762, a lawyer, traveling through Périgord with a lady who was a client of his, her son, and a girl, had to put up at an inn which owned but two beds, and those both in one room. This room, by the way, possessed two doors, one opening upon a meadow and with joinery so imperfect that a dog could have crept in underneath; no dog took the chance, it is true, but the wind did.

Of lodgings and pensions and houses for hire, it is unnecessary to speak, because, apart from the conditions of living that have already been indicated, there is nothing to distinguish them from those of to-day. Pensions are doubtless still to be found in the same variety now, as two hundred and fifty years ago, at Blois — ‘ dainty, magnificent, dirty, pretty fair, and stinking.'

Supervision over the inns was far stricter than at present, especially in Italy. At Lucca and at Florence all the inns were in a single street; and in many towns the new arrival was taken before the authorities by the guard at the gates before he was allowed to choose his inn, to which he would be conducted by a soldier. At Lucca, too, was a department of the judiciary, called della Loggia, which was specially concerned with strangers; and to this the innkeepers had to send a daily report of each guest. Yet to judge by the tourists’accounts, the supervision might well have been carried further, and reports upon the innkeepers required from the tourists. Such a system of double reports would have been a check on the murdering innkeeper, to whom there are occasional references. A landlord at Poitiers was detected, in the middle of the seventeenth century; and at Stralesund, so runs another tale, eight hundred (!) persons had disappeared at one inn. They had reappeared, it is true — but pickled. Another variety of innkeeper, who ran less risk but was equally dangerous, was he who was in league with robbers; it was common enough, if travelers may be believed, for robbers to have spies at the inns. At Acciaiuolo, near Naples, another device was practiced by the keeper of an atrocious inn. He had an understanding with the captains of coasting-vessels, the result of which was that the latter found it impossible to get any farther that night and would not allow the passengers to sleep in the boat.

But what a one-sided account this is — and must remain. The travelers may have suffered then, but those few who have thought fit to leave us record of their sufferings have not a man to answer them now. Dead are their persecutors, and dead the jolly host, and the even jollier hostess, and the ladiesin-waiting, and the willing ' boots,’ who so rarely get a word of recognition in these yellow pages; dead without a word. And rare are the tourists who give themselves away like Benvenuto Cellini, the blackguard! who admits that he ripped up forty crowns’ worth of bedding because he was asked to pay his bill overnight instead of in the morning; and then ran for his life.