The Descriptive Writing of Martha Grimes

 

The Oxford Arm Inn was demolished in 1887.

The following excerpt continues our series on excellent descriptive writing. This is from The Man with a Load of Mischief by Martha Grimes, Chapter 5.

    The English inn stands permanently planted at the confluence of the roads of history, memory, and romance. Who has not, in his imagination, leaned from its timbered galleries over the cobbled courtyard to watch the coaches pull in, the horses' breath fogging the air as they stamp on dark winter evenings? Who has not read of these long, squat buildings with mullioned windows; sunken, uneven floors; massive beams and walls hung round with copper; kitchens where joints once turned on spits, and hams hung from ceilings. There by the fireplace the travelers of lesser quality might sit on wood stools or settles with cups of ale. There the hustling landlady sent the housemaids scurrying like mice to their duties. Battalions of chambermaids with lavendered sheets, scullions, footmen, drawers, stage-coachmen, and that Jack-of-all trades Boots waited to assist the traveler to and from the heavy oaken doors. Often he could not be sure whether the floor would be covered with hay, or what bodies might have to be stepped over or crept past on his way to breakfast, if he slept in an inner room. But the breakfast more than made up for the discomfort of the night, with kidney pies and pigeon pies, hot mutton pasties, tankards of ale, and muffins and tea, poached eggs and thick rashers of bacon.

    Who has not alighted with Mr. Pickwick in the courtyard square of The Blue Lion at Mugggleton; or eaten oysters with Tom Jones at The Bell in Gloucestershire; or suffered with Keats at the inn at Burford Bridge? Or, hungry and thirsty who has not paused for a half-pint of bitter and a cut of blue-veined Stilton, flakey Cheshire, or a knob of cheddar; or known that he would always find the brass gleaming, the wood polished, the fire enormous, the beer dark, the host tweeded, and, upstairs, the halls dark and narrow, the snug room nearly impossible to find - up two stairs, down three, turn right, up five, walk ten paces, like a child playing hide and seek or a counting game? If the streamers are gone from the white caps, and the host is there more in spirit than in fact, like a smile hovering in air - still, with all of this wealth in the vaults of memory, one could almost forget that the pound had dropped."

Related reading: Excerpt from Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop