Again, it is easy to represent the landlord as a pliable
person who agrees with everybody; but the landlord of real life is a
person who is treated with deference, and who asserts his position in
the most pronounced fashion. If he has a good customer he is courteous
and obliging, but he keeps a strict hand on his company, and lets them
know who is master. Nearly all the landlords I have known since I became
a Loafer have been good fellows. They find it in their interest to be
generous, obliging, and friendly; but to represent them as timorous
sycophants is absurd. They are ordinary tradesmen; they have a good
opinion of themselves, and they hold their own with all classes of men.
The women are sometimes insolent, overdressed creatures, who heartily
despise their customers; but very often a landlord marries a lady who is
as far as possible from being like the hostess of fiction.
The temperance orators destroy their main chance of gaining a success by
their senseless attempts to be funny at the expense of the licensed
victuallers.
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