MDMD(1): Chapter 3 detail

[andrew at cee.hw.ac.uk]

Jeremy Osner writes:
> andrew at cee.hw.ac.uk wrote:
> > Chapter 3: Wicks reveals that he has reconstructed the previous scene
> > and we return to Mason & Dixon in a pub in Portsmouth, probably in
> > December 1760 or early January 1761. 

> I was a bit confused at the beginning of chapter 3; the conversation
> between M&D is set in a "Saloon", however Dixon keeps urging that they
> should go somewhere where they can drink -- implying that they can not
> do so where they are. Is an alternate meaning of "Saloon" in use here,
> or did I mix up the sequence of events?

Well spotted. That will teach me to trust that I know my own language.
M&D are reported to be in the `Saloon of Mason's Inn'. I looked up
saloon in the OED and it appears that in the middle 18th century it
meant a large meeting room in a hotel (it has several other
interesting meanings but it only came to mean a bar for drinking in
the US in the M19 and in Britain was first applied to cinema bars in
the M20 before it came to mean a lounge bar in a pub).

Inn of course means a hotel, not a pub.


Andrew Dinn
-----------
And though Earthliness forget you,
To the stilled Earth say:  I flow.
To the rushing water speak:  I am.