Almost equally forceful were some of the old-time proprietors of the “George” at Walsall. In 1781 Mr. Thomas Fletcher, one of an old and highly respected family in that town, gave up the “Dragon” in High Street and built the great “George Hotel.” He even procured an Act of Parliament by which the present road from Walsall to Stafford was made, thereby bringing Walsall out of a by-road into the direct line of traffic. He also caused the Birmingham road to be straightened and widened, and gradually brought coaching and posting through the town. His successors, Fletcher and Sharratt, were equally energetic. In 1823 they remodelled the “George,” giving it the classic-columned front that confers a kind of third-cousin relationship to the British Museum, with unappetising and gruesome thoughts of dining on fried mummy and kippered parchments. The columns, which are still very solemnly there--or were, a year ago--came from the Marquis of Donegall’s neighbouring seat of Fisherwick Hall, demolished about that time, and the placing of them here was celebrated by an inaugural feast, “the colonnade dinner,” presided over by Lord Hatherton, a great patron of the house. Those wonder-working innkeepers also, in 1831, promoted the Bill by which the present Birmingham road through Perry Bar was made, superseding the old route by Hamstead and Handsworth church. Unfortunately, those fine old innkeepers, whatever else they were, were not usually cultivators of the art of literary expression, and did not write their memoirs and reminiscences. Yet they could, had they chosen, have told an interesting tale of men and matters. Consider! They were in the whirl of life, and often knew personages and affairs, not merely by report, but at first hand. What would not the historian of social England give for such reminiscences? They would open the door to much that is now sealed, and would clothe the dry bones of mere facts with romance. One such innkeeper, Mr. J. Kearsley Fowler, who kept the “White Hart,” Aylesbury, in the last few years of its existence, has, however, left us something by which we may see, described at first-hand, the life and surroundings of a first-class old coaching and posting inn between 1812 and those middle years of the ’60’s, when a few branch-road coaches were yet left, and the Squire and Agriculture were still prosperous. He tells us, of his own knowledge, that the innkeepers had by far the largest amount of capital invested in the country towns, where, as men generally of superior manners and education, from their constant association with the leading nobility, clergy, and magistracy, they took a prominent position, both socially and politically, the leading houses being the head quarters, respectively, of Whigs and Tories.