Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/1997/11/02/murphys_gift.php
Sunday, November 2, 1997
'Sir,' said Johnson to Boswell, exhaling loudly, 'there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.'
Through extensive personal research, Dr. Johnson knew whereof he spoke, and his famous Literary Club met at Mitre Tavern.
So it is not surprising that what many consider the most important building at Dartmouth College has emerged as such during the last few years on Main Street in the small college town of Hanover, New Hampshire. This is 'Murphy's,' right there in northern New England.
The inspiration of Murphy's, however, is not New but Old England.
One important thing about an English or Irish pub is its communal quality. Whether in a small rural town or in the middle of London, it is always the hub of a community. Anyone is welcome, but there are always regulars.
The 'Rose and Crown' might stand in a small town in the west of England with some such fantastic name as Woonton-under-Edge. There it forms an informal club of darts-players and Guinness drinkers, and everyone from around nearby drops in for a pint.
Or the 'Eagle and Onion' might be in the London financial district and full of brokers from that neighborhood enjoying kidney pie and Red Barrel. But they are regulars, and this is their neighborhood.
So it is at Murphy's in Hanover, where the neighborhood consists of townspeople from the region, college students, Dartmouth faculty, athletes, tourists, men, women, old and young. Murphy's is the infinitely hospitable hub of this neighborhood.
It is of the essence of a pub that it not look new. So there is nothing plastic or chic or cute about Murphy's. Instead you find dark wood, a long polished bar, shiny metal fountains for beer, and rows of old books on shelves along the wall.
A good pub has memorabilia, and Murphy's has historic photographs and much of sports interest, including a framed celebration of Dartmouth's 10-0 1996 football team. Conviviality extends late into the evening, especially when there is a Monday night football game.
At Harvard the 1890s bar Cronin's is gone now, with its white-tiled floor, an evil-looking office building in its place. Where did all the oars go that once hung on the walls, and the ancient footballs: Harvard 32 Yale 3. Yale still has Mory's. My initials are carved into one of the 'tables down at Mory's.' You get to do that after drinking their Green Cup — an evil mixture — out of a silver trophy. At Penn they may still lift a highball at nightfall, and Columbia owns New York, but Dartmouth now has Murphy's.
All day, and through the evening, as Ben Jonson wrote,
The generous board doth flow
With all that hospitality doth know...
Here no man counts my cups, nor standing by,
A waiter doth my gluttony envy:
But gives me what I call, and lets me eat.
Murphy's is the creation of Nigel Leeming, a New Zealander who went to Boston College, a wit and a gentleman, a rugby player and a New England Patriots fanatic. He even travelled to the Super Bowl to enjoy the carnage.
With Nigel in charge, anyone who does not feel at home in Murphy's is fit to be in a Steig or a Thurber cartoon.
Like Doctor Johnson and his ancestor Ben Jonson, I consider the man who creates a good tavern an artist and a benefactor of mankind. Ben Jonson hung out at the Mermaid, where he traded puns with Shakespeare and the boys as the tankards went round.
I did mention England. There my own favorite pub, after a fellowship year of research into the subject, is called The Turf, in Oxford. To get to get to it, you walk down Broad Street ('The Broad'), past Blackwell's bookstore and turn left into the inconspicuous mouth of a very narrow alley between two medieval colleges. This alley is so narrow that neither Falstaff nor Chaucer's Friar could possibly squeeze through it The alley opens into a small courtyard where crouches The Turf.
Inside the tiny thatched building everything is very fine indeed, but The Turf is also famous for its men's room, or, rather, the graffiti in its men's room. This is an art form. Wit only is acceptable, never vulgarity. Such graffiti as: 'Rupert in love with the mannequin in Marks Spencer's window,' and, with reference to the Cubist painter, 'Balls, by Braque: n n.'
Murphy's hasn't established a tradition of elegant graffiti as yet, but the beer — foreign and American — is as good as the beer at The Turf. And the food is far better. To tell the absolute truth, the food at The Turf is pretty bad. Stay away from the pork pies — if you drop one, it goes right through the floor — and from the pickled eggs. The special of the day is likely to be a few boiled carrots and peas along with a wilted piece of some sort of meat.
What you have to do to get a cold martini at The Turf I was never able to discover. But the martinis at Murphy's are of Hemingway quality — he liked to freeze his in tennis ball cans — and the food is extraordinary: Angus burgers and sirloins, sesame seared Yellow Fin tuna, cajun catfish with Louisiana gumbo, Prince Edward Island mussels in a Saffron broth, Stinky Rose pasta, Murphy's Irish stew and California chicken on foccacia. They all are consumed with delight by the brethren at Murphy's.
Now, since Nigel is a wit and Murphy's has its literary clientele, it will be fitting to end with Oliver Goldsmith's tribute to that exquisite country tavern in the little town of Auburn:
Low lies that house where nut-brown draughts inspired
Where grey-beard mirth and smiling toil retired...
The white-washed wall, the nicely sanded floor,
The varnished clock that clicked behind the door:
Yes, yes, yes, Murphy's really is the most important building at Dartmouth.