XI. THE HOUSE AND THE TABLE…

XI. THE HOUSE AND THE TABLE

Instead of carved or painted signs hung above the doors, many shop and tavern keepers preferred to designate their houses after some external feature, such as the colour of the building--thus we find the Red house, the White house, the Blue house, the Dark house, &c. Others painted their door-posts a particular colour, whence the origin of the well-known BLUE POSTS. In still older times painted posts or poles in front of the houses seem occasionally to have served as signs; to some such distinction, at least Caxton’s RED POLES, as mentioned in one of his advertisements, seems to refer:--

“If it please ony man spirituel or temporel to bye our pyes of two or thre comemoracio’s of salisburi use, emprynted after the form of this prese’t letre whiche ben wel and truly correct, late hym come Westmonester into the almonestrye at the REED PALE, and he shal have them good and chepe:

Supplico stet cedula.”

Even in the seventeenth century such a distinction was still occasionally used, as the GREEN PALES in Peter Street, Westminster;[543]--and Stukeley[544] speaks of Mr Brown’s garden at the GREEN POLES, where an urn was dug up lined with lead and filled with earth and bones. In Etheredge’s play “She Would if she Could,” the BLACK POSTS in James Street are named, (Act i., sc. 1, 1703;) whilst the newspapers in the beginning of the eighteenth century contain advertisements stating that the mineral water from Hampstead Wells might be obtained, at the rate of 3d. a flask, from the lessee of the wells, who lived at the BLACK POSTS in King Street, near Guildhall.

GARDEN-HOUSES, or Summer-houses, attached to a building, were also used to designate shops and residences, as appears from a trades token “at the garden-house in Blackfriars,” and also from a newspaper advertisement of 1679, where the garden-house in King Street, St Giles, is mentioned. Frequent allusions to these garden-houses are found in the old plays; they appear to have been similar in all intents and purposes to the petites maisons of the profligate French nobility in the times of the Régence. Stubbe, in his “Anatomy of Abuses,” severely attacks them:--

“In the suburbes of the citie they have gardens either paled or walled round about very high, with their harbers and bowers fit for the purpose; and lest they might be espied in those open places, they have their banqueting houses, with galleries, turrets, and what not, therein sumptuously erected, wherein they may, and doubtless do, many of them, play the filthy persons.”

The young Rake in Shakespeare’s spurious play of the “London Prodigal,” (1604,) says to the lady:--

“Now, God thank you, sweet lady, if you have any friend, or a garden-house where you may employ a poor gentleman as your friend, I am yours to command in all sweet service.”

And Corisca in Massinger’s “Bondsman,” (Act i., sc. 3):--

“And if need be I have a couch and banqueting-house in my orchard, where many a man of honour has not scorned to spend an afternoon.”

He also alludes to it in the “City Madam.” A remnant of this custom is still to be traced in a few country towns, (Sunderland for instance,) where the middle classes have little gardens, in the outskirts of the town, with bowers and wooden summer-houses for tea-drinkings. In Holland they still flourish; the family usually take tea in them, whilst paterfamilias placidly smokes his pipe and listens to the croaking of the frogs and the lowing of the cows in the flat meadows beyond.

The WELL AND BUCKET is a sign in Shoreditch, not badly chosen, as it intimates an inexhaustible supply; it is of very old standing in London, for it is mentioned in the “Paston Letters” in the year 1472.[545]

“I pray God send you all your desires and me my mewed goss-hawk in haste, or, rather than fail, a scar-hawk; there is a grocer dwelling right over against the WELL WITH TWO BUCKETS, a little from St Helen’s Church, hath ever hawks to sell.”

The anxiety about the bird, expressed in this letter, is most amusing:--“I ask no more good of you for all the services that I shall do you, while the world standeth, but a goss-hawk,” is the commencement of the letter, which concludes:--

“Now, think on me, good lord, for if I have not an hawk I shall wax fat for default of labour, and dead for default of company by my troth.”

In old times the ale-house windows were generally open, so that the company within might enjoy the fresh air, and see all that was going on in the street; but, as the scenes within were not always fit to be seen by the “profanum vulgus” that passed by, a trellis was put up in the open window. This trellis, or lattice, was generally painted red, to the intent, it has been jocularly suggested, that it might harmonise with the rich hue of the customers’ noses; which effect, at all events, was obtained by the choice of this colour. Thus Pistol says:--

“He called me even now by word through a red lattice, and I could see no part of his face from the window.”

The same idea is expressed in the “Last Will and Testament of Lawrence Lucifer,” 1604:--

“Watched sometimes ten hours together in an ale-house, ever and anon peeping forth and sampling thy nose with the red lattice.”

So common was this fixture, that no ale-house was without it:--

“A whole street is in some places but a continuous ale-house, not a shop to be seen between red lattice and red lattice.”--Decker’s English Villanies Seven Times Pressed to Death.

At last it became synonymous with ale-house:--

“As well known by my wit as an ale-house by a red lattice.”[546]

“Trusty Rachel was drinking burnt brandy with a couple of tinder-box cryers at the next red lattice.”[547]

The lattices continued in use until the beginning of the eighteenth century, and after they disappeared from the windows were adopted as signs, and as such they continue to the present day. The GREEN LATTICE occurs on a trades token of Cock Lane, and still figures at the door of an ale-house in Billingsgate, whilst not many years ago there was one, in Brownlow Street, Holborn, which had been corrupted into the GREEN LETTUCE.

When balconies were newly introduced, they were also used in the place of signs. Lord Arundel was the inventor of them, and Covent Garden the first place where they became general. “Every house here has one of ’em,” says Richard Broome, in 1659. Trades tokens “of THE BELLCONEY,” in Bedford Street, are still extant, and also tokens of “John Williams, the king’s chairman, at y^{e} lower end of St Martin’s Lane, AT Y^{E} BALCONEY. 1667.” The first house that adopted a balcony was situated at the corner of Chandos Street, “which country people were wont much to gaze on;” soon, however, they became so common that further distinctions had to be added, as the IRON BALCONY, (St James’ Street, 1699,) the BLUE AND GILT BALCONY, (Hatton Street, 1673.) Lamps have also, for two or three centuries, frequently done duty as signs, and continue still to act as beacons to those who want the assistance of the doctor, the chemist, or the sweep. Ale and coffee-houses, too, are frequently decorated with gorgeous lamps: this was already the custom in Tom Brown’s time:--

“Every coffee-house is illuminated both without and within doors; without by a fine Glass Lanthorn, and within by a woman so light and splendid you may see through her without the help of a Perspective.”[548]

The Moorfield quacks had always lamps at their doors at night, with round glasses, having the same colours as the balls in their signs, and this custom has been handed down to our day by the chemists, who still have circular, red, green, and yellow bull’s-eye glasses in their lamps.

In Paris, in the sixteenth century, the pastry-cooks used at nights to place a kind of lamp in their windows, which acted as magic lanterns. They were made of transparent paper, covered with rudely-painted figures of men and animals. Regnier mentions them in his eleventh satire:--

“Ressemblait transparent une lanterne vive, Dont quelques patissiers amusent les enfants, Où des oysons bridez, guenuches, elefans, Chiens, chats, lièvres, renards, et mainte estrange beste Courent l’une après l’autre.”[549]

A Dutch grocer, in the seventeenth century, put up the sign of the BURNING LAMP, and wrote under it the following distich:--

“Myn lampje brant uyt den Orienten, Ik verkoop oly, vygen en krenten.”[550]

The BRASS KNOCKER in the Great Gardens, Bristol, is another sign taken from the exterior of the house; also the FLOWER-POT, which was very common in old London: one of the last remaining stood at the corner of Bishopsgate and Leadenhall Streets. It dated from an early period, and was, in the heyday of its fame, a celebrated coaching inn. The introduction of railroads, however, gave it a death-blow; for some time it continued to languish as a starting-point for omnibuses, and was finally demolished to make room for merchants’ offices in 1863. Trades tokens of this inn are extant in the Beaufoy collection. Mr Burn, the compiler of the catalogue of this collection, suggests that the Flower-pot was originally the vase of lilies, always represented in the old pictures of the Salutation or Annunciation; according to his theory the Angel and the Virgin were omitted at the Reformation, and nothing but the vase left. This, however, seems somewhat improbable. There is no apparent reason why it should not have been a real flower-pot, or rather vase, which our ancestors frequently had on the top of the pent-houses above their shops. In order to distinguish them from ordinary flower-pots, some painted theirs blue, thus the sign of the BLUE FLOWER-POT, as appears from the advertisement of Cornelius a Tilborgh, who styles himself “sworn chirurgeon in ordinary to King Charles II., to our late sovereign King William, as also to her present majesty Queen Anne.” This worthy lived in Great Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Holborn Row, and besides the Blue Flower-pot at his front door, his customers might recognise the house, by “a light at night over the door,” and a Blue Ball at the back-door. The TWO BLUE FLOWER-POTS used to be a sign in Dean Street, Soho; and the TWO FLOWER-POTS AND SUN DIAL in Parker’s Lane, near Drury Lane, (London Gazette, Sept. 16-19, 1700.)

Innumerable objects from the interior of the house were likewise adopted as signs, such as furniture of all kinds, and domestic utensils. The upholsterers, for instance, generally selected pieces of furniture. At the end of the last century THE ROYAL BED was a great favourite, as may be seen from engravings on several of the shop bills in the Banks collection; the bed in olden times was a very important article in a household, and was always particularly named in the will. Upholsterers in those days were also frequently called bed-joiners. Next we have the BOARD or Table, still a great favourite in the north--in Durham alone at least sixty public-houses with that sign could be named.

The mention of the Table affords an opportunity for particularising those good things which usually grace the festive board. First of all there is the SALT HORN, (at Bradford and Leeds,) which formerly at dinner marked the line of demarcation; for whether a guest was to be placed above or below the salt was a matter of etiquette strictly to be attended to. In Dudley we find a very substantial and tempting ROUND OF BEEF, with the following rhymes:--

“If you are hungry or a-dry, Or your stomach out of order, There’s sure relief at the Round of Beef, For both these two disorders.”

The roast beef of old England is further represented by THE RIBS OF BEEF, in Wensum Street, Norwich. THE FLANK OF BEEF at Spalding, the much less tempting COW ROAST at Hampstead, besides a couple of unpretending BEEF-STEAKS in Bath. Our bill of fare also contains plenty of mutton, sometimes rehaussé with a poetic sauce, as one that was at Hackney in the last century, THE SHOULDER OF MUTTON AND CAT, having the following rhymes:--

“Pray Puss, don’t tear, For the Mutton is so dear; Pray Puss, don’t claw, For the Mutton yet is raw.”

The sign is still there, but the verses are gone. This suggested to another innkeeper on the common at Horsham, the sign of the DOG AND BACON. An epicurean publican at Yapton, Arundel, has a more gastronomic combination, viz.:--the SHOULDER OF MUTTON AND CUCUMBERS. It was at the SHOULDER OF MUTTON in Brecknock that Mrs Siddons, England’s greatest tragic actress, was born, July 14, 1755. “Fancy,” writes an enthusiastic biographer, “the English Melpomene behind the bar of such a place!” Legs of Mutton on the signboard do not appear to be so common as Shoulders. But by far the finest of all the dishes represented on the signboard was the BOAR’S HEAD, in Eastcheap, for the character of the famous inn patronised by Jack Falstaff makes the association of an excellent dish much more natural than any heraldic origin. The first mention of this inn occurs in the testament of William Warden, in the reign of Richard II., who gave “all that tenement called the Boar’s Head in Eastcheap,” to a college of priests, or chaplains, founded by Sir W. Walworth, the Lord Mayor, in the adjoining church of St Michael, Crooked Lane. The presence of “Prince Hal” in this house was no invention of Shakespeare; history records his pranks, how one night, with his two brothers, John and Thomas, he made such a riot that they had to be taken before the magistrate. No wonder, then, at the proud inscription on the sign, which still existed in Maitland’s time:--“This is the chief tavern in London.” At one time the portal was decorated with carved oak figures of Falstaff and Prince Henry; and in 1834 the former was in the possession of a brazier of Eastcheap, whose ancestors had lived in the shop he then occupied since the great fire. The last great Shakespearian dinner-party at the Boar’s Head took place about 1784, on which occasion Wilberforce and Pitt were present, and though there were many professed wits, Pitt was the most amusing of the company.

On the removal of a mound of rubbish at Whitechapel, brought there after the great fire, a carved boxwood bas-relief boar’s head was found, set in a circular frame formed by two boars’ tusks, mounted and united with silver. An inscription to the following effect was pricked in the back:--“Wm. Brooke, Landlord of the Bore’s Hedde, Estchepe, 1566.” This object, formerly in the possession of Mr Stamford, the celebrated publisher, was sold at Christie and Manson’s, on January 27, 1855, and was bought by Mr Halliwell.[551]

The original inn having been destroyed by the fire, was rebuilt and continued in existence until 1831, when it was finally demolished to make way for the streets leading to new London Bridge. Its site was between Small Alley and St Michael’s Lane. The ancient sign, carved in stone, with the initials I. T. and the date 1668, is now preserved in the City of London Library, Guildhall.

In the month of May 1718, one James Austin, “inventor of the Persian ink powder,” desiring to give his customers a substantial proof of his gratitude, invited them to the Boar’s Head to partake of an immense plum-pudding. This pudding weighed 1000 lbs.; a baked pudding of 1 foot square, and the best piece of an ox roasted: the principal dish was put in the copper on Monday, May 12, at the RED LION Inn, by the Mint in Southwark, and had to boil fourteen days. From there it was to be brought to the SWAN TAVERN, in Fish Street Hill, accompanied by a band of music playing--“What lumps of pudding my mother gave me;” one of the instruments was a drum in proportion to the pudding, being 18 feet 2 inches in length, and 4 feet diameter, which was drawn by “a device fixt on six asses.” Finally the monstrous pudding was to be divided in St George’s Fields, but apparently its smell was too much for the gluttony of the Londoners; the escort was routed, the pudding taken and devoured, and the whole ceremony brought to an end, before Mr Austin had a chance to regale his customers.

Puddings seem to have been the forte of this Austin. Twelve or thirteen years before this last pudding, he had baked one for a wager, ten feet deep in the Thames, near Rotherhithe, by enclosing it in a great tin pan, and that in a sack of lime: it was taken up after about two hours and a half, and eaten with great relish, its only fault being that it was somewhat overdone. The bet was for more than £100. Austin was also noted for his fireworks.

The back windows of the Boar’s Head looked out upon the burial-ground of St Michael’s Church,[552] and there rested all that was mortal of one of the waiters of this tavern. His tomb, in Purbeck stone, had the following epitaph:--

“HERE LIETH THE BODYE of Robert Preston, late Drawer at the Boar’s Head Tavern, Great Eastcheap, who departed this Life, March 16, Anno Domini, 1730, aged 27 years.”

“Bacchus, to give the topeing world surprize, Produc’d one sober son, and here he lies. Tho’ nurs’d among full Hogsheads, he defy’d The charm of wine and ev’ry vice beside. O Reader, if to Justice thou ’rt inclin’d, Keep Honest Preston daily in thy Mind. He drew good wine, took care to fill his pots, Had sundry virtues that outweighed his fauts (sic) You that on Bacchus have the like dependance, Pray, copy Bob, in measure and attendance.”[553]

Amongst other Boar’s Head Inns, we may notice one in Southwark, the property of Sir John Falstolf of Caistor Castle, Norfolk, who died in 1460, and whose name Shakespeare adopted in the play. Then there was another one without Aldgate, as appears from the following curious document:--

“At St James’s the v daye of September, an. 1557.

“A letter to the Lord Mayor of London, to give order forthwith that some of his officers do forthwith repaire to the Boreshed w^{hout} Aldgate, where the Lordes are enformed a lewde Playe, called ‘A Sacke full of Newse,’ shall be plaied this daye, the Playeres whereof he is willed to apprehende and to comitt to safe warde, untill he shall heare further from hence, and to take their Playsbook from them, and to send the same hither.

“At West^{r} the vj daye of Sep. 1557.”[554]

At the beginning of this century there was a noted tavern in Bond Street, called THE BRAWN’S HEAD, and the general opinion was, that at one time it had a brawn or boar’s head for its sign; this, however, was a mistake; the house was named after the head of a noted cook whose name was Theophilus Brawn, formerly landlord of Rummer Tavern in Great Queen Street, and the article (as the letters THE were usually supposed to be) was simply an abbreviation of the man’s magnificent Christian name.

All these gastronomic signs, doubtless, originated in the old custom of landlords selling eatables:--

“You brave-minded and most joviall Sardanapalitans,” saith Taylor the Water poet, addressing the country tavern-keepers, “have power and prerogative (cum privilegio) to receive, lodge, feast, and feed, both man and beast. You have the happinesse to Boyle, Roast, Broyle, and Bake, Fish, Flesh, and Foule, whilst we in London have scarce the command of a Gull, a widgeon, or a woodcock.”

In a little volume of 1685, entitled “The Praise of Yorkshire ale,” we are told that Bacchus held a parliament in the SUN, behind the Exchange in York, to consider the adulteration of wine, the various drinking vessels, and other matters sold in alehouses, as:--

“Papers of sugar, with such like knacks, Biskets, Luke olives, Anchoves, Caveare, Neats’ tongues, Westphalia Hambs, and Such like cheat, Crabs, Lobsters, Collar Beef, Cold puddings, oysters, and such like stuff.”

Hence, then, the once common sign of the THREE NEATS’ TONGUES, one of which still exists in Spitalfields; another one in the eighteenth century was very appropriately situated in Bull and Mouth Street.[555] The HAM is the usual porkman’s sign, though at Walmyth, in Yorkshire, there is a public-house sign of the HAM AND FIRKIN. THE CRAB AND LOBSTER Inn occurs at Ventnor; the LOBSTER is a sign on trades tokens of a shop in Bearbinder (now St Swithin’s) Lane, and also near the Maypole in the Strand; the CRAWFISH at Thursford Guist, in Norfolk, and the BUTT AND OYSTER at Chelmondiston, Ipswich. Those eatables, all more or less salt, were sold as incitements to drink, and went by the cant term of shoeing horns, gloves, or pullers-on. They are often alluded to by ancient authors:--

“Then, sir, comes me up a service of shoeing-horns of all sorts, salt cakes, red herrings, anchoves, and gammon of bacon, and abundance of such pullers-on.”--Bishop Hall’s Mundus alter et idem.

The PIE was a sign in very early times, and gave its name to Pie Corner, “a place so called from such a sign, sometimes a fair inn for receipt of travellers.”--Stow, p. 139. One of the most famous inns with that sign was the PIE in Aldgate.

“One ask’d a friend where Captain Shark did lye, Why, sir, quoth he, at Aldgate at the Pye. Away, quoth th’ other, he lies not there, I know’t. No, sayes the other, then he lies in ’s throat.”

Wits’ Recreation, p. 185, vol. ii.

De Foe, in his “History of the Plague,” tells of “a dreadful set of fellows” who used to revel and roar nightly in that inn during the time the plague was at its height, but within a fortnight all of them were buried. The COCK AND PIE was once common. At an inn in Ipswich there used to be a rude representation of a cock perched on a pie, which was discovered whilst the house was undergoing some repairs. It was also, about the middle of last century, the sign of a house famed for conviviality, which stood on the site of the present Rathbone Place, Oxford Street, and was the resort of the “fancy” of those days. A row of fine elms connected this house with another, noted for the manufacture of Bath buns and Tunbridge water-cakes, the latter a dainty now almost obsolete, but which then was so famous, that it was one of the London cries, being sold by a man on horseback. With regard to the origin of the sign COCK AND PIE, both the ancient Catholic oath, to swear by Cock and Pie, (by God and the Pie, or Roman Catholic service book,) and the fable of the magpie (Old English pie, or pye) and the peacocks, have each been duly considered by us; but the sign is probably only an abbreviation of the Peacock and Pie. In ancient times the peacock was a favourite dish, and was introduced on the table in a pie; the head, with gilt beak, being elevated above the crust, and the beautiful feathers of the tail expanded. As a dainty dish, then, it may have been put up, like the other good things of this world, just mentioned, as a trap to hungry or epicurean passers-by; at last the dish went out of fashion, the name even became a mystery, and was rendered by the sign-painters, according to their own understanding, by a COCK AND MAGPIE, which is still very common. There is a public-house with such a sign in Drury Lane, which was already in existence more than two centuries ago, when the rest of Drury Lane was still occupied by farms and gardens, and the mansions of the Drury family. Hither the youths and maidens of the metropolis, who, on May-day, danced round the Maypole in the Strand, were accustomed to resort for cakes and ale, and other refreshments. This ale-house gave its name to the Cock and Pye Fields, between Drury Lane and St Giles’ Hospital. At Chatsworth, the original name was mutilated by a provincialism into the COCK AND PYNOT, (Derbyshire, for Magpie.) In this ale-house, still existing, the Revolution of 1688 was plotted, between Thomas Osborne Earl of Danby, William Cavendish Earl of Devonshire, and Mr John d’Arcy. They met by appointment on a heath adjoining the house, but a shower of rain coming on, they adjourned to the inn. The room is still shown in which the conspirators met. In Hone’s “Table Book” there is a woodcut of the inn, showing the wooden construction across the road, by which the signs in villages were generally suspended.

Lastly, we may mention the PICKLED EGG, in Clerkenwell. As the origin of this sign, it is said that Charles II. here once partook of the dish, which so flattered the landlord, that he adopted it as his sign, and so it has remained till this day. It has given its name to a lane called Pickled Egg Walk, in which there was a notorious cocking-house, frequently mentioned in advertisements circa 1775.

We may very appropriately terminate the gastronomic signs with the CHESHIRE CHEESE, which is still very common; there is a famous tavern of this name in Wine Office Court, Fleet Street, and numerous public-houses in the country have adopted it as their signs. And as we began with the Salt Horn we will end with the MUSTARD-POT, which was the sign of a mustard shop in Holland, in the seventeenth century, with these rhymes:--

“Ik lever uyt Een zeldzaam kruyt Daar zyn der weinig in de stad Of ik heb ze by de neus gehad.”[556]

This reminds us of a rather indelicate sign of a mustard shop, formerly in the Rue du Chatel, at Beauvais, but now in the Musée d’Antiquités of that town, representing a fool stirring mustard in a barrel with a large stick, whilst a tall grinning monkey stands just opposite, assisting him in a way we need not describe.

Drinkables are not frequent as signs, if we except such as the RHENISH WINE HOUSE, and the CANARY HOUSE; two taverns of Old London, named after the wines they sold. BARLEY BROTH, BEE’S-WING, and YORKSHIRE STINGO, are at present all three common: the first applies either to whisky or beer; the second is the delicate crimson film left in bottles by old port wine, and Yorkshire stingo is the well-known name of a kind of ale. From a house with this name in the New Road, the first pair of London omnibuses were started, July 4, 1829, running to the Bank and back: they were constructed to carry twenty-two passengers, all inside; the fare was one shilling, or sixpence for half the distance, together with the luxury of a newspaper. A Mr J. Shillibeer was the owner of these carriages, and the first conductors were the two sons of a British naval officer.

Drinking vessels are very appropriate ale-house signs. Amongst the oldest certainly ranks the BLACK JACK, common even in the present day, although the vessel that it represented is long since fallen into disuse: it was a leather bottle, sometimes lined with silver or other metal, and perhaps took its name from a part of the soldiers’ armour. Sometimes it was ornamented with little silver bells “to ring peales of drunkeness,” in which case it was called a “gyngle boy.”[557] This primitive bottle has been celebrated in one of the Roxburghe Ballads, (vol. iii., fol. 433:)--

“God above that made all things, The heaven, and earth, and all therein, The ships that on the sea do swim For to keepe the enemies out that none come in, And let them all do what they can, It is for the use and pains of man; And I wish in heaven his soul may dwell, Who first devized the leather bottle.”

Its various good qualities are next explained, and finally:--

“Then when this bottle doth grow old, And will no longer good liquor hold, Out of its side you may take a clout, Will mend your shoes when they are worn out, Else take it and hang it upon a pin, It will serve to put odd trifles in, As hinges, awls, and candle ends, For young beginners must have such things.”

There is another ballad in the same collection, (vol i., fol. 107,) entitled “Time’s Alteration, or the Old Man’s Rehearsal,” which speaks of the black jack in the following terms:--

“Black jacks to euery man Were filled with wine and Beere, No pewter Pot nor Canne In those days did appeare:

* * * * *

We took not such delight In cups of silver fine; No pewter Pot nor Canne In those days did appeare:

* * * * *

None under the degree of a knight In Plate drunk Beere or Wine.”

But we may glean more full and complete particulars from Heywood’s “Philocothonista or Drunkard Opened, Dissected and Anatomized,” 1635, where we get a detailed inventory of all the various drinking vessels of the day:--

“Of drinking Cups divers and sundry sorts we have; some of elme, some of box, some of maple, some of holly, etc. Mazers, broad mouthed dishes, naggins, whiskins, piggins, creuzes, alebowles, wassel bowles, court dishes, tankards, kannes, from a pottle to a pint, from a pint to a gill. Other bottles we have of leather, but they are most used amongst the shepheards and harvest people of the countrey: small jacks wee have in many alehouses of the citie and suburbs lipt with silver: blackjacks and bombards at the Court; which when the Frenchmen first saw, they reported at their return into their countrey that the Englishmen used to drinke out of their bootes. We have besides cups made of hornes of beastes, of cockernuts,[558] of goords, of eggs of estriches; others made of the shells of divers fishes brought from the Indies and other places, and shining like mother of pearle. Come to plate, every taverne can afford you flat bowles, french bowles, prounet cups, beare bowles, beakers; and private householders in the citie, when they make a feaste to entertain their friends, can furnish their cupboards with flaggons, tankards, beere cups, wine bowles, some white, some percell guilt, some guilt all over, some with covers, others without, of sundry shapes and qualities.”

That they were of ancient use and high in price appears from an entry in the expenses of John, King of France, when prisoner in England after the battle of Poictiers, 1359-60:--

“Pour deux bouteilles de cuir achetées a Londres pour Monseigneur Philippe . . . . . . . . . . . . 9s. 8d.”

Though these vessels are now completely superseded by pewter and glass, yet their memory still lives on the signboard, and the LEATHER BOTTLE is anything but an uncommon ale-house emblem at the present day. There is one still to be seen, carved in wood, suspended in front of an old ale-house at the corner of Charles Street, Hatton Garden. In Germany, also, the leather bottle was once in use; drinking vessels of various materials, in the shape of a boot, are common in that country, usually with this inscription:--

“Wer sein Stiefel nit drinken kan, Der ist führwahr kein Teutscher Man.”

The Black-jack Tavern, in Clare Market, still in existence, acquired some celebrity from being the favourite haunt of Joe Miller, the reputed author of the famous Jest Book. The house was also for a long time known by the cant name of the Jump, which it had received from the fact of Jack Sheppard one day escaping the clutches of Jonathan Wild’s emissaries by jumping from a window into the street, and so making his escape. From the Leather Bottle to the GOLDEN BOTTLE is not so great a step as would appear at first sight, the golden bottle being simply the leather bottle gilt, as may be seen above the door of Messrs Hoare the bankers, in Fleet Street, a firm established for centuries under the same sign, although not always occupying the same premises. In the “Little London Directory for 1677” we find:--“James Hore at the Golden Bottle in Cheapside,” one of the goldsmiths that kept “running cashes.” In 1693 we find Mr Richard Hoare, a goldsmith, “at the Golden Bottle” in Cheapside, but in 1718 the house in Cheapside seems to have had a second occupant:--

“DROPT or taken from a Ladies’ side on Tuesday, the 25^{th} of March, coming from the Spanish ambassadour’s at St James’ Square, a gold watch and chain, with a seal to it, a pendulum[559] on the outside; Windmill the maker. Whoever brings it to Mr Madding, Goldsmith at the Golden Bottle, the upper end of Cheapside, or to Jonathan Wilde, over against the Duke of Grafton’s Head in the Old Bailey, shall have 8 Guineas and no questions asked.”--Daily Courant, April 5, 1718.

That the GOLDEN CAN was also an old sign may be concluded from a mention in the nursery rhyme:--

“Little Brown Betty lived at the Golden Can, Where she brewed good ale for gentlemen. And gentlemen came every day, Till little brown Betty she hopt away.”

Where the fact of little brown Betty brewing good ale points to a very old custom, when ale-wives flourished, and Eleanor Rumying and her gossips brewed their own ale. The GOLDEN CAN is still to be seen on two public-houses in Norwich. The GUILDED CUP in Houndsditch is mentioned in a quaint little pamphlet on the virtues of “Warme Beere,” 1641.

THE FLASK was the sign of an old-established tavern in Ebury Square, Pimlico. In the last century there were two famous Flask taverns in Hampstead; the one called the Lower Flask was an inn at the foot of the hill, and is mentioned in the following advertisement, printed on the cover of the original edition of the Spectator, No. 428:--

“This is to give notice that Hampstead Fair is to be kept upon the Lower Flask Tavern Walk, on Friday, the first of August, and holds for four days.”

The UPPER FLASK was a place of public entertainment near the summit of Hampstead Hill, and is now a private residence. Here Richardson sends his Clarissa:--“The Hampstead coach, when the dear fugitive came to it, had but two passengers in it, but she made the fellow go off directly, paying for the vacant places. The two passengers directing the coachman to set them down at the Upper Flask, she bid them set her down there also.” The well-known Kit-Kat Club used to meet at this tavern in the summer months; and here, after it became a private abode, George Steevens, the celebrated critic and antiquary, lived and died.

Besides these, more homely vessels occur as publicans’ signs at the present day, which it requires no stretch of imagination to understand the meaning of, as the PITCHER AND GLASS, the BROWN JUG, the JUG AND GLASS, the BOTTLE AND GLASS, the FOAMING QUART, &c. At Newark the BOTTLE is accompanied by the following inscription:--

“From this Bottle I am sure You’ll get a glass both good and pure, In opposition to a many, I’m striving hard to get a penny.”

The PEWTER POT, an old sign, is thus alluded to by Randle Holme.[560]

“This should be looked upon by all good artists to be the most ignoble and dishonourable bearing; but as the custom takes away the sense of dislike, so the frequent use takes away the dishonour, which is seen by those multitudes that have it for their cognizance, in so much that it is painted over their doors by the wayside.”[561]

The Pewter Pot, in Leadenhall Street, was a famous carriers’ and coaching inn in 1681. There are also the SIX CANS, in High Holborn, (a sign evidently suggested by the THREE TUNS;) and, in the same locality, the SIX CANS AND PUNCHBOWL. This last object, the PUNCHBOWL, was introduced on the signboard at the end of the seventeenth century, when punch became the fashionable drink; in one instance, at Penalney Kea, near Truro, we have the PUNCHBOWL AND LADLE, but most generally it is found in combination with other very heterogeneous objects. The reason of this is that punch, like music, had a sort of political prestige, and was the Whig drink, whilst the Tories adhered to sack, claret, and canary, connected in their memory with bygone things and times. Hence it followed that the punchbowl was added as a kind of party-badge to many of the Whig tavern signs, and hence such combinations as the following, all of which still survive at the present day:--

The CROWN AND PUNCHBOWL, Somersham, St Ives.

The MAGPIE AND PUNCHBOWL, Bishopsgate Within.

The ROSE AND PUNCHBOWL, Redman’s Row, Stepney, and elsewhere.

The SHIP AND PUNCHBOWL, Wapping.

The RED LION AND PUNCHBOWL, St John’s Street, Clerkenwell.

The UNION FLAG AND PUNCHBOWL, High Street, Wapping.

The DOG AND PUNCHBOWL, Lymm, Warrington, Cheshire.

The HALFMOON AND PUNCHBOWL, Buckle Street, Whitechapel.

The PARROT AND PUNCHBOWL, Aldringham, Suffolk.

The FOX AND PUNCHBOWL, Old Windsor, (perhaps meant for the great statesman, who was not disinclined to the beverage.)

The TWO POTS is the sign of a public-house at Boxworth, St Ives, accompanied by the following verses, which are enough to set the teeth of a Bœotian on edge: how then must they shock the refined ears of the Cambridge dons?--

“Rest, traveller, rest; lo, Cooper’s hand Obedient brings two pots at thy command; Rest, traveller, rest; and banish thoughts of care, Drink to thy friends and recommend them here.”

Another Two Pots, at Leatherhead, can boast a most venerable antiquity, for it is believed to be the very ale-house where the notorious Eleanor Rumying tunned her “noppy ale,” and made

“thereof fast sale To travellers, to tinkers, To sweaters, to swinkers, And all good ale-drinkers.”

There was, at the end of the last century, a painted sign still remaining, which, under a coating of summer’s dust and winter’s sludge, faintly showed two pots of beer placed in the same position as they are on the title-page of the original edition of Skelton’s poem.

The sign of the Two Pots again gave rise to that of the THREE POTS, at Horseway Bridge, Chatteris, in the same county, and at Burbage, near Hinckley.

The RUMMER, another drinking vessel, is also common: there is one in Old Fish Street, and there are three Rummer public-houses in Bristol alone. A tavern of that name was kept by Samuel Prior, uncle of Matthew Prior the poet. Uncle Sam took his nephew as an apprentice to learn the business, and be his successor. Prior alludes to this uncle and his little professional tricks in the following lines:--

“My uncle, rest his soul, when living, Might have contrived me ways of thriving; Taught me with cider to replenish My vats or ebbing tide of Rhenish; So, when for Hock I drew pricked white Wine, Swear ’t had the flavour and was right wine.”

To his stay in this tavern also alludes the bitter Whig satire in “State Poems,” (ii., p. 355,) beginning--

“A vintner’s boy the wretch was first preferr’d To wait at vice’s gates and pimp for bread; To hold the candle, and sometimes the door, Let in the drunkard, and let out the w----.”

In 1709 there was another Rummer tavern “over against Bow Lane, in Cheapside,” where “the surprizing Mr Higgins, the posture master, that lately performed at the Queen’s Theatre Royal in the Haymarket,” was to be seen every evening at six; admission 18d. and 1s.

This sign was also common in Holland two centuries ago; at that time there was one in Amsterdam with this inscription:--

“Als gy dees Roemer ziet, gy kunt ze pryzen of laken, Maar komt in, proeft zyn nat, dat zal u beeter smaaken.”[562]

And another one at the Hague had this same idea, but added a caution to it on a double-sided signboard:--

“Dees Roemer die gy ziet en kan u niet vermaken, Komt in en proeft het nat het zal u beter smaken Maar siet eens wat hier achter staat.”

On the other side:--

“Betaal eerst, eer je henen gaat Of anders hoed of mantel laat.”[563]

A near relative of the Rummer was the BUMPER, a tavern in St James’ Street, Covent Garden, kept by Estcourt the actor. His drawer was “his old servant Trusty Anthony, who has so often adorned both the theatres in England and Ireland; and as he is a person altogether unknown in the Wine Trade, it cannot be doubted but that he will deliver the wine in the same natural purity as he receives it from the said merchants,” (Brooke & Hillier.)--Estcourt’s advertisements on the last page of the original Edition of the Spectator, cclx., 1711. To this occupation of Estcourt, Parnell alludes in the beginning of his poems:--

“Gay Bacchus liking Estcourt’s wine, A noble meal bespoke us; And for the guests that were to dine Brought Comus, Love, and Jocus.”

This same Estcourt was sometime provedore of the Beefsteak Club.

Finally, we may conclude this notice of drinking vessels on the signboard with the TANKARD, which is still of frequent occurrence. There is a public-house at Ipswich with this sign, which was formerly part of the house of Sir Anthony Wingfield, one of the legal executors of Henry VIII.

The hanap or tankard was generally of silver, and was formerly one of the most valuable properties of an ale-house, for in the Act 13 Edw. I., it says that “if a tavern-keeper keep his house open after curfew he shall be put on his surety the first time by the hanap of the tavern, or by some other good pledge therein found.”[564] Silver tankards were more or less common in all the London taverns. In some houses they were reserved for the more distinguished visitors; in others, as at the Bull’s Head in Leadenhall Street, “every poor mechanic drank in plate.” They were of different sizes, and experienced topers well knew for which name to call when ordering a tankard proportionate to their thirst. From a curious old tippler’s handbook, published in the reign of Queen Anne or George the First, entitled, “A Vade Mecum for Maltworms,” we gather that the names of the tankards at the SWEET APPLE, in Sweet Apple Yard, were “the Lamb,” “the Lion,” “the Peacock,” (in honour of the brewer,) “Sacheverell,” (in memory of the notorious divine of St Andrew’s, Holborn,) and “Nan Elton.” The same work also relates a curious instance of enthusiasm in a publican. His house, the Raven, in Fetter Lane, was famous for

“Massy tankards form’d of silver plate, That walk throughout his noted house in state; Ever since Eaglesfield in Anna’s reign, To compliment each fortunate campaign, Made one be hammer’d out for every town was ta’en.”

We may suppose each tankard named after a victory--the greater the victory, the greater the tankard; and can imagine the gratifying display of loyalty in emptying those tankards to the perdition of “Popery and wooden shoes.”

Besides the tankard for drinking beer or wine, there was also the WATER TANKARD. In Ben Jonson’s comedy of “Every Man in his Humour,” 1598, Cob, the water-carrier of the Old Jewry, says:--“I dwell, sir, at the sign of the WATER TANKARD, hard by the Green Lattice. I have paid scot and lot there many time this eighteen years.” These water-tankards were used for carrying water from the conduits to the houses, and were therefore a professional sign of the water-carriers. The measures held about three gallons, and were shaped like a truncated cone, with an iron handle and hoops like a pail, and were closed with a cork, bung, or stopple. In Wilkinson’s “Londina Illustrata,” there is an engraving of Westcheap as it appeared in the year 1585, copied from a drawing of the period, in which the Little Conduit is seen with a quantity of water-tankards ranged round it.

Amongst the other articles of furniture which are represented on the signboard we must first of all notice that useful article the LOOKING GLASS, which was the favourite sign of the booksellers on London Bridge. Thus, one of John Bunyan’s works, “The Saints’ Triumph, or the Glory of Saints with Jesus Christ discovered in a Divine Ejaculation by J. B.,” was printed by J. Millet for J. Blare, at the Looking Glass on London Bridge, in 1688. The French booksellers also used it: for instance, Nicholas Despréaux, or Dupré, a bookseller of the seventeenth century, who lived near the church of St Etienne du Mont, at Paris. Its origin was this:--Speculum, a looking-glass, was in the middle ages a common name for a certain class of books. We find, as early as 1332, a work entitled “Speculum Historiale in consuetudine Parisiensi;” then there is the “Grand Speculum Historiale,” the great historical work of Vincent of Beauvais, one of the most celebrated books of the Middle Ages; “Speculum Humanæ Salvationis;” “Speculum Humanæ Vitæ;” “Speculum Vitæ Christæ,” “a boke that is clepid the Myrrour of the blessed lyffe of our Lorde J’hu cryste;” the “Mirrour of Magistrates;” “Le miroir de l’ame pécheresse,” and innumerable other Speculums. These Speculums were amongst the first books that were printed; many of the early booksellers adopted the Bible as their sign, whilst others chose the Speculum, which they translated and made more fit for the signboard under the name of the LOOKING GLASS.

A curious fact is connected with this so common title of the Speculum for early religious books. When the first pioneers in the art of printing were pondering over their new invention, during the transition period from block-printing to printing with detached letters, Guttenberg, in 1436, entered into an agreement with John Riffe, Anthony Heilman, and Andrew Dreizehn, in which speculation the three associates were to furnish the necessary funds, whilst Guttenberg was to pay them one half of any profits, the other half being for himself. After a certain time the association broke up, differences arose about the liquidation, and a lawsuit was the consequence. The documents of this lawsuit are still in existence; from them it appears that they kept their invention a secret, and called themselves “Spiegelmachers,” (makers of looking-glasses,) which looking-glasses, according to the evidence of witnesses, had found a very ready sale amongst the pilgrims who at that period congregated at Aix-la-Chapelle on the occasion of some religious festival. But as apparently no extra number of mirrors were sold on that occasion, and there does not appear to have been any new invention in the art of making them, it is evident that the looking-glasses sold were the Speculum books, which undoubtedly would be readily purchased by the pilgrims to the holy shrine. This opinion is still more corroborated by the mention made in the evidence of a Press, which could scarcely be used in the manufacture of looking-glasses. It is therefore most probable that, as the art of printing was at this period still in its infancy, and the printed works were sold rather as an imitation or facsimile[565] of the written manuscripts, this art was still kept a secret; by so doing, its early practitioners were not only safe from competition, but also from the attacks and opposition by which the new invention would have been assailed by all those connected with the business of transcribing and illuminating.[566]

Other pieces of furniture are the CABINET, a common upholsterer’s sign in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; the THREE CRICKETS, or little stools, which we gather from a trades token of the seventeenth century, was in Crooked Lane; and the CRADLE, a peculiar sign, occurs in Taylor’s “Carrier’s Cosmography,” 1637, where he gives a rather curious insight into the postal arrangements of that time:--

“Those that will send any letter to Edinbourgh, that so they may be conveyed to and fro to any parts of the kingdome of Scotland, the poste doth lodge at the signe of the kings armes or the CRADLE at the upper end of Cheapside, from whence every Monday any that have occasion may send.”

Generally, however, it did not designate so respectable a business; the “Compleat Vintner,” 1720, explains the secret arcana of that sign:--

“The pregnant Madam drawn aside, By promise to be made a bride, If near her time and in distress For some obscure convenient place, Let her but take the pains to waddle About till she observes a Cradle With the foot hanging towards the door, And there she may be made secure From all the parish plagues and terrors, That wait on poor weak woman’s errors. But if the head hang tow’rds the house, As very often we see it does, Avaunt, for she’s a cautious bawd Whose business only lies abroad.”

From the last interpretation of this sign to the Colt in the Cradle (see under Humorous Signs) is but a step.

The TRUNK was the sign of Caleb Swinock, a bookseller in St Paul’s Churchyard in 1684, for which it is difficult to find any rational explanation; almost equally incomprehensible is the sign of the GREEN BELLOWS, (le soufflet vert,) which was that of Johan Stoll and Peter Cesaris, booksellers and printers in the Rue St Jacques, Paris, in 1473.[567] This sign was also to be seen in other towns of France, as in Abbeville, where a stone bas-relief sign of the seventeenth century, with the inscription “le vert soufflet,” remains at the present day in the front of a house in the Rue des Jacobins. It may have been adopted in allusion to the occult sciences and alchemy, green being the emblematical colour of Hope.

The GOLDEN CANDLESTICK was the sign of a Marriage Insurance office in Newgate Street, in 1711, a time when there was a mania for insurance offices of every description; the THREE CANDLESTICKS occurs on a trades token of the Old Bailey in 1649. A publican in Tamworth, Staffordshire, has taken the COFFEE-POT for a sign, probably on the strength of the derivation of “lucus a non lucendo,” because he sells no coffee; the ROYAL COFFEE-MILL was the more appropriate sign of Paul Greenwood, in Clothfair, for he was a seller of “Coffee-powder.”[568] Then there is the SUGAR-LOAF, a common grocer’s sign of former times, the selection of which showed great disinterestedness on their part, the article being that on which the least profit was made. Campbell said, in 1757:--

“There is indeed one article which they [the Grocers] must sell to their loss, sugars. A custom has prevailed (but why?) amongst the Grocers, to sell sugar for the prime cost, and are out of pocket by the sale, with paper, packthread, and their labour in breaking and weighing it out. The expense of some shops in London, for the article of paper and packthread for sugars, amounts to £60 or £70 per annum; but this they lay upon the other articles. The customer had much better allow him a profit upon his sugars, than pay extravagant prices for tea and other comodities.”

At present, we understand, loaf-sugar is not sold exactly at cost price, but moist sugar is, whence many grocers refuse to sell that article to strangers unless something else be bought at the same time. At No. 44 Fenchurch Street, a very old established grocery firm still carries on business under the sign of the THREE SUGAR LOAVES. The house presents much the same appearance it had in the last century, with the gilt sugar-loaves above the doorway, and is one of the few places of business in London conducted in the ancient style. The small old-fashioned window panes, the complete absence of all show and decoration, the cleanliness of the interior, and the quiet order of the assistants in their long white aprons, betoken the respectable old tea-warehouse, and impress the passer-by with a complete conviction as to the genuineness of its articles. That the sugar-loaf was not always exclusively a grocer’s sign, nor the THREE BALLS a pawnbroker’s, appears from the following advertisement in the Postman, February 3-6, 1711:--

“THOMAS SETH at the Sugarloaf in Fore Street, Pawnbroker, is going to leave his house, and to leave off the said business: all persons concerned are desired to fetch away their Goods on or before the fourth of March next, else they will be disposed off and sold.”

Here is another curious advertisement:--

“A TANNY MORE [tawny Moor] with short bushy hair, very well shaped, in a grey livery lined with yellow, about 17 or 18 years of age, with a silver collar about his neck with these directions:--‘Captain George Hastings’ Boy, Brigadier in the King’s Horse guards.’ Whosoever brings him to the Sugarloaf in the Pall Mall shall have forty shillings Reward.”--London Gazette, March 23, 1685.

The Sugar-loaf is also a public-house sign, though not a very appropriate one. The BLUE BOWL, suggestive of punch-making, occurs on three public-houses in Bristol; but much more significant for a resort of thirsty souls is that of the THREE FUNNELS, (les Trois Entonnoirs,) which in the time of Louis XIV. was the sign of a tavern in Paris, mostly patronised by the University people. An equally expressive sign, the SIEVE, was used by John Johnson, in Aldermansbury, 1669, and “Richard Harris in Trinity Minories.”

We now arrive at kitchen utensils: foremost amongst these ranks the GRIDIRON, which was very common in the sixteenth century, and may perhaps have been a jocular rendering of the Portcullis. The FRYING PAN is still a constant ironmonger’s sign--thus in Highcross Street, Leicester, there is a gigantic gilt specimen with the inscription “the Family Fry Pan.” There are trades tokens of “John Vere, at y^{e} Frying Pan in Islington, Mealman,” which, considered in connexion with pancakes, one can understand; but it certainly looks out of place at the door of Samuel Wadsell, bookseller at the GOLDEN FRYING PAN, in Leadenhall Street, 1680. The COPPER POT (le Pot de Cuivre) at Dijon, in France, was the sign of one of the oldest inns in that country. It was opened in 1250 and continued till the middle of the seventeenth century. The society of the Mère Folle held their meetings at this house.

The PEWTER PLATTER occurs both in France and in England; it was famous as a carriers’ inn in St John Street, Clerkenwell, in 1681. At this inn Curll’s translators, in pay, were lodged, and had to sleep three in a bed, and there “he and they were for ever at work to deceive the publick.”[569] In mediæval Paris it was a common sign, and gave its name to several streets. Two of the inns victimised by that incorrigible scamp Villon, bore this sign:--

“Le cas advint au Plat d’etain Emprès saint Pierre-des-Arsis.”[570]--Repues Franches.

Probably it was a very early sign for eating-houses.

The PUMP is a common ale-house sign, and occurs as such on a token of Tooley Street, with the following lines:--

“The Pump runs cleer Wh. Ale and Beer.”

which, as Mr Burn (Beaufoy Tokens) observes, may be a travesty of a verse in Histrio-Mastrix, 1610:--

“Yet a verse may run cleare, That is tapt out of Beere.”

Another token belonging to Chick Lane, West Smithfield, represents a hand grasping the handle of a pump; and a publican in Old Swinford, who combines engineering with his trade, has a similar sign with the words, “Hands to the Pump.” In the reign of Charles I. there was a public-house, the BLUE PUMP, in Blackfriars, near the famous Hollands Leaguer. It represented a man, evidently a sailor, pumping with all his might, and the legend ran:--“Poor Tom’s last refuge.”[571] With the pump we may place the BUCKET, which was the sign of a shop in Aldersgate Street, of which there are trades tokens extant, and the TUB, the name of a tavern in Jermyn Street, in the reign of Charles II., as appears from a letter sent, (not written, for she could not write,) by Nell Gwynn, from Windsor in 1684, to her milliner and factotum, addressed “To Madam Jennings, over against the Tub tavern in Jermyn Street, London.” Another utensil, the DUST-PAN, is common with hardware shops. There is one in Islington, at a shop next to the house in which Charles Lamb lived; at night it is illuminated, and hence called the ILLUMINATED DUST-PAN. Lastly, there is the HOUR-GLASS, a colossal specimen carved in wood, in Upper Thames Street, near All Hallows Church, and the GOLDEN JAR, which was the sign of a china shop, as we see in the Country Journal, or Craftsman, for April 25, 1730, where Anne Cibber acquaints the public that she is removed from Charles Street to the Golden Jar in Tavistock Street, carrying on two trades which now are rarely associated in London, viz., “All sorts of chinaware, and the best teas, coffees, chocolate,” &c. Now-a-days the jars, painted red and green, are the usual oilman’s sign, representing those vessels in which oil is kept in Eastern countries, and in which Ali Baba’s forty thieves came to such an untimely end. Formerly oil used to be imported in this country in similar jars, hence their adoption as trade emblems.

We may close this chapter, not inappropriately with the KEY, a sign once largely used, not only by locksmiths, as at present, but by all manners of shops; thus there was a celebrated tavern, at the corner of Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, circa 1690, and many others that could be mentioned. The GOLDEN KEY is named in an old advertisement, speaking of some sports and pastimes which many English gentlemen are now attempting to revive:--

“RICHARD FENNEY, Esquire of Alaxton in Leicestershire, about a forthnight since, lost a lanner from that place; she has neither Bells nor Varvels; she is a white Hawk, and her long feathers and sarcels are both in the blood. If any one give tidings thereof to Mr Lambert at the GOLDEN KEY, in Fleet Street, they shall have 40 shillings for their pains.”--Mercurius Publicus, August 30 to September 6, 1660.

The LOCK AND KEY is a sign of a public-house in West Smithfield, and was, during the Commonwealth, that of a house in the parish of St Dunstan, belonging to Praise God Barebones, citizen and leather-seller of London. There is a MS. in the British Museum,[572] containing a petition of Barebones against Elisabeth and James Spight, the latter an infant under age, offered to the court of judicature for determination of differences touching houses burned or demolished by the fire of 1666. From that paper it appears that Elisabeth Spight paid £40 a year for the rent of the Lock and Key.

[543] London Gazette, August 28 to Sept. 1, 1679.

[544] “Itinerarium Curiosum,” 1776, p. 14.

[545] Letter of John Paston to Sir John Paston, Sept. 21, 1472.

[546] Marston’s Antonio and Mellida, 1633.

[547] Tom Brown’s Works, vol. iii, p. 243.

[548] Tom Brown’s Amusements for the Meridian of London, 1706.

[549] “It represented a burning lamp, such as some pastry-cooks have to amuse the children, on which geese, monkeys, elephants, dogs, cats, hares, foxes, and many strange animals are to be seen running after each other.”

[550]

“My lamp is kept burning by the produce of the East. Oil, figs, and currants sold here.”

[551] There is a drawing of this very curious relic in a number of the Illustrated London News, published shortly after the sale.

[552] Also demolished to make room for the streets leading to London Bridge.

[553] Lansdowne MSS. No. 889, art. 73.

[554] Harleian MSS No. 256.

[555] Bagford Bills, Harleian MSS.

[556] This loses much by translation:--

“I contain A curious kind of condiment-- There are not many people in this town Which I have not had by the nose.”

This is a pun in Dutch, on the sensation produced in the nose by mustard, the expression meaning, at the same time, “to take in.”

[557] Decker’s English Villanies Seven Times Pressed to Death.

[558] Cocoa-nuts. The word is still pronounced in that manner by the lower classes.

[559] A face or dial-plate, sometimes also called pendulum dial.

[560] Book iii., p. 294.

[561] What would old Randle Holme have said, had he seen the elegant (!) breast-pins displayed in the shop-windows of one of the principal West End jewellers, forming the tasteful device of a tobacco-pipe on a quart pot; another with a rebus for: “You are an art[a heart]ful card;” and a third with: “O my eye!” and similar distingué ornaments.

[562]

“When you see this Rummer you may praise or blame it, But come in, and taste its liquor, you will like that better.”

[563]

“This Rummer which you see here cannot give you much pleasure. Come in, and taste its liquor, you will like that better, But first, see what is written on the other side.”

On the other side:--

“Pay before you go away, Otherwise you will have to leave your hat or your cloak.”

[564] Liber Albus, Book iii., Part ii.

[565] Even after the art got to be known, it continued to be still called writing. Thus, Gaspar Hedion (Paral. ad Chron. Conradi) calls it “novo scribendi genere reperto,” and Fulgosus (Lib. viii., Dict. & Fact. Memor.) says that Guttenberg could “uno die imprimendo plura scribere quam uno anno calamis.”

[566] See the whole of the documents of this law-suit in Count Leon de Laborde’s Débuts de l’Imprimerie à Strasbourg.

[567] This De Cesaris family seemed to have a predilection for puzzling signboards. When Peter de Cesaris, a bookseller and printer in the Rue St Jacques, circa 1480, had for a sign the SWAN AND SOLDIER, (le cygne et soldat,) in the absence of his colophon, we can only suppose that it was a representation of the legend of the Knight of the Swan, i.e., a knight in a boat drawn by a swan. The steel armour of the knight might easily have bestowed upon him the title of “the soldier.”

[568] London Gazette, Nov. 10-13, 1679.

[569] Loyd’s Evening Post, Jan 9-12, 1767.

[570]

“It happened at the Pewter Platter, Near Saint Pierre des Arsis.”

[571] Whether it would be just to conclude from this that sailors in that time went by the generic name of Tom instead of Jack, we leave to the reader to judge. That Tom was in former times a more common name than now, (owing, it is said, to the respect at one time paid to the great saint Thomas a-Becket,) appears from the many words to which it is an affix, and from many imaginary names, as:--Tomtit, Tomcat, Tomfoolery, Tomboy, Tommyshop, Tommy, (slang for bread,) double Tom, (a sort of plough,) Tom the Piper, (in the morris dance,) Tom Tiddler, Tom of Bedlam, Tom of Westminster, (a bell,) Tom and Jerry, Tom Telltruth, Tom Hickathrift, Tom, (the knave of Trumps,) Whipping Tom, an itinerant flogger of wandering maids, Tom Tapster, “Tib’s rush for Tom’s forefingers,” (all’s well that ends well.)

“Then every wanton may dance at her will, Both Tomkin with Tomlin and Jenkin with Gill.”

Tusser’s Plowman’s Fasting Day

[572] Additional MSS., 5079.Return to passage

XII. DRESS; PLAIN AND ORNAMENTAL

Of this class only a few signs are to be found; one of the most common is the HAT, the usual hatter’s sign, although it may also be found before taverns and public-houses, in which case, however, it is probable that it was the previous sign of the house, which the publican on entering left unaltered; or it may have been used to suggest “a house of call” to the trade. The age of each individual hat-sign may sometimes be gathered from its shape; thus there is one in Whitechapel, made out of tin, representing the cocked hat worn at the end of the last century; it is evidently a relic of that time. The continental hatters using this sign, occasionally indulged in a little humour. A hatter at Ghent in the sixteenth century added to it this distich:--

“Onder den Hoedt Schuylt quaedt & goet.”[573]

And a Dutch hatter made a still more unpleasant allusion to the brains of his customers:--

“Hier maakt men sterke hoeden om de hersens in te sluyten Opdat het los verstand daar niet mag vliegen buyten.”[574]

Dr Franklin used to tell an amusing story of a journeyman hatter, his companion when young, who on commencing business for himself, was anxious to get a handsome signboard, with a proper inscription. This he composed himself as follows:--

+------------------------+ | JOHN THOMPSON, HATTER, | | MAKES AND SELLS HATS | | FOR READY MONEY | +------------------------+

Above the inscription was the ordinary figure of a hat. But he thought he would submit the composition to his friends for amendment. The first he showed it to thought the word “hatter” tautologous, because followed by the words “makes hats,” which showed he was a hatter; it was struck out. The next observed that the word “makes” might as well be omitted, because his customers would not care who made the hats; if good, and to their mind, they would buy, by whomsoever made. He struck that out also. A third said he thought that the words “for ready money” were useless, as it was not the custom of the place to sell on credit--every one who purchased expected to pay. These, too, were parted with, and the inscription then stood, “John Thompson sells Hats.” “Sells Hats!” says his next friend; “why, who expects you to give them away? What, then, is the use of the word?” It was struck out, and HATS was all that remained attached to the name John Thompson. Even this inscription, brief as it was, was reduced ultimately to “John Thompson,” with the figure of the hat above it.

The HAT AND FEATHERS was almost equally common in those days, when no full-fledged gallant could be deemed complete without his fluttering ribbons and plume. The puritanical Philip Stubbe in his “Anatomie of Abuses,” 1585, is very hard upon this fashion:--

“Another sort, (as phantasticall as the rest,) are content with no kind of hat, without a great bunch of feathers of divers and sondrie colours, peaking on top of their heades, not unlike (I dare not saie) cockes combes, but as Sternes of Pride and ensignes of vanitie and these fluttering sailes and feathered flagges of defiaunce to virtue, (for so they are,) are so advanced in Ailgnia [Anglia] that euery child has thē in his Hatte or Cappe. Many get good living by deying and selling of them, and not a fewe proue themselues more than fooles in wearyng of them.”

Decker calls the “swell” of his day “our feathered ostrich,” and in his comedy of the “Sun’s Darling” he mentions “some alderman’s son wondrous giddy and light-headed, one that blew his patrimony away in feathers and tobacco.” There is one sign of the HAT AND FEATHERS still in existence, a publican’s, at Grantchester, in Cambridgeshire.

Another old hatter’s sign is the HAT AND BEAVER, which at present may be seen at the door of a publican’s in Leicester. Shopbills of this once common sign occur amongst the Banks Collection, representing a beaver seated on the edge of a stream, with a hat above him. The relation between the two is evident, and about as gratifying to the beaver as it was to the widow of the hanged man to hear the gallows named. The beaver hats worn in England at the time of Edward III., and long after, were made in Flanders and Picardy. From the Privy Purse expenses of Henry VIII. we see that the king paid in 1532:--

“Item, the xxiij day [of October] for a hath and plume for the King in Boleyn, xv shillings.”

“On 27 May MDLV. (ij of Queen Mary) Sir William Cecil [afterwards Lord Burghley] being then at Callice [Calais] bought [as appears from his MS. Diary] three hats for his children at xxd each.”

The Protestant refugees, however, from Flanders and France, introduced the manufacture of these hats into England when they settled in Norwich; by a statute 5 and 6 Edw. VI., the manufacture of felt and thrummed hats was confined to Norwich and the corporate and market towns in that county.[575] As for the shapes of the hats worn at that period we must again refer to Stubbe’s satirical account:--

“Some tymes they use them sharpe on the crowne, pearking up like the speare or shaft of a steeple, standing a quarter of a yarde above the crowne of their heades, some more, some lesse, as pleases the fantasies of their inconstant mindes; othersome be flat and broad in the crowne like the battlements of a house. Another sort have round crownes, sometymes with one kinde of bande, sometymes with another, now blacke, now whyte, now russet, now red, now green, now yellowe, now this, now that, never content, with one colour or fashion two daies to an ende.”[576]

Felt hats for a long time were exclusively worn by the aristocracy. Stow tells us that “about the beginning of Henry VIII. began the making of Spanish feltes in England, by Spaniardes and Dutchmen, before which time, and long since the English used to ride, and goe winter and sommer in knitcapps, cloth hoods, and the best sort in silk throm’d Hatts.” These caps were enforced by a statute of 13th Queen Elizabeth, which gives, at the same time, a curious picture of the fashions of that period:--

“If any person above six yeares of age, (except maidens, ladies, gentlewomen, nobles, knights, gentlemen of twenty marks by year in lands, and their heirs, and such as have borne office of worship,) have not worn upon the Sundays and Holidays, (except it be in the time of his travell out of the citie, towne, or hamlet, where he dwelleth,) uppon his head one cap of wool knit, thicked, and dressed in England, and onely dressed and finished by some of the trade of cappers, shall be fined 3s. 4d. for each day’s transgression.”

These caps, termed statute caps, are frequently alluded to by the dramatists and authors of that period. Rosalind, for instance, in “Love’s Labour Lost,” taunts her lover with the words: “Well, better wits have worn plain statute caps.” The act was repealed in the year 1597. The sign of the CAP AND STOCKING, still in Leicester, commemorates the once-flourishing trade of that town in those articles. The quantity of workmen who found occupations in the manufacture of the above-named “statute caps,” (which came chiefly from Leicestershire and the surrounding districts,) was one of the principal reasons why it was so often protected by parliamentary statutes. Fuller enumerates not less than fifteen callings, “besides other exercises,” all employed in the trade of capmaking, beginning with the woolcarder, and ending with the bandmaker. The HAT AND STAR, which occurs on the bill of Master Bates in St Paul’s Churchyard, who sold all sorts of fine “caines, whippes, spurres,”[577] &c., if not a simple quartering of two signs, possibly originated in the clasp ornament of precious stones, formerly worn in the hat. The LEGHORN HAT, at the end of the last century, was generally a turner’s sign, because the members of that trade sold straw hats imported from Leghorn. In St John Street, Clerkenwell, there was an old established public-house, and place of resort, called the THREE HATS. It is mentioned by Bickerstaff in his comedy of “The Hypocrite,” where Mawworm thus alludes to it:--

“Till I went after him, [Dr Cantwell,] I was little better than the devil, my conscience was tanned with sin, like a piece of neat’s leather, and had no more feeling than the sole of my shoe; always a roving after fantastical delights; I used to go every Sunday evening to the Three Hats at Islington; it’s a public-house . . . mayhap your Ladyship may know it. I was a great lover of skittles, too, but now I cannot bear them.”

At this house the earliest prototypes of Astley used to perform in 1758. There was Thomas, an Irishman, surnamed Tartar; then came Johnson, Sampson, Price, and Cunningham. The great Dr Johnson went here to see his namesake.

“Such a man, sir, said he, should be encouraged; for his performance show the extent of human powers in one instance, and thus tend to raise our opinion of the faculties of man. He shows what may be obtained by persevering application; so that every man may hope, by giving as much application, although, perhaps, he may never ride three horses at a time, or dance upon a wire, yet he may be equally expert in whatever profession he has chosen to pursue.”

Royalty also visited the place: “Yesterday his Royal Highness the Duke of York was at the Three Hats, Islington, to see the extraordinary feats of horsemanship exhibited there. There were near five hundred spectators.”[578] Sampson’s wife was the first female equestrian.

HORSEMANSHIP

At Mr Dingley’s, the Three Hats, Islington.

“MR SAMPSON begs leave to inform the public, that besides the usual feats which he exhibits, Mrs Sampson, to diversify the entertainment, and prove that the fair sex are by no means inferior to the male, either in Courage or Agility, will, this and every Evening during the Summer, perform various exercises in the same art, in which she hopes to acquit herself to the universal approbation of those Ladies and Gentlemen whose curiosity may induce them to honour her attempt with their company.”[579]

The Three Hats occurs amongst the trades tokens of the seventeenth century. There is one of the THREE HATS AND NAG’S HEAD in Southwark. In the seventeenth century the sign of the Three Hats at Leeuwarden, in Friesland, was accompanied by the following stanza:--

“Dit is in de drie Hoeden Om ’t hoofd te behoeden, Voor wind en koud. Tromp was stout, Voor der staten kroon, Hier maakt men hoeden schoon.”[580]

The LOCKS OF HAIR was the very appropriate sign of John Allen, a hairdresser on London Bridge in the last century, who sold “all sorts of hair, Curled or Uncurled; Bags, Roses, Cauls, Ribbons, Weaving Silk, Sewing Cards, and Blocks. With all Goods made use of by Peruke makers, at the lowest prices.”[581] The locks of hair were represented curled and tied. This sign appears to have been not unusual with the hairdressers of a former age. In 1649, there was one in St Dunstan’s-in-the-East, who had the LOCK AND SHEARS; which are represented on his trades token by a lock of hair between a pair of shears, intimating that the “unlovely lovelocks” were curtailed by him. What he would require the tokens for in his profession (they were used as farthings) it is difficult to guess, as apparently no such small change was needed. This sign was in accordance with the spirit of the times; short hair was the unmistakable mark of the godly puritan, just as the straggling love-lock hanging over the shoulder denoted the cavalier. For this reason, Decker advises the young cavalier Gull:--

“Thy hair, whose length before the rigorous edge of any puritanical pair of scissors should shorten the breadth of a finger, let the three house-wifely spinsters of Destiny rather curtail the thread of thy life. Oh, no! long hair is the only net that women spread abroad to entrap man in, and why should not men be as far above women in that comodity as they go far beyond them in others.”[582]

The PERIWIG was another common hairdresser’s sign. Even this had to submit to the favourite blue colour, for amongst the Banks bills there is one of John Thompson, in Brewer Street, Golden Square, who lived at the BLUE PERUKE AND STAR. The star evidently was the original sign, to which the wig had been added on account of the profession of the occupant of the house.

The WHITE PERUKE, in Maiden Lane, was the sign of the barber, at whose lodgings Voltaire lived when on a visit to London; some of his letters to Swift are dated from that place. A white periwig was a highly fashionable object:--“Now, I think he looks very humorous and agreeable; I vow, in a white periwig he might do mischief; could he but talk and take snuff, there’s never a fop in town wou’d go beyond him.”--Cibber’s Double Gallant, 1707. So Shadwell, in “The Humorist,” 1671, describes Brisk, one of the dramatis personæ, as “a fellow that never wore a noble and polite garniture, or a white periwig.” Well might the barbers give the peruke the honour of this signboard, for the profits on that article must have been enormous. In Charles II.’s time, for instance, a fine peruke cost as much as £50; and hence the great respect Cibber paid to the one he wore in the character of Sir Fopling Flutter, which was brought on the stage in a sedan, and put on before the public. As the glory of Miltiades prevented Epaminondas from sleeping, so the beauty of this periwig disturbed the slumbers of Mr (afterwards Colonel) Brett, who in the end bought it from Cibber.[583] The thieves as well as the beaux knew the value of those wigs, and practised all manner of tricks to obtain them. Sometimes a boy, carried in a basket on the shoulders of a man, would snatch the “curly honour” off the head of the unsuspecting beau;[584] at other times they would cut holes in the leather backs of the coaches,[585] whilst the highwaymen were sure to include the periwig with the rest of the booty captured on the road. Though this article is now shorn of its honours, there is still a publican at Great Redisham, Suffolk, who carries on his trade under the sign of the WIG.

The French have a sign quite as absurd as our BLUE PERUKE--viz., The GOLDEN BEARD, (la barbe d’or,) which is carved in stone in the Rue des Bourdonnais, Paris, and also in the Marché aux Herbes, Amiens: both these signs date from the eighteenth century, but their origin is much older, as appears from the following:--

“The Duke of Lorraine, after the Battle of Nancy, wherein he killed Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, went in procession to visit the body, clothed in deep mourning, with a golden beard fixed on, that reached down to his waist, (after the manner of the old heroes that were knighted for their prowess, who, on a signal victory over an enemy, were honoured with such a beard.)”--Richardsoniana, London, 1776, p. 47.

The ANODYNE NECKLACE was as notorious in the eighteenth century, as Holloway’s Pills and Rowland’s Macassar Oil are in our day. Advertisements concerning it were continually appearing in the papers:--

“THE Anodyne Necklace for children’s teeth, women in labour, and distempers of the head; price 5s. Recommended by Dr Chamberlain. Sold up one pair of stairs at the sign of the Anodyne Necklace, without Temple Bar; at the SPANISH LADY at the Royal Exchange, next Threadneedle Street; at the INDIAN HANDKERCHIEF, facing the New Stairs in Wapping,” &c.[586]

To attract attention, there was frequently some book of not very delicate character, advertised as “given away gratis” at this house. But as this kind of literature was sure to find a great many readers--more especially when the book could be had for nothing--a restriction was sometimes added that “this curious book will not be given away to any boys or girls, or any paultry person.” Such a pamphlet, for instance, was:--

“THE RABBIT-AFFAIR made clear in a full account of the whole matter, with the pictures engraved of the pretended rabbit-breeder herself, Mary Tofts, and of the rabbits, and of the persons who attended her during her pretended deliveries, showing who were and who were not deceived by her. ’Tis given gratis nowhere, but only up one pair of stairs at the sign of the Anodyne Necklace, recommended by Dr Chamberlain,” &c.--Daily Courant, Jan. 11, 1726.

This alluded to one of the most impudent frauds ever committed. A certain profligate woman, Mary Tofts by name, a native of Godalming, in Surrey, pretended to give birth to rabbits. The first delivery was a family of seventeen; she actually found people who believed her, and gave their attention to this phenomenon. Amongst them were Sir Richard Manningham, Dr St André, surgeon and anatomist to his Majesty, Dr Mowbray, &c. By these gentlemen she was brought to Lacy’s Bagnio, and the case was watched with intense interest; yet she succeeded in baffling and deluding their attention. At last the fraud came out by one of her accomplices informing upon her. Prints, books, and ballads were published upon the subject, Dr St André coming in for an extra share of ridicule; but whether the woman was in any way punished, is not on record. The last information respecting her was in the Weekly Miscellany, April 19, 1740:--“The celebrated rabbit-woman, of Godalmin’, in Surrey, was committed to Guilford gaol for receiving stolen goods.” She died in January 1763.

The PEARL OF VENICE is named in an advertisement of a watch lost, “made at Paris, not so broad as a shilling, in a case of black leather with gold nails.”[587] It was the sign of “Mr Leroy, in St James’ Street, Covent Garding.” The pearls of Venice were celebrated:--

“Is your pearl orient, sir? Corv. Venice was never owner of the like.”

--BEN JONSON, The Fox, a. i., s. i.

At the same time that city was celebrated for its mock jewellery and glass imitations.

From the Bagford shopbills, it appears that the BLUE BODDICE was, in Queen Anne’s reign, a milliner’s shop in the Long Walk, near Christchurch Hospital. At the same period another member of the same fraternity (there were men-milliners in those days) had the HOOD AND SCARF, articles of female apparel; this shop was in Cornhill, “over against Wills’ Coffee-house.”[588] At the present time there is in the North a public-house called the BLUE STOOPS; this also seems to refer to an ancient garment, worn in the beginning of the seventeenth century, and named by Ben Jonson--“Alchymist,” a. iv., s. ii.--“Your Spanish stoop is the best garment.”

The BONNY CRAVAT, at Woodchurch, Tenterden, to judge from the adjective, seems rather to have been suggested by the old song of “Jenny, come tie my bonny cravat,” than by the introduction of the cravat as an article of dress. The fashion is said to have been brought over from Germany, in the seventeenth century, by some of the young French nobility, who had served the emperor in the wars against the Turks, and had copied this garment from the Croats, whence the name.

The DOUBLET, formerly the HARROW AND DOUBLET,[589] is still the sign of an iron warehouse in Upper Thames Street; it bears the date 1720, and the letters T. C., the initials of one of the Crowley family, to whom this warehouse has belonged “time out of mind.” It is made of cast and painted iron, and is said to represent the leather doublet in which the founder of the firm came to London as a day-labourer. The doublet was a kind of vestment which originated from the gambason or pourpoint worn under the armour; sleeves were added when it was worn without armour, and so it became a universal garment.

There are trades tokens extant of the CHILD-COAT, in Whitecross Street, probably a shop where children’s apparel was sold. Randle Holme, in his heraldic Omnium Gatherum, b. iii., ch. i, p. 18, gives a representation of a child’s coat, which is very similar to the “Knickerbocker” suit of the present day, with a short kilt added to it. He adds the following explanation:--“A boy’s coat is the last coat used for boys, after which they are put into breeches. If it has hanging sleeves, they would term it a child’s coat.” In the same manner as the child’s coat, the MINISTER’S GOWN figured at the door of the shop where this article was sold. There is a shopbill of such a one in Booksellers’ Row, St Paul’s Churchyard, among the Bagford bills.

The TABARD was the well-known inn in Southwark whence Chaucer and the other pilgrims started on their way to Canterbury. Mr Edmund Ollier has recently contributed a very interesting paper on this old inn to All the Year Round, and several paragraphs have appeared in other journals upon the same subject. A very few words, therefore, will be sufficient for the present purpose. Originally, it was the property of the Abbot of Hyde, near Winchester, who had his town residence within the inn-yard. The earliest record relating to this property is in 33d Edw. I., (1304,) when the Abbot and convent of Hyde purchased of William of Lategareshall two houses in Southwark, held by the Archbishop of Canterbury at the annual rent of 5s. 1½d., and suit to his court in Southwark, and 1d. a year for a purpresture of one foot wide on the king’s highway; £4 per annum to John de Tymberhutts, and 3s. to the Prior and convent of St Mary Overie, in Southwark; value clear, 40s.

It is a fact on record that Henry Bayley, the hosteller of the Tabard, was one of the burgesses who represented the borough of Southwark in the Parliament held in Westminster in the 50th Edw. III., (1376;) and he was again returned to the Parliament held at Gloucester in the 2d Richard II., in 1378.[590] The tavern itself is named, at the very period when Chaucer’s poem is supposed to have been written, in one of the rolls of Parliament, where, 5th Richard II., (1381,) in a list of malefactors who had participated in the rebellion of Jack Cade, occurs the name of “Joh’es Brewersman, manens apud le Tabbard, London.” Stow thus notices the old inn:--

“From thence to London, on the same side, be many fair inns for receipt of travellers, by their signs--the SPURRE, CHRISTOPHER, BULL, QUEEN’S HEAD, TABARDE, GEORGE, HART, KING’S HEAD, &c. Amongst the which the most ancient is the Tabard; so called of the sign, which, as we now term it, is a jacket or sleeveless coat, whole before, open on both sides, with a square collar, winged at the shoulders, a stately garment of old time, commonly worn of noblemen and others, both at home and abroad in the wars, but then, (to wit, in the wars,) their arms embroidered or otherwise depict upon them, that any man by his coat of arms might be known from others; but now these tabardes are only worn by the heralds, and be called their coate of armes in service.”--Stow, p. 154.

Formerly there stood in the road, in front of the Tabard, a beam laid crosswise upon two uprights, upon which was the following inscription:--“This is the Inne where Sir Jeffrey Chaucer and the nine-and-twenty pilgrims lay in their journey to Canterbury, anno 1583.” Over this the sign was hung, but that disappeared with the rest of them in 1766. The writing of this inscription seemed ancient, yet Tyrwhitt is of opinion that it was not older than the seventeenth century, since Speght, who describes the Tabard in his edition of Chaucer 1602, does not mention it. Perhaps it was put up after the fire of 1676, when the Tabard changed its name into the TALBOT.

At the present day the inn is known by the name of the Talbot; and although the building is by no means the same that sheltered Chaucer and his merry pilgrims, yet it is full of traditionary lore concerning them. In the centre of the gallery there was a picture, said to be by Blake, and well painted, representing the Canterbury Pilgrimage, almost invisible from dirt, age, and smoke. Behind this picture was a door opening into a lofty passage, with rooms on either side, one of which, on the right hand, was still designated as the Pilgrims’ Room. The house was repaired in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and from that period, probably, dated the fireplace, carved oak panels, and other parts spared by the fire of 1676, which were still to be seen in the beginning of this century.

As leather breeches were much used for riding in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the occupations of breeches-maker and glover were frequently combined; hence the sign of the BREECHES AND GLOVE on old London Bridge, the shop of “Walter Watkins, Breeches-maker, Leather-seller, and Glover.” But what made a Cornish publican of the present day, (at Camelford,) choose the sign of the COTTON BREECHES, is more than we can pretend to explain.

STOCKINGS or LEGS are of constant occurrence in the seventeenth century trades tokens, as the signs of hosiers--frequently real, not painted, stockings were suspended at the door.

“On hosier’s poles depending stockings ty’d, Flag with the slacken’d gale from side to side.”--GAY’S Trivia.

Boots and shoes occur in greater variety and abundance than any other article of dress. The BOOT is a very common inn sign, either owing to the thirsty reputation of cobblers, or from the premises where they are found having been at one time occupied by shoemakers. The BOOT AND SLIPPER may be seen at Smethwick, near Birmingham; the GOLDEN SLIPPER at Goodrange, in West Riding; the HAND AND SLIPPERS was a sign in Long Lane, Smithfield, in 1750. THE SHOE AND SLAP occurs in the following handbill:--

“AT MR CROOME’S, at the sign of the Shoe and Slap, near the Hospital Gate, in West Smithfield, is to be seen THE WONDER OF NATURE,

A GIRL above Sixteen Years of Age, born in Cheshire, and not above Eighteen inches long, having shed her Teeth seven several Times, and not a perfect Bone in any Part of her, only the Head, yet she hath all her senses to Admiration, and Discourses, Reads very well, Sings, Whistles, and all very pleasant to hear.

“Sept. 4, 1667. ‘God save the King.’”

A slap was a kind of “ladies shoe, with a loose sole,”[591] the origin, probably, of the present word slipper. Another kind of shoe is also mentioned in an advertisement--the LACED SHOE in Chancery Lane.[592] “Laced shoes,” says Randle Holme, “have the over leathers and edges of the shoe laced in orderly courses with narrow galloon lace of any colour;” this places the use of laced boots much earlier than we would have been apt to imagine. The CLOG is often used as a shoemaker’s sign in Lancashire and the midland counties, and also in those parts of London where that article is worn. The FIVE CLOGS was, in 1718, the sign of William Wright, a quack, who lived over against Prescott Street, Goodman’s Fields.[593] Perhaps he occupied apartments at a clog-maker’s. Even the primitive WOODEN SHOE (sabot) of France has figured as a tavern sign in that country. In a farce of the fourteenth century, entitled, “Pernet qui va au Vin,” the husband names the following taverns:--

“Au Sabot ou à la Lanterne J’ai mis en oubli la taverne.”

Ronsard addressed some of his verses to the hostess of this tavern, which was situated in the Faubourg St Marcel:--

“Je ne suis point, ma guerrière Cassandre, Ni Mirmidon, ni Dolope soudard.”

“Il n’y a personne,” says Furretière in his Roman Bourgeois, “qui ne se figure qu’on parle d’une Pentasilée ou d’une Talestris; cepandant cette guerrière Cassandre n’était reellement qu’une grande hallebreda qui tenit le cabaret du Sabot dans le faubourg Saint Marcel.”[594]

This sign has given its name to a street in Paris.

The PATTEN, the quaint little contrivance in which our great-grandmothers tripped through the winter’s sludge, was the sign of a toy-shop in the Haymarket, “over against Great Suffolk Street, and by Pall Mall;”[595] at the present day it is still extant as a fishmonger’s shop in Whitecross Street, near the prison.

The very common sign of the STAR AND GARTER refers to the insignia of the Order of the Garter. Anciently it was simply called the GARTER, and thus it is designated by Shakespeare in his “Merry Wives of Windsor.” Charles I. added the star to the insignia, and his example was followed on the signboard. At that time the Garter was treated with a great deal more respect than at present, for Sandford, Lancaster Herald in 1686, complained that several coffee-houses had the sign of the Garter with coffee-pots, &c., painted inside, which he considered downright desecration; hence, order was given to those offenders, “to amend the same, or else they should be pulled down.”

The Garter Inn at Windsor, where Falstaff lived in such grand style, “as an emperor in his expense,” was not a creation of Shakespeare’s fancy, but did really exist, and most probably on the same site at present occupied by the Star and Garter.[596] The first Star and Garter at Richmond was built in 1738/9, on what was then a portion of the waste of Petersham Common; it was rented at 40s. a year. A drawing by Hearne, of the comparatively insignificant tenement then raised, is still preserved at the hotel.

It was also the sign of a famous ordinary in Pall Mall. Here the Duke of Ormond, in the reign of Queen Anne, gave a dinner to a few friends, and was charged £21, 6s. 8d. for the two courses, each of four dishes, without any wine or dessert, which, considering the value of money in those days, was certainly a considerable sum. In this house, in 1765, Lord Byron, the poet’s grandfather, killed Mr Chaworth in an irregular duel, the result of a dispute whether Mr Chaworth, who preserved his game, or Lord Byron, who did not, had more game on his estate. About the same time there was another Star and Garter tavern at the end of Burton Street, near the famous Five Fields in Chelsea, “a place where robbers lie in wait,”[597] the site now occupied by Eaton Square and Belgrave Square. At this tavern, Johnson the equestrian rode in July 1762, for the gratification of the Cherokee king, when on a visit in this country. The newspapers of the day describe the feats he performed:--“He rides three horses, and when in full speed, tosses his cap and catches it several times; he stands with both feet on the horse whilst it goes three times round the green in full speed,” and similar “astounding” acts, which would now be thought very little of.

The GLOVE is, in France, the common sign of the glove-makers; generally it is a colossal representation of a glove in tin painted red. This article of dress has had more honour conferred upon it than any other; anciently it was given, by way of delivery or investiture, in sales and conveyances of lands and goods; it was worn by magistrates on certain occasions, presented to them on others; it was the challenge and sacred pledge of a duel; the rural bridegroom in the time of Queen Elizabeth wore gloves on his hat as a sign of good husbandry; noblemen wore their ladies’ gloves in front of their hats; in some parts of England it used to be the custom to hang a pair of white gloves on the pew of unmarried villagers, who had died in the flower of their youth; it is used in marriage by proxy, and is connected with innumerable other customs and ceremonies.

The FAN, the CROWNED FAN, the TWO FANS, &c., were the ordinary signs of milliners who sold fans.

The PINCUSHION is the sign of a public-house at Wyberton, Boston, but why chosen it is difficult to say; and the PURSE occurs amongst the trades tokens of W. Smithfield, with the date 1669. This last object was also the sign of one of the taverns visited at Barnet by Drunken Barnaby, where he had the misfortune with the bears.

The RING was the sign of one of the booksellers in Little Britain, in the reign of Queen Anne; and the GOLDEN RING was, in 1723, the sign of G. Coniers on Ludgate Hill, who published a black letter edition of “The Merry Tales of the Mad Men of Gotam.” An old tradition that Guttenberg received the first idea of printing from the seal of his ring impressed in wax, may have led those booksellers to adopt that object for their sign.

“Respicit archetypos auri vestigia lustrans, Et secum tacitus talia verba refert: Quam belle pandit certas hæc orbita voces, Monstrat et exactis apta reperta libris.”[598]

A red or a bipartite UMBRELLA or PARASOL is the invariable sign of the umbrella-maker. This now indispensable article was brought into fashion by Hanway the philanthropist, towards the end of the eighteenth century. Before his time, a cloak was the only protection against a shower. Pepys writes in his Diary, “This day in the afternoon, stepping with the Duke of York into St James’ Park, it rained, and I was forced to lend the duke my cloak, which he wore through the park.” On another occasion Pepys was out with no less than four ladies, “and it rained all the way, it troubled us; but, however, my cloak kept us all dry.” Pepys sheltering the four ladies under his cloak of charity would make a very pretty picture. In the reign of Queen Anne, good housewives defied the winter’s shower, “underneath th’ umbrella’s oily shed,”[599] but Hanway was the first who, braving laughter and sarcasm, accustomed the Londoners to the sight of a man carrying that useful contrivance. John Pugh, who wrote Hanway’s life, says:--

“When it rained, a small parapluie defended his face and wig; thus he was always prepared to enter into any company without impropriety or the appearance of negligence. And he was the first man who ventured to walk the streets of London with an umbrella over his head; after carrying one near thirty years he saw them come into general use.”

There is a small umbrella shop in Old Street, Shoreditch, called the Umbrella Hospital; two placards are in the window, one setting forth the analogy between a human being and an umbrella, the second giving a list of the prices charged for curing the several ills an umbrella is heir to, thus:--

s. d. RESTORING A BROKEN rib, 0 6 RESTORING a spine, 0 6 INSERTING a new spine, 1 0 RESUSCITATING the muscularia, 0 6 A NEW membranous attachment, 2 6 RESTORING a shattered constitution, 1 0 SETTING a dislocated neck, 0 6 RESTORING a broken neck, 0 9 A NEW set of nerves, 1 0 A NEW rib, 0 6 A NEW muscle, 0 3 A NEW motive power, 0 6 A CRENATED attachment, 0 6 RESTORING the muscular power, 1 6 FIXING on a new head, 0 3 SUPPLYING a new head, 1 0

[573]

“The hat Covers evil and good.”

[574]

“Strong hats made here to enclose the head, In order that the soft (loose) brains may be kept together.”

[575] J. S. Burn, History of Foreign Refugees, p. 257.

[576] Stubbe’s Anatomie of Abuses, p. 21.

[577] Bagford Bills.

[578] British Chronicle, July 17, 1766.

[579] Publick Advertiser, July 1767.

[580]

“This is in the Three Hats, Which are worn on the head, To keep it from cold and wind. Tromp was a brave man Who supported the crown of the states Hats cleaned here.”

[581] Shopbill, quoted in Thomson’s Chronicles of London Bridge, vol. ii., p. 277.

[582] Decker’s Gull’s Hornbook.

[583] Cibber’s Apology, p. 303.

[584] Gay’s Trivia, book iii.

[585] Weekly Journal, March 30, 1717.

[586] Weekly Journal. Jan. 4, 1718.

[587] Mercurius Publicus, Jan. 8 to 15, 1662.

[588] London Gazette, March 12 to 16, 1673. This was not the famous Will’s Coffee-house, which was situated in Bow Street, Covent Garden.

[589] Banks Bills.

[590] G. A. Corner, on the Inns of Southwark.

[591] Randle Holme, b. iii., ch. i., p. 14.

[592] London Gazette, July 31 to Aug. 4, 1679.

[593] Weekly Journal, Jan. 4, 1718.

[594]

“I am, my warlike Cassandra, Neither a Myrmidon nor a Dolopian warrior.”

“Everybody that reads those lines,” says Furretière in his Roman Bourgeois, “will certainly imagine that he alludes to some Pentasilea or Talestris; yet this warlike Cassandra was after all neither more nor less than a tall manly looking wench who kept the Wooden Shoe (Sabot) public-house in the Faubourg Saint Marcel.”

[595] Bagford Bills.Return to passage

[596] See J. O. Halliwell’s folio Shakespeare, vol. ii., p. 468.Return to passage

[597] The Tatler.Return to passage

[598] “He looked intently at the seal, observing the impression left by the gold, and spoke these words to himself, ‘How beautifully and distinctly does this impression render the words,’ and he proved his useful discovery in exact books.”Return to passage

[599] Gay’s Trivia, book i., p. 221.Return to passage

XIII. GEOGRAPHY AND TOPOGRAPHY

Foremost in this division stands the GLOBE,--“the great Globe itself,” a trade emblem common to publicans, outfitters, and others, who rely upon cosmopolitan customers. One of the theatres, where Shakespeare used to perform, was called The Globe, from its sign representing Atlas supporting the world. It was accompanied by the motto, TOTUS MUNDUS AGIT HISTRIONEM; upon which Ben Jonson made the following epigram:--

“If but stage actors all the world displays, Where shall we find spectators to their plays?”

To which Shakespeare is said to have returned this answer:--

“Little or much of what we see we do, We are all actors and spectators too.”

The house stood on the Bankside, Southwark, and was burnt down in June 1613, having been set on fire during one of the plays by a piece of wadding fired from a cannon falling on the thatched roof. It was rebuilt, but finally taken down in 1644 to make room for dwelling-houses.

One of the most famous Globe taverns stood, till the beginning of this century, in Fleet Street. It had been one of the favourite haunts of Oliver Goldsmith, who, it appears, was never tired of hearing a certain “tun of a man” sing “Nottingham Ale.” Goldsmith’s face was so well known here that a wealthy pork-butcher, another habitué of the house, used to drink to him in the familiar words, “Come, Noll, old boy, here’s my service to you.” Several actors, also, “used” the house,--amongst others, the centenarian Macklin, Tom King, and Dunstall. Many amusing anecdotes concerning the place have been preserved in the “Fruits of Experience,” a delightful book of city gossip, written in his eightieth year by Joseph Brasbridge, a silversmith in Fleet Street. Brasbridge was a constant visitor at this tavern.

At Aldborough, near Boroughbridge, there is a Globe public-house, in which a tessellated pavement, part of a Roman villa, may be seen. The publican informs passers-by of this by the following inscription on his signboard:--

“This is the ancient manor-house, and in it you may see The Romans work a great curiositee.”

And the absence of the apostrophe certainly makes it so. Finally, John Partridge, the almanac-making shoemaker, so amusingly ridiculed in the Tatler, lived at the Globe in Salisbury Street. From the pursuits of that great man, we may surmise his globe to have been a celestial one.

Sometimes the Globe was gilt, “for a difference.” Thus the GOLDEN GLOBE was the sign of William Herbert, printseller, and editor of Joseph Ames’s well-known work on “Typographical Antiquities.” This shop was under the Piazza on London Bridge, where he continued till 1758, when the house was taken down.

Of all the signs which may be termed “Geographical,” those referring to our own island are, of course, the most common in this country. BRITANNIA is very general. Hone, in his “Every-day Book,” mentions a public-house in the country where London porter was sold, and the figure of Britannia was represented in a languishing, reclining posture, with the motto,

“PRAY, SUP-PORTER.”

The first inhabitants are commemorated by the sign of the ANCIENT BRITON; but this is not one of the “Cærulei Britanni,” though true blue for all that, but refers simply to a true patriot in the best sense of the word. Thus Boswell uses the expression in one of his letters to Dr Johnson:--

“I trust that you will be liberal enough to make allowance for my differing from you on two points, [the Middlesex election and the American war,] when my general principles of government are according to your own heart, and when, at a crisis of doubtful event, I stand forth with honest zeal as an ancient and faithful Briton.”

That this is the meaning attached to the word is evident from other signs of the same family, as TRUE BRITON, GENEROUS BRITON, &c., all common signatures to political letters in the newspapers of the Junius period. The modern JOHN BULL, and the still later OLD ENGLISH GENTLEMAN, descend from the same stock, and are all equally common.

ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, AND IRELAND was, in 1673, the sign of John Thornton, in the Minories, hydrographer to the Hon. East India Company. As he also sold maps, he had probably a map of the United Kingdom as his sign. Formerly signs representing buildings or localities in London were common, though generally they bore very little resemblance to the places intended. Among the trades tokens we find the EXCHANGE, a tavern in the Poultry in 1651; the EAST INDIA HOUSE, in Leadenhall Street, like most of this description of signs, prompted by the vicinity of the building represented; CHARING CROSS, the sign of a shop in that locality where they sold canaries in 1699, and also a sign at Norwich in 1750; THE OLD PRISON, in Whitechapel--this Old Prison was intended for King’s Cross; CAMDEN HOUSE, in Maiden Lane, 1668,--this must have been in honour of Baptist Hicks, the opulent mercer, at the White Bear, in Cheapside, who died as Viscount Camden in 1628. He built Hicks Hall on Clerkenwell Green, and presented it to the county magistrates as their session-house.

Further, there was the TEMPLE, the sign of Mr Buck, bookseller, near the Inner Temple Gate, in Fleet Street, in 1700; and at the same period, HYDE PARK, a shop or tavern in Gray’s Inn Lane. A public-house in Bridge Row, Chelsea, mentioned before 1750, and still in existence, bears the name of the CHELSEA WATERWORKS. The Waterworks, after which it was named, were constructed circa 1724; a canal was dug from the Thames, near Ranelagh, to Pimlico, where an engine was placed for the purpose of raising the water into pipes, which conveyed it to Chelsea, Westminster, and various parts of western London. The reservoirs in Hyde and Green Park were supplied by pipes from the Chelsea Waterworks, which, in 1767, yielded daily 1740 tons.

The LANCASHIRE WITCH, a sign of an exhibition of shell-work and petrifactions in Shoreditch, 1754, was doubtless named after our old friend, Mother Shipton, born near the Petrifying Well at Knaresborough.

Even on the Continent we meet with a London sign,--viz., at Verona, where, in 1825, the TOWER OF LONDON was one of the inns which recommended itself to English travellers in the following grand circular:--

“Circulatory.--The old inn of London’s Tower, placed among the more agreeable situation of Verona’s Course, belonging at Sir Theodosius Ziguoni, restored by the decorum most indulgent to good things, of life’s eases, which are favoured from every art at same inn, with all object that is concern’d, conveniency of stage-coaches, proper horses, and good foragers, and coach-house; do offers at innkeeper the constant hope to be honoured from a great concourse, where politeness, good genius of meats to delight of nations, round table, [table d’hôte,] coffee-house, hackney-coach, men servant of place, swiftness of service, and moderacion of prices, shall arrive to accomplish in him all satisfaction, and at Sir’s who will do the favour honouring him a very assur’d kindness.”

York figures more frequently on the signboard than any other place in England. From the trades tokens we see that the CITY OF YORK was a sign in Middle Row, Holborn, in the seventeenth century. The YORK MINSTER is one of the few cathedrals ever seen represented out of its own city, probably for no other reason than because it stands in the capital of the county from whence the Yorkshire stingo comes. York, however, seems to have been a right merry city, second only to the city of London, for one of the oldest Roxburghe ballads, dated 1584, says:--

“Yorke, Yorke, for my monie, of all the cities that ever I see, For mery pastime and companie, except the cittie of London.”

The CASTLE being such a general sign, many traders adopted some particular castle. DOVER CASTLE, or WALMER CASTLE, is amongst the most frequent. The first is mentioned in the following amusing advertisement:--

“FOR FEMALE SATISFACTION.

“WHEREAS THE MYSTERY of Freemasonry has been kept a profound secret for several Ages, till at length some Men assembled themselves at the Dover Castle, in the parish of Lambeth, under pretence of knowing the secret, and likewise in opposition to some gentlemen that are real Freemasons, and hold a Lodge at the same house; therefore, to prove that they are no more than pretenders, and as the Ladies have sometimes been desirous of gaining knowledge of the noble art, (sic,) several regular-made Masons, (both ancient and modern,) members of constituted Lodges in this metropolis, have thought proper to unite into a select Body at Beau Silvester’s, the sign of the Angel, Bull Stairs, Southwark, and stile themselves UNIONS, think it highly expedient, and in justice to the fair sex, to initiate them therein, provided they are women of undeniable character; for tho’ no Lodge as yet (except the Free Union Masons) have thought proper to admit Women into the Fraternity, we, well knowing they have as much Right to attain to the secrets as those Castle Humbugs, have thought proper so to do, not doubting but they will prove an honour to the Craft; and as we have had the honour to inculcate several worthy Sisters therein, those that are desirous, and think themselves capable of having the secret conferred on them, by proper Application, will be admitted, and the charges will not exceed the Expences of our Lodge.”--Publick Advertiser, March 7, 1759.

The sign of the Angel at Beau Silvester’s was certainly well chosen by those gallant soi-disant Masons; but would not the SILENT WOMAN have been still more appropriate? Be that as it may, Lodges for ladies there were--witness the following advertisement, a good specimen of “Stratford-le-Bow” French:--

“C. LOGE C.

“AVERTISSEMENT AUX DAMES, etc. Pour vincre que les Francs Massons ne sont pas telles que le public les a representées en particulier la sexe Feminine, cet Loge juge a propos de recevoir des Femmes aussi bien que des Hommes.

“N.B.--Les Dames seront introduits dans la Loge avec la Ceremonie accoutumée ou le Serment ordinaire et le reel Secret leur seront administrées. On commencera a recevoir des Dames Jeudy 11 de Mars 1762, at Mrs Maynard’s, next door to the Lying-in Hospital, Brownlow Street, Longacre. La Porte sera ouverte a 6 Heures du Soir. Les Dames et Messieurs sont priées de ne pas venir après sept. Le prix est £1, 1s.”--(Newspaper, 1762.)

How the ladies were initiated--or, as the worthy secretary of Beau Silvester’s Lodge calls it, “inculcated,”--we are not informed; but certainly some modification must have been made in the usual ceremony attending the initiation of novices.

LLANGOLLEN CASTLE is painted on a sign in Deansgate, Manchester: under it is the following rhyme:--

“Near the above place in a vault, There is such liquor fixed, You’ll say that water, hops, and malt, Were never better mixed.”

Many other castles occur, such as JERSEY CASTLE, on the token of Philip Crosse in Finch Lane, in the seventeenth century; ROCHESTER CASTLE, MITFORD CASTLE, HEREFORD CASTLE, WARWICK CASTLE, EDINBURGH CASTLE, &c.

Towns are often adopted for signs as a point de ralliement for the natives of such places, the birthplace of the landlord being generally the town which has the honour of his selection. The CITY OF NORWICH was the sign of a house in Bishopsgate Street in the seventeenth century, either for the reason just alleged, or because “the fall of Niniveh with Norwich built in an hour,” was one of the penny sights at that period. COVENTRY CROSS was the sign of a mercer in New Bond Street at the end of the last century, evidently chosen on account of the silk ribbons manufactured in that town; and the CHILTERN HUNDRED, a public-house at Boxley, near Maidstone, doubtless refers to the well-known range of hills extending from Henley-on-Thames to Tring in Herts. In old times these hills were covered with forests, and infested by numerous bands of thieves. To protect the people in the neighbourhood, an officer was appointed by the Crown, called the steward of the Chiltern Hundreds, and although the duties have long ceased the office still exists, and is made use of to afford members of the House of Commons an opportunity of resigning their seats when they desire it. Being a Government appointment, though without either duties or salary, the acceptance of it disqualifies a member from retaining his seat.

The WILTSHIRE SHEPHERD was a sign in St Martin’s Lane in the seventeenth century. The Wiltshire downs were famous for their flocks of sheep. Aubrey, himself a Wiltshireman, says that the innocent lives of those shepherds “doe give us a resemblance of the golden age.” He also states that their sight inspired Sir Philip Sidney in charming pastorals, which on those very downs he sketched from nature, as some of his old relations well remembered. “’Twas about these purlieus,” says he, “that the muses were wont to appeare to Sir Philip Sidney, and where he wrote down their dictates in his table-book, though on horseback.” Many of the customs of these shepherds Aubrey traces down from the Romans.[600] The GENTLE SHEPHERD OF SALISBURY PLAIN is the name given to Farmer Peek’s house, on the road from Cape Town to Simon’s Bay, Cape of Good Hope. On his signboard is the following mosaic inscription:--

“Multum in parvo, pro bono publico Entertainment for man or beast all of a row. Lekker host as much as you please; Excellent beds without any fleas. Nos patriam fugimus--now we are here, Vivamus, let us live by selling beer. On donne à boire et à manger ici; Come in and try it, whoever you be. The Gentle Shepherd of Salisbury Plain.”

Near Basingstoke there is a public-house sign representing a grenadier in full uniform, holding in his hand a foaming pot of ale; it is called the WHITLEY GRENADIER, and bears the following disinterested verses:--

“This is the Whitley Grenadier, A noted house for famous beer. My friend, if you should chance to call, Beware and get not drunk withal; Let moderation be your guide, It answers well whene’er ’tis try’d. Then use, but not abuse, strong beer, And don’t forget the Grenadier.”

This sign seems to have been suggested by the tragical death of a grenadier, which is thus recorded on a tombstone in the churchyard of Winchester Cathedral:--

“Here sleeps in peace a Hampshire Grenadeer, Who caught his death by drinking cold small beer. Soldiers be warned by his untimely fall, And when you’re hot, drink strong, or none at all.”

To which a wag appended the following lines:--

“An honest soldier never is forgot, Whether he die by musket or by pot.”

The FLITCH OF DUNMOW is a common sign in Essex, and is sometimes seen in other counties. The custom of giving a flitch of bacon, on the well-known conditions, is not peculiar to Dunmow. In the reign of Edward III., the Earl of Lancaster, lord of the honour of Tutbury, granted a manor near Wichnor village, Burton-upon-Trent, to Sir Philip de Sommerville, stipulating that he was to give a flitch of bacon on the same conditions as at Dunmow.[601] At the abbey of St Milaine, near Rennes, in Normandy, the same custom was observed, but the practice was still less successful, for Dunmow at least has six times given the side of bacon away, but--

“A l’abbaye de Saint Milaine près Rennes y a plus de six cents ans ont un costé de lard encore tout frais et non corrompu; et néanmoins ont voué et ordonné aux premiers qui par an et jour ensemble mariez ont vescu sans debat, grondement et sans s’en repentir.”[602]

Our next sign is geographical only in its relationship. At Wansford Bridge, which crosses the river Nen in Northampton, there is the HAYCOCK Inn, deriving its name from a curious incident: the river overflowed its banks and carried away a haycock with a man upon it. Taylor, the Water poet, says of the circumstance:--

“On a haycock sleeping soundly, The river rose, and took me roundly Down the current; people cried, As along the stream I hied. ‘Where away?’ quoth they, ‘From Greenland?’ ‘No; from Wansford Bridge, in England.’”

The stone bridge, of thirteen arches, carries the Great North Road across the river, so much traversed in the coaching times; and well known to many a traveller in those days was the Haycock Inn, at one end of the bridge, which has on the signboard a pictorial representation of the scene.

Scotland, which, besides Edinburgh ales and Highland whisky, produces a great many publicans, is honoured in numberless signs. LAND O’ CAKES, the name given by Burns to the country of the “brighter Scotch,” is a sign at Middle Hill Gate, near Stockport. And here we may observe the popularity of Burns among the publicans, for not only is the poet himself, and several of his amusing heroes, exalted in innumerable places among the “living dead,” but at Kirby Moor some of his verses are even introduced on the sign:--

“When neebors anger at a plea, An’ just as wud as wud can be, How easy can the barley bree Cement the quarrel? It’s aye the cheapest lawyer’s fee, To taste the barrel.”

Very good advice indeed.

Since the Highlander’s love for snuff and whisky was such, that he wished to have “a Benlomond of snuff, and a Loch Lomond of whisky,” nobody could make a better public-house sign than the HIGHLAND LADDIE, nor a better snuff-shop sign than the kilted Highlander who stands generally at the door of these establishments. Two others of the lares and penates of the tobacconist are the Sailor and the Moor or Oriental. The first presiding over the snuff, the second over the chewing, the third over the smoking “department,”--as the drapers term the divisions of their shop. After the rebellion of 1745, when everything was done by the Government to extinguish the nationality of the Scotch, when Scotch ballads were forbidden, and the names of some clans were deemed more odious than the word raka to the Jews, the kilt was forbidden by the legislature as an abomination. On that occasion the following trifle appeared in the newspapers:--

“We hear that the dapper wooden Highlanders, who guard so heroically the doors of snuff-shops, intend to petition the Legislature, in order that they may be excused from complying with the act of Parliament with regard to their change of dress: alledging that they have ever been faithful subjects to his Majesty, having constantly supplied his Guards with a pinch out of their Mulls when they marched by them, and so far from engaging in any Rebellion, that they have never entertained a rebellious thought; whence they humbly hope that they shall not be put to the Expense of buying new cloaths.”

The ubiquity of the Scotch packman produced the sign of the SCOTCHMAN’S PACK, St Michael’s Hill, Bristol, and in some other places. From the following passage it appears that these Scottish packmen, in the sixteenth century, penetrated even as far as Poland:--“Ane pedder is called are merchõd or cremar quha beirs are pack or creame[603] upon his bak, quha are called beirares of the puddill be the Scottesmen in the realme of Polonia, quhair I saw an greate multitude in the town of Cracovia, anno Dom. 1569.”[604]

GRETNA GREEN used at one time to be a not very uncommon sign on the Border; there is one at Ayeliffe, Darlington. The origin of marriages at this place is not so generally known that it would be superfluous to introduce it here. Marriages in Scotland at all times having been considered legal if two parties accepted each other for man and wife in the presence of witnesses, a dissipated tobacconist, named Joseph Paisley, about a century ago, conceived the idea of opening an establishment on the Border to unite runaway couples in wedlock. For this purpose he selected the common, or green, between Graitney and Springfield, in Dumfries-shire, a place called Megshill, the first Scottish ground on entering the country from Cumberland; there he commenced business. In 1791 he settled in the then newly-built village of Springfield, but the reputation of his impromptu marriage-temple on Graitney Common, (or Gretna Green, as the English called it,) had already so widely spread that the name of the place had passed into a by-word for clandestine marriages. Paisley died in 1814, but marriage-mongering had become a trade in Springfield, and several self-appointed parsons started up to fill the office. Pennant says that in 1771 a young couple might be united “from two guineas a job to a dram of whisky” by a fisherman, a joiner, or a blacksmith; but the prices rose much higher afterwards, varying from £40 to half-a-guinea, and this last sum was only accepted from pedestrian couples. As a rule, the fee was settled by the post-boys from Carlisle, each patronising certain houses, and the hymeneal priests, knowing the value of their patronage, permitted them to go snacks in the proceeds. It is estimated that about 300 couples a year used to get married in this off-hand manner.

Of our colonies, GIBRALTAR and the CAPE OF GOOD HOPE seem to be almost the only ones considered worthy the honour of the signboard. Gibraltar became popular as soon as the acquisition had been esteemed at its proper value. As for the Cape of Good Hope, the frequency of this sign all over England seems to render it probable that it was not so much adopted in honour of the colony as to express the landlord’s hope of success, and therefore as a sort of equivalent to the Hope and Anchor, or the Hope.[605] The JAMAICA tavern, too, may have been christened in compliment to the birth-place of rum. There is a house with this name in Bermondsey, which is one of the many houses stated in our time to have been a residence of Oliver Cromwell. “The building, of which only a moiety now remains, and that very ruinous, the other having been removed years ago to make room for modern erections, presents probably almost the same features as when tenanted by the Protector. The carved quatrefoils and flowers upon the staircase beams, the old-fashioned fastenings of the doors--‘bolts, locks, and bars’--the huge single gable, (which in a modern house would be double,) even the divided section, like a monstrous amputated stump, imperfectly plastered over, patched here and there with planks, slates, and tiles, to keep the wind and weather out, though it be very poorly--all are in keeping; and the glimmer of the gas, by which the old and ruinous kitchen into which we strayed was dimly lighted, seemed to ‘pale its ineffectual fires’ in striving to illumine the old black settles, and still older wainscot.”[606] After the Restoration, this house seems to have become a tavern, and here, according to the homely, kind-hearted custom of the times, Pepys, on Sunday, April 14, 1667, took his wife and her maids to give them a day’s pleasure. “Over the water to the Jamaica house, where I never was before, and then the girls did run wagers on the bowling green, and there with much pleasure spent little, and so home.” Subsequently, he frequently returned to this place, which seems to have been the same he elsewhere calls The Halfway House. Besides this, there is the JAMAICA AND MADEIRA coffee-house, a well-known business club or tavern in St Michael’s Alley, Cornhill.

Only a few European nations and towns are represented. Amongst the Bagford shopbills there is one of a perfumer, named Dighton, who, in the reign of Queen Anne, sold “true Hungary Water, all sorts of snuff and perfumes,” &c. His shop was next door to the King’s Head Tavern at Chancery Lane End, and had the sign of the CITY OF SEVILLA; the woodcut above his shop-bill presents a distant family resemblance to that place, and with a little goodwill one may recognise the Alcazar, the Giralda, San Clementi, and San Juan de la Palma; the view is taken from the suburb of Triana, on the other side of the river. This “famous Henry Dighton,” as he styles himself in an advertisement in 1718, “sworn perfumer in ordinary to H. M. King George,” had chosen the sign of the City of Sevilla from the fact of his importing Spanish snuff, the fashionable mixture in those days, which the gallants dislodged with such airy elegance from among the lace frills of their shirts and neckties. His successor, Henry Coulthurst, promised “to furnish greater variety of the choicest and truest snuff than any perfumer in England, viz., Havana, Port St Mary’s, Barcelona, Port Mahon, Seville, plain Spanish, and fine Lisbon.” These Spanish snuffs had come greatly into fashion at the capture of Puerta St Maria, near Cadiz, when the fleet, under Sir George Rooke, captured several thousand barrels of snuff. But long before that time enormous quantities of Spanish tobacco had been yearly imported into England.

“There was wont to come out of Spain,” said Sir Edwin Sandys, in 1620, “a great mass of money to the value of £100,000 per annum for our cloths and other merchandises; and now we have from thence for all our cloth and merchandises nothing but tobacco: nay, that will not pay for all the tobacco we have from thence, but they have more from us in money every year, £20,000; so there goes out of this kingdom as good as £120,000 for tobacco every year.”[607]

The THREE SPANISH GYPSIES, in the New Exchange, was the shop of the future “Monkey Duchess,” the nickname given by her aristocratic friends to Anne Monk, Duchess of Albemarle. “She was the daughter of John Clarges, a farrier in the Savoy, and horse-shoer to Colonel Monk. In 1632 she was married, in the church of St Lawrence Poultney, to Thomas Radford, son of Thomas Radford, late a farrier, servant to Prince Charles, and resident in the Mews. She had a daughter who was born in 1634, and died in 1638. She lived with her husband at the Three Spanish Gypsies, in the New Exchange, and sold wash-balls, powder, gloves, and such things, and taught girls plain work. About 1647, being a sempstress to Colonel Monk, she used to carry him his linen. In 1648 her father and mother died. The year after she fell out with her husband, and they parted. But no certificate from any parish register appears reciting his burial. In 1652 she was married in the church of St George, Southwark, to General Monk, and in the following year was delivered of a son, Christopher, (afterwards the second and last Duke of Albemarle,) who was suckled by Honour Mills, who sold apples, herbs, and oysters.”[608] What became of her first husband, and when he died, is not known.

VENICE was the sign of B. Martin, a bookseller in the Old Bailey, circa 1640, adopted probably in honour of the Aldi, the famous printers, who carried on business in this city. In the reign of Charles II. there was a house of indifferent fame in Moorfields, called the RUSSIA HOUSE, whether opened during the time that the Russian ambassadors visited the king, or how it obtained its name, is not known. The house became notorious in 1667 through the trial of Gabriel Holmes and a band of incendiaries, among whom were two young boys, sons of James Montague of Lackham, grandsons of the Earl of Manchester. The boys turned king’s evidence, and Holmes was hanged. Russia House was one of the places where they planned their expeditions and spent their money: the object of their incendiarism, it came out at the trial, was simply that they might steal the goods which would be flung into the streets by the terrified inmates of the burning houses.

The ANTWERP tavern was a famous house behind the Exchange, in the seventeenth century, of which tokens are extant, representing a view of Antwerp from the river. The extensive trade of Flanders, in the middle ages and long after, made Antwerp a favourite subject for signboards, it being the best harbour in Flanders. In Dieppe there is still a house on the Quai Henri IV., bearing a stone bas-relief sign of Antwerp, (la ville d’Anvers,) with the date 1697; but this house and sign are named, as early as 1645, in a MS. list of rents of houses in Dieppe, due to the Archbishop of Rouen.

Dutchmen, in some instances, have been appointed the tutelar saints of public-houses, on account of their reputed love for drink; thus we have the TWO DUTCHMEN at Marsden, near Huddersfield, and the JOVIAL DUTCHMAN at Crick, in Derbyshire. Now, though the Dutchman’s joviality is questionable, yet he certainly has at all times been reputed a heavy drinker. Shakespeare names, “your swag-bellied Hollander,” along with the Dane and German, as the only (though unsuccessful) rival of the English in the art of hard drinking. Massinger, in his “Duke of Florence,” has a similar remark; and Sir Richard Baker, in his “Chronicles,” says that the English “in these Dutch wars learned to be drunkards, and as we do not like to do things by halves in this country, we soon surpassed our masters.” Decker remarks that “Drunkenness, which was once the Dutchman’s headake, is now become the Englishman’s.”[609] Upsy Dutch and upsy freeze (for “op zyn Dutch,” and “op zyn Vriesch,” à la Dutch and à la Vriesch) are terms constantly used by Decker to denote a very drunken condition. Yet there was a time, long before the “Dutch wars,” when the English did not want any foreign masters to teach them drinking; how could it have been otherwise with descendants of the beer-drinking Saxons and Danes? Malmesbury complains that in his time “the English fashion was to sit bibbing whole hours after dinner, as the Normane guise was to walke and get up and downe in the stretes with great waines of idle serving men following them;”[610] and Hollinshed, who wrote at the very time of the Dutch wars, mentions among the improvements which old men in his time observed, was that the farmers could pay their rent without selling a cow or a horse, as they had been wont to do in former times, “owing to too much attention to the ale-house, and too little to work.”

Notwithstanding this, the Jovial Dutchman is a very good sign for licensed victuallers, since the general opinion is:--

“Death’s not to be--, so Seneca doth think, But Dutchmen say ’tis death to cease to drink.”[611]

Besides drinking, the Dutchman has long had a reputation for smoking, whence the tobacconists of the last century used frequently to have on their sign, a Scotchman, a Dutchman, and a sailor, with the following rhyme:--

“We three are engaged in one cause, I snuffs, I smokes, and I chaws.”

A tobacconist in Kingsland Road had the same men, but a different reading of the text:--

“This Indian weed is good indeed, Puff on, keep up the joke, ’Tis the best, ’twill stand the test, Either to chew or smoke.”[612]

The introduction of coffee produced signs of various sultans, but the TURK’S HEAD may, perhaps, date from earlier times, possessing an origin similar to the Saracen’s Head. The Turks throughout the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, were a common topic of conversation, and the bugbear of the European nations. This is well exemplified in the church-wardens’ accounts of St Helen’s, Abingdon, where the following entry occurs:--“Anno MDLXV--8 of Q. Eliz.--payde for two bokes of common prayer agaynste invading of the Turke, 0. 6.” That year the Turks had made a descent upon the isle of Malta, where they besieged the town and castle of St Michael; but upon the approach of the fleet of the Order, they broke up the siege and suffered a considerable loss in their flight. During the war of Emperor Maximilian against the Turks in Hungary, similar prayer-books were annually purchased for the parish. The first prototypes of newspapers, also, were the printed despatches concerning the battles and engagements of the emperor with the Turks,[613] and even at the end of the seventeenth century no newspaper was complete without its news from the Danube and “movements of the Turks.” One of the earliest patents granted for pistols, contains a clause that square balls are not to be used, “except against the Turks.” The number of Turk’s Heads in London in the seventeenth century was considerable; not less than eight trades tokens of different houses with this sign are known to exist.

In 1667, Robert Boulter, at the Turk’s Head in Bishopsgate, published the first edition of Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” It was with difficulty that the author sold the copy for five pounds! he was to receive £5 more after the sale of the 1300 copies which comprised the first impression, and £5 more after the sale of each new impression of 1300 copies each. “And what a poor consideration was this,” says one of his biographers, “for such an inestimable performance,” and how much more do others get by the works of great authors than the authors themselves! And yet we find that Hoyle, the author of the “Treatise on the Game of Whist,” after having disposed of the whole of the first impression, sold the copyright to the bookseller for two hundred guineas.

Dr Johnson used often to take supper at the Turk’s Head in the Strand: “I encourage this house, (said he;) for the mistress of it is a good, civil woman, and has not much business.”[614] At another Turk’s Head, Gerrard Street, Soho, Johnson formed, in 1763, that well-known club, which was long without a name, but which after Garrick’s funeral became distinguished by the name of the Literary Club.

“Sir Joshua Reynolds had the merit of being the first proposer of it, to which Johnson acceded, and the original members were Sir Joshua Reynolds, Dr Johnson, Mr Edmund Burke, Dr Nugent, Mr Beauclerck, Mr Langton, Dr Goldsmith, Mr Chamier, and Sir John Hawkins. They met at the Turk’s Head in Gerrard Street, Soho, one evening every week, at seven, and generally continued their conversation till a pretty late hour. This club has been gradually increased to its present [1791] number thirty-five. After about ten years, instead of supping weekly, it was resolved to dine together once a fortnight during the meeting of Parliament.”[615]

After the death of the landlord of this house, the club removed to the PRINCE in Sackville Street; and after two or three more changes, it finally settled down at the THATCHED HOUSE, St James’s. The original portrait of Sir Joshua Reynolds, presented to the club by the painter himself, is still preserved; one of its peculiarities is, that the artist has represented himself wearing spectacles. The club is still in existence, under the name of the Dilettanti Club. “The Turk’s Head in Gerrard Street, Soho,” says Moser in his Memorandum-book, “was, more than fifty years since, removed from a tavern of the same sign, the corner of Greek and Compton Streets. This place was a kind of head-quarters for the Loyal Association during the rebellion of 1745.”[616]

About that time there was a waiter in this tavern, who, like Tennyson’s waiter at the Cock, Templebar, had obtained considerable celebrity. His name was Little Will. On an engraving dated 1752, he is represented as a small man with a large head and a periwig, dressed in a long apron, with a pair of snuffers suspended from the waist. The Rev. Mr Huddersford, of Trinity College, Oxford, in a letter to Granger, says,--

“Little Will, as I have heard, was a great favourite with the gentlemen of the coffee-house; there is a print representing him in his constant attitude, apparently insensible to anything around him, but swallowing every article of politicks that dropped, which, I am told, he understands better than any of his masters.”

The THREE TURKS was a sign at Norwich in 1750,[617] and even now, though the crescent is decidedly in the “last quarter,” there are still signs of Turks to be found, as the TURK AND SLAVE, Brick Lane, Spitalfields; the GREAT TURK (i.e., the Sultan) at Wolverhampton--the last is of considerable antiquity, for in 1600 it was the sign of John Barnes, a bookseller in Fleet Street. One of the most opulent Turkish towns was commemorated by the SMYRNA coffee-house, in Pall Mall, a fashionable coffee-house in the reign of Queen Anne, when the wits and beaux used to take their constitutional in St James’ Park, and then go to the Smyrna, where, sitting before the open windows, they could see the ladies carried past in their sedans or coaches, on their return from the Mall. This coffee-house seems to have had a reputation for politics. In the Tatler, (No. 10,) a “cluster of wise heads” is said to sit every evening from the left side of the fire at the Smyrna to the door; and in No. 78, the public is informed that “the seat of learning is now removed from the corner of the chimney on the left hand towards the window, to the round table in the middle of the floor, over against the fire; a revolution much lamented by the porters and chairmen, who were greatly edified through a pane of glass that remained broken all the last summer.” Prior, Swift, and Pope, were constant visitors at this house.

There was a GRECIAN coffee-house in Devereux Court, Strand, which for nearly two centuries was equally well frequented. It derived its name probably from having been opened by a Greek, the natives of that country having been among the first to open coffee-houses in London. It was a very fashionable house in the time of the Spectators and Tatlers: “My face is likewise very well known at the Grecian,” says Addison in Spectator, No. 1. It seems generally to have been frequented by literati and savants, some of them rather hot-headed:--

“I remember two gentlemen, who were constant companions, disputing one evening at the Grecian coffee-house, concerning the accent of a Greek word. This dispute was carried to such a length that the two friends thought proper to determine it with their swords; for this purpose they stept into Devereux Court, where one of them (whose name, if I remember right, was Fitzgerald) was run through the body, and died on the spot.”[618]

In this coffee-house Mrs Mapp, the famous bone-setter, (see p. 113) performed her cures before Sir Hans Sloane:--

“On Saturday and yesterday, Mrs Mapp performed several operations at the Grecian coffee-house, particularly one upon a niece of Sir Hans Sloane, to his great satisfaction and her credit. The patient had her shoulder-bone out for about nine years.”--Grub Street Journal, October 21, 1736.

The coffee-house was closed in 1843; a bust of Essex is in front of the house it formerly occupied with the inscription, “This is Devereux Court, 1676.”

Various reasons are given to account for the sign of the SARACEN’S HEAD. “When our countrymen came home from fighting with the Saracens, and were beaten by them, they pictured them with huge, big, terrible faces, (as you still see the sign of the Saracen’s Head is,) when, in truth, they were like other men. But this they did to save their own credit.”[619] Or the sign may have been adopted by those who had visited the Holy Land, either as pilgrims or when fighting the Saracens. Others, again, hold that it was first set up in compliment to the mother of Thomas à Becket, who was the daughter of a Saracen: formerly the sign was very general. During the time of the Commonwealth, the Saracen’s Head in Islington was a place of resort for the Londoners. In the “Walks of Islington and Hogsden, with the Humours of Wood Street Compter,” a comedy by Thomas Jordan, gentleman, 1648, the scene is laid at that tavern. It was also the sign of the house occupied by Sir Christopher Wren in Friday Street, which remained almost unchanged till it was taken down in 1844. The Saracen’s Head, Snow Hill, is one of the last remaining, and, at the same time, one of the oldest, being named in Dick Tarlton’s Jests as “the Sarracen’s Head without Newgate;” and Stow says, “next to this church [St Sepulchre’s in the Bailey] is a fair and large inn for receipt of travellers, and hath to sign the Sarrazen’s Head.” The courtyard has still many of the characteristics of an old English inn, with galleries all round leading to the bed-rooms, and a spacious gate, through which the dusty mail-coaches used to rumble in, the tired passengers creeping forth, and thanking their stars in having escaped the highwaymen, and the holes and sloughs of the road. How many hearts, beating with hope on their first entry into London, have passed under this gate, that now lie mouldering in the quiet little churchyards of the metropolis: some finding a resting-place in Westminster, whilst others ceased to beat at Tyburn. It was at this inn that Nicholas Nickleby and his uncle waited upon Squeers, the Yorkshire schoolmaster. Mr Dickens describes the old tavern as it was in the last years of our mail-coaching, when it was one of the most important places for arrivals and departures in London:--

“Near to the jail, and by consequence near to Smithfield also, and the Compter and the bustle and noise of the city; and just on that particular part of Snow Hill where omnibus horses going eastwards seriously think of falling down on purpose, and where horses in hackney cabriolets going westwards not unfrequently fall by accident, is the coach-yard of the Saracen’s Head Inn, its portals guarded by two Saracens’ heads and shoulders, which it was once the pride and glory of the choice spirits of this metropolis to pull down at night, but which have for some time remained in undisturbed tranquillity, possibly because this species of humour is now confined to Saint James’s parish, where door-knockers are preferred as being more portable, and bell-wires esteemed as convenient toothpicks. Whether this be the reason or not, there they are, frowning upon you from each side of the gateway; and the inn itself, garnished with another Saracen’s Head, frowns upon you from the top of the yard; while from the door of the hind boot of all the red coaches that are standing therein, there glares a small Saracen’s Head with a twin expression to the large Saracen’s Head below, so that the general appearance of the pile is of the Saracenic order.”

Blackamoors and other dark-skinned foreigners have always possessed considerable attractions as signs for tobacconists, and sometimes also for public-houses. Negroes, with feathered headdresses and kilts, smoking pipes, are to be seen outside tobacco-shops on the Continent, as well as in England. Thus, in the seventeenth century, there was one in Amsterdam with the following inscription:--

“Josua badt den Heere van herten aan Dat de zon en maan bleef stille staan. Puik van Verinis en gœ Blaan Haalt men hier in den Indiaan.”[620]

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the VIRGINIAN was the most common in England, owing to the first tobacco having been imported from that country:--

“They returned homewards, passing by Virginia, a colony which Sir Walter Raleigh had there planted, from whence Drake brings home with him Walter Lane, who was the first that brought tobacco into England, which the Indians take against crudities of the stomach.”[621]

Publicans have a strange fancy for INDIAN KINGS, QUEENS, and CHIEFS, thus bearing out Trinculo’s assertion of the nation at large:--“When they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian.” There is a sculptured sign of an INDIAN CHIEF at Shoreditch, having all the appearance of an old ship’s figure-head; and, as a nomen ac præterea nihil, it figures in many places. In Dolphin Lane, Boston, (Linc.,) there used formerly to be a sign with some fanciful, masked-ball dressed figures on it, which were meant to represent the THREE KINGS of Cologne; but they conveyed so little the idea of those holy personages, that the profanum vulgus called them the THREE MERRY DEVILS. Eventually, by a metamorphosis more strange than any in Ovid, these three merry devils were transformed into one very strangely dressed female called the INDIAN QUEEN. The AFRICAN CHIEF, in Sommerstown, is evidently a variety of these Indian chiefs.

Another sign of venerable antiquity is the BLACK BOY. That this is of old standing, appears from an entry in Machyn’s Diary: “The XXX day of Desember 1562, was slayne in John Street, Gylbard Goldsmith, dwellyng at the sene of the Blake Boy, in the Cheap, by ys wyff’s sun.”

This Black Boy seems to have been a tobacconist’s sign from the first; for in Ben Jonson’s “Bartholomew Fair” we find:--“I thought he would have run mad o’ the Black Boy in Bucklersbury, that takes the scurvy roguy tobacco there.”--Act i., Scene 1.

In the seventeenth century, it was the sign of a celebrated ordinary in Southwark:--

“Jove, and all his hous’hold a’ter Him, yesterday went crosse the water, To th’ signe of the Black Boy in Southwarke, To th’ ordinary, to find his mouth worke. Here he intends to fuddle’s nose This fortnight yet, under the rose.”

Homer à la Mode, 1665.

At the Black Boy in Newgate Street, the Calves’ Head Club was sometimes held. It was not restricted to any particular house, but moved yearly from one place to another, as it was found most convenient. An axe was hung up in the club-room crowned with laurel: the bill of fare consisted of calves’ heads, dressed in various ways; a large pike, with a small one in his mouth, (an emblem of tyranny;) a large cod’s head; and a boar’s head, to indicate stupidity and bestiality.[622]

One of the early editions of Cocker’s Arithmetic was published at the Black Boy. Such was the fame of this work, that even as the Pythagorians swore in verba magistris, and αυτος ἑφη settled all questions, so our ancestors proved their points “according to Cocker.” The title of the work we must not abbreviate:--

“COCKER’S ARITHMETIC: Being a plain and familiar method, suitable to the meanest capacity, for the full understanding of that incomparable art, as now taught by the ablest schoolmasters in city and country. Composed by Thomas Cocker, late practioner in the art of writing, arithmetic, and engraving. Being that so long since promised to the world. Perused and published by John Hawkins, writing-master, near St George’s Church, in Southwark. By the author’s correct copy, and commended to the world by many eminent Mathematicians and writing-masters in and near London. Licensed September 1677. London: printed by J. R. for T. P., and are to be sold by John Back, at the Black Boy, on London Bridge. 1694. 12o.”

The BLACK GIRL is a variety of this sign at Clareborough, Notts. So, too, appears to be the ARAB BOY, an ale-house on the road between Putney and East-Sheen. The TWO BLACK BOYS occurs on one of the London trades tokens, where they are represented shaking hands. The BLACK BOY AND COMB was, in 1730, a shop on Ludgate Hill, either a perfumer’s or a mercer’s, for he advertises “right French Hungary water, at 1s. 3d. a half pint bottle; fine Florence oil, at 2s. per flask; right orange flower water, at 1s. 6d. per flask; Barbadoes citron water, at 14s. per quart; and all sort of Bermudas, Leghorn, and fine silk hats for ladies,” &c.[623] The combination on the sign arose from the combs dangling at the doors of the shops where they were sold.

The BLACK BOY AND CAMEL (doubtless a black boy leading a camel) was not many years ago the sign of a tavern in Leadenhall Street, where it was already in existence in the year 1700.

“The Annual feast for the Parish of St Dunstan, in Stepney, being revived, will be kept the 29th instant, at the King’s Head, in Stepney, where Tickets may be had, and at Tho. Warham’s, at the Black Boy and Camel, Leaden Hall Street,” &c.--London Gazette, August 15-19, 1700.

These parish feasts show most unmistakably the general conviviality of the time. Natives of the same county used also to have their public feasts. Thus the London Gazette for May 30 to June 3, 1700, advertises “the annual feast for gentlemen of the county of Huntingdon;” and the Gazette for October 21-24, “the anniversary feast for the gentlemen, natives of the county of Kent.” It is easy to imagine the attraction of such festivals in times when travelling was both very expensive and very dangerous,--when the post was badly conducted and extravagant in its charges; and, moreover, but few people could write. Such meetings, then, were the only ties that connected the provincial residing in London with the home of his childhood. At such times friends brought up in the same town or village could meet each other, talk over bygone times, call up the recollections of early years, remember mutual friends, and drink a bumper to those left behind. Sometimes these feasts took a religious turn, when a native of the county or district preached in the neighbouring church or chapel. Blessed occasions were these religious yet merry feasts of the olden time. But the “march of intellect”--that is to say, improved locomotion, the spread of reading, writing, and high notions--have done away with these meetings of warm hearts and jovial tempers as things low and vulgar.

JERUSALEM was sure to figure early on signboards of those inns at which pilgrims, on their way to the Holy Land, were wont to put up; and long after pilgrimages were discontinued it was still retained as a sign. In 1657 we find it in Fleet Street. What the sign was like it is impossible now to say, but on the trades token of the house the Holy City is represented by one single building. There is another token extant of a house, also in Fleet Street, without date or name of the shop, on which there is a view of a town, with the usual conventional representation of the temple of Solomon. It was equally common in France. Regnard mentions one in Nogent:--

“Entrant dans la bonne ville Cité Nogent Jerusalem fut l’asile Soleil couchant, Bon sejour pour le pelerin, Vin du Vaulx, et le bon vin.”[624]

On a house in the Rue Etoupée, at Rouen, there is a stone carved sign of Jerusalem, represented as a fortified town, with a figure arriving on each side, evidently meant for pilgrims. A similar idea seems to be conveyed by the sign of TRIP TO JERUSALEM, a public-house in Nottingham, and the PILGRIM in Coventry. There is still an Old Jerusalem tavern in Clerkenwell, so called after the Knights of St John, of whose hospital this house was the principal gateway.

MOUNT PLEASANT is a name frequently bestowed upon public-houses, not always with any allusion to such a locality, but simply on account of its being an alluring name of the same maudlin class as COTTAGE OF CONTENT, BANK OF FRIENDSHIP, &c. There is said to be a mountain of that name in America, which obtained some celebrity from being the locality on which the sassafras (Orchis mascula) was gathered, the plant which produces the saloop. This drink came in vogue at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Reide’s coffee-house in Fleet Street was the first respectable house where it was sold. When it was opened in 1719, the following lines, painted on a board, hung in front of the house; in latter times, until the closing of the establishment in 1833, they were preserved in the coffee-room:--

“Come all degrees now passing by, My charming liquor taste and try; To Lockyer[625] come and drink your fill, Mount Pleasant has no kind of ill. The fumes of wines, punch, drams, or beer, It will expel; your spirits cheer; From drowsiness your spirits free; Sweet as a rose your breath shall be. Come taste and try, and speak your mind, Such rare ingredients here are joined. Mount Pleasant pleases all mankind.”

Lockyer had begun life with half-a-crown, and by selling salop, or saloop, at Fleet-ditch, amassed sufficient to open the above place in Fleet Street, where he died worth £1000, in March 1739.[626]

Our old friend Pepys mentions going to CHINA HALL, but gives no further particulars. It is not unlikely that this was the same place which, in the summer of 1777, was opened as a theatre. Whatever its use in former times, it was at that period the warehouse of a paper manufacturer. In those days the West-end often visited the entertainments of the East, and the new theatre was sufficiently patronised to enable the proprietors to venture upon some embellishments. The prices were--boxes, 3s.; pit, 2s.; gallery, 1s.; and the time of commencing varied from half-past six to seven o’clock, according to the season. “The Wonder,” “Love in a Village,” the “Comical Courtship,” and the “Lying Valet,” were among the plays performed. The famous Cooke was one of the actors in the season of 1778. In that same year the building suffered the usual fate of all theatres, and was utterly destroyed by fire.

One name we omitted to notice when speaking of signs derived from European cities--COPENHAGEN HOUSE. Until very recently, this stood isolated in the fields north of the metropolis, near the old road to Highgate. It was said to have derived its name from the fact of a Danish prince or ambassador having resided in it during a great plague in London. Another tradition is to the effect that, early in the seventeenth century, upon some political occasion, great numbers of Danes left that kingdom, and came to London; whereupon the house was opened by an emigrant from Copenhagen, as a place of resort for his countrymen resident in the metropolis. This tradition probably refers to the reign of James I., who was visited in London by his brother-in-law, the King of Denmark, at which time it is very probable that there was a considerable influx of persons from the Danish capital. Coopen-Hagen is the name given to the place in the map accompanying Camden’s Britannia, 1695. For many years previous to its demolition, the house had a great reputation amongst Cockney excursionists, and its tea-gardens, skittle-ground, Dutch pins, and particularly Fives Play, were great attractions. For this last game especially the place was very famous. The house possessed another attraction. From its windows a very fine view of London, the Thames, and the Surrey hills beyond, was obtainable. The New Cattle Market now occupies its site, and a modern public-house only perpetuates the name.

Besides the above-mentioned geographical signs, we have others of more modern introduction, such as the SOUTH AUSTRALIAN in Cadogan Street, Chelsea, and the NORTH POLE in Oxford Street, which last commemorates one of those equally brave and unsuccessful expeditions that have taken place every now and then since Admiral Frobisher first started on the discovery of the Meta Incognita.

There exists a class of signs in some respects geographical, yet, from their indefinite character, they are more adapted for insertion in the following chapter than here. We allude to such tavern decorations as that picture of the fiery sun going down behind a hill, which is called THE WORLD’S END, at St George’s, near Bristol; THE FIRST AND LAST INN IN ENGLAND, a sign which may be seen in many other localities besides at the Land’s End, in Cornwall; and NO PLACE INN, a public-house in the suburbs of Plymouth, the sign representing an old woman standing at the door, accosting her husband, just arrived--“Where have you been?” “No place.” Many others of an equally indefinite character might be given here, but they would be found to be even less topographical than those just named.

[600] Aubrey, Remains of Judaisme and Gentilisme. MS. Lansdowne Collection.

[601] See Gent.’s Mag., Jan. 1819, where the conditions are given in extenso.

[602] “At the abbey of Saint Milaine, near Rennes, there has been for more than 600 years a flitch of bacon, still perfectly fresh and good; yet it is promised and ordered to be given to the first couple that has been married for a year and a day without quarrelling, scolding, or regretting that they were married.”--Contes d’Eutrap.

[603] Creame--Dutch, kraam--a temporary booth erected in fair-time to serve as a shop. Even at the present day those men that go from village to village selling cheap jewellery and other articles, which they carry in a box or basket, are called mars-kramers--apparently from marcher, to walk, and the above kraam.

[604] Skene, De Verborum Significatione at the End of his Lawes and Actes. Edinburgh, 1597.

[605] See in this same chapter, p. 417, for particulars of a signboard at the Cape, exhibited by Farmer Peek.

[606] “Fly Leaves,” 1854.

[607] Parliamentary History, vol. i., p. 1195.

[608] See Gent’s Mag., Jan. 1792, p. 19.

[609] Tho. Decker’s A Knight’s Conjuring.

[610] Quoted in Lambarde’s Perambulation of Kent, p. 356.

[611] Witt’s Recreation, 1640.

[612] Banks collection of shopbills, where amateurs of tobacco curiosities may find a very rich collection of all sorts of tobacco-paper rhymes, signs, &c.

[613] In the Typographical Antiquities of Great Britain, London 1816, vol. iii., p. 116, such a paper is given, entitled: “The triumphant victory of the Imperyall Mageste against the Turkes the xxvi day of Septembre, the yere of our lord mcccccxxxii. in Steuermarke by a Capytayne named Michael Meschsaer.”

[614] Boswell’s Johnson, vol. i., p. 304.

[615] Ibid., vol. i., p. 327.

[616] Moser’s Memorandum-Book, M.S. dated 1799, as quoted in Notes and Queries, December 22, 1849.

[617] Gent.’s Mag., March 1842.

[618] Dr King’s Anecdotes, p. 117.

[619] Selden’s Table-Talk.

[620]

“Joshua prayed to the Lord from the bottom of his heart, That the sun and moon might stand still. The best Varinas and good tobacco in the leaf Are sold here at the Indian.”

[621] Sir Richard Baker’s Chronicles, anno 1588.Return to passage

[622] See Secret History of the Calves’ Head Club. London, 1705.Return to passage

[623] Country Journal, or Craftsman, Saturday, April 25, 1730.Return to passage

[624] “On entering the good town of Nogent by sunset, I put up at the Jerusalem, which offers good accommodation for travellers, wine of Vaulx, and that good.”Return to passage

[625] The landlord.Return to passage

[626] Read’s Weekly Journal, March 31, 1739.Return to passage