SECULAR HOSPITALITY: KNIGHTLY AND POPULAR SIGNS
“In bibliis ich selten las
viel lieber in dem Kruge sass.”
RINGWALDT, 1582.
The heavy castle gates in mediæval times were gladly opened to the
minstrels who came to charm with their art the banquets of the noble
lords and ladies--troubadours and minstrels, the ancestors of that
vast and still thriving fraternity of poets whose blood runs too
quickly through their veins to keep them content in the quiet monotony
of a home. With the sailing clouds, with the migrating birds, and the
rising sun they wander through woods and fields “to be like their
mother the wandering world.” With Walt Whitman they love the open road
and hate the confinement of the stuffy room:--
“Afoot and light-hearted, I take the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose.”
Never do they feel happier than when the long, long road lies before
them, which now seems to dip down into the green sea of the forests
and now to climb straight into the bright blue heaven. Jean Richepin,
himself a “chemineau,” now well settled as an honorable member of the
French Academy, has sung the open road’s praise. All poets feel deeply
the words of Kleist, “Life is a journey.” And how bitter the journey
often was in the days of the minstrels, how glad they were when the
dark forests and unsafe roads lay behind them and the big hearth-fire
of the castle hall brightened face and soul! Gratefully they praised
the noble lord for his hospitable reception and his kindly welcome.
Thus Walter von der Vogelweide, Germany’s greatest minstrel:--
“Nun ich drei Höfe weiss, wo Ehrenmänner hausen,
Fehlt mir es nicht an Wein, kann meine Pfanne sausen...
Mir ist nicht not, dass ich nach Herberg fernumher noch streiche.”
Impoverished knights may have occasionally hung out an iron helmet
over the castle door as a sign that they were willing to receive and
to entertain paying guests: certainly a more honorable method of
gaining one’s livelihood than to plunder the passing merchant or even
one’s own peasants, as was the noble fashion at the end of mediæval
times. But it is more likely that such poor noblemen would first think
of using their city houses for such commercial purposes and not their
lonely and uninviting fortified castles. Here on one of their city
houses, where they used to lodge in time of markets or city
festivities, the first iron helmet perhaps appeared as a knightly
sign. Certain it is that we find inns of such name in France as well
as in Germany, the most famous one in Rothenburg on the Tauber, the
best preserved mediæval city in existence, infinitely more charming
than the much-talked-about Carcassonne, reconstructed by
Viollet-le-Duc with such cold correctness. Here in the quaint hall of
the “_Eisenhut_,” under the glittering arms of knights dead and gone,
we will rest awhile and gladden our heart with the golden Tauber wine.
Let the comfort-seeker go to the modern prosaic hotel outside the city
wall!
The iron helmet is not the only martial tavern sign. Other names
sounded equally well to the soldier’s ear: in France “Le Haubert”
(iron shirt), for instance, that might remind us of the old English
inn, “The Tabard,” in which Chaucer gathered his joyous pilgrims for
happy meals and amusing conversations; the sword, St. Peter’s
attribute, was used as tavern sign in his holy city Rome in the
sixteenth century (“alla spada”); the cannon was very popular as
“canone d’oro” in northern Italy; and many others.
Like chicks under the wings of the hen, the little huts of the
villagers cluster around the protecting mountain castle of the
knightly lord. Most naturally the village innkeeper, therefore,
chooses his master’s escutcheon as a tavern sign. And the landlord in
the town feels equally honored when noble guests leave him, as parting
presents, their coats of arms neatly painted on the panels or the
windows of the dining-room as Montaigne informs us: “Les Alemans sont
fort amoureux d’armoiries; car en tous les logis, il en est une
miliasse que les passans jantilshomes du païs y laissent par les
parois, et toutes leurs vitres en sont fournies.” Although a
philosopher Montaigne himself was vain enough to follow the pretty
custom, and occasionally to dedicate his escutcheon to the innkeeper
as a sign of his satisfaction; so in “The Angel” at Plombières,
already a popular resort even in his day, and in Augsburg at “The
Linde,” situated near the palace of the rich Fuggers. Like a good
housekeeper, who daily writes his expenses down, he tells us that the
painter, who did his work very well, received “deux escus” or two
dollars, the carpenter “vint solds” or a whole quarter, for the screen
on which the escutcheon was painted and which was placed before the
big green stove.
The painting of heraldic designs goes back to the time of the
crusaders and soon became the principal source of income of the
painters. In the Netherlands, which grew to be such a wonderful hotbed
of art, the sign-painters were called “Schilderer,” for that same
reason, a name which clings to them to the present day. Whoever has
traveled in England knows that the same custom of the nobility, to
give coats of arms to the landlords, prevailed there too. “Mol’s
Coffee House” in Exeter, close to the beautiful cathedral, is a good
example. Here Sir Walter Raleigh used to sit in the paneled room on
the second floor, drink a cup of the beverage then quite rare, and
chat with his friends. All along the walls the escutcheons of the
noble visitors of days gone by decorate the quaint old room and every
modern visitor admires them duly, especially that of the valiant but
unhappy seafarer.
To come back to the heraldic tavern signs, we find everywhere in
German lands, where once the imperial House of Hapsburg ruled, their
coat of arms, the double eagle, and in the domains of the House of
Savoy and the Dukes of Lorraine, the cross. In France the escutcheon
of the Bourbons, the fleur de lys, hangs over the tavern door, and in
England the white horse of the royal House of Hanover. Long before the
Georges, the white horse was a popular symbol in England. The giant
horse, roughly hewn in the chalk of the “White Horse Hill,” near
Faringdon, still reminds us of Alfred the Great’s victory over the
Danes at Ashdown in 871. In our days the noble white horse has been
degraded into an advertisement for Scotch whiskey--O quæ mutatio
rerum!
The heraldic meaning of the signs was just as quickly forgotten as
was the pious significance of the religious signs. Only a few notable
animals, such as lions, unicorns, and the like interested the tavern
habitués.
[Illustration: Zum Rössle Bozen]
More important than the hospitality under the protection of knights
and sovereigns was the hospitality extended to the traveler behind big
city walls. The city government provided not only lodgings for the
poor pilgrims, tramps, and jobless people, but not infrequently
offered hospitality likewise to the merchant who came to display his
wares in the open vaults of the city hall. In the famous “Rathskeller”
every business transaction was duly celebrated by buyer and seller;
the brotherly act of drinking a glass of wine together seemed to be
the essential finishing-touch which clinched the business. These old
cellars are still a great attraction of the town in many German
places, such as Bremen, Lübeck, or Heilbronn, for instance, and all
travelers are glad to refresh themselves in their quiet vaults.
A hospitality of more intricate character was given by the guilds, in
their houses, to all the members of the trade or craft. Most naturally
they choose as signs symbols of the special work of each guild. The
fisher and boatmen loved to see a fish, an anchor, or a ship over
their tavern door; but they did not claim these signs as a special
privilege, every “compleat angler,” to use Izaak Walton’s expression,
as well as every incomplete one, could hang a fish out over his porch
or on his house corner even if he did not keep a tavern. The house
where Dr. Faustus treated his comrades in such miraculous way was
called “Zum Anker” and belonged to a nobleman in Erfurt if we believe
the oldest popular reports of the event. Goethe transferred the scene
to Auerbach’s Keller in Leipzig, which was familiar to him from his
happy student-days. Old sea-captains and blue-jackets cannot resist
the temptations of “The Anchor” even if the signboard does not invite
them so charmingly as the one of “The Three Jolly Sailors” in
Castleford:--
“Coil up your ropes and anchor here
Till better weather does appear.”
The shoemakers most naturally decorated their guild-house with a
beautiful big boot, a word closely related to the old French “botte,”
a large drinking cup, and its diminutive “bouteille,” the origin of
the English “bottle.” The butchers seldom show the cruel axe, far
oftener the poetical lamb, their oldest sign being the Pascal lamb
holding the little flag of the resurrection. A patriotic English
landlord in the neighborhood of Bath changed the flag into a Union
Jack, forgetting all about the religious meaning of the sign as it
still appears in a French relief “L’Agneau Pascal” in Caen, Rue de
Bayeux. The tavern “Zum guldin Schooffe” in Strassburg, “la vieille
ville allemande” as Victor Hugo called the city quite frankly, is
perhaps the oldest sign of this group. It dates back to the year 1311
at least. Another butcher sign is the ox or bull, most popular, of
course, in the land of John Bull, where the bull appears in the most
surprising combinations as “Bull and Bell,” “Bull and Magpie,” “Bull
and Stirrup,” and the like.
The tavern signs of the bakers, “The Crown,” “The Sun,” or “The Star,”
lead us back to old pagan times in which the cakes offered as
sacrifice to the gods were shaped in the same curious forms which we
observe to-day in our various breakfast rolls. Christian legends of
the holy three kings and the star that stood over the stable in
Bethlehem effaced these pagan souvenirs. On the day of Epiphany
especially beautiful crowns were baked; in France the bakers still
follow the old tradition and offer such a crown to each of their
customers as a present, not without hiding a tiny porcelain shoe in
the dough. The happy finder of this shoe becomes the king of the
company. Dutch masters have represented the merry family scene of the
Epiphany dinner, none perhaps so convincingly as Jordaens in the
famous picture, “The King Drinks,” in the great gallery of the Louvre.
“The Star” has always been one of the most popular signs, its gentle
glow seemed to promise the traveler on the dark road a friendly
resting-place after the long, weary day. Sometimes the modern owner of
such a venerable old star-inn promises even more and advertises his
place, in slangy rhyme, as the landlord of “The Star” in York.
“Here at the sign of Ye Old Starre
You may sup and smoke at your ease
Tip-Top cigars, port above par,
A Host ever ready to please.”
Beside “The Star” and “The Golden Sun,” where you drink “the best beer
under the sun,” we find “The Moon,” especially “The Half-Moon,” as
great favorites of the people. The naval victory of 1571 at Lepanto,
where the united Christian fleet destroyed The Turk,--in those days
not a sick man, but rather a robust and aggressive one,--is perhaps
the cause of the popularity of the half-moon. The Virgin Mary, to whom
the pious sailors ascribed the victory, was often represented as
standing on a half-moon, because she was “the woman clothed with the
sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve
stars” whom the poet of the Revelation had seen in his immortal
dreams. Crowned with her diadem of stars she was dear to the seamen,
the “_stella maris_,” to whom they lifted their anguished soul in
prayer: “Ave Maria, navigantium stella, quos ad portum tranquillum
vocata conducis.” As “light of the world” she was praised in the old
“dialogus consolatorius” where the sinner humbly begs her:--
“Festina miseris misereri, virgo beata!
Virgo Maria pia splendens orbisque lucerna
Per tua presidia nos duc ad regna beata!”
But it is not the half-moon, lying horizontally as a silver bowl in
the Christian presentation of the heavenly queen, which we find on the
tavern sign, but always the standing crescent of the Turkish flag, and
we are glad of it. If we study the life in these half-moon taverns at
the hand of Teniers’ pictures and etchings, we find very little that is
Christian and worthy of the sacred symbol of the Revelation.
Still more popular than the stars of heaven is the animal world on the
tavern sign. The ark of Noah itself and all it contained, every
creeping and flying thing, was welcome over the tavern door in those
days when men and beast, often living under the same roof, as in the
divine inn of Bethlehem, were nearer to each other than they are now.
Nothing less than a tavern zoölogy could give a complete enumeration,
which we prefer to avoid. We will choose only a few which were
especially dear to the people. First of all, naturally, the house
companions,--the cat, “Le Chat qui dort” which found a quiet
resting-place for her old days in the Musée Carnavalet in Paris; the
dog, popular in sport-loving England; the ox and the donkey, even an
elegant mule we find in the “Auberge de la Mule” at Avignon, praised
by Abraham Gölnitz, the Baedeker of the seventeenth century, as a
“logement élégant et agréable.” We have already met the cock in Rome
of old, on the Forum, in Holland we see him occasionally as a cavalier
in high boots. The dove, the symbol of the Holy Ghost, decorates the
“Gasthäuser zum Geiste” one of which stood in the old Strassburg and
saw the remarkable interview between the young Goethe and the poet
Herder. Finally the stork, the true sign of German “Gemütlichkeit”;
the one in Basel was honored by the visit of Victor Hugo: “Je me suis
logé à la Cigogne, et de la fenêtre où je vous écris, je vois dans une
petite place deux jolies fontaines côte à côte, l’une du quinzième
siècle, l’autre du seizième.”
To the Philistine the strange animals of foreign distant lands had a
greater attraction still. In every modern “zoo” you will always find a
larger public before the monkey house than before the cage of the lion
or even the elephant, whose dignity and wisdom find fewer admirers
than does the foolishness of the apes. Early in the Middle Ages we
find this most curious of strange animals on the tavern signs.
“L’Ostel des Singes,” sometimes called “The Green Monkeys,” in
Senlis, France, is first mentioned in the year 1359. Our “Affenwagen”
is a Swiss sign, artfully carved in wood, and dates from the
Renaissance times, as does the inn “Zum Rohraff” in Strassburg, often
referred to in the sermons of Geiler von Kaisersberg.
When the first dromedary made its appearance in Germany, a circular
containing a primitive woodcut invited old and young to see “the
curious animal called Romdarius.” Fifty miles it could run in one day
in the sand sea--i.e., desert--the text said, and in summer it could
live three months without drinking “ohne sauffen.” This last-mentioned
quality seemed to predestine the animal to a temperance sign, but
fortunately the description added, “when it drinks it drinks much at
one time,” and so the tavern-keepers did not hesitate to adopt it as a
tavern sign. As an example we might quote the inn “Zum Kameeltier” in
Strassburg. Somewhat later, in the first half of the seventeenth
century, “The Crocodile” appears over the tavern door in Antwerp, and
this reminds us of the stuffed animals in the pharmacy described by
Shakespeare in “Romeo and Juliet”:--
“And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,
An alligator stuff’d, and other skins
Of ill-shap’d fishes.”
The zebra seems to have been known quite early if we are allowed to
take “The Striped Donkey” as such. In the inn “L’Ane rayé” at Rheims,
the father of Joan of Arc is reported to have lodged when he came to
see the coronation in 1429. One of the last comers of the curious and
rare animals was the giraffe; it appeared in Paris for the first time
in 1827, and was immediately adopted as a tavern sign by a host in
Étampes, near the capital. The “enseigne” represented “le dit animal
conduit par un Bédouin.”
But the most curious animals of creation did not suffice. The
imagination of the people created others still more strange and the
landlords put these fabulous beasts on their signs too: the unicorn,
the dragon, the siren. “The Siren” tavern in Lyons at the time of the
Renaissance was evidently a very attractive place which the traveler
found very hard to leave again, because, as a contemporary tells us,
“il s’y trouve des Sirènes.” In later days, when the popular stories
were forgotten, the sirens were changed to “Six Reines,” the six
queens. In another chapter we shall see how Keats in his poem, The
Mermaid, has celebrated one of these old Siren taverns.
How deeply rooted in the old days was this belief in “Mörwonder” or
ill-shaped fishes and malformations of the human figure will appear at
a glance in Schedel’s “Welt Chronik” printed by Koberger in Nuremberg
in 1493, where we see them in strange woodcuts before us: the man
with ears hanging to the ground and other misshaped creatures.
The same source of popular imagination created “Le Géant,” the sign
“Zu den Slaraffen” in Strassburg, 1435, and the sign of “The Little
and the Great Sleeper” that during three centuries, from 1400 to 1705,
invited the citizens of the Alsatian capital to cross its hospitable
threshold. A charming picture, “The Sleeping Giant of the Woods” by
Lukas Kranach, in Dresden’s famous Gallery, will help us to imagine
how the big sleeper probably looked. Is it the famous “Wild Man” or
“Le Grand Hercule” who sleeps here in the shadow of the forest? One
thing is sure, he has been drinking deeply and is dead asleep; nothing
can wake him up, not even this little army of dwarfs around him who
attack him with lances and arrows, nay, even try to saw into his
strong limbs.
Since the days of the “Roman du Renard,” the first version of which
dates back to the eleventh century, to the days of Goethe’s “Reineke
Fuchs,” shrewd master Fox was a favorite of the people. In old
miniatures we encounter him as a monk, his pointed nose buried in a
prayer-book. His exploits most naturally form good themes for the
tavern sign. Dancing before a hen to seduce the foolish creature by
his graceful charms, he was represented on an old French sign in Le
Mans: “Renard dansant devant une poule.” Preaching to ducks, “Wo der
Fuchs den Enten predigt” is the name of a Strassburg tavern, which
dates only from 1848. His shrewdness before the royal tribunal of the
lion was well known; Montaigne, therefore, warns the tavern-keepers
who desire the patronage of advocates against painting him on the
signboard: “qui veut avoir la clientèle des procureurs ne doit point
mettre renard sur son enseigne.”
Other animals appealed more to the culinary instincts of the
passer-by, among them the swan, “l’oiseau de bon augure,” which we do
not like to see turned into roasts. But in Chaucer’s times it was
evidently considered a fine dish, since he lets the monk in his
“Canterbury Tales” say: “A fat swan loved he best of any rost.” A
picture by David Teniers in The Hague, called “The Kitchen,” shows how
the bird was served in his natural glory, a crown of flowers on his
proud head. This custom to serve fowl in full plumage is proved by
Montaigne’s description of a dinner in Rome: “On y servit force
volaille rôtie, revêtue de sa plume naturelle comme vifve ... oiseaus
vifs (enplumés) en paste.”
To this group belongs the peacock, in the old days the official roast
for marriage feasts. Its picture on the signboard promised large
accommodations for people who wanted to celebrate marriages in true
style. “Le Paon blanc” in Paris, Rue de la Mortelleric, now a rather
shady region, was once a noble inn. Shortly after his marriage,
Rembrandt painted the famous picture in Dresden, where he represents
himself, a glass of champagne in hand, happily holding his beloved
Saskia on his knees. The richly decorated table in the background
still carries the peacock of the marriage feast. Of “The Pheasant” in
Worms, before the days of gas and electricity, Victor Hugo has given
us this amusing picture: “J’étais installé dans l’auberge du Faisan,
qui, je dois le dire, avait le meilleur aspect du monde. Je mangeais
un excellent souper dans une salle meublée d’une longue table et de
deux hommes occupés à deux pipes. Malheureusement la salle à manger
était peu éclairée, ce qui m’attrista. En y entrant on n’aperçevait
qu’une chandelle dans un nuage. Les deux hommes dégageaient plus de
fumée que dix héros.”
Sometimes a living bird served originally as a sign. The parrot of the
pharmacy, “Au Perroquet Vert,” in Lyons, was a real bird, which had
learned even some Latin phrases, as “ora pro nobis,” from the passing
processions, and naturally attracted many people by its wisdom. He
belonged to the living signs to which Balzac refers in “Les scènes de
la vie privée”: “Les animaux en cage dont l’adresse émerveillait les
passants.” Sometimes the cage itself was adopted as a tavern sign and
in Lyons a street was named “Rue de la Cage” for a public-house of
this name. A charming little French rhyme from the beginning of the
seventeenth century introduces us to such a cage-tavern:--
“Mademoiselle Louizon
Demeurant cher Alizon
Justement au cinquième étage
Près du cabaret de la Cage.”
Not only bird-cages and their musical or scholarly inhabitants, but
any remarkable object that happened to stand before the tavern was
readily interpreted by the people as a sign. In the little English
town of Grantham, where we had already the opportunity of admiring the
noble “Angel Inn,” we saw in a tree before a modest tavern a beehive
with this inscription on a board beneath it:--
“Stop, traveller, this wondrous sign explore,
And say when thou hast viewed it o’er and o’er,
Grantham now two rarities are thine,
A lofty steeple and a living sign.”
To tell the truth, the lofty tower of St. Wulfram seemed to us the
only remarkable “rarity” of the two, the more so as the church was
beautifully decorated for Thanksgiving Day with flowers and the fruits
of the field, not to mention its unique little library with the
chained old books.
We may infer the great popularity of signs by the ceremonious way in
which they were changed when a guild removed to other quarters. The
sign was carried in solemn procession to the new inn and hung up with
blasts of trumpets. The Swabian poet Mörike has tried to express the
melancholy emotions of the old landlord when he sees the sign changed
and finds it hard to recognize his old inn:--
“Where is the golden lamb of yore
So dear to my old guests?
I see a cock with reddish breast
Pecked it away from the door.”
An English author even tells us about the burial of a sign, which, he
says, was not an unusual affair in Cumberland. We give the story in
his own words: “It is a function always observed when an inn in the
neighborhood of Lady Carlisle’s estate at Naworth has lost its
license. The inn sign is solemnly removed, and in the dead of night is
committed to the grave, in the presence of the old customers of the
inn. As a rule it is ‘watered’ with tears in the shape of a bottle of
whiskey, and the burial sentence runs as follows:--
“‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,
If Lady Carlisle won’t have you
The Devil must.’”
But we shall not end our chapter with this story of rather doubtful
taste. If we review the wealth of popular signs, which we have in no
way exhausted, we may well say that everything on earth may be adopted
by the people as a sign, from the cradle in which we dream our first
dreams to the cross that some day will stand over our “last inn” as a
pious and scholarly man has called our grave. In the beautiful
churchyard that enfolds in its greenery England’s oldest existing
church, St. Martin in Canterbury, we read on the tombstone of Dean
Alford the simple words: “Deversorium Viatoris Hierosolymam
Proficiscentis,” last inn of a pilgrim to the heavenly Jerusalem.
[Illustration: ·EAGLE·AND·CHILD·IN·LONDON·]