THE SIGN IN POETRY
“Er ging nicht in den Krug,
Er wohnte gar darinnen.”
JOACHIM RACHEL.
Like a prophetic star the sign seems to stand over the birth-house of
many a poet. Or shall we not agree with Chateaubriand who saw in the
eagle on the house in Bread Street, London, where Milton was born, an
“augure et symbole”? And is it not a curious coincidence that the
greatest French comedy-writer was born “à l’enseigne du Pavillon des
Cinges dans la Rue des Étuves Saint-Honoré” in Paris? One of the most
ingenious reconstructions of Robida (the architect of Vieux Paris,
never to be forgotten by any visitor of the Parisian World’s Fair of
1900) was this birthplace of Molière’s that took its name from the
mighty corner-beam, covered with carved monkeys. Truly, Milton had
hoped less from the eagle on his father’s house than from the gentle
star of Venus under which he was born. In his family Bible, one of
the many autograph treasures of the British Museum, he has registered
his birth with his own hand: “John Milton was born the 9th of
December, 1608, die Veneris, half an hour after 6 in the morning.” It
availed him little to be born on the day of Venus, and the promise
given to the “children of Venus” by an old German calendar of 1489,
“They shall sing joyfully and free from care,” was not fulfilled in
his life. His marriage was an unhappy one. Taine said of him: “Ni les
circonstances ni la nature l’avaient fait pour le bonheur.” But the
eagle on the house of his childhood proved to be a true symbol of his
great future, for like an eagle he soared to the highest heights of
poetical creation. Schiller was born in Marbach in the neighboring
house to the “Golden Lion,” whose landlord his grandfather had been.
Considering that all houses in earlier times were distinguished by
such symbols, even the most pious could not help being born under a
sign. Calvin, the French Puritan, was even born in an inn, the “grasse
hôtellerie des Quatre Nations” at Noyen in Picardy. On the other hand,
merry souls seem to have preferred saints as patrons of their
birthplace, for Gavarni, the ingenious cartoonist, came into the world
at Paris “à l’enseigne de Sainte Opportune, Rue des Vieilles
Haudriettes.”
Sometimes Fate seems to mock the highflying ambitions of a great poet,
by changing the house of his birth into a common public-house, as
happened in the case of Chateaubriand, “the gentilhomme né” and his
birthplace in the Rue des Juifs at Saint-Malo. On the other hand,
Rabelais’s birthplace in Chinon, which became a tavern after his
death, should have been one from the first hour of his life; for his
was like the “étrange nativité” of his hero Gargantua: “Soubdain qu’il
fut né, ne cria comme les aultres enfans: ‘Mies, mies’; mais à haulte
voix s’escrioit: ‘À boire, à boire, à boire!’ comme invitant tout le
monde à boire.” A little poem tells us the story how his study was
transformed into a wine-cellar for merry revelers:--
“Là chacun dit sa chansonette
Là le plus sage est le plus fou
* * * * *
La cave s’y trouve placée
Où fut jadis le cabinet,
On n’y porte plus sa pensée
Qu’aux douceurs d’un vin frais et net.”
The oldest poetical tradition of tavern signs we find, perhaps, in the
songs of Villon, who sometimes has been called the Paul Verlaine of
the fifteenth century, on account of his similar vicissitudes in life.
A child of the people, he is not ashamed of his low origin:--
“Sur les tumbeaux de mes ancestres
Les âmes desquels Dieu embrasse,
On n’y voyt couronnes ne sceptres.”
Living the life of the common people, he mingles freely with them, and
in his wordly poems many a tavern adventure is told with zest. As a
roaming scholar he wanders from place to place and, having rarely a
penny in his purse, he acquires easily the art of dining without
paying:--
“C’est bien trompé, qui rien ne paye,
Et qui peut vivre d’advantaige,
Sans débourser or ne monnoye
En usant de joyeux langaige.”
And although he arrives at the tavern door riding shank’s mare, poor
devil that he is,--
“Il va à pied, par faulte d’asne,”--
he is rich in fascinating stories to win the landlord’s favors and to
secure ample credit. Full of self-assurance, he demands always the
best of everything, “boire ypocras à jour et à nuyctée” (day and night
to sip Hypokras), one of Falstaff’s various favorite drinks.
Curious sign-names Villon mentions; as, the tin plate,--
“le cas advint an Plat d’estain,”--
or, the golden mortar (“le mortier d’or”), and even “the pestle.” The
mortar was really a chemist’s sign. To-day, even, we may see, in a
little French provincial town over the door of a druggist, a bear
diligently braying some wholesome herb, in a mortar, an “Ours qui
pile.”
“Or advint, environ midy,
Qu’il estoit de faim estourdy;
S’en vint à une hostellerie
Rue de la Mortellerie,
Où pend l’enseigne du Pestel
À bon logis et bon hostel;
Demandant s’en a que repaistre.
Ouy vraiment, ce dist le maistre,
Ne soyez de rien en soucy
Car vous serez très bien servy,
De pain, de vin et de viande.”
The animal kingdom is represented by the mule, “la Mulle,” an inn
frequented by Rabelais, too, the red donkey (“un asne rouge”), and
the white horse that, like all the painted horses, had the bad habit
of never moving (“le cheval blanc qui ne bouge”). We have seen above
that the “White Horse” was popular in Italy, too, although an old
Italian proverb pretends that it is just as capricious as a beautiful
woman and a source of continual annoyances:--
“Chi hà cavallo bianco e belle moglie
Non è mai senza doglie.”
The most famous of all the cabarets immortalized by Villon is “le trou
de la Pomme de Pin,” as he usually calls it. In the “Repues Franches,”
from which we quoted the story of the Hotel du Pestel we read:--
“Et vint à la Pomme de Pin
* * * * *
Demandant s’ils avoient du bon vin,
Et qu’on luy emplist du plus fin
Mais qu’il fust blanc et amoureux.”
We see that our poet-tramp hated adulteraters of wine (“les taverniers
qui brouillent nostre vin”) not less sincerely than his old Roman
colleague Horace. In his older days he regretted the dissipation of
his youth, sadly reflecting upon what a comfortable age he could have
now if ...
“J’eusse maison et couche molle!
Mais quoy? je fuyoye l’escolle,
Comme faict le mauvays enfant....
En escrivant cette parole
A peu que le cueur ne me fend.”
The tavern of the “Pomme de Pin” stood near the Madeleine Church--not
the famous one we all know, but an old building in the “cité,” Rue de
la Lanterne, which was pulled down in the time of the Revolution.
Rabelais loved the place and praised this pineapple higher than the
golden apple that young Paris once gave to Venus, thus creating
endless troubles among men and gods:--
“La Pomme de Pin qui vaut mieux
Que celle d’or, dont fut troublée
Toute la divine assemblée.”
Sainte-Beuve has called this tavern, connected with so many proud
names in French literature, “la véritable taverne littéraire, le vrai
cabaret classique,” a title which to-day is deserved by the “Cabaret
du Chat Noir,” the creation of such gifted artists as Henri Rivière,
Willette, and, last but not least, Steinlen, the painter of its sign.
Next in literary celebrity stands “La Croix de Lorraine,” where
Molière used to relax from his strenuous life as poet and actor and
get merry over the blinking glass, “assez pour vers le soir être en
goguettes.” Among the guests ponderous Boileau sometimes appeared,
although he seems to have taken his admonition in the “Art poétique,”
“connaissez la ville,” rather seriously and to have made quite
extensive studies of the Parisian public-houses. We find him in the
“Diable,” who had his quarters in those days very near the Sainte
Chapelle, and in “La Tête Noire,” a counterpart of “The Golden Head”
in Malines where Dürer lodged on his journey through the Netherlands.
It would be amusing to count how many immortal works have been created
over a tavern table. Have we not heard that in our days Mascagni wrote
the incomparable overture to his “Cavalleria Rusticana” on the little
marble table of a modern café? Racine is supposed to have written his
“Plaideurs” on the tavern table of the “Mouton Blanc” in Paris, and
this happy circumstance seems to have affected his style very
agreeably and to have made the play easier for a modern reader than
the solemn dramas which are so difficult to enjoy if one does not
happen to be a Frenchman. How attractive a place this “Mouton Blanc”
was we might imagine from the little rhyme:--
“Ah! que n’ai-je pour sépulture
Les Deux Torches ou le Mouton!”
What gifted fathers earned through tavern creations the prodigal sons
sometimes lost again in gambling. Louis Racine spent the little
fortune his father had left him in the “Epée de bois,” the same place
where the comedy-writer Marivaux once gambled away his paternal
heritage, regaining it soon, to be sure, by new and charming
productions. It is mostly the stimulating company of comrades and
fellow-artists, the freedom from petty household cares, that draws the
poet to a quiet tavern corner; but sometimes, too, a charming landlady
is the attractive force which may become so irresistible as to bind
him forever in marriage bonds. Maybe, too, the tavern-bill was growing
so hopelessly big that the poor dreamer saw no other solution. This
was the reason why La Serre married the landlady of the “Trois ponts
d’or,” it being understood that “contrat de mariage valait quittance
alors entre cabaretière et poète,” as Michel-Fournier expresses the
matter.
The tender relationship between the landlady and the poet-guest has
given birth to numerous songs, from which we select the famous German
Lied by Rudolf Baumbach:
“Angethan hat mir’s dein Wein
Deiner Äuglein heller Schein
Lindenwirtin, du junge!”
and the not less charming poem of Molière’s successor, Dancourt,
composed in honor of the landlady of the “Cabaret du petit père
noire”:--
“Si tu veux sans suite et sans bruit
Noyer tous tes ennuis et boire à ta maîtresse,
Viens, je sais un réduit
Inaccessible à la tristesse
Là nous serons servis de la main d’une hôtesse
Plus belle que l’astre qui luit,
Et mêlant au bon vin quelque peu de tendresse,
Contents du jour, nous attendrons la nuit.”
The classical literary tavern of England was without doubt “The
Mermaid Tavern,” once situated in Bread Street not far from Milton’s
birthplace. Here the famous club, founded by Ben Jonson, in 1603,
assembled, among them the immortal Shakespeare. The fascination of
this mermaid was still in the nineteenth century so great as to
inspire Keats with his charming “Lines on the Mermaid Tavern,” which
we feel inclined to quote in full from Anning Bell’s illustrated
edition, where it stands under a graceful reconstruction of the
sign:--
“Souls of Poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the _Mermaid Tavern_?
Have ye tippled drink more fine
Than mine host’s Canary wine?
Or are fruits of Paradise
Sweeter than those dainty pies
Of venison? O generous food!
Drest as though bold Robin Hood
Would, with his maid Marian,
Sup and browse from horn and can.
“I have heard that on a day
Mine host’s sign-board flew away
Nobody knew whither, till
An astrologer’s old quill
To a sheepskin gave the story,
Said he saw you in your glory,
Underneath a new-old sign
Sipping beverage divine,
And pledging with contented smack
The Mermaid in the Zodiak.
“Souls of Poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy fields or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?”
Truly a capricious wind has carried away the old Mermaid sign into far
and unknown regions, and to-day the scholars are disputing where
really the famous house stood.
Two other taverns, less roughly handled by Father Time, may claim to
be next in literary rank: “The Cheshire Cheese” and “The Cock,” both
in Fleet Street. “Ye olde Cheshire Cheese,” or simply “The Cheese,” is
not easy to find because it really stands on a narrow side-lane, the
Wine Office Court. It has the great advantage of having preserved
unchanged the character of a seventeenth-century tavern. Although
venerable, it is not the original building, which was destroyed,
together with many other public-houses in the great fire of 1666.
Pious souls saw in the fact that the conflagration started in Pudding
Lane and ended at Pie Corner an evident proof that the fire was sent
from Heaven as punishment for “the sin of gluttony.” Shakespeare is
said to have turned in not unfrequently at the old house of the
“Cheshire Cheese” on his way to the Blackfriars’ Theatre in the
Playhouse Yard, Ludgate Hill, where he was director for a time, or
coming back for a twilight drink after the performance, which in
those times closed as early as five o’clock. In spite of the warning
fire of 1666 the sin of gluttony is still readily committed in the
“Cheshire Cheese,” whose specialty, a meat pudding,--containing not
only roast beef, kidneys, and oysters, but sky-larks too!--might even
be called a sin against the holy ghost of poetry. Once immersed in
this pudding the divine singers are silent forever without the
consolation of the children’s book:--
“And when the pie was opened
The birds began to sing.”
Some of these lark puddings are even shipped to Yankeeland, which
sends every year countless pilgrims to the “Cheshire Cheese.” If
possible, the American father of a family will take the seat of Dr.
Samuel Johnson, the famous lexicographer, lean his head against the
old paneling, which clearly shows the marks of the greasy wigs of the
Doctor and his friend Oliver Goldsmith, and look at chick and child
with an Olympian air, as if he wanted to say: “I am Sir Oracle, and
when I ope my mouth let no dog bark.”
Among the guests and visitors at this “house of antique ease” we find
many famous names beside Johnson and the author of the “Vicar of
Wakefield,” who dwelt in the neighboring house, No. 6, Wine Office
Court; men like Swift, Addison, Sheridan, Pope, even Voltaire, who
must have felt rather out of place in this atmosphere of beefsteak and
ale. Among modern poets Thackeray and Dickens are foremost,--Dickens
who has studied so intimately the taverns and inns of his country.
Under the spell of these souls of poets dead and gone, writers of the
present generation love to gather here in literary clubs, such as the
Johnson Club, which has adopted as its device the Doctor’s classical
definition of the word “club”: “An assembly of good fellows meeting
under certain conditions.” Johnson, who spent almost all his life in
taverns, favored not only “The Cheese” with his presence, but others,
too, as “The Mitre,” in whose dark coffee-room Hawthorne once dined.
This old house has entirely vanished from the ground, just as the
still older inn “The Devil”--who, following his old custom of settling
near a church, had established himself opposite St. Dunstan’s. Thus
we no longer “go to The Devil,” but if we have some serious business
on hand we may step into “Child’s Bank,” which stands exactly on his
former spot.
How important a rôle the waiters played in these old taverns we may
realize from the fact that the portraits of two former head waiters
decorate the walls of “The Cheshire Cheese.” Tennyson has celebrated
another of these dignitaries in a long poem written in the Cock
Tavern, beginning in this classical fashion:--
“O plump head-waiter at The Cock,
To which I most resort,
How goes the time? ’T is five o’clock.
Go fetch a pint of port;
But let it not be such as that
You set before chance-comers,
But such whose father-grape grew fat
On Lusitanian summers.”
Dreaming over his glass of wine the poet sees in a sudden vision the
prototype of the cock who once brought the head-waiter as a round
country boy to the city, to the great bewilderment of his church-tower
colleagues who witnessed his audacious flight:--
“His brothers of the weather stood
Stock-still for sheer amazement.”
The description of this legendary cock, inspired evidently by the
beautiful work of Gibbon’s master-hand, still to be seen in the modern
Cock Tavern in Fleet Street, might well be called classical, and shall
not be withheld from our readers:--
“The Cock was of a larger egg
Than modern poultry drop,
Stept forward on a firmer leg,
And cramm’d a plumper crop,
Upon an ampler dunghill trod,
Crow’d lustier late and early,
Sipt wine from silver, praising God,
And raked in golden barley.”
Everybody who knows and loves the Swabian poet Mörike, the music for
whose songs, composed by Hugo Wolff, have become the property of the
international brotherhood of music-lovers, will think of his “Old
Church-Tower Cock,” strangely similar in feeling to Tennyson’s poem of
“The Cock” and his brothers of the weather.
We are not surprised to find that the poets of the land of Wanderlust
give special attention to taverns and signs. Besides Mörike, and
Uhland, whose “Inn” we quoted above, Johann Peter Hebel, a son of the
Black Forest, has always shown a special predilection for the sign and
its wonders. In an untranslatable poem, “On the death of a tippler,”
he celebrates his man as a diligent astronomer who never tires looking
for shining “Stars,” a brave knight always ready to hunt up “Bears”
and “Lions,” a pious Christian willing to do penitence at the “Cross,”
a man who frequented the best society, including “The Three Kings,”
his most intimate friends.
Germany may boast, too, of a classical literary tavern, the
“Bratwurstglöckle” in Nuremberg, built directly against the walls of a
church, the Gothic Moritz-Kapelle. Among its famous guests were the
Mastersinger, Hans Sachs, and Dürer, Germany’s greatest artist. Like
a house out of a fairy tale it stands before us; we are only surprised
that no fence of sausages surrounds it and that its door and window
shutters are ordinary wood and not gingerbread!