The fault’s in you, and not in I.
If Robin Hood from home is gone,
Step in and drink with Little John.”
At Overseal, in Leicestershire:--
“Robin Hood is dead and gone,
Pray call and drink with Little John.”
Finally, at Turnham Green:--
“Try Charrington’s ale, you will find it good.
Step in and drink with Robin Hood.
If Robin Hood,” &c.
And to shew the perfect application of the rhyme, mine host informs the
public that he is “Little John from the old PACK HORSE,” (a public-house
opposite.)
One of the ballads in Robin Hood’s Garland has given another signboard
hero, namely, the PINDAR OF WAKEFIELD,[92] George a Green.
“In Wakefielde there lives a jolly Pindar,
In Wakefielde all on the greene.
‘There is neither knight nor squire,’ said the Pindar,
‘Nor baron so bold, nor baron so bold,
Dares make a trespass to the town of Wakefielde,
But his pledge goes to the Pinfold.’”
Drunken Barnaby mentions the sign in Wakefield in 1634:--
“Straight at Wakefielde I was seen, a’,
Where I sought for George-a-Green, a’,
But could find not such a creature,
_Yet on sign I saw his feature_.
Whose strength of ale had so much stirr’d me,
That I grew stouter far than Jordie.”
There was formerly a public-house near St Chad’s Well, Clerkenwell,
bearing this sign, which at one period, to judge from the following
inscription, would seem to have been more famous than the celebrated
Bagnigge Wells hard by. A stone in the garden-wall of Bagnigge House
said:--
☩
S. T.
THIS IS BAGNIGGE
HOUSE, NEARE
THE PINDAR A
WAKEFEILDE.
1680.
Among the more uncommon ballad signs, we find the BABES IN THE WOOD at
Hanging Heaton, Dewsbury, West Riding. JANE SHORE was commemorated in
Shoreditch in the seventeenth century, as we see from trades tokens.
VALENTINE AND ORSON we find mentioned as early as 1711,[93] as the sign
of a coffee-house in Long Lane, Bermondsey; and there they remain till
the present day.
Other chapbook celebrities are MOTHER SHIPTON, Kentish Town, and Low
Bridge, Knaresboro’; which latter village disputes with Shipton, near
Londesborough, the honour of giving birth to this remarkable character
in the month of July 1488. The fact is duly commemorated under her
signboard in the former place:--
“Near to this petrifying wall[94]
I first drew breath, as records tell.”
Her life and prophecies have at all times been a favourite theme in
popular literature. If we may believe her biographers, she predicted
the fall of Cardinal Wolsey, the dissolution of the monasteries, the
establishment of the Protestant religion under Edward VI., the cruelty
of Queen Mary, the glorious reign of Queen Elizabeth, the defeat of the
Armada, the Plague and Great Fire, and many things not yet come to pass.
Like the Delphic oracles, her predictions were given in metre, and
veiled in mystery. The plague and fire, for instance, are thus
foretold:--
“Triumphant death rides London thro’,
And men on tops of houses go.”
She is represented as of a most unprepossessing appearance; although we
certainly might have expected better from the daughter of a necromancer,
or “the phantasm of Apollo, or some aerial dæmon who seduced her
mother;”--“her body was long, and very big-boned; she had great goggling
eyes, very sharp and fiery; a nose of unproportionable length, having in
it many crooks and turnings, adorned with great pimples, and which, like
vapours of brimstone, gave such a lustre in the night, that the nurse
needed no other light to dress her by in her childhood.”[95]
Another necromancer, Merlin, shares renown with Mother Shipton, both in
chapbooks and on signboards. MERLIN’S CAVE is the sign of a public-house
in Great Audley Street, and in Upper Rosomon Street, Clerkenwell, in
which places he doubtless still plays his old pranks, of changing men
into beasts. Innumerable romances and histories of Merlin were printed
in the middle ages. He appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth as early as the
twelfth century, and Alain de l’Isle gave an ample explanation of his
prophecies in seven books, printed in 1608. “This Merlin,” says M. de la
Monnoye, “tout magicien et fils du diable que l’on l’a cru,” has by the
good Carmelite, Baptiste Mantuanus, been metamorphosed into a saint. At
the end of his “Tolentinum,” a poem in three books, in honour of St
Nicholas, (anno 1509,) he thus speaks of Merlin:--
“Vitæ venerabilis olim
Vir fuit et vates, venturi præscius ævi,
Merlinus, laris infando de semine cretus.
Hic satus infami coitu pietate refulsit
Eximia superum factus post funera consors.”[96]
His prophecies were also translated into Italian, and printed at Venice
in 1516. The annotators say it was reported that Merlin, by his
enchantments, transported from Ireland those huge stones found in
Salisbury plain. His cave was in Clerkenwell, on the site where the
alehouse now stands, and was in the reign of James I., one of the London
sights strangers went to see.[97]
We have a well-known chapbook hero in JACK OF NEWBURY, who had already
attained to the signboard honours in the seventeenth century, when we
find him on the token of John Wheeler, in Soper Lane (now Queen Street,
Cheapside,) whilst at present, he may be seen in a full-length portrait
in Chiswell Street, Finsbury Square. This Jack of Newbury, alias
Winchcombe, alias Smallwoode, “was the most considerable clothier
England ever had. He kept an hundred looms in his house, each managed by
a man and a boy. He feasted King Henry VIII. and his first Queen
Catherine at his own house in Newbury, now divided into sixteen
clothiers’ houses. He built the Church of Newbury, from the pulpit
westward to the town.”[98] At the battle of Flodden in 1513, he joined
the Earl of Surrey with a corps of one hundred men, well equipped at his
sole expense, who distinguished themselves greatly in that fight. He is
buried in Newbury, where his brass effigy is still to be seen,
purporting that he died February 15, 1519. An inn bearing his sign in
Newbury, is said to be built on the site of the house where he
entertained King Harry. Thomas Deloney, the ballad-writer, wrote a tale
about him, entitled, “The pleasant history of John Winchcomb, in his
younger years called Jack of Newberry, the famous and worthy clothier of
England, declaring his life and love, together with his charitable deeds
and great hospitalitie. Entered in the Stationers’ Book, May 7, 1596.”
WHITTINGTON AND HIS CAT is still very common, not only in London but in
the country also. Sometimes the cat is represented without her master,
as on the token of a shop in Longacre, 1657, and on the sign of ----
Varney, a seal-engraver in New Court, Old Bailey, 1783, whose
shopbill[99] represents a large cat carved in wood holding an eye-glass
by a chain. The story of Whittington is still a favourite chapbook tale,
and has its parallel in the fairy tales of various other countries.
Straparola, in his “Piacevole Notte,” is, we believe, the first who
mentions it. The earliest English narrative occurs in Johnson’s “Crown
Garland of Golden Roses,” 1612, but there is an allusion to “Whittington
and his Puss” in the play of “Eastward Hoe!” 1603. For more than a
century it was one of the stock pieces of Punch and his dramatic troop.
Sept. 21, 1688, Pepys went to see it: “To Southwark Fair, very dirty,
and there saw the puppet-show of Whittington, which is pretty to see;
and how that idle thing do work upon people that see it, and even myself
too.” Foote, in his comedy of the “Nabob,” makes Sir Matthew Mite
account for the legend by explaining the cat as the name of some
quick-sailing vessels by which Whittington imported coals, which should
have been the source of the Lord Mayor’s wealth. In the Highgate Road
there is a skeleton of a cat in a public-house window, which by the
people who visit there is firmly believed to be the earthly remains of
Whittington’s identical cat. The house is not far distant from the spot
where the future Lord Mayor of London stopped to listen to the city
bells inviting him to return. It is now marked by a stone, with the
event duly inscribed thereon.
King Arthur’s ROUND TABLE is to be seen on various public-houses. There
is one in St Martin’s Court, Leicester Square, where the American
champion, Heenan, put up when he came to contest the belt with the
valiant Tom Sayers. The same sign is also often to be met with on the
Continent. In the seventeenth century there was a famous tavern called
_la Table Roland_ in the Vallée de Misère at Paris. JOHN-O’-GROAT’S
HOUSE is also used for a sign; there was one some years ago in Windmill
Street, Haymarket; and at present there is a JOHN-O’-GROAT’S in Gray
Street, Blackfriars Road. Both these and the Round Table contain, we
conceive, some intimation of that even-handed justice observed at the
houses, where all comers are treated alike, and one man is as good as
another.
DARBY AND JOHN, a corruption of Darby and Joan, and borrowed from an old
nursery fable, is a sign at Crowle, in Lincolnshire; and HOB IN THE
WELL, with a similar origin, at Little Port Street, Lynn; whilst SIR
JOHN BARLEYCORN is the hero of a ballad allegorical of the art of
brewing, &c.
A favourite ballad of our ancestors originated the sign of the LONDON
APPRENTICE, of which there are still numerous examples. How they were
represented appears from the _Spectator_, No. 428, viz., “with a lion’s
heart in each hand.” The ballad informs us that the apprentice came off
with flying colours, after endless adventures, one of which was that
like Richard Cœur-de-Lion--he “robbed the lion of his heart.” The ballad
is entitled “The Honour of an Apprentice of London, wherein he declared
his matchless manhood and brave adventures done by him in Turkey, and by
what means he married the king’s daughter of that same country.”
The ESSEX SERPENT is a sign in King Street, Covent Garden, and in
Charles Street, Westminster, perhaps in allusion to a fabulous monster
recorded in a catalogue of wonders and awful prognostications contained
in a broadside of 1704,[100] from which we learn that, “Before Henry the
Second died, a dragon of marvellous bigness was discovered at St Osyph,
in Essex.” Had we any evidence that it is an old sign, we might almost
be inclined to consider it as dating from the civil war, and hung up
with reference to Essex, the Parliamentary general; for though we have
searched the chroniclers fondest of relating wonders and monstrous
apparitions, we have not succeeded in finding any authority for the St
Osyph Dragon, other than the above-mentioned broadside.
Literature of a somewhat higher class than street ballads, has likewise
contributed material to the signboards. One of the oldest instances is
the LUCRECE, the chaste _felo-de-se_ of Roman history, who, in the
sixteenth century, was much in fashion among the poets, and was even
sung by Shakespeare. We find that “Thomas Berthelet, prynter unto the
kynges mooste noble grace, dwellynge at the sygne of the Lucrece, in
Fletestrete, in the year of our Lorde 1536.” In 1557, it was the sign of
Leonard Axtell, in St Paul’s Churchyard; and in the reign of Charles I.,
of Thomas Purfoot, in New Rents, Newgate Market, both booksellers and
printers. The COMPLETE ANGLER was _the_ usual sign of fish-tackle
sellers in the last century, and the essays of the _Spectator_ made the
character of SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY very popular with tobacconists.
DOCTOR SYNTAX hangs at the door of many public-houses, as at Preston,
Oldham, Newcastle, Gateshead, &c.; the LADY OF THE LAKE at Lowestoft;
DANDIE DINMONT at West Linton, Carlisle; PICKWICK in Newcastle; the RED
ROVER, Barton Street, Gloucester;[101] TAM O’ SHANTER, Laurence Street,
York, and various other towns; ROBIN ADAIR, Benwell, Newcastle. Popular
songs also belong to this class, as the LASS O’ GOWRIE, Sunderland and
Durham; AULD LANG SYNE, Preston Street, Liverpool; TULLOCH-GORUM and
LOCH-NA-GAR, both in Manchester; ROB ROY, Titheburn Street, Liverpool;
FLOWERS OF THE FOREST, Blackfriars Road. On the whole, however, this
class of names is much more prevalent in the northerly than in the
southerly districts of England. In the south, if we except THE OLD
ENGLISH GENTLEMAN, who occurs everywhere, the great JIM CROW is almost
the only instance of the hero of a song promoted to the signboard.
ROBINSON CRUSOE is common to all the seaports of the kingdom, whilst
UNCLE TOM, or UNCLE TOM’S CABIN, is to be found everywhere, not only in
England, but also on the Continent. Any little underground place of
refreshment or beer-house difficult of access, is considered as
fittingly named by Mrs Beecher Stowe’s novel.
A very appropriate, and not uncommon public-house sign is the TOBY
PHILPOTT. That he well deserves this honour, appears from the following
obituary notice, (in the _Gent. Mag._, Dec. 1810:)--
“At the Ewes farm-house, Yorkshire, aged 76, Mr Paul Parnell, farmer,
grazier, and maltster, who, during his lifetime, drank out of one
silver pint cup upwards of £2000 sterling worth of Yorkshire Stingo,
being remarkably attached to Stingo tipple of the home-brewed best
quality. The calculation is taken at 2d. per cupful. He was the
_bon-vivant_ whom O’Keefe celebrated in more than one of his
Bacchanalian songs under the appellation of Toby Philpott.”
Between St Albans and Harpenden, there was, some years ago, and perhaps
there is still, a public-house called the OLD ROSON. This name also
appears to be borrowed from the well-known song, “_Old Rosin_ the Beau,”
beginning thus:--
“I have travell’d this wide world over,
And now to another I’ll go,
I know that good quarters are waiting
To welcome old Rosin the Beau (ter.)
When I am dead and laid out on the counter,
A voice you will hear from below,
Singing out brandy and water
To drink to old Rosin the Beau (ter.)
You must get some dozen good fellows,
And stand them all round in a row,
And drink out of half-gallon bottles,
To the name of old Rosin the Beau,” &c.
These stanzas, and one or two more to the same import, were quite
sufficient to make the old Beau a fit subject for the signboard,
irrespective of his other amiable qualities held forth in the song. The
very common OLD HOUSE AT HOME, too, is borrowed from a once-popular
ballad, the verse of which is too well known to need quotation here.
The equally common HEARTY GOOD FELLOW is adopted from a Seven Dials
ballad:--
“I am a hearty good fellow,
I live at my ease,
I work when I am willing,
I play when I please.
* * * * *
With my bottle and my glass,
Many hours I pass,
Sometimes with a friend,
And sometimes with a lass,” &c.
Of signboards portraying artists, but few instances occur; and when they
do, they are almost exclusively the property of printsellers. We have
only met with three: REMBRANDT’S HEAD, the sign of J. Jackson,
printseller, at the corner of Chancery Lane, Fleet Street, 1759; and of
Nathaniel Smith, the father (?) of J. T. Smith, in Great May’s
Buildings, St Martin’s Lane. Another member of that family, J. Smith,
who kept a printshop in Cheapside, where several of Hogarth’s engravings
were published, assumed the HOGARTH’S HEAD for his sign. The third is
the VAN DYKE’S HEAD, the sign of C. Philips, engraver and
print-publisher in Portugal Street, in 1761. Hogarth also had a head of
Van Dyke as his trade symbol, made from small pieces of cork, but being
gilt, he called it the GOLDEN HEAD, (_see under_ Miscellaneous Signs.)
In old times, more than at present, music was deemed a necessary adjunct
to tavern hospitality and public-house entertainment. The fiddlers and
ballad singers of the “tap” room, however, gave way to the newer brass
band at the doors, and this, in its turn, is now gradually fading before
the “music hall” and so-called “concert” arrangement. Singing, it may be
remarked, is one of the first follies into which a man falls after a too
free indulgence in the cup. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that
musical signboards should have swung from time to time over the alehouse
door. PAGANINI, who contributed so much to the popularity of that
well-known part of the “Carnival de Venise”--still the shibboleth of all
fiddlers--is of very common occurrence.
The love for music is also eloquently expressed by the sign of the
FIDDLER’S ARMS, Gornal Wood, Staffordshire. JENNY LIND seems to be the
only musician of modern times who has found her way to the signboard. In
the last century, HANDEL’S HEAD was common; but at the present moment,
no instance of its use remains. The MAID AND THE MAGPIE, a very common
tavern title, is believed to be the only sign borrowed from an opera. In
Queen Anne’s time, there was a PURCELL’S HEAD in Wych Street, Drury
Lane, the sign of a music-house. It represented that musician in a
brown, full-bottomed wig, and green nightgown, and was very well
painted. Purcell, who died in 1682, greatly improved English melody; he
composed sonatas, anthems, and the music to various plays. His “Te Deum”
and “Jubilate” are still admired.
Actors, and favourite characters from plays, have frequently been
adopted as signs. The oldest instance we find is TARLETON, or DICK
TARLETON, who, in the sixteenth century, seems to have been common
enough to make Bishop Hall allude to him in his “Satyres,” (b. vi., s.
1)--
“O honour far beyond a brazen shrine,
To sit with Tarlton on an ale-post’s sign.”
Tarleton is seen on the trades token of a house in Wheeler Street,
Southwark; and it is only within a very few years that this sign has
been consigned to oblivion. Richard, or “Dick” Tarleton was a celebrated
low-comedy actor, born at Condover in Shropshire, and brought to town in
the household of the Earl of Leicester. He first kept an ordinary in
Paternoster Row, called the CASTLE, much frequented by the booksellers
and printers of St Paul’s Churchyard. Afterwards, he kept the TABOR, in
Gracechurch Street. He was one of Queen Elizabeth’s twelve players, in
receipt of wages, and was at that time living as one of the grooms of
the chamber at Barn Elms, but lost his situation by reason of some
scurrilous reflections on Leicester and Raleigh. He probably also
performed at the Curtain in Shoreditch, in which parish he was buried,
September 3, 1588. “The great popularity which Tarlton possessed may be
readily seen from the numerous allusions to him in almost all the
writers of the time, and few actors have been honoured with so many
practical tokens of esteem. His portrait graced the ale-house,
game-cocks were named after him, and a century after his death, his
effigy adorned the jakes.”[102] The portrait of this famous wit is
prefixed to the edition of his jests, printed in 1611, where he is
represented in the costume of a clown playing on the tabor and pipe.
Another portrait of him occurs as an accompaniment to the letter T, in a
collection of ornamental letters,[103] with the following rhymes:--
“This picture here set down within his letter T,
Aright doth shew the forme and shape of Tharleton unto thee.
When he in pleasaunt wise the counterfeit expreste,
Of clowne with cote of russet hew, and startups w^{th} the reste;
Who merry many made when he appear’d in sight,
The grave, the wise, as well as rude, att him did take delight.
The partie now is gone, and closlie clad in claye;
Of all the jesters in the lande, he bare the praise awaie.
Now hath he plaied his parte, and sure he is of this,
If he in Christe did die to live with Him in lasting bliss.”
SPILLER’S HEAD was the sign of an inn in Clare Market, where one of the
most famous tavern clubs was held. This meeting of artists, wits,
humorists, and actors originated with the performances at Lincoln’s Inn,
about the year 1697. They counted many men of note amongst their
members. Colley Cibber was one of the founders, and their best
president, not even excepting Tom d’Urfey. James Spiller, it should be
stated, was a celebrated actor _circa_ 1700. His greatest character was
“Mat o’ the Mint,” in the Beggar’s Opera. He was an immense favourite
with the butchers of Clare Market, one of whom was so charmed with his
performances, that he took down his sign of the BULL AND BUTCHER, and
put up SPILLER’S HEAD. At Spiller’s death, (Feb. 7, 1729,) the following
elegiac verse was made by one of the butchers in that locality:--
“Down with your marrow-bones and cleavers all,
And on your marrow-bones ye butchers fall!
For prayers from you who never pray’d before,
Perhaps poor Jimmie may to life restore.
‘What have we done?’ the wretched bailiffs cry,
‘That th’ only man by whom we lived should die!’
Enraged they gnaw their wax and tear their writs,
While butchers’ wives fall in hysteric fits;
For, sure as they’re alive, poor Spiller’s dead.
But, thanks to _Jack Legar!_ we’ve got his _head_.
He was an inoffensive, merry fellow,
When sober, hipp’d, blythe as a bird when mellow.”
A ticket for one of his benefit representations, engraved by Hogarth, is
still a _morceau recherché_ amongst print collectors, as much as £12
having been paid for one. “Spiller’s Life and Jests” is the title of a
little book published at that time.
GARRICK’S HEAD was set up as a sign in his lifetime, and in 1768 it hung
at the door of W. Griffiths, a bookseller of Catherine Street, Strand.
It is still common in the neighbourhood of theatres. There is one in
Leman Street, Whitechapel, not far from the place of his first
successes, where, in 1742, he played at the theatre in Goodman’s Fields,
and “the town ran horn-mad after him,” so that there were “a dozen dukes
of a night at Goodman’s Fields sometimes.”[104]
ROXELLANA was, in the seventeenth century, the sign of Thomas Lacy, of
Cateaton Street, (now Gresham Street,) City. It was the name of the
principal female character in “The Siege of Rhodes,” and was originally
the favourite part of the handsome Elizabeth Davenport, whose sham
marriage to the Earl of Oxford, (who deceived her by disguising a
trumpeter of his troop as a priest,) is told in De Grammont’s Memoirs.
After she had found out the Earl’s deception, she continued under his
protection, and is occasionally mentioned, (always under the name of
Roxellana,) with a few words of encomium on her good looks by that
entertaining gossip, Pepys.
Formerly there was a sign of JOEY GRIMALDI at a public-house nearly
opposite Sadler’s Wells Theatre; not only had it the name, but _addidit
vultum verbis_, in the shape of a clown with a goose under his arm, and
a string of sausages issuing from his pocket. Joey’s name being less
familiar to the public of the present day, the house is now called the
CLOWN. This, we think, is the last instance of an actor being elevated
to signboard honours.
ABEL DRUGGER is one of the _dramatis personæ_ in Ben Jonson’s comedy of
the Alchymist, and from the character given him by his friend Captain
Face, we get some curious information concerning the mysteries of the
tobacco trade of that day:--
“This is my friend Abel, an honest fellow,
He lets me have good tobacco, and he does not
Sophisticate it with sack lees or oil,
Nor washes it with muscadel and grains,
Nor buries it in gravel underground,
Wrapp’d up in greasy leather or p---- clouts,
But keeps it in fine lily pots, that open’d
Smell like conserve of roses, or French beans.
He has his maple block, his silver tongs,
Winchester pipes, and fire of juniper.
A neat, spruce, honest fellow, and no goldsmith.”
This worthy was, in the end of the last century, the sign of Peter
Cockburn, a tobacconist in Fenchurch Street, formerly shopman at the SIR
ROGER DE COVERLEY, as he informs the public on his tobacco paper.[105]
According to the custom of the times, and one which has yet lingered in
old-fashioned neighbourhoods, this wrapper is adorned with some curious
rhymes:--
“At DRUGGER’S HEAD, without a puff,
You’ll ever find the best of snuff,
Believe me, I’m not joking;
Tobacco, too, of every kind,
The very best you’ll always find,
For chewing or for smoaking.
Tho’ Abel, when the Humour’s in,
At Drury Lane to make you grin,
May sometimes take his station;
At number Hundred-Forty-Six,
In Fenchurch Street he now does fix
His present Habitation.
His best respects he therefore sends,
And thus acquaints his generous Friends,
From Limehouse up to Holborn,
That his rare snuffs are sold by none,
Except in Fenchurch Street alone,
And there by Peter Cockburn.”
FALSTAFF, whom we have already mentioned when speaking of Shakespeare,
and PAUL PRY, are both very common. The last is even of more frequent
occurrence than “honest Jack” himself.
Lower down in the scale of celebrities and public characters, we find
the court-jester of Henry VIII., OLD WILL SOMERS, the sign of a
public-house in Crispin Street, Spittalfields, at the present day. He
also occurs on a token issued from Old Fish Street, in which he is
represented very much the same as in his portrait by Holbein, viz.,
wearing a long gown, with hat on his head, and blowing a horn. Under an
engraving of this picture are the following lines:--
“What though thou think’st me clad in strange attire,
Knowe I am suted to my own deseire;
And yet the characters described upon mee
May shew thee that a king bestowed them upon mee.
This horn I have betokens Sommers’ game,
Which sportive tyme will bid thee reade my name,
All with my nature well agreeing to
As both the name, and tyme, and habit doe.”
Formerly there used to be in the town a wooden figure of Will with rams’
horns and a pair of large spectacles; and the story was told that he
never would believe that his wife had presented him with the “bull’s
feather” until he had seen it through his spectacles.
Two portraits of Sommers are preserved at Hampton Court, one in a
picture after Holbein, representing Henry VII. with his queen,
Elizabeth, and Henry VIII. with his queen, Jane Seymour. Will is on one
side, his wife on the other. The other portrait is by Holbein,
three-quarter life size, where he is represented looking through a
closed window.[106] He also figures in Henry VIII.’s illuminated
Psalter,[107] in which King Henry’s features are given to David, and
those of Will Sommers to the fool who accompanies him.
Sommers was born at Eston Neston, Northamptonshire, where his father was
a shepherd. His popularity arose from his frankness, which is thus
eulogised by Ascham in his “Toxophilus:”--“They be not much unlike in
this to Wyll Sommers, the kingis foole, which smiteth him that standeth
alwayes before his face, be he never so worshipful a man, and never
greatlye lokes for him which lurkes behinde another man’s backe that
hurte him indeede.”
We next come to _Broughton_, the champion pugilist of England in the
reign of George II. He kept a public-house in the Haymarket, opposite
the present theatre; his sign was a portrait of himself, without a wig,
in the costume of a bruiser. Underneath was the following line, from
Æneid, v. 484:--
“HIC VICTOR CÆSTUS, ARTEMQUE REPONO.”
Numerous public-houses already retail their good things under the
auspices of the great TOM SAYERS. One in Pimlico, Brighton, deserves
especial mention, as it is reported to be the identical house in which
the mighty champion made his entry on the stage of this world, for the
noble purpose of dealing and receiving the blows of fistic fortune. But,
as in the case of Homer’s birthplace, the honour is contested; almost
every house in Pimlico lays claim to his nativity, and unless the great
man writes his life and settles this mooted point, it is likely to give
serious trouble to future historiographers.
Another athlete, TOPHAM, “the strong man,” had also his quantum of
signboards. “The public interest which his extraordinary exhibitions of
strength had always excited did not die with him. His feats were
delineated on many signs which were remaining up to 1800. One in
particular, over a public-house near the Maypole, in East Smithfield,
represented his first great feat of pulling against two dray
horses.”[108]
Thomas Topham was born in London in 1710. His strength almost makes the
feats of Homer’s heroes credible, for, besides pulling against two dray
horses, in which he would have been successful if he had been properly
placed, he lifted three hogsheads of water, weighing 1836 lbs, broke a
rope two inches in circumference, lifted a stone roller, weighing 800
lbs., by a chain with his hands only, lifted with his teeth a table six
feet long, with half a hundredweight fastened to the end of it, and held
it a considerable time in a horizontal position, struck an iron poker, a
yard long and three inches thick, against his bare left arm until it was
bent into a right angle, placed a poker of the same dimensions against
the back of his neck, and bent it until the ends met, and performed
innumerable other remarkable feats.
In DANIEL LAMBERT, whose portly figure acts as sign to a coffee-house on
Ludgate Hill, and to a public-house in the High Street, St Martins,
Stamford, Lincolnshire, we behold another wonder of the age. This man
weighed no less than 52 stone 11 lb. (14 lbs. to the stone.) He was in
his 40th year when he died, and the circumstances of his burial give a
good idea of his enormous proportions. His coffin, in which there was
great difficulty of placing him, was 6 ft. 4 in. long, 4 ft. 4 in. wide,
and 2 ft. 4 in. deep. The immense size of his legs made it almost a
square case. It consisted of 112 superficial feet of elm, and was built
upon two axletrees and four clogwheels, and upon them his remains were
rolled into the grave, a regular descent having been made by cutting the
earth away for some distance slopingly down to the bottom. The window
and part of the wall had to be taken down to allow his exit from the
house in which he died. His demise took place on June 21, 1809.
Over the entrance to Bullhead Court, Newgate Street, there is a stone
bas-relief, according to Horace Walpole once the sign of a house called
THE KING’S PORTER AND THE DWARF, with the date 1660. The two persons
represented are William Evans and Jeffrey Hudson. Evans is mentioned by
Fuller.[109] Jeffrey Hudson, the dwarf, had a very chequered life. He
was born in 1609 at Okeham in Rutlandshire, from a stalwart father,
keeper of baiting-bulls to the Duke of Buckingham. Having been
introduced at court by the Duchess, he entered the Queen’s service. On
one occasion, at an entertainment given by Charles I. to his queen, he
was served up in a cold pie; at another time at a court ball, he was
drawn out of the pocket of Will Evans, the huge door porter, or keeper,
at the palace. In 1630 he was sent to France to bring over a midwife for
the queen, but on his return was taken prisoner by Flemish pirates, who
robbed him of £2500 worth of presents received in France. Sir John
Davenant wrote a comic poem on this occasion entitled “Jeffereïdos.”
During the civil wars Jeffrey was a captain of horse in the royal army;
he followed the queen to France, and there had a duel with a Mr Crofts
(brother of Lord Crofts) whom he shot, for which misdemeanour he was
expelled the court. Taken prisoner by pirates a second time, he was sold
as a slave in Barbary. When he obtained his liberty he returned to
London, but got into prison for participation in the Titus Oates plot,
and died shortly after his release in 1682. Walter Scott has introduced
him in his “Peveril of the Peak.”
Jeffrey is not the only dwarf who has figured on a signboard, for in the
last century there was a DWARF TAVERN in Chelsea Fields, kept by John
Coan, a Norfolk dwarf. It seems to have been a place of some attraction,
since it was honoured by the repeated visits of an Indian king. “On
Friday last the Cherokee king and his two chiefs, were so greatly
pleased with the curiosities of the Dwarf’s Tavern in Chelsea Fields,
that they were there again on Sunday at seven in the evening to
drink tea, and will be there again in a few days.”--_Daily
Advertiser_, July 12, 1762. Two years after we find the following
advertisement:--“Yesterday died at the Dwarf Tavern in Chelsea Fields,
Mr John Coan, the unparalleled Norfolk Dwarf.”--_Daily Advertiser_,
March 17, 1764.
The name of DIRTY DICK, which graces a public-house in Bishopsgate
Without, was transferred to those spirit stores from the once famous
DIRTY WAREHOUSE formerly in Leadenhall Street, a hardware shop kept in
the end of the last century by Richard Bentley, _alias_ Dirty Dick, in
which premises, until about fifteen or twenty years ago, the signboard
of the original shop was still to be seen in the window. Bentley was an
eccentric character, the son of an opulent merchant, who kept his
carriage and lived in great style. In his early life he was one of the
beaux in Paris, was presented at the court of Louis XVI., and enjoyed
the reputation of being the handsomest and best dressed Englishman at
that time in the capital of France. On his return to London he became a
new, though not a better, man. Brooms, mops, and brushes were rigorously
proscribed from his shop; all order was abolished, jewellery and
hardware were carelessly thrown together, covered by the same shroud of
undisturbed dust. So they remained for more than forty years, when he
relinquished business in 1804. The outside of his house was as dirty as
the inside, to the great annoyance of his neighbours, who repeatedly
offered Bentley to have it cleaned, painted, and repaired at their
expense; but he would not hear of this, for his dirt had given him
celebrity, and his house was known in the Levant, and the East and West
Indies, by no other denomination than the “Dirty Warehouse in Leadenhall
Street.” The appearance of his premises is thus described by a
contemporary:--
“Who but has seen, (if he can see at all,)
’Twixt Aldgate’s well-known pump and Leadenhall,
A curious hardware shop, in generall full
Of wares from Birmingham and Pontipool!
Begrimed with dirt, behold its ample front,
With thirty years’ collected filth upon’t;
In festoon’d cobwebs pendant o’er the door,
While boxes, bales, and trunks are strew’d around the floor.
* * * * *
Behold how whistling winds and driving rain
Gain free admission at each broken pane,
Safe when the dingy tenant keeps them out,
With urn or tray, knife-case or dirty clout!
Here snuffers, waiters, patent screws for corks,
There castors, cardracks, cheesetrays, knives and forks;
There empty cases piled in heaps on high,
There packthread, papers, rope, in wild disorder lie.”
&c. &c. &c.
The present Dirty Dick is a small public-house, or rather a tap of a
wholesale wine and spirit business in Bishopsgate Street Without. It has
all the appearance of one of those establishments that started up in the
wake of the army at Varna and Balaclava, or at newly-discovered
gold-diggings. A warehouse or barn without floorboards; a low ceiling,
with cobweb festoons dangling from the black rafters; a pewter bar
battered and dirty, floating with beer; numberless gas-pipes, tied
anyhow along the struts and posts, to conduct the spirits from the
barrels to the taps; sample phials and labelled bottles of wine and
spirits on shelves,--everything covered with virgin dust and
cobweb,--indeed, a place that would set the whole Dutch nation frantic.
Yet, though it has been observed that cleanliness of the body is
conducive to cleanliness of the soul, and _vice versa_, the regulations
of this dirty establishment, (hung up in a conspicuous place,) are more
moral than those of the cleaner gin-palaces,--as, for instance:--“No man
can be served twice.”[110] “No person to be served if in the least
intoxicated.” “No improper language permitted.” “No smoking permitted;”
whilst the last request, for fear of this charming place tempting
customers to lounge about, says, “Our shop being small, difficulty
occasionally arises in supplying the customers, who will greatly oblige
by bearing in mind the good old maxim:--
‘When you are in a place of business,
Transact your business
And go about your business.’”
By a trades token we see that OLD PARR’S HEAD was already in the
seventeenth century the sign of a house in Chancery Lane. _Circa_ 1825,
a publican in Aldersgate put up the old patriarch, with the following
medical advice:--
“Your head cool,
Your feet warm,
But a glass of good gin
Would do you no harm.”
Thomas Parr was born in 1483, and dying November 15, 1635, at the age of
152, had lived in the reigns of ten several princes,--viz., Edward IV.,
Edward V., Richard III., Henry VII., Henry VIII., Edward VI., Queen
Mary, Queen Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I. He was not the only one
of the family who attained to a great age, for the _London Evening
Post_, August 24, 1757, has the following note:--“Last week died at
Kanne, in Shropshire, Robert Parr, aged 124. He was great-grandson of
old Thomas Parr, who died in the reign of King Charles I., and lies
buried in Westminster Abbey. What is very remarkable is, that the father
of Robert was 109; the grandfather 113; and the great-grandfather, the
said Thomas, is well known to have died at the age of 152.” Signs of old
Parr are still remaining at Gravesend and at Rochester.
Thomas Hobson, (Hobson’s Choice,) the benevolent old carrier, is the
sign of two public-houses in Cambridge,--the one called OLD HOBSON, the
other HOBSON’S HOUSE. His own inn in London was the BULL INN in
Bishopsgate Street, where he was represented in fresco, having a £100
bag under his arm, with the words, “The fruitful mother of an hundred
more.” There is an engraving of him by John Payne, his contemporary,
which also represents him holding a bag of money. Under it are these
lines:--
“Laugh not to see so plaine a man in print;
The shadow’s homely, yet there’s something in’t.
Witness the Bagg he wears, (though seeming poore,)
The fertile Mother of a thousand more.
He was a thriving man, through lawful gain,
And wealthy grew by warrantable faime.
Men laugh at them that spend, not them that gather,
Like thriving sonnes of such a thrifty father.”
The print also informs us that he died at the age of eighty-six, in the
year 1630. Milton, who wrote two epitaphs upon him, says, that “he
sickened in the time of his vacancy, being forbid to go to London by
reason of the plague.”
Among this class of minor celebrities we may also place those who put up
their own head for signs. Taylor, the water poet, (see Mourning Crown,
pp. 49,) was one of the first. Next to him followed PASQUA ROSEE;
according to his handbill, “the first who made and publicly sold
coffee-drink in England.” His establishment was “in St Michael’s Alley,
in Cornhill, at the sign of his own head.” This handbill largely enters
into the virtues of the “coffee-drink,” gives the natural history of the
plant, prescribes how to make the drink, and advises that “it is to be
drunk, fasting an hour before, and not eating an hour after, and to be
taken as hot as possibly can be endured; the which will never fetch the
skin off the mouth, or raise any blisters by reason of that heat.” The
next enters upon a glowing description of all the evils cured by that
drink, as fumes, headaches, defluxions of rhumes, dropsy, gout, scurvy,
king’s-evil, spleen, hypochondriac, winds, stone, &c. This coffee-house
was opened in 1652.
LEBECK’S HEAD was another instance of the owner setting up his own head
as a sign; and though his name has not filled the trumpet of fame, yet
had he many times bravely stood the fire, and filled the mouths of his
contemporaries, for he kept an ordinary (about 1690) at the north-west
corner of Half-moon Passage, (since called Bradford Street.) The sign
seems to have found imitators at the time, and is even yet kept up by
tradition. There is Lebeck’s Head in Shadwell, High Street; a Lebeck’s
Inn and Lebeck’s Tavern in Bristol; and a LEBECK AND CHAFF-CUTTER at a
village in Gloucestershire.
A still more famous house was the PONTACK’S HEAD, formerly called the
WHITE BEAR, in Christ Church Passage, (leading from Newgate Street to
Christ Church.) This tavern having been destroyed by fire, Pontack, the
son of a president of the parliament of Bordeaux, opened a new
establishment on its site, and assuming his father’s portrait as its
sign, called it the Pontack’s Head. It was the first fashionable
eating-house in London, was opened soon after the Restoration, and
continued in favour until about the year 1780, when it was pulled down
to make room for the building of the vestry hall of Christ Church. De
Foe describes it as “a constant ordinary for all comers at very
reasonable prices, where you may bespeak a dinner from four or five
shillings a head to a guinea, or what sum you please.”[111] In the
beginning of the eighteenth century the dinners had become proverbially
extravagant:--
“Now at Pontack’s we’ll take a bit,
Shall quicken Nature’s appetite.
Here, shew a room! what have you got?
The waiter (cries) What have we not?
All that the season can afford,
Fresh, fat, and fine, upon my word
A Guinea ordinary, sir.”
This Guinea ordinary was:--
“---- every way compleat,
Adorn’d and beautifully dress’d.
But what it was could not be guess’d.”
The waiter, however, gives the _menu_, which contains--Bird’s nest soup
from China; a ragout of fatted snails; bantam pig, but one day old,
stuffed with hard row and ambergris; French peas stewed in gravy, with
cheese and garlick; an incomparable tart of frogs and forced meat; cod,
with shrimp sauce; chickens _en surprise_, (they had not been two hours
from the shell,) and similar dainties.[112] Pontack contributed much
towards bringing the French wines in fashion, being proprietor of some
of the Bordeaux vineyards which bore his name.
About the same time another tavern flourished, with its master’s head
for sign; this was CAVEAC’S,[113] celebrated for wine; of him Amhurst
sang:--
“Now sumptuously at Caveac’s dine,
And drink the very best of wine.”
Though it cannot be said that DON SALTERO put up his portrait for a
sign, yet his coffee-house was named after him, and is still extant
under the same denomination in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. This house was
opened in 1695 by a certain Salter, who had been servant to Sir Hans
Sloane, and had accompanied him on his travels. Chelsea at that time was
a village, full of the suburban residences of the aristocracy, and the
pleasant situation of Salter’s house soon made it the resort of merry
companions, on their way to or from friends’ villas, or Vauxhall, Jenny
Whin’s, and other places of public resort in the neighbourhood.
Vice-Admiral Mundy, on his return from the coast of Spain, amused with
the pedantic dignity of Salter, christened him Don Saltero, and under
that name the house has continued till this day.
From his connexion with the great Sir Hans Sloane, and the tradition of
a descent from the Tradescants, Salter was of course in duty bound to
have a museum of curiosities, which, by gifts from Sir Hans and certain
aristocratic customers in the army and navy, soon became sufficiently
interesting to constitute one of the London sights. It existed more than
a century, and was at last sold by auction in the summer of 1798. From
his catalogue[114] (headed with the words, “O RARE!”) we gather that the
curiosities fully deserved that name, for amongst them we find: “a piece
of St Catherine’s skin;” “a painted ribbon from Jerusalem, with which
our Saviour was tied to the pillar when scourged, with a motto;”[115]
“a very curious young mermaid-fish;” “manna from Canaan, it drops from
the clouds twice a year, in May and June, one day in each month;” “a
piece of nun’s skin;” “a necklace made of Job’s tears;” “the skeleton
(sic) of a man’s finger;” “petrified rain;” “a petrified lamb, or a
stone of that animal;” “a starved cat in the act of catching two mice,
found between the walls of Westminster Abbey when repairing;” “Queen
Elizabeth’s chambermaid’s hat,” &c.[116]
A most amusing paper in the _Tatler_, No. 34, gives a full-length
portrait of Salter, who appears to have been an “original.” Music was
his besetting sin, and with very little excuse for it. In that paper the
museum, too, is taken to task. Richard Cromwell used to be a visitor to
this house, where Pennant’s father, when a child, saw him, “a very neat
old man, with a placid countenance.” Franklin also, when a printer’s
apprentice, “one day made a party to go by water to Chelsea in order to
see the college, and Don Saltero’s curiosities.”
There is a rather amusing advertisement of the Don’s in the _Weekly
Journal_ for June 23, 1723:--
“SIR,--Fifty years since to Chelsea great,
From Rodnam on the Irish main,
I stroll’d with maggots in my pate,
Where much improved they still remain.
Through various employs I’ve past,
Toothdrawer, trimmer, and at last,
I’m now a gimcrack whim-collector.
Monsters of all sorts here are seen,
Strange things in nature as they grew so;
Some relicks of the Sheba queen,
And fragments of the famed Bob Cruso;
Knicknacks to dangle round the wall,
Some in glass cases, some on shelf;
But what’s the rarest sight of all,
Your humble servant shows himself.
On this my chiefest hope depends.
Now if you will the cause espouse,
In journals pray direct your friends
To my Museum-Coffeehouse;
And in requital for the timely favour
I’ll gratis bleed, draw teeth, and be your shaver.
Nay, that your pate may with my noddle tally,
And you shine bright as I do--marry shall ye.
Freely consult my revelation Molly;
Nor shall one jealous thought create a huff,
For she has taught me manners long enough.
“_Chelsea Knackatory._
DON SALTERO.”
At the end of his catalogue a list of the donors is added, most of whom,
doubtless, also frequented his house. Amongst them the following names
appear:--the Duke of Buccleuch, the Earl of Sutherland, Sir John
Balchen, Sir Rob. Cotton, Bart., Sir John Cope, Bart., Sir Thomas de
Veil, Sir Francis Drake, Lady Humphrey, Sir Thomas Littleton, Sir John
Molesworth, the Hon. Capt. William Montague, Sir Yelverton Peyton,
George Selwyn, the Hon. Mr Verney, Sir Francis Windham, &c., besides
numbers of naval and military officers.
THE MOTHER REDCAP is a sign that occurs in various places, as in Upper
Holloway, in the High Street, Camden Town, in Blackburn, Lancashire, in
Edmund’s Lowland, Lincolnshire, &c.: whilst there is a FATHER REDCAP at
Camberwell Green, but he is merely a creature of the publican’s fancy.
From the way in which Brathwaite mentions this sign in his “Whimsies of
a new Cast of Characters,” 1631, it would seem to have been not uncommon
at that time. “He [the painter] bestows his pencile on an aged piece of
decayed canvas, in a sooty alehouse where MOTHER REDCAP must be set out
in her colours.” Who the original Mother Redcap was, is believed to be
unknown, but not unlikely it is an impersonification of Skelton’s famous
“Ellinor Rumming,” the alewife.
The Mother Redcap at Holloway is named by Drunken Barnaby in his
travels. Formerly the following verses accompanied this sign:--
“Old Mother Redcap, according to her tale,
Lived twenty and a hundred years by drinking this good ale;
It was her meat, it was her drink, and medicine besides,
And if she still had drank this ale, she never would have died.”
At one time the Mother Redcap, in Kentish Town, was kept by an old
crone, from her amiable temper surnamed Mother Damnable.[117] This was
probably the same person we find elsewhere alluded to under the name of
Mother Huff, as in Baker’s “Comedy of Hampstead Heath,” 1706, a. ii. s.
1. “_Arabella._--Well, this Hampstead’s a charming place, to dance all
night at the Wells, and be treated at _Mother Huff’s_.”
[Illustration: PLATE VI.
THREE SQUIRRELS.
(Fleet Street, circa 1668.)
HAND AND STAR.
(1550.)
CHESHIRE CHEESE.
(Modern sign, Aldermanbury, City.)
KING’S PORTER AND DWARF.
(Newgate Street, circa 1668.)
ROYAL OAK.
(Roxburghe Ballads, 1660.)]
Only a few more celebrities now remain to be disposed of; but they are
of such a varied character, and so heterogeneous, that they can scarcely
be ranged under any of the former divisions: thus we meet with the stern
reformer, MELANCTHON’S HEAD, as the sign of an orthodox publican, in
Park Street, Derby. Pretty NELL GWYNN occurs on several London
public-houses: one in Chelsea, where she must have been well known,
since her mother resided in that neighbourhood, and popular tradition
allows Nell to have been one of the principal promoters of the erection
of the famous hospital there. Another house, named after Charles II.’s
favourite mistress, may be observed in Drury Lane, in which street she
lived, and where Pepys, on May-day, 1667, saw her “standing at her
lodgings door, in her smock sleeves and boddice,” and thought her “a
mighty pretty creature.”
The SIR JOHN OLDCASTLE was a tavern, in Coldbathfields, in the beginning
of the last century; near this house, Bagford and a Mr Conyers, an
antiquarian apothecary of Fleet Street, discovered the skeleton of an
elephant in a gravel pit.[118] This house is also named in the following
bill:--[119]
“All gentlemen, who are lovers of the ancient and noble exercise of
archery, are hereby invited, by the stewards of the annual feast for
the Clerkenwell Archers, to dine with them at Mrs Mary Barton’s, at
the sign of Sir John Oldcastle, upon Friday, the 18th day of July
1707, at one of the clock, and to pay the bearer, Thomas Beaumont,
Master of the Regiment of Archers, two shillings and sixpence, and to
take a sealed ticket, that the certain number may be known, and
provision made accordingly.
Nathaniel Axtell, Esq.} Stewards.”
Edward Bromwick, Gent.}
Opposite this house stood the LORD COBHAM’S HEAD, as appears from the
_Daily Advertiser_ for August 9, 1742, which contains an advertisement
puff of this place, praising its beer at 3d. a tankard, and mentioning
the concert and illuminations. The correspondent concludes his letter by
saying: “_Note._--In seeing this great preparation, I thought it a duty
incumbent upon me to inform my fellow-citizens and others, that they may
distinguish this place from any pretended concerts, which are nothing
but noise and nonsense, in particular, one that is rightly-styled the
_Hog-concert_,” &c.
Both these houses were named after “the Good Lord Cobham,”--Sir John
Oldcastle, who married the heiress of the Cobham family--the first
author, as well as the first martyr of noble family in England. Being
one of the Lollards, he was accused of rebellion, hanged in chains, and
burned alive at St Giles in the Fields, in December 1417. Lord Cobham’s
estates were close to the site of these two public-houses, which were
supposed to comprise a part of the ancient mansion of that nobleman.
The SIR PAUL PINDAR public-house, in Bishopsgate Street Without, is all
that remains of the splendid mansion of the rich merchant of that name,
who had here a beautiful park, well stocked with game. The house
continues almost in its original state, in the Cinque Cento style of
ornament; the best part of it is the façade. In “Londiniana,” ii. p.
137, is an engraving of a lodge, standing in Half-Moon Alley, ornamented
with figures, which tradition says was the keeper’s lodge of Sir Paul
Pindar’s Park. Mulberry trees, and other park-like vestiges, were still
within memory in 1829. In Pennant’s time it was already a public-house,
having for a sign, “a head, called that of the original owner.” Sir Paul
was a contemporary of Gresham, the founder of the Exchange. He travelled
much, and by that means acquired many languages, which, at that time,
was a sure way to advancement. James I. sent him as ambassador to the
Sultan, from whom he obtained valuable concessions for the English trade
throughout the Turkish dominions. After his return, he was appointed
farmer of the customs, and frequently advanced money to King James, and
afterwards to Charles I. In 1639 he was esteemed worth £236,000,
exclusive of bad debts. He expended £19,000 in repairing St Paul’s
Cathedral, and contributed large sums to various charities, yet, strange
to say, died insolvent, Aug. 22, 1650, the year after his royal master
had been beheaded. His executor, William Toomes, was so shocked at the
hopeless state of Sir Paul’s affairs, that he committed suicide, and was
buried with all the degrading ceremonies of a _felo-de-se_.
The WELCH HEAD was the sign of a low public-house in Dyot Street, St
Giles. In the last century there was a mendicants’ club held here, the
origin of which dated as far back as 1660, at which time they used to
hold their meetings at the THREE CROWNS in the Poultry. Saunders Welch
was one of the justices of the peace for Westminster, and kept a regular
office for the police of that district, in which he succeeded Fielding.
He died Oct. 31, 1784, and lies buried in the church of St George’s,
Bloomsbury. He was a very popular magistrate: a story is told that in
1766 he went unattended into Cranbourne Alley, to quell the riotous
meetings of the journeymen shoemakers there, who had struck for an
advance of wages. One of the crowd soon recognised him, when they at
once mounted him on a beer barrel, and patiently listened to all that he
had to say. He quieted the rioters, and prevailed upon the master
shoemakers to grant an additional allowance to the workmen. This little
incident, joined to his well-known benevolence, and skill in capturing
malefactors, gave him that popularity which rewards by a signboard fame.
The BEDFORD HEAD, Covent Garden, represented the head of one of the
Dukes of Bedford, ground landlords of that district. Pope twice alludes
to this tavern, as a place where to obtain a delicate dinner. This house
Mr Cunningham[120] suspects to have occupied the north-east corner of
the Piazza, and there it appears in a view of old Covent Garden, about
1780, preserved in the “Crowle Pennant,” (vii. p. 25.) There was another
Bedford Head in Southampton Street, which was kept by Wildman, the
brother-in-law of Horne Tooke. A Liberal club used to meet at this
house, of which Wilkes was a member, for several years. There is still a
Bedford Head in Maiden Lane, hard by, at which the Reunion Literary Club
is held.
Under the historical signs may be ranged a class of more modern signs,
referring to local celebrities,--“mighty hunters before the Lord”
probably--such as CAPTAIN HARMER, White Horse Plain, Yarmouth; CAPTAIN
ROSS ON CLINKER, at Natland, a village in Westmoreland; CAPTAIN DIGBY
(the name of a vessel wrecked), at St Peter’s, Margate; COLONEL
LINSKILL, Charlotte Street, North Shields, &c.
The DON COSSACK, so frequently seen, dates from the celebrity acquired
by those troops in the extermination of the unfortunate half-starved and
frozen soldiers, on their retreat from Moscow; though a more intimate
acquaintance with the formidable Cossacks, during the Crimean campaign,
considerably damaged their ancient reputation. The signs of the DRUID,
the DRUID’S HEAD, the DRUID AND OAK, and the ROYAL ARCH DRUID, are more
to be attributed to various kinds of masonic brotherhoods, than as a
mark of respect paid to our aboriginal clergy. The UNION originated with
the union of Ireland with this kingdom; the JUBILEE dates from the
centenary of the revolution of 1688, held with considerable pomp and
national rejoicing, in 1788. The HERO OF SWITZERLAND, Loughborough Road,
Brixton, and in a few other places, refers to William Tell; and the
SPANISH PATRIOT, (Lambeth Lower Marsh and White Conduit Street,) dates
from the excitement of our proposed intervention in the Spanish
Succession question, in 1833. The SPANISH GALLEON, Church Street,
Greenwich, simply owes its origin to the pictures of our naval victories
in the Greenwich Hospital.
These, then, are some of the principal and most curious historic signs.
From the perusal of this catalogue, we can draw one conclusion--namely,
that only a few of what we have termed “historical signs,” outlive the
century which gave them birth. If the term of their duration extends
over this period, there is some chance that they will remain in popular
favour for a long time. Thus, in the case of most heroes of the last
century, few publicans certainly will know anything about the Marquis of
Granby, Admiral Rodney, or the Duke of Cumberland, yet their names are
almost as familiar as the Red Lion, or the Green Dragon, and have indeed
become public-household words. Once that stage past, they have a last
chance of continuing another century or two--namely, when those heroes
are so completely forgotten, that the very mystery of their names
becomes their recommendation; such as the Grave Morris, the Will
Sommers, the Jack of Newbury, &c.
[54] Lloyd’s _Evening Post_, February 11-13, 1761.
[55] Horace Walpole’s Letters. Thirteenth Letter to Mr Conway, April 16,
1747.
[56] In the Print-room of the British Museum.
[57] Pennant’s History of London, vol. i. p. 99.
[58] “The Quack Vintners, 1710,” a tract written against Brooke and
Hilliers, the famous wine-merchants of that time, frequently mentioned
by the _Spectator_.
[59] _Newcastle Journal_, June 28, 1746.
[60] Nugæ Antiquæ, vol. i. p. 348.
[61] Barrow’s Life of Peter the Great.
[62] _Gent. Mag._, March 1842.
[63] Peacham’s Compleat Gentleman, p. 79.
[64] The taverns of the seventeenth century appear in many instances to
have been upstairs, above shops. In 1679, there was a “Mr Crutch,
goldsmith, near Temple Bar, at the _Palsgrave Head_.” In a similar way,
a bookseller lived at the sign of the _Rainbow_, at the same time as one
Farr, who opened this place as a coffee-house. Another bookseller, James
Roberts, who printed most of the satires, epigrams, and other
wasp-stings against Pope, lived at the _Oxford Arms_, a carriers’ inn in
Warwick Lane. Finally, Isaac Walton sold his “Complete Angler” “at his
shopp in Fleet Street, under the _King’s Head_ Tavern.”
[65] Macaulay’s Biographical Essays, Frederick the Great.
[66] Goldsmith’s Essay on the Versatility of Popular Favour.
[67] For more particulars about Topham, _see_ p. 88.
[68] Trades tokens in the Beaufoy Collection.
[69] For several centuries, Fleet Street was the head-quarters for shows
and exhibitions out of fair-time. Ben Jonson speaks of “the City of
Nineveh at Fleetbridge.” This was in the reign of James I. Mrs Salmon’s
waxworks were among the last remaining sights in that locality.
[70] Richardsoniana, p. 140.
[71] Grosley, in his Tour to London, 1772, vol i. p. 150, mentions this
society, which at that period was held at the Robin Hood, and says it
was a semi-public club, into which all sorts of people were admitted,
and all sorts of topics, religious as well as political, were discussed.
He makes an odd mistake, however, when he says that the president was a
baker by trade.
[72] This John Marshall afterwards, when he was appointed the king’s
optician, changed his sign into the ARCHIMEDES AND KING’S ARMS, under
which we find him, in 1718, advertising his “chrystall dressing-glasses
for ladies, which shew the face as nature hath made it, which other
looking-glasses do not.”
[73] Banks’s Collection.
[74] Banks’s Collection.
[75] The Angler. Hawkins’s edition. 1784.
[76] Bagford Bills, Bib. Harl. 5964.
[77] “On the chair of Ben Johnson, now remaining at Robert Wilson’s, at
the sign of the Johnson’s Head, in the Strand.”--_Wit and Drollery_,
1655, p. 79.
[78] _The Newes_, August 24, 1655. This may have been the
above-mentioned tavern, as York House was situated in the Strand on the
site of the present York Buildings.
[79] Addison’s Lion’s Head, the box for the deposition of the
correspondence of the _Guardian_, was originally placed at Button’s,
over against Tom’s in Great Russell Street. “After having become a
receptacle of papers and a spy for the _Guardian_, it was moved to the
Shakespeare’s Head Tavern, under the Piazza in Covent Garden, kept by a
person named Tomkins, and in 1751 was for a short time placed in the
Bedford Coffeehouse, immediately adjoining the Shakespeare Tavern, and
there employed as a medium of literary communication by Dr John Hill,
author of the ‘Inspector.’ In 1769, Tomkins was succeeded by his waiter,
named Campbell, as proprietor of the tavern and Lion’s Head, and by him
the latter was retained till 1804, when it was purchased by the late
Charles Richardson, after whose death in 1827 it devolved to his son,
and has since become the property of his Grace the Duke of
Bedford.”--Till, in his Preface to Descriptive Catalogue of English
Medals.
[80] Our slang friends the burlesque writers and parodists, would
probably say something about _mopping_.--ED.
[81] An “Apollo in his glory” is a charge in the apothecaries’ arms.
[82] Aubrey, Remains of Gentilisme and Judaism. Lansdowne MSS. 231, p.
106.
[83] At the Vulcan. He lights his pipe at the fire;--whosoever wants to
buy good tobacco let him come here;--you will get a pipe filled into the
bargain, and a glass of strong beer in fair time.
[84] Vulcan, that lame blacksmith, when he got tired over his work, sat
down a while to rest his limbs. The gods saw it; he took his cutty pipe
and his tobacco box out of his pocket and smoked a pipe of tobacco.
[85] _Gent. Mag._, March 1842.
[86] The History of Tom Jones, book xvi. ch. ii.
[87] _Lond. Gaz._, June 18-22, 1674.
[88] This was not true, for Pepys went (24th Oct. 1667) to hear the same
instrument played by a Mr Prin, a Frenchman, “which he do beyond belief,
and the truth is, it do so far outdo a trumpet as nothing more, and he
do play anything very true. The instrument is open at the end I
discovered, but he would not let me look into it.” Philips, in his “New
World of Words,” 1696, describes it as “an instrument with a bellows,
resembling a lute, having a long neck with a string, which being struck
with a hairbow sounds like a trumpet.”
[89] Aubrey, Miscellanies upon various subjects.
[90] See in Bib. Top. Brit., vol. iv., a Critical Memoir on the Story of
Guy of Warwick, by the Rev. Samuel Pegge, who supposes that Guy lived in
Saxon times, and was the son of Simon, Baron of Wallingford. He married
Felicia, (Phillis,) the daughter and heiress of Rohand, Earl of Warwick,
who flourished in the reign of Edward the Elder, and so became Earl of
Warwick.
[91] In Ritson’s Ancient Songs and Ballads.
[92] The “pindar” was the man who took care of stray cattle, which he
kept in the pinfold, or pound, until it was claimed and the expenses
paid.
[93] _Daily Courant_, Feb. 19, 1711.
[94] The “Dropping Well,” one of the most noted petrifying springs in
England, and so named on account of its percolating through the rock
that hangs over it.
[95] This information we gather from a chapbook entitled “The Strange
and Wonderful History and Prophecies of Mother Shipton, by Ferraby,
printer on the Market Place, Hull.” It is evidently a reprint of a
chapbook of the time of Charles II., as appears from many allusions.
[96] Once there was a man who led a holy life, and was a prophet, who
could see what would come to pass; his name was Merlin, and he was the
offspring of an evil and fiendish spirit. But though born from such a
father, he shone forth in virtue, and after his death, became a
companion of the saints.
[97] Henry Peacham’s Compleat Gentleman.
[98] John Collet’s Historical Anecdotes, Add. MSS. 8890, p. 113.
[99] In the Banks Collection.
[100] This broadside is reprinted in Notes and Queries for January 15,
1859. Sussex had its snake as late as 1614. There is a pamphlet In the
Harl. Collection, entitled, “True and Wonderful--a discourse relating a
strange and monstrous serpent, (or dragon,) lately discovered, and yet
living, to the great annoyance and divers slaughter both of men and
cattell, by his strong and violent Poyson, in Sussex, two miles from
Horsam, in a woode called St Leonard’s Forrest, and thirtie miles from
London, this present month of August 1614.” That this Sussex snake
caused a great sensation, appears from the fact that seventeen years
after, it is alluded to in “Whimsies: or, A New Cast of Characters,”
1631: “Nor comes his [the ballad-monger’s] invention far short of his
imagination. For want of truer relations for a neede, he can find you
out a _Sussex dragon_, some sea or inland monster, drawn out by some
Shoe Lane man, [_i.e._, a sign-painter; they all lived in Harp Alley,
Shoe Lane,] in Gorgon-like features, to enforce more horror in the
beholder.”
[101] The title of Cooper’s novel seems to have taken hold of the
popular fancy to an astonishing degree: not only are there several
public-houses who have adopted it as their sign, but also race-horses,
ships, and locomotive engines have been named after it. There is even a
baked potato-can in the streets of London, decorated with that name; it
is built in the shape of a locomotive-engine, japanned red, and wheeled
about the streets by an old woman. The name on a brass plate is screwed
to the can, similar to the names of locomotive-engines.
[102] Introduction to Tarlton’s Jests, by J. O. Halliwell.
[103] Harl. MSS. 3885.
[104] Gray’s Letter to Chute. Mitford, ii. 138.
[105] Banks’s Collection.
[106] This is engraved in Caulfield’s Portraits of Remarkable and
Eccentric Characters, as well as the wooden figure in the Tower.
[107] MSS. Reg., 2 A. xvi.
[108] Fairholt, Remarkable and Eccentric Characters, p. 56.
[109] Fuller’s Worthies, _voce_ Monmouthshire.
[110] This is an old “dodge,” mentioned long ago by Decker in his “Seven
Deadly Sins, seven times pressed to Death,” &c.:--“Then you have another
brewing called Huff’s ale, at which, because no man must have _but a pot
at a sitting_, and so be gone, the restraint makes them more eager to
come in, so that by this policie one may huffe it four or five times a
day.”
[111] Journey through England, vol. i. p. 175.
[112] Metamorphosis of the Town; or, a View of the Present Fashions.
London: Printed for J. Wilford at the THREE FLOWER DE LUCES, behind the
Chapter House in St Paul’s Churchyard, 1730.
[113] Oddly enough, both Cave and Ponto are terms of some games at
cards.
[114] There is a copy in the British Museum.
[115] This _motto_ was: “Misura della Colonna di Christo n^{ro},”
_i.e._, Measure of the column of our Saviour.
[116] A brother Boniface, Adams, “at the ROYAL SWAN in Kingsland Road,
leading from Shoreditch Church,” (1756) had also a _knackatory_, which,
from his catalogue, looks very like a parody on the Don’s. He exhibited,
for instance, “Adam’s eldest daughter’s hat;” “the heart of famous Bess
Adams, that was hanged with Lawyer Carr, January 18, 1736-37;” “the
Vicar of Bray’s clogs;” “an engine to shell green peas with;” “teeth
that grew in a fish’s belly;” “Black Jack’s ribs;” “the very comb that
Adam combed his son Isaac’s and Jacob’s head with;” “rope that cured
Captain Lowry of the headach, earach, toothach, and bellyach;” “Adam’s
key to the fore and back door of the garden of Eden,” &c., &c., and 500
other curiosities.
[117] Her portrait, with a poem upon her, too long to quote, occurs in
“Portraits and Lives of Remarkable and Eccentric Characters,”
Westminster, 1819.
[118] Harl. MSS. 5900.
[119] Bagford Bills. Harl. MSS. 5962.
[120] London, Past and Present, p. 48.