FLOWERS, TREES, HERBS, ETC.
In old times, when signboards flourished, there would have been many
reasons for choosing these house-decorations. 1. Their symbolic meaning,
as the olive-tree, the fig-tree, the palm-tree. 2. To intimate what was
sold within, as the vine, the coffee-plant, &c. 3. The use of some
plants as badges. 4. The vicinity of some well-known tree or road-mark,
near the place where the sign was displayed. 5. The desire of a landlord
to have an unusual sign.
The oldest sign borrowed from the vegetable kingdom is the Bush; it was
a bush or bunch of ivy, box or evergreen, tied to the end of a pole,
such as is represented in many of the suttler’s tents in the pictures of
Wouverman. The custom came evidently from the Romans, and with it the
oft-repeated proverb, “Good wine needs no Bush.” (_Vinum vendibile
hedera non est opus_; in Italian, _Al buon vino non bisogna frasca_; in
French, _à bon vin point d’enseigne_.) Ivy was the plant commonly used:
“The Tavern Ivy clings about my money and kills it,” says the sottish
slave in Massinger’s “Virgin Martyr,” (a. iii. s. 3.) It may have been
adopted as the plant sacred to Bacchus and the Bacchantes, or perhaps
simply because it is a hardy plant, and long continues green. As late as
the reign of King James I. many inns used it as their only sign. Taylor,
the water poet, in his perambulation of ten shires around London, notes
various places where there is “a taverne with a bush only;” in other
parts he mentions “the signe of the Bush.” Even at the present day “the
Bush” is a very general sign for inn and public-house, whilst sometimes
it assumes the name of the IVY BUSH, or the IVY GREEN, (two in
Birmingham.) In Gloucester, Warwick, and other counties, where at
certain fairs the ordinary booth people and tradesmen enjoy the
privilege of selling liquors without a licence, they hang out bunches of
ivy, flowers, or boughs of trees, to indicate this sale. As far away as
the western States of North America, at the building of a new village,
or station, it is no uncommon thing to see a bunch of hay, or a green
bough, hung from above the “grocery,” or bar-room door, until such time
as a superior decoration can be provided. The bunch being fixed to a
long staff was also called the Alepole; thus among the processions of
odd characters that came to purchase ale at the Tunnyng of Elinour
Rummyng:--
“Another brought her bedes
Of jet or of coale,
To offer to the _Alepole_.”
How these Alepoles, from the very earliest times, continued to enlarge
and encroach upon the public way, has been shown in our Introduction,
pp. 16, 17. The Bunch gradually became a garland of flowers of
considerable proportions, whence Chaucer, describing the Sompnour,
says:--
“A garlond hadde he sette upon his hede
As gret as it were for an alestake.”
Afterwards it became a still more elegant object, as exemplified by the
Nagshead in Cheapside, in the print of the entry of Marie de Medici;
finally it appeared as a crown of green leaves, with a little Bacchus,
bestriding a tun dangling from it. Thus the sign was used simultaneously
with the bush.
“If these houses [ale-houses] have a boxe-bush, or an old post, it is
enough to show their profession. But if they be graced with a signe
compleat, it’s a signe of a good custome.”[326]
In a mask of 1633, the constituents of a tavern are thus described:--“A
flaminge red lattice, seueral drinking roomes, and a backe doore, but
_especially a conceited signe and an eminent bush_.” “Tavernes are
quickly set up, it is but hanging out a bush at a nobleman’s or an
alderman’s gate, and ’tis made instantly.”--_Shirley’s Masque of the
Triumph of Peace._ In a woodcut from the “Cent Nouvelle Nouvelles,”
introduced in Wright’s “Domestic Manners,” the Bush is suspended from a
square board, on which the sign was painted; for in France as well as in
England, signboard and bush went together:--
“La taverne levée
_L’enseigne et le bouchon_,
La dame bien peignée
Les cheveux en bouchon.”[327]
--_Chanson nouvelle des Tavernes et Tavernières, Fleur des Chansons
Nouvelles, Lyon_, 1586.
Whilst an English host in “Good News and Bad News,” says:--“I rather
will take down my bush and sign than live by means of riotous expense.”
Gradually, as signs became more costly, the bunch was entirely neglected
and the sign alone remained.
The HAND AND FLOWER is a sign very frequently adopted by alehouses in
the vicinity of nursery grounds:--thus, there is one in the High Street,
Kensington, and one in the King’s Road, a little past Cremorne, though
there the nursery ground has very recently been built over.
The ROSE, besides being the queen of flowers, and the national emblem,
had yet another prestige which alone would have been sufficient to make
it a favourite sign in the middle ages; this was its religious import.
On the monumental brass of Abbot Kirton, formerly in Westminster Abbey,
there was a crowned rose with I.H.C. in its heart, and round it the
words
SIS, ROSA, FLOS FLORUM, MORBIS MEDECINA MEORUM.[328]
And in Caxton’s Psalter, above a woodcut representing an angel holding a
shield with a rose on it, occur the words:--
“Per te rosa toluntur vitia,
Per te datur mestis leticia.”[329]
It was evidently an emblem of the Virgin, and may contain some allusion
to the Rose of Jericho, or to the Christmas rose.
Three centuries ago roses were still very scarce, as we learn from an
original MS. of the time of Henry VIII., and signed by him, preserved at
the Remembrance Office, in which it says that a red rose cost two
shillings; hence, roses were often amongst the terms of a tenure. Sir
Christopher Hatton, the handsome Lord Chancellor, with the “bushy beard
and shoe strings green,” who danced himself into Queen Elizabeth’s
favour, paid the Bishop of Ely for the rent of Ely House for a term of
twenty-one years in 1576, a _red rose_, ten loads of hay, and £10
a-year; but that roses then were plentiful, in that garden at all
events, is also evident, for the Bishop and his successors had a right
to gather yearly twenty bushels of roses out of it. Sir John Poulteney,
21 Edward III., gave and confirmed by charter to Humphrey de Bohun, Earl
of Hereford and Essex, his tenement of Cold Harborough, and
appurtenances, for one rose at Midsummer; a still more whimsical tenure
was that of a farm at Brookhouse, Penistone, York, for which yearly a
payment was to be made of a red rose at Christmas, and a snow ball at
Midsummer.[330] Unless the flower of the Viburnum or Gueldres Rose,
sometimes called a Snowball, was meant, the payment will have been
almost impossible in those days when ice-cellars were unknown.
At the present day some publicans take liberties with the old sign of
the Rose; in Macclesfield, and at Preston, for instance, there is the
MOSS ROSE; on Silkstone Common, in Yorkshire, the BUNCH OF ROSES; on the
London Road, Preston, the ROSEBUD, &c. The THREE ROSES was formerly a
common sign; from the way they are represented, they appear to have been
heraldic roses, (see our _illustration_ of the ancient Lattice.) It was
the sign of Jonathan Edwin, bookseller in Ludgate Street in 1673. At the
ROSE GARLAND, Robert Coplande, the bookseller and printer, published in
1534 Dame Juliana Berner’s “Boke of Hawkyng, Huntyng, and Fyshyng.” This
shop was in “the Flete Strete.” Rose garlands or chaplets were not only
worn in the middle ages as head-dresses, but also awarded as archery
prizes.
“On euery syde a Rose garlonde
They shott under the lyne,
Whoso faileth of the Rose garlonde, sayth Robyn,
His tackyll he shall tyne.”
_Merry Gestes of Robin Hoode._
Copland’s Rose garland, doubtless, suggested the sign of another
bookseller, John Wayland, who also lived in Fleet Street about the year
1540; his sign was the BLUE GARLAND.
The colloquial phrase, UNDER THE ROSE, is sometimes used as a sign, or
written under the pictorial representation of the rose; it occurs on a
trade’s token of Cambridge,[331] and may be seen on various
public-houses of the present day. Numerous suppositions have been made
concerning its origin, some holding that it arose from this flower being
the emblem of Harpocrates; others from a rose painted on the ceiling,
any conversations held under which were not to be divulged; whilst
Gregory Nazianzen seems to imply that the rose, from its close bud, had
been made the emblem of silence.
“Utque latet rosa verna suo putamine clausa,
Sic os vincla ferat, validis arcietur habenis,
Indicatque suis prolixa silentia labris.”[332]
At Lullingstone Castle, in Kent, the residence of Sir Percival Dyke,
Bart., there is, says a correspondent of Notes and Queries, a
representation of a rose nearly two feet in diameter, surrounded with
the following inscription:--
“Kentish true blue
Take this as a token,
That what is said here
Under the Rose is spoken.”
The Dutch have a similar phrase. In an old Book of Inscriptions of the
seventeenth century is a device written round a rose painted on the
ceiling:--
“Al wat hier onder de Roos geschied,
Laat dat aldaar en meld het niet.”[333]
There is one sign of the Rose, the origin of which it is difficult to
ascertain, this is the ROSE OF NORMANDY, a public-house in the High
Street, Marylebone. It was built in the seventeenth century, and is the
oldest house in that parish. In 1659 it is described as having
“Outside a square brick wall set with fruit trees, gravel walks 204
paces long, 7 broad; the circular wall 485 paces long, 6 broad; the
centre square, a bowling-green, 112 paces one way, 88 another--all,
except the first, double set with quickset hedges, full grown, and
kept in excellent order, and indented like town walls.”[334]
The street having been raised, the entrance to the house is at present
some steps beneath the roadway. The original form of the exterior has
been preserved, and the staircases and balusters are coeval with the
building; but the garden and large bowling-green have dwindled into a
miserable skittle-ground.
As a sign the MARYGOLD, it is said, arose from a popular reading of the
sign of the SUN; a very natural and plausible origin. At the same time,
it is just worth mentioning, that this flower (originally called _the
Gold_) seems to have been considered as an emblem of Queen Mary; so, at
least, it would appear from a lengthy ballad of “the Marygolde,”
composed by her chaplain, William Forrest, in which, amongst many other
similar allusions, the following words are found:--
“She [the Queen] may be called Marygolde well,
Of _Marie_ (chiefe) Christes mother deere,
That as in heaven she doth excell,
And _golde_ on earth to have no peere,
So certainly she shineth cleere,
In grace and honour double fold,
The like was never erst seen heere,
Such as this flower the Marygolde.”
The flower was a favourite one in the middle ages, deriving the first
part of its name from the Virgin Mary. No mention of the actual use of
the sign, however, has been met with previous to 1638, when it appears
on the title-pages of Francis Eglisfield, a bookseller in St Paul’s
Churchyard. His name still occurs at the same house in 1673,[335] when
it was also the sign of “Mr Cox, milliner, over against St Clement’s
Church in the Strand.”[336] This must have been the same house in which
Richard Blanchard and Francis Child, the goldsmiths, kept their “running
cashes.”[337] It is the oldest banking firm in London. Francis Child,
the founder, was, in the reign of Charles I., apprenticed to a
goldsmith, William Wheeler, whose shop stood on the same spot now
occupied by the bank. He married his master’s daughter, and thus laid
the foundation of his immense fortune. Many bills and other papers
relating to Nell Gwynn are still preserved by this firm, as well as
various documents concerning the sale of Dunkerque. Alderman Blackwell,
who was ruined by the shutting up of the Exchequer in the reign of
Charles II., was at one time a partner in this house. It was here that
Dryden deposited the £50 offered for the discovery of the bullies of the
“Rose-alley cudgel ambuscade.”[338] The old sign of the house is still
preserved by their successors, together with various relics of the Devil
Tavern, on the site of which it was built.
Only a few other flowers occur, mostly modern introductions. The DAISEY,
Bramley, Leeds; the TULIP, Springfield, Chelmsford; the LILIES OF THE
VALLEY, Ible, near Wirksworth; the SNOWDROP, near Lewes; WOODBINE
Tavern, South Shields; and the FOREST BLUE BELL, Mansfield. The Blue
Bell is very common, but, _inter doctores lis est_, whether it signifies
the little blue flower, or a bell painted blue.
As a sequel to the flowers, we may name the MYRTLE tree, of which there
are two in Bristol, and the ROSEMARY BRANCH, in Camberwell, and in many
other places. Rosemary was formerly an emblem of Remembrance, in the
same way as the Forget-me-not is now; “There’s Rosemary, that’s for
_remembrance_,” says Ophelia, (Hamlet, ac. iv., s. 5,) and in Winter’s
Tale, Perdita says:--
“For you, there’s Rosemary and Rue, these keep
Seeming and savour all the winter long,
Grace and _remembrance_ be to you both.”
_Winter’s Tale_, ac. iv., s. 4.
Hence Rosemary and gloves were of old presented to those who followed
the funeral of a friend.
Fruit trees are much more common, particularly the APPLE-TREE and the
PEAR-TREE, which (owing to the favourite drinks of cider and perry) are
next to the Rose; and the Oak, the most frequent among vegetable signs.
The APPLE-TREE, near Coldbath Fields prison, was one of the numerous
public-houses which Topham the strong man kept in 1745. At the
Apple-tree Tavern, in Charles Street, Covent Garden, four of the leading
London Free Masons’ lodges, considering themselves neglected by Sir
Christopher Wren in 1716, met and chose a grandmaster, _pro tem._, until
they should be able to place a noble brother at the head, which they did
the year following, electing the Duke of Montague. Sir Christopher had
been chosen in 1698. The three lodges that joined with the Apple-tree
Lodge used to meet respectively at the GOOSE AND GRIDIRON, St Paul’s
Churchyard; THE CROWN, Parker’s Lane; and at the RUMMER AND GRAPES
Tavern, Westminster. The HAND AND APPLE was the sign, in 1782, of a shop
in Thames Street, where “syder, Barcelona, cherry brandy, tobacco,” &c.,
were sold. It represented a hand holding an apple, and was chosen on
account of the cider.[339] To this beverage other signs owe their
origin: for instance, the RED-STREAK TREE, from the apple of which the
best cider is made. Tickets used formerly to be in the windows of houses
where cider was sold, with the words, “Bright Red-streak Cyder sold
here,” illustrated with three merry companions in cocked hats, sitting
under an apple-tree drinking cider, on the other side a pile of barrels,
from which the landlord is drawing the liquor. In Maylordsham, Hereford,
this sign is rendered as the “Red-streaked Tree;” there was a
Red-streaked Tree Inn in that same town in 1775.[340] The APPLE-TREE AND
MITRE is an old painted sign, a great deal the worse for London smoke,
in Cursitor Street. It represents an apple-tree abundantly loaded with
fruit, standing in a landscape, with some figures; above it a gilt
mitre. It is evidently a combination of two signs.
The PEAR-TREE is as common as the Apple-tree. The IRON PEAR-TREE at
Appleshaw, Andover, Hants, and at Redenham in the same county, _may_
have been derived from some noted pear-tree in that neighbourhood, whose
hollow and broken stem was secured with plates or bands of iron. Very
general, also, is the CHERRY-TREE. It was the sign of a once famous
resort in Bowling-green Lane, Clerkenwell, and was adopted on account of
the quantities of cherry-trees which grew upon its grounds, even as late
as thirty or forty years ago. In our younger days, this house was the
resort of the fast men of Clerkenwell; its bowling-green gave the name
to the alley in which the house stood. Down the river, at Rotherhithe,
was the CHERRY-GARDEN, a famous place of entertainment in the reign of
the Merry Monarch. Pepys went to it on June 15, 1664, and, with his
usual pleasant flow of animal spirits, “came home by water, singing
merrily.”
“Over against the parish church, [St Olave’s, Southwark,] on the south
side of the street, was some time one great house, builded of stone,
with arched gates, which pertained to the Prior of Lewis, in Sussex,
and was his lodging when he came to London; it is now a common
hostelry for travellers, and hath to sign the WALNUT-TREE.”[341]
The WALNUT-TREE was also the sign of a tavern at the south side of St
Paul’s Churchyard, over against the New Vault, in which place a concert
is advertised in July 1718, which, from the high price of the admission
tickets--5s. each--must have been something out of the common.[342] The
Walnut-tree was frequently adopted by cabinetmakers, and is at the
present day a not uncommon alehouse sign.
The MULBERRY-TREE was introduced at an early period, but does not seem
to have been used as a sign until modern times. James I., in 1609,
caused several shiploads of mulberry trees to be imported from abroad to
encourage the home manufacture of silk: these were planted in a part of
St James’s Park; but the climate being too cold for the silk worms, it
was changed into a pleasure garden, where even the serious Evelyn would
occasionally relax. 10th May 1654:--
“My Lady Gerard treated us at the Mulberry Gardens, now y^{e} only
place of refreshment about y^{e} towne for persons of y^{e} best
quality to be exceedingly cheated at; Cromwell and his partizans
having shut up and seized on Spring Gardens, which till now had been
y^{e} usual rendezvous for y^{e} ladys and gallants at this season.”
Here Dryden went to eat mulberry tarts, and here Pepys occasionally
dined, as 5th April 1669, when he indulged in what he calls an “olio,”
evidently an _olla podrida_, since it was prepared by a Spanish cook;
and the dish was so “noble,” and such a success, that he and his friends
left the rest of their dinners untouched; and after a ride in a coach
and a walk for digestion, they took supper “upon what was left at noon,
and very good.”
Orange trees were one of the ornaments of St James’ Park in the reign of
Charles II.; and at that period and long after, were mostly used as
signboards of the seed-shops, and by Italian merchants. The ORANGE-TREE
AND TWO JARS was the sign of a shop of the latter description in the
Haymarket in 1753.[343] No doubt, the orange tree must have obtained
some popularity in the reign of William III., as it is the emblem of the
Orange family. The orange tree is said to be originally a Chinese plant,
(whence they were formerly called China oranges.) They were unknown to
the ancients, and introduced by the Moors into Sicily in the twelfth
century. France possessed them in the fourteenth century; and probably
much about the same period they were brought to England, for we find
“pome d’orring” mentioned as one of the items at the coronation dinner
of Henry IV. in 1399, where they occur in the third course, along with
_quincys en comfyte doucettys_, and other items of a modern
dessert.[344] But a still earlier instance is mentioned in the “Book of
Days,” (vol. ii. p. 694,) viz., in 1290, when a large ship from Spain
arrived at Portsmouth laden with spices. On this occasion, Queen Eleanor
of Castile, anxious to taste again the luscious fruit that reminded her
of her home in sunny Spain and the days of her girlhood, bought out of
the cargo “a frail of figs, of raisins, and of grapes, a bale of dates,
230 pomegranates, 15 citrons, and 7 oranges.” This probably is the
oldest mention of the orange being brought to England. The tree is said
to have been introduced into this country by a member of the Carew
family. Oranges are named amongst the articles of diet consumed by the
Lords of the Star Chamber in 1509, when their price is quoted one day at
iijd., and another at ijd., whilst the charge for strawberries was
vijd., and on another day iiijd.[345] Perhaps, however, they were only
used as _hors d’œuvres_, for Randle Holme, in his instructions how to
arrange a dinner, (in that _omnium gatherum_, “Academy of Armory,”)
mentions oranges and lemons as the first item of the second course. At
all events, they were abundant enough in 1559, for on May day of that
year the revellers “at the queen’s plasse at Westmynster shott and threw
eges and _orengs_ on a-gaynst a-nodur.”[346] In an “Account of several
Gardens near London,” in 1691,[347] Beddington Gardens are
mentioned--then in the hands of the Duke of Norfolk, but belonging to
the Carew family--as having in it the best oranges in England. The
orange and lemon trees grew in the ground, “and had done so near one
hundred years, the house in which they were being above 200 feet long.
Each of the trees was about 13 feet high, and generally full of fruit,
producing above 10,000 oranges a year.” Sir William Temple’s oranges at
Sheen are also praised. It is, indeed, a pity that this plant has so
much gone out of fashion; for, besides being always green, it bears
fruit and flowers all the year round, both appearing at the same time.
The flowers have a delicious smell; the candied petals impart a very
fine flavour to tea, if a few of them are infused with it; whilst the
fruit may be preserved in exactly the same manner as other fruit. The
sign of the orange-tree still occurs at Highgate, Birmingham; the LEMON
TREE at Beacon Street, Lichfield.
The OLIVE TREE was a common Italian warehouse sign, but was occasionally
used by other shops. Amongst the tokens in the Beaufoy Collection, there
is the “Olfa Tree, Singon Strete,” an example of the liberties taken
with our language on the old tokens, as this stands for the Olive Tree
in St John’s Street. The usefulness of the olive tree made it in very
early times a symbol of peace. In 1503 it was the sign of Henry
Estienne, a bookseller and printer at the end of the Rue de St Jean
Beauvais, otherwise Clos Bruneau, in Paris. This firm, for several
generations, continued the leading publishers and printers in Paris.
Sauval, who wrote in 1650, says that in his time the olive tree, carved
in stone, was still to be seen in the front of the house. Here Francis
I., in 1539, visited Robert Estienne, grandson of the founder of the
firm, in his workshops; and to give him a proof of his favour, conferred
upon him the title of Printer to the King for Latin and Hebrew; and
presented him with those beautiful letters which Estienne proudly
mentions on his title-pages: “Ex officina Roberti Stephani, typographi
regii, _typis regiis_.”
The VINE, or the BUNCH OF GRAPES, is a very natural sign at a place
where wine is sold. The last particularly was almost inseparable from
every tavern, and was often combined with other objects--
“Without there hangs a noble sign,
Where golden grapes in image shine;
To crown the bush, a little Punch-
Gut Bacchus dangling of a bunch,
Sits loftily enthron’d upon
What’s called (in miniature) a Tun.”
_Compleat Vintner_: London, 1720, p. 86.
The BUNCH OF CARROTS, at Hampton Bishop, Hereford, is probably meant as
a joke upon the Bunch of Grapes. Bagford, in a letter to his brother
antiquary, Leland,[348] says:--
“I have often thought, and am now fully perswaded, that the planting
of vines in the adjacent parts about this city, was first of all begun
by the Romans, an industrious people, and famous for their skill in
agriculture and gardening, as may appear from their _rei agrariæ
scriptores_, as well as from Pliny and other authors. We had a
vineyard in East Smithfield, another in Hatton Garden, (which
at this time is called Vine Street,) and a third in St
Giles-in-the-Fields.[349] Many places in the country bear the name of
the Vineyard to this day, especially in the ancient monasteries, as
Canterbury, Ely, Abingdon, &c., which were left as such by the
Romans.”
In Bede’s time vineyards were abundant; and still later, tithes on wine
were common in Gloucester, Kent, Surrey, and the adjacent counties.
Winchester was famous for its vineyards in olden times, for Robert of
Gloucester, in summing up the various commodities of the English
counties, says:--
“And London ships most, and _wine_ at Winchester.”
The Isle of Ely was called Isle des Vignes, and the tithe on the vines
yielded as much as three or four tuns of wine to the bishop. Even in
Richard II.’s time, the Little Park at Windsor was used as a vineyard
for the home consumption; and the vale of Gloucester, according to
William of Malmesbury, produced, in the twelfth century, as good a wine
as many of the provinces of France; this county, in fact, produced the
best wine:--
“There is no province in England hath so many or such good vineyards
as this county, [Gloucester,] either for fertility or sweetness of the
grape; the wine whereof carrieth no unpleasant tartness, being not
much inferior to French in sweetness.”[350]
From the household expenses of Richard de Swinfield, Bishop of Hereford,
(1289-1290,) it appears that the white wine was at that period chiefly
home-grown, whilst the greater proportion of red wine was imported from
abroad. Even as late as the last century wine was made in England:
Faulkner[351] quotes the following memorandum from the MS. notes of
Peter Collinson:--
“October 18, 1765.--I went to see Mr Roger’s vineyards at Parson’s
Green [at Fulham] all of Burgundy grapes, and seemingly all perfectly
ripe; I did not see a green, half-ripe grape in all this quantity. He
does not expect to make less than fourteen hogsheads of wine. The
branches and fruit are remarkably large, and the wine very strong.”
Grosley[352] mentions a vineyard at Cobham, belonging to a Mr Hamilton,
of about half an acre, planted with Burgundian vines; but the wine it
produced will cause nobody to regret that the culture has been
abandoned, for “it was a liquor of a darkish gray color; to the palate
it was like verjuice and vinegar blended together by a bad taste of the
soil.” This description, enough to set the teeth on edge, is most likely
true, and gives us the reason why English wine came to be abandoned.
As the vine was set up as a sign in honour of wine, so the HOP-POLE, or
the HOP AND BARLEYCORN, the BARLEY MOW, the BARLEY STACK, the MALT AND
HOPS, and the HOPBINE, are very general tributes of honour rendered to
beer. In many ale-houses a bunch of hops may be seen suspended in some
conspicuous place.
The PINE-APPLE, in the end of the last and the beginning of this
century, was generally the emblem adopted by confectioners, though not
exclusively, for it was the sign of an eating-house in New Street,
Strand, at which Dr Johnson, on his first coming to town, used to dine.
“I dined very well for eightpence, with very good company, at the
Pine-apple in New Street, just by.[353] Several of them had travelled;
they expected to meet every day, but did not know one another’s
names. It used to cost the rest a shilling, for they drank wine; but I
had a cut of meat for sixpence, and bread for a penny, and gave the
waiter a penny; so that I was quite well served, nay, better than the
rest, for they gave the waiter nothing.”
The pine-apple was first known at the discovery of America, and was
preserved in sugar as early as 1556. The first pine-apple was brought
from Santa Cruz to the West Indies, thence to the East Indies and China.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, writing in October 1716, informs her sister
that she had been at a supper of the King of Hanover, “where there
were,” says she, “what I thought worth all the rest, two ripe ananas,
which, to my taste, are a fruit perfectly delicious. You know they are
naturally the growth of Brazil, and I could not imagine how they came
there, but by enchantment.” Upon inquiry she learned that they had been
forced in stoves or hot-houses, and is “surprised we do not practise in
England so useful an invention.” It was not till the end of the last
century that they were introduced into English gardens, having been
brought over from hot-houses in Holland; and from that time seems to
date their introduction on the signboard. It is still in general use
with public-houses.
Of the FIG TREE there are several examples among the London trades
tokens, some of them, no doubt, grocers’ signs, but other trades may
have adopted it, either in allusion to the text of every man “sitting
under his own fig-tree,” or because the fig-tree was a symbol of quiet
unassuming industry; as such, at least, Camerarius represents it:--
“Verno tempore ficus arbor speciosis floribus aut fructuum præcocium
abundantia minime sese ostentat, nullamque inanem hominibus de se spem
injicit: in autumno autem fructus suaviss. ac quidem in illis
reconditos quasi flores quosdam proferre solet.”[354]
The ALMOND TREE was the sign of John Webster in St Paul’s Churchyard, in
1663; and the PEACH TREE occurs sometimes as an ale-house sign, as, for
instance, in Nottingham. Neither of these signs, however, are of
frequent occurrence.
Not only fruit-trees but various forest-trees are constantly met with on
the signboard: thus the GREEN TREE, which is very common, originally had
allusion to the foresters of the “merry greenwood,” or was suggested by
some large evergreen, or tree sheltering, or standing near the inn; of
this green tree the GREEN SEEDLING in Chester is evidently a sprout.
Again, in Sheffield there are two signs of the BURNT TREE, which name
possibly originated from some tree having been damaged in a fire, and
becoming a well-known landmark. The OAK, the vigorous emblem of our
mighty state, is deservedly much used for a sign; sometimes it is called
the BRITISH OAK. At Kilpeck, in Herefordshire, the following rhyme
accompanies it:--
“I am an oak and not a yew,
So drink a cup with good John Pugh.”
Druidical recollections are called up by the OAK AND IVY, at Bilston,
Stafford; HEARTS OF OAK is the material out of which, according to the
song, our ships and seamen are constructed, and therefore well deserves
the favourite place it occupies amongst the signboards of the present
day; whilst the ACORN, the fruit of the British oak, is nearly as common
as the other oak signs.
Next to the oak the ELM seems to have had most followers. From the
trades tokens it appears that the THREE ELMS was the sign of Edward
Boswell in Chandos Street, in 1667; and also of Isaac Elliotson, St John
Street, Clerkenwell. Besides these there was, about the same date, the
ONE ELM, and the ELM. At present we have the NINE ELMS, and the QUEEN’S
ELM, Brompton, which is mentioned under the name of the QUEEN’S TREE, in
the parish books of 1586. This tree is said to derive its name from the
fact of Queen Elizabeth, when on a visit to Lord Burleigh, being caught
in a shower of rain, and taking shelter under the branches of an
elm-tree, then growing on this spot. The SEVEN SISTERS, the sign of two
public-houses in Tottenham, were seven elm-trees, planted in a circular
form, with a walnut tree in the middle; they were upwards of 500 years
old, and the local tradition said that a martyr had been burnt on that
spot. They stood formerly at the entrance from the high road at Page
Green, Tottenham. Within the last twenty years they have been removed.
The CHESTNUT, the SYCAMORE, the BEECH TREE, the FIR TREE, the BIRCH
TREE, and the ASH TREE, all occur in various places where ale-houses are
built in the shadow of such trees. The THORN TREE is peculiar to
Derbyshire. The BUCKTHORN TREE was, in 1775, the sign of “William
Blackwell in Covent Garden, or at his garden in South Lambeth.” He had
chosen this sign because he sold, amongst other herbs, “_buckthorn_ and
elder-berries, besides leeches and _vipers_.” What the use of the first
was is well known; as for the vipers, they were eaten in broth and
soups, before Madame Rachel’s enamels were employed, by ladies who
wished to continue “young and beautiful for ever.” The CRAB TREE, our
indigenous apple-tree, is also seen in a great many places. A house in
Fulham, with that name, is well known to the oarsmen on the Thames. It
derives its denomination from a large crab-tree growing near the
public-house, which gave its name to the whole village. The WILLOW TREE
is very rare; in the seventeenth century it was the sign of a shop in
the Old Exchange, as appears from a trades token, but what business was
carried on under this gloomy sign does not appear. Fuller, in his
Worthies, (_voce_ Cambridgeshire,) says of willows:--
“A sad tree whereof such who have lost their love make them mourning
garlands; and we know that exiles hung their harps upon such doleful
supporters; the twiggs hereoff are physick to drive out the folly of
children. Let me add that if green ash may burn before a queen,
withered willows may be allowed to burn before a lady.”
As an attribute of forsaken love it is of constant occurrence in old
plays:--
“_Sylli._ If you forsake me,
Send me word, that I may provide a _willow garland_
To wear when I drown myself.”
MASSINGER’S _Maid of Honour_, a. iv. s. 5, 1631.
And in the same play Sylli, who thinks himself the preferred lover, says
to his rival:--
“You may cry willow, willow!”--_Ibid._, a. v. s. 1.
Shakespeare uses the same emblem frequently, particularly in Desdemona’s
famous willow song. There is a quaint ballad which an old Northumberland
woman used to sing, but which we have never seen in print: it begins as
follows:--
“Young men are false, and they are so deceitful:
Young men are false, and they seldom will prove true;
For wi’ wrangling and jangling, their minds are always changing,
They’re always seeking for some pretty girl that’s new.
It’s all round my hat, I will wear a green willow,
It’s all round my hat for a twelvemonth and a day;
If any one should ask you the reason why I wear it,
Oh! tell them I have been slighted by my own true love.”
Douce, in his “Illustrations to Shakespeare,” says:--This tree might
have been chosen as the symbol of sadness from the verse in Psalm
cxxxvii.: “We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof;”
or else from a coincidence between the weeping willow and falling tears.
Another reason has been assigned: the _Agnus castus_ or _vitex_ was
supposed by the ancients to promote chastity, “and the willow being of a
much like nature,” says an old writer, “it is yet a custom that he which
is deprived of his love must wear a willow garland.”--_Swan’s Speculum
Mundi_, ch. vi. sec. 4. 1635.
The frequency of the sign of the YEW TREE is not to be attributed to its
association with the churchyard, but to its being the wood from which
those famous bows were made that did such execution at Agincourt and
Poictiers, and wherever the English armies trod the field before the
invention of gunpowder. So great was the patronage our early kings
granted to the practice of the bow, that the patten-makers, by an Act of
Parliament of 4 Henry V., were forbidden, under a penalty of £5, to use
in their craft any kind of wood fit to make arrows of.
The COTTON TREE is a sign generally put up in the neighbourhood of
cotton factories, as at Manchester. The PALM TREE is one of the oldest
symbols known: it was used as such by the Assyrians, the Greeks, the
Romans, and by them transmitted to the early Christians. St Ambrosius,
in a very forcible image, compares the life of an early and faithful
Christian to the palm tree, rough and rugged below, like its stem, but
increasing in beauty upwards, where it bears heavenly fruit. It might
also illustrate a more homely truth, namely, that business cannot
flourish without patronage and custom; thus, Camerarius says:--
“Inter alias multas singulares proprietates quas scriptores rerum
naturalium Palmæ attribuunt, ista non postrema est, quod hæc arbor non
facile crescat, nisi radiis solaribus opt. foveatur nec non humore
aliquo conveniente irrigetur.”[355]
The COCOA TREE was frequently the sign of chocolate-houses when that
beverage was newly imported and very fashionable. One of the most famous
was in St James’ Street; it was, in the reign of Queen Anne, strictly a
Tory house:--“A Whig will no more go to the Cocoa Tree, or Ozinda’s,
[another chocolate-house in the same neighbourhood,] than a Tory will be
seen at the coffee-house of St James’.”[356] Deep play was the order of
the day in that as in all other fashionable resorts at the end of the
last century. Walpole, in 1780, wrote to one of his friends:--
“Within this week there has been a cast at hazard at the Cocoa Tree,
the difference of which amounted to an hundred and four score thousand
pounds. Mr O’Birne, an Irish gamester, had won £100,000 off a young Mr
Harvey, of Chigwell, just started from a midshipman into an estate by
his elder brother’s death. O’Birne said, ‘You can never pay me?’ ‘I
can,’ said the youth, ‘my estate will sell for the debt.’ ‘No,’ said
O., ‘I will win ten thousand, you shall throw for the odd ninety.’
They did, and Harvey won.”[357]
It afterwards became a club, of which Byron was a member. This gambling
seems to have been inseparable from the chocolate-houses. Roger North,
attorney-general to James II., says,--
“The use of coffee-houses seems newly improved by a new invention
called Chocolate-houses, for the benefit of rooks and cullies of all
the quality, where gaming is added to all the rest, and the summons of
wh---- seldom fails: as if the devil had erected a new university, and
those were the colleges of its professors, as well as his school of
discipline.”[358]
Chocolate was known in Germany as early as 1624, when Joan Franz. Rauch
wrote a treatise against that beverage and the monks. In England,
however, it seems to have been introduced much later, for in 1657 it was
advertised as a new drink:--
“IN BISHOPSGATE STREET, in Queen’s Head Alley, at a Frenchman’s house,
is an excellent West India drink called Chocolate to be sold, where
you may have it ready at any time, and also unmade, at reasonable
rates.”[359]
It is amusing to observe the fluctuating reputation of chocolate on its
first introduction. M^{me}. de Sévigné, in her letters, gives many
proofs of it; at one time she fervently recommends it to her daughter as
a perfect panacea, at other times she is as violently against it, and
puts it down as the root of all evil.
THE COFFEE HOUSE is the now inappropriate sign of a gin-palace in
Chalton Street, Somers Town. Early in the last century this
neighbourhood was a delightful rural suburb, with fields and flower
gardens. A short distance down the hill was the then famous Bagnigge
Wells, and close by were the remains of Totten-Hall, with the Adam and
Eve tea-gardens, and the so-called King John’s Palace. Many foreign
Protestant refugees had taken up their residence in this suburb, on
account of the retirement it afforded, and the low rates asked for the
small houses. “THE COFFEE HOUSE” was then the popular tea and
coffee-gardens of the district, and was visited by the foreigners of the
neighbourhood, as well as the pleasure-seeking Cockney from the distant
city. There were other public-houses and places of entertainment near at
hand, but the specialty of this establishment was its coffee. As the
traffic increased, it became a posting-house, uniting the business of an
inn to the profits of a pleasure garden. Gradually the demand for coffee
fell off, and that for malt and spirituous liquors increased. At present
the gardens are all built over, and the old gateway forms part of the
modern bar; but there are aged persons in the neighbourhood who remember
Sunday-school excursions to the place, and pic-nic parties from the
crowded city, making merry here in the grounds.
The HOLLY BUSH is a common public-house sign at the present day. Among
the London trades tokens there is one of the HAND AND HOLLY BUSH at
Templebar, evidently the same inn mentioned in 1708 by Hatton, “on the
north side, and about the middle of the backside of St Clements, near
the church.”[360] This combination with the hand does not seem to have
any very distinct meaning, and apparently arose simply from the manner
of representing objects in those days, as being held by a hand issuing
from a cloud. Adorning houses and churches at Christmas with evergreens
and holly is a very ancient custom, supposed, like some others of our
old customs, to be derived from the Druids. Formerly the streets also
appear to have been decked out, for Stow tells us that
“Against the feast of Christmas every man’s house, as also the parish
churches, were decked with holme, ivy, and bayes, and whatsoever the
season of the year afforded to be given. The conduits and standards in
the streets were likewise garnished.”
Thus flowers, fruit trees, and forest trees were represented on the
signboard, and with them even the homely but useful tenants of the
kitchen garden found a place. The ARTICHOKE, above all, used to be a
great favourite, and still gives a name to some public-houses. As a
seedsman’s sign it was common and rational; not so for a milliner, yet
both among the Bagford and Banks’s shopbills there are several instances
of its being the sign of that business; thus:--
“Susannah Fordham, att the HARTICHOAKE, in ye Royal Exchange,” in the
reign of Queen Anne, sold “all sorts of fine poynts, laces, and
linnens, and all sorts of gloves and ribons, and all other sorts of
millenary wares.”[361]
Probably the novelty of the plant had more than anything else to do with
this selection; for though it was introduced in this country in the
reign of King Henry VIII., yet Evelyn observes:--
“‘Tis not very long since this noble thistle came first into Italy,
improved to this magnitude by culture, and so rare in England that
they were commonly sold for a crowne a piece.”[362]
The CABBAGE is an ale-house sign at Hunslet, Leeds, and at Liverpool,
and CABBAGE HALL, opposite Chaney Lane, on the road to the Lunatic
Asylum, Oxford, was formerly the name of a public-house kept by a
tailor; but whether he himself had christened it thus, or his customers
had a sly suspicion that it owed its origin to _cabbaging_, history has
omitted to record. Another public-house, higher up the hill, was known
by the name of CATERPILLAR HALL, a name clearly selected in compliment
to Cabbage Hall, intimating that it meant to draw away the customers
from Cabbage Hall, in other words, that the caterpillar would eat the
cabbage. The OXNOBLE, a kind of potato, is the name of a public-house in
Manchester, and the homely mess of PEASE AND BEANS was a sign in Norwich
in 1750.[363] The THREE RADISHES was, in the seventeenth century, a
common nursery and market gardener’s sign in Holland. There was one near
Haarlem, to which was added a representation of Christ appearing to Mary
Magdalene in the garden, with this rhyme--
“Christus vertoont men hier
Na zyn dood in verryzen,
Als een groot hovenier
Die ieder een moet pryzen.
Dit ’s in de drie Radyzen.”[364]
Another, near Gouda, had a still more absurd inscription:--
“Adam en Eva leefden in den Paradyze
Zelden aten zy stokvisch maar veel warmoes, kropsla en radyzen.
Hier vindt gy allerley aardgewas om menschen mêe te spyzen.”[365]
The WHEATSHEAF is an extremely common inn, public-house, and baker’s
sign; it is a charge in the arms of these three corporations, besides
that of the brewers. In the middle of Farringdon Street, opposite the
vegetable market, is Wheatsheaf Yard, once a famous waggon inn, which
also did a roaring trade in wine, spirits, and Fleet Street marriages.
Indeed, most of the large inns within the liberties of the Fleet served
as “marriage shops” between 1734 and 1749; amongst the most famous were
the BULL AND GARTER, the HOOP AND BUNCH OF GRAPES, the BISHOP BLAIZE AND
TWO SAWYERS, the FIGHTING COCKS, and numerous others. The gateway
entrance to the old coach-yard is adorned with very fine carvings of
wheat ears and lions’ heads intermixed, finished in a manner not
unworthy of Grinling Gibbons himself.
The OATSHEAF is very rare; it was the sign of a shop in Cree Church
Lane, Leadenhall Street, in the seventeenth century, as appears from a
trades token; but this seems the only instance of the sign.
With these plants we may also class Tobacco, that best abused of all
weeds. Sometimes we see a pictorial representation of the TOBACCO PLANT,
but most usually it occurs in the form of TOBACCO ROLLS, representing
coils of the so-called spun or twist tobacco, otherwise pigtail, for the
sake of ornament, painted brown and gold alternately. Decker, in his
“Gull’s Hornbook,” mentions _Roll Trinidado_, leaf, and pudding tobacco,
which probably were the three sorts smokers at that day preferred. That
it was used mixed may be conjectured from the introduction to “Cinthia’s
Revels,” a play by Ben Jonson; one of the interlocutors says,--“I have
my three sorts of tobacco in my pocket.”
[326] “The Country Carbonadoed,” by D. Lupton, 1632. _Voce_ “Alehouse.”
[327]
“The tavern opened
With signboard and bush;
The landlady’s hair neatly dressed.
Tied up in a knot.”
[328] Be thou, rose, queen of flowers, the cure of my diseases.
[329]
Through thee, rose, sins are taken away,
Through thee, gladness is given to the sorrowing.
[330] Blount’s “Fragmenta Antiquitatis, or Ancient Tenures,” p. 248.
[331] See Boynes’ Tokens issued in the seventeenth century in England,
Wales, and Ireland.
[332] Like the rose in spring, hidden in its bud, so must the mouth be
closed and restrained with strong reins, enforcing silence to the
loquacious lips.
[333]
All that is done here, under the Rose,
Leave it here and do not divulge it.
[334] Memoirs by Samuel Sainthill, 1659, _Gent. Mag._, lxxxiii. p. 520.
[335] _London Gazette_, Nov. 6, 1673.
[336] _Ibid._, Oct. 20, 1673.
[337] See the “Little London Directory, 1677,” recently reprinted.
[338] _Domestic Intelligencer_, Sept. 9, 1679.
[339] Banks’s Bills in the British Museum.
[340] _Hereford Journal_, January 7, 1775.
[341] Stow’s Survey, p. 340.
[342] _Daily Courant_, July 1, 1718.
[343] Banks’s Bills.
[344] Harl. MSS., 279, p. 47, a cookery book of that period.
[345] Lansdowne MS., No. 1, fol. 49. Three weeks’ diet of the Lords of
the Star Chamber. These lords appear to have lived very well, as we may
learn from some of the items of one day’s dinner:--ffirst for bread,
xijd.; ale, iijs. iiijd.; and wine, xvjd. Item to
viijd. vjd. vd. ijd.
loyne of moton; maribones and beef; powdered beef; ij capons;
xiiijd. xd. iiijd. xviijd. vd.
ij geese; v conyes; j leg moton; vj places; vj pegions;
xijd. vjd. xd.
ij doz. larkes; salt and sause; butter and eggs, &c., &c., &c.
[346] Machyn’s Diary.
[347] Archæologia, vol. xii.
[348] Prefixed to Collectanea, 1770, p. lxxv.; there is also a paper on
Vines in England in Archæologia, i. p. 321; and Roach Smith’s
Collectanea Antiqua, vol. vi., p. 78, _et seq._ may be consulted with
advantage upon this subject.
[349] Curiously enough, until about 1820, a public-house, the sign of
the Vine, in Dobie Street, St Giles, occupied the very site assigned to
this vineyard in Domesday Book, A.D. 1070.
[350] Hollinshed’s Description of Britain, p. 3.
[351] Faulkner, Antiquities of Kensington.
[352] Grosley, vol. i., p. 83.
[353] He lived then in Exeter Street, at a stay-maker’s. Boswell’s
Johnson: London, 1819, p. 67.
[354] “In spring-time the fig-tree does not make any show of beautiful
flowers or precocious fruit to deceive mankind with idle hope; but in
autumn it generally produces exceedingly sweet fruit, with flowers as it
were contained within them.”--_Joachimus Camerarius_, “_Symbolorum
Centuriæ Quatuor_,” 1697, Centur. i., p. 18.
[355] “Among the many curious properties which the writers on natural
history attribute to the palm tree, it is not one of the least singular
that this tree cannot well thrive unless it be properly basked by the
beams of the sun, and watered by some neighbouring stream.”--_J.
Camerarius_, “_Centuria_,” i., 1697.
[356] Defoe’s Journey through England, p. 168.
[357] Horace Walpole’s Letters to Mr Mann, February 6, 1780.
[358] As quoted in Disraeli’s Curiosities of Literature, ii. p. 326.
[359] _Publick Advertiser_, Tuesday, June 16-22, 1657.
[360] Hatton’s New View of London, 1708, p. 36.
[361] Bagford Bills.
[362] Evelyn’s Miscellaneous Writings, p. 735.
[363] _Gent. Mag._, March 1842.
[364]
“Christ is represented here
After his death and resurrection,
As a great gardener
Whom every body must praise.
This is at the Three Radishes.”
[365]
“Adam and Eve lived in Paradise,
They rarely ate stock fish, but a great deal of hotchpotch, lettuce,
and radishes.
All sorts of vegetables sold here for human food.”
A similarly dull joke occurs in an old English comedy, “Law Tricks,” by
John Day, 1608. “I have heard old Adam was an honest man and a good
gardener, loved lettuce well, salads and cabbage reasonably well, yet no
tobacco.”