wanting: Partridge, the classical scholar, in Fielding’s “Tom Jones;”
Vossius’ barber, who used to comb his hair in iambics;[502] and
Smollett’s Hugh Strap, are excellent specimens. This last one was
sketched from life; his real name was Hugh Hughson; he died in the
parish of St Martin’s-in-the-Field, at the advanced age of eighty-five,
having kept a barber-shop in that locality upwards of forty years. His
shop was hung round with Latin quotations, and he would frequently
point out to his customers the several scenes in “Roderick Random”
pertaining to himself, which had their foundation, not in the Doctor’s
inventive fancy, but in truth and reality. The meeting at the
barber-shop in Newcastle, the subsequent mistake at the inn, their
arrival together in London, and the assistance they experienced from
Strap’s friends, were all facts. He is said to have left behind him an
interleaved copy of “Roderick Random,” showing how far we are indebted
to the creative fancy of Doctor Smollett, and to what extent the
incidents recorded were founded upon fact.
Not many years ago there was a hairdresser in the Rue Racine, who,
probably on account of his proximity to the universities of the Collège
de France and the Sorbonne, had this inscription on his window: “κειρω
τακιστα και σιναω,” “I shear quickly and am silent.” This classical
hairdresser was evidently acquainted with the answers given by
Anaxagoras to a barber who asked him, “How do you wish to have your
beard shaved?” and who received the laconic answer, “without talking.”
The shutters and windows of our Parisian worthy were covered with
inscriptions in foreign languages, the number of which was only
surpassed by the Bible shop in Brompton, during the time of the
International Exhibition in 1862.
An eccentric barber opened a shop under the walls of the King’s Bench
Prison; the windows being broken when he entered the house, he mended
them with paper, on which appeared, “Shave for a penny,” with the usual
invitation to customers; whilst on his door was scrawled the following
rhymes:--
“Here lives Jemmie Wright,
Shaves almost as well as any man in England,
Almost--not quite.”
Foote, who delighted in anything eccentric, saw this inscription, and
hoping to extract some wit from the author, whom he justly concluded to
be an odd character, he pulled off his hat, and thrusting his head
through a paper pane into the shop, called out, “Is Jimmy Wright at
home?” The barber immediately forced his own head through another pane
into the street, and replied: “No, sir, he has just popt out.”
Numerous more or less witty barbers’ inscriptions are recorded; one of
the best is that attributed to Dean Swift, penned by him for a barber,
who at the same time kept a public-house:--
“Rove not from _pole_ to _pole_, but step in here,
Where nought excels the shaving but the beer.”
A variation often met is:--
“Rove not from pole to pole, but here turn in,
Where nought excels the shaving but the gin.”
Sir Walter Scott in his “Fortunes of Nigel,” vol ii., as a motto to
chap. iv., gives the following version:--
“Rove not from pole to pole--the man lives here,
Whose razor’s only equall’d by his beer;
And where, in either sense, the Cockney-put,
May, if he pleases, get confounded cut.”
The amalgamation of the two trades has led to some other rhymes and
jokes. A barber-publican in Dudley has the following _barbar_ous joke:--
“What do you think
I’ll shave you for nothing and give you some drink?”
The point of this joke lies in the punctuation, which the illiterate
_shavers_ coming to the shop are sure to treat with supreme contempt;
but a barber in Ratcliffe Highway, _circa_ 1825, had the following _bona
fide_ invitation:--
“Hair cut with despatch,
Shave well in a minute,
And a glass in the bar--gain
With a thimbleful in it.”[503]
Another common inscription is the following:--“I tell U there is no
shaving to X L----’s” (name of the barber.) The Parisian barbers are
much on a par with their English colleagues in brilliancy of wit and
inventive power: “Ici on rajeunit,”[504] used to be a frequent
inscription with them; others have:--
“La nature donne barbe et cheveux,
Et moi je les coupe tous les deux.”
or--
“A toutes les figures dédiant mes rasoirs,
Je nargue la critique des fidèles mirroirs.”[505]
Tools belonging to various handicrafts are common public-house signs at
the present day. The AXE is a very old sign; it was a well-known
carriers’ inn in Aldermanbury in the seventeenth century, and was one of
the places visited in 1634 by that thirsty tourist, Drunken Barnaby.
From this inn, the first regular line of stage waggons from London to
Liverpool was established towards the middle of the seventeenth century.
There were constantly some of them on the road, for they left every
Monday and Thursday, and it took them ten days in summer, and as many as
twelve in winter to perform the journey.
In 1642 there appeared “A Petition from the Towne and County of
Leicester unto the King’s most excellent Majestie,” which was “printed
for William Gay, and to be sold at his shop in Hosier Lane, at the
_signe of the Axe_, July 29, 1642.” When we consider that “the King’s
most excellent Majestie,” was Charles I., we may come to the conclusion
that there is something in a sign, as well as in a name; it was
certainly an ominous and _bad sign_ for the king. The _Cross Axes_ is a
sign at Preston, Bolton, &c. The axe is also found combined with various
other carpenter’s tools, as the AXE AND SAW, Carlton, Newmarket; AXE AND
COMPASSES in many places; AXE AND CLEAVER, in Boston, Yorkshire. Another
sign, complimentary to the same class of workmen, was the TWO SAWYERS,
which, at the end of the last century, was to be seen near the garden
wall of the archiepiscopal palace at Lambeth; not unlikely, this was the
same house, of which trades tokens are extant from the time of Charles
II., when it was kept by John Raines, and its locality is described as
the “New Plantation, Narrow Wall, Lambeth.”
Signs referring to iron in its various states are very common on
public-houses, as the smith is generally a good customer to them. Iron
seems to have a dyspeptic effect even in the bowels of the earth, if we
may judge from the quantity of MINERS’ ARMS in Staffordshire,
Warwickshire, and the black country, in which latitudes teetotalism
evidently has made but little progress; the DAVY LAMP is another sign
intended to court the custom of miners, but being almost exclusively for
workmen in coal pits, it only occurs in Northumberland. The FORGE, or
the THREE FORGES, is common in the Midland iron districts. The
CINDER-OVEN occurs in Norwich. The ANVIL, the ANVIL AND BLACKSMITH, the
ANVIL AND HAMMER, the SMITH AND SMITHY, &c., are all common about
Sheffield. So are HAMMERS, combined with various instruments, as
PINCERS, VICE, STITHY, &c. The TWO SMITHS was a sign in the Minories in
1655; the trades tokens of the house represent two men working at the
anvil. HOBNAILS is a sign in Dudley, that town having been famous for
the manufacture of nails of every description, even as early as the time
of Henry VIII., for the nails used in building the hall at Hampton Court
came from there, and the original accounts preserved in the Public
Record Office state that there was “Payde to Raynalde _Warde_, of
_Dudley_, for 7350 of dubbyll tenpenny nayles inglys at 11s. the 1000.”
The BAG OF NAILS was once a very common sign; there is one still
remaining in Arabella Row, Pimlico. “About fifty years ago, the original
sign might have been seen at the front of the house, which was a satyr
of the woods, and a group of jolly dogs, ycleped Bacchanals. But the
satyr having been painted with cloven feet, and painted black, it was by
the common people called the DEVIL, while the Bacchanalians were
transmuted by a comical process into a Bag of Nails.”[506] This was,
however, only an old slang name for the house, for, in the trial of
Catlin, Patterson, and others, for conspiracy, one of the witnesses
describing the place where the conspirators used to meet, says: “He went
into a public-house, the sign of the DEVIL AND BAG OF NAILS, for so that
gentry called it amongst themselves, (though it was the BLACKMOOR’S HEAD
AND WOOLPACK,) by Buckingham Gate.”[507]
A _bona fide_ representation of a bag of nails was also used as a sign,
as may be seen on the trades token of Henry Hurdam in Tuttle (Tothill)
Street, Westminster, 1663, where the bag of nails is combined with a
hammer crowned. And as it would be difficult to guess what the bag
contained, and nobody cares to buy “a pig in a poke,” the nails were
sometimes represented protruding through it, as on the token of Samuel
Hincks of Whitechapel, 1669. A somewhat similar sign is expressed in
Rouen, Rue des Bons Enfans; it is carved in stone, and represents a bag,
with smith’s tools protruding out of it.
Bakers and millers also are represented by a variety of signs. Beginning
at the BUSHEL, a sign on the Bankside in the seventeenth century, and
the SHOVEL AND SIEVE, the sign of a brush and turnery warehouse among
the Bagford Bills, we next accompany the corn to the mill, where we
meet the DUSTY MILLER, a favourite sign in some parts of Yorkshire and
Lancashire. A reminiscence of childhood may have suggested the epithet
in this sign, for there is the well known nursery rhyme,
“Millery, Millery, Dusty poll,
How many sacks have you stole?”
The MILLSTONE may be seen at Stockport and Macclesfield.
The WINDMILL itself is a very old sign. It was a tavern in Lothbury, Old
Jewry, frequented by fast men in the reigns of Elizabeth, James, and
Charles I. Wellbred, in “Every Man in his Humour,” (a play by Ben
Jonson,) dates his letter to Edward Knowell from this house:--
“Why, Ned, I beseech thee, hast thou forsworn all thy friends in the
Old Jewry, or doest thou think us all Jews that inhabit there,” &c.
It is named amongst the list of inns “viewed” previous to the visit of
Charles V. in 1522.
“Hugh Clapton, Mercer, mayor, in 1492, dwelt in this house and kept
his Mayoralty there; it is now a tavern, and has to sign a Windmill.
And thus much for this house, sometime a Jew’s synagogue [in 1262,]
since a house of friars, [fratres de penitentia Jesu or de Sacca,
1275,] then a nobleman’s house, [Robert Fitz Walter, 1305,] after that
a merchant’s house, wherein Mayoralties have been kept, and now a wine
taverne.”--_Stow._
The PEEL, _i.e._, the wooden shovel with a long handle used by bakers to
place bread in the oven, was the sign of John Alder, in Leadenhall
Street, 1668. Next comes the basket or PANYER, to bring bread round,
which gave its name to “a passage out of Paternoster Row--called of such
a sign Panyer Alley.”[508] This is the highest spot in the City of
London, as we are informed from an inscription under a stone figure of a
boy sitting on a pannier, eating a very questionable bunch of grapes:
“When you have sought the City round,
Yet still this is the highest ground.
_Aug._ 26, 1688.”
The Pannier was not an uncommon trade emblem. The BAKER AND BASKET is
the sign of a public-house in Leman Street, and another in Worship
Street. The claims to superior usefulness of the BAKER AND BREWER are
held forth triumphantly to the advantage of the latter in some signs of
this name. One, in Wash Lane, Birmingham, gives a pictorial
representation of it; the baker’s hand is resting on what is usually
called the “Staff of Life,”--namely, a loaf of very respectable
dimensions; the brewer exhibits “with artful pride,” a foaming tankard,
when the following dialogue ensues:--
“The Baker says, I’ve the Staff of Life,
And you’re a silly elf;
The Brewer replied, with artful pride,
Why, _this is life itself_.”
The TWO BREWERS, or the TWO JOLLY BREWERS, used to be very common, but
is now gradually becoming obsolete. It represented two brewers’ men
carrying a barrel of beer slung between them on a pole; it was also
frequently called the TWO DRAYMEN. In the bar of the QUEEN’S HEAD
Tavern, Great Queen Street, is preserved a carved wooden sign, which
formerly hung before this house, representing two men standing near a
large tun. The DRAY AND HORSES, meaning of course the brewer’s dray, has
now in some instances superseded the Two Jolly Brewers. The STILL, the
chief implement in the manufacture of spirits, is very appropriate
before the houses where the produce of the still is sold: frequently it
is combined with other objects.
The BOY AND BARREL, to be seen in Dagger Lane, London, and in many
country places, is all that remains of the little Bacchus on a tun,
formerly in almost every ale-house:--
“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 BOY AND CUP at Norwich, in 1750, was a variation of this sign. Other
brewers and distillers’ measures also are exhibited, as the BARREL; the
PORTER BUTT, (three in Bath;) the BRANDY CASKS, (three in Bristol;) the
RUM PUNCHEON, at Boston, Lincoln, and such like. Promises of fair
dealing are held out in the sign of the FULL MEASURE, (four in Hull;)
the GOLDEN MEASURE, Lowgate, Hull; and the FOAMING TANKARD; or, an
appeal is made to public joviality by such a sign as the PARTING POT, at
Stamford, Lincoln.
Shoemakers generally follow the advice of the proverb, _ne sutor ultra
crepidam_, and confine themselves to the sign of the LAST, which, for
variety’s sake, they paint red, blue, gold, &c. But since “cobblers and
tinkers are the best ale drinkers,” many alehouses have adopted this
sign also. A Crispin who keeps an ale-house near Liscard, Chester, has
shown himself “true to the _last_,” by putting under his sign of a
Wooden Shoe or Last:--
“All day long I have sought good beer,
And, _at the last_, I have found it here.”
The SHEARS was originally a tailor’s sign, though like most other trade
emblems it had become common in the seventeenth century.
“Snip, snap, quoth the tailor’s shears;
Alas, poor Louse, beware thy ears.”
This elegant little verse is quoted by Randle Holme, and seems to have
been thought such a good joke, that a canny Scotchman, buried in Paisley
Abbey, had a pictorial representation of it on his headstone. Charles
Mackie, who wrote the history of that Abbey, says it is an obliterated
cross; more probably, however, it is a _fleur de luce_: this would also
agree with the Scottish pronunciation of the name of the insect, which
is exactly the same as the last part of that heraldic charge.
The HAND AND SHEARS, in Cloth Fair, Smithfield, played an important part
at the opening of Bartholomew Fair. It was customary to make the
proclamation for opening the fair late in the afternoon of August 23d,
but the showmen and traders opened their booths early in the morning:--
“Lawful objections being made to this, a riotous assembly met the
night before the day of the Mayor’s Proclamation at the public-house
within Cloth Fair, in which the Court of Piepoudre was held,[509] the
_Hand and Shears_--now transformed into a tall brick gin-palace--and
at midnight sallied forth, bearing along, in later years, the effigy
of a woman to represent Lady Holland, (who must have been instigator,
and it would seem, first leader of the mob,) and the mob--knocking at
doors, ringing bells, clamouring and rioting, some five thousand
strong, during three hours of the middle of the night--proclaimed for
itself, in its own way, that Bartholomew Fair was open. The first
irregular proclamation was for many years made by a company of
tailors, who met the night before the legal proclamation at the Hand
and Shears, elected a chairman, and as the clock struck twelve went
out into Cloth Fair, each with a _pair of shears in his hand_. The
chairman then proclaimed the Fair to the expectant mob, who all sped
on their errand of riot, to arouse with the news of it the sleepers in
the neighbourhood of Smithfield.”[510]
The THREE CROWNED NEEDLES looks also like a tailor’s sign, and from the
evidence of a trades token of 1669 we know that it was the sign of a
shop in Aldersgate. Hatton thinks that a similar sign may have given its
name to Threadneedle Street, (Three Needle Street.) Three Crowned
Needles was a charge in the needle-makers’ company’s arms. It is a
curious fact that all the needles used in England up to the time of
Queen Elizabeth were of foreign make; those sold in Cheapside in the
reign of Queen Mary were made by a Spanish negro, who carried the secret
of their manufacture with him to the grave. In 1566 they were
manufactured under the direction of a German, Elias Grause, and after
that time only it seems that we had learned how to make them.
Among agricultural signs, the PLOUGH leads the van, sometimes
accompanied by the legend “Speed the Plough.” Of two inscriptions on the
sign of the Plough that have come under our observation, both contain
sound advice. That of the Plough at Filey might well be remembered by
“afternoon” farmers: it says:--
“He who by the Plough would thrive,
Himself must either hold or drive;”
whilst on the Plough Inn, Alnwick, the following is cut in stone:--
“That which your father old
Hath purchased and left you to possess,
Do you dearly hold
To shew your worthiness. 1717.”
In the inventory of church goods made at Holbeach, in Lincoln, at the
time of the Reformation:--
Wm. Davy bought the sygne whereon the plowghe did stond for xvj^{d}.
This probably refers to the signs or badges exhibited by the religious
guilds in the middle ages over the altars and as decorations in their
churches, which were in some measure of the nature of other signs, in
pointing out certain fraternities or trades, besides possessing a
secondary and religious meaning.
The PLOUGH AND HORSES is a sign at Branston, Lincoln. The PLOUGH AND
HARROW is very common. Two doors west from the Harrow Inn lived Isaac
Walton, about 1624, carrying on the business of “milliner and sempster,”
or what we should now call a linen-draper. He afterwards resided at a
house in Chancery Lane, until he left London, for fear of having his
morals corrupted--as he himself asserted. Goldsmith’s tailor, who lived
at the sign of the Harrow, has gained immortality by the bad taste of
poor Goldy. On one occasion--
“Goldsmith strutted about, bragging of his dress, and, I believe, was
seriously vain of it, for his mind was wonderfully prone to such
impressions. ‘Come, come,’ said Garrick, ‘talk no more of that, you
are perhaps the worst--eh, eh.’ Goldsmith was eagerly attempting to
interrupt him, when Garrick went on, laughing ironically, ‘Nay, you
will always _look_ like a gentleman, but I am talking of being _well_
or _ill drest_.’ ‘Well, let me tell you,’ said Goldsmith, ‘when my
tailor brought home my bloom-coloured coat, he said, “Sir, I have a
favour to beg of you. When anybody asks you who made your clothes, be
pleased to mention, _John Filby, at the Harrow in Water Lane_.”’
JOHNSON. ‘Why, sir, that was because he knew the strange colour would
attract crowds to gaze at it, and then they might hear of him, and see
how well he could make a coat even of so absurd a colour.’”[511]
Near Bagshot there is a public-house called the JOLLY FARMER, a
corruption of the GOLDEN FARMER, a nickname obtained by one of the
former possessors on account of his wealth, and his custom of paying his
rent always in guineas, which--so says the legend--he obtained as a
footpad on Bagshot Heath. That some such thing happened is evident from
the _Weekly Journal_, March 29, 1718, where allusion is made to “Bagshot
Heath, near the Gibbet where the _Golden Farmer_ hanged in chains.” The
use of this word _Jolly_, on the signboard, formerly so common in our
“Merry England,” is now gradually dying away. Whatever be the opinion of
our workmen upon the subject of national good humour, they no longer
desire to be advertised as _Jolly_; it is vulgar, and they prefer _Arms_
like their betters--hence those heraldic anomalies of the GRAZIERS’
ARMS, the FARMERS’ ARMS, the CHAFF-CUTTERS’ ARMS, the PUDDLERS’ ARMS,
the PAVIORS’ ARMS, and so forth.
The SHEPHERD AND SHEPHERDESS is one of those signs reminding us of--
“The tea-cup days of hoop and hood
And when the patch was worn.”
calling up pictures of rouged shepherdesses with jaunty straw hats on
the top of powdered hair a foot high, short quilted petticoats and
high-heeled boots, courted in madrigals by shepherds dressed in the
height of the elegance of the New Exchange gallants, with ribboned
crooks and flowered-satin waistcoats. It was the sign of a pleasure
resort in the City Road, Islington, much frequented in the eighteenth
century for amusement, and by invalids for the pure, healthy, country
air of Islington, which was then a charming village, more rural in the
midst of its meadows and rivulets than Richmond is now. Cakes, cream,
and furmity were its great attractions:--
“To the _Shepherd and Shepherdess_ then they go
To tea with their wives for a constant rule,
And next cross the road to the _Fountain_ also,
And there they sit so pleasant and cool,
And see in and out
The folks walk about,
And gentlemen angling in Peerless Pool.”[512]
[Illustration: PLATE XIV.
BRAZEN SERPENT.
(Reynold Wolfe, circa 1550.)
GREEN MAN.
(Banks’s Collection, 1760.)
SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY.
(Banks’s Collection, 1780.)
ASS PLAYING ON THE HARP.
(Chartres Cathedral, circa 1420.)]
More business-like is the sign of the SHEPHERD AND DOG; he, too, wears
_patches_, but not on his face; so with the SHEPHERD AND CROOK, and the
CROOK AND SHEARS. All these may be found in most villages, and refer to
the inferior farm-labourer, to whom the care of the flock is intrusted,
and not the elegant Corydon or Alexis.
The merry, thirsty time of haymaking is commemorated in the usual signs
of a LOAD OF HAY and the CROSS SCYTHES. There is a LOAD OF HAY tavern on
Haverstock Hill, a favourite place for Sunday afternoon excursionists in
the summer time. Many years ago the eccentricity of Davies the landlord
was one of the attractions of the place. Lately the house has been
re-built, and it is now only a suburban gin-palace. The MATTOCK AND
SPADE, and the SPADE AND BECKET, refer to field labour; the first is
very general, the second less so; but an example occurs at Chatteris,
Cambridgeshire. The PEAT SPADE, Longstock, Hants, tells its own tale.
The DAIRY MAID was in great favour with the London cheesemongers of the
seventeenth century. Akerman gives a trades token of such a sign in
Catherine Street, in 1653, which is an amusing specimen of the liberties
the token engravers took with the king’s English, the country Phillis
being transformed into a “_Deary Made_.” The Dutch in the seventeenth
century used the sign for a rather heterogenous trade: it seems that the
process of sucking or inhaling the tobacco smoke carried back their
ideas to tender years of innocence and milk diet, and so the Dairy Maid
became the sign, _par excellence_, of tobacco shops. Even at the present
day that idea is not quite forgotten; tobacco boxes or other smoking
implements are sometimes seen amongst that nation, with the words,
“Troost voor Zuigelingen,” “consolation for sucklings.” The inscriptions
under these signs were occasionally very curious:--
“Toebak dat edel kruyt soveel daarvan getuygen
Al die lang zyn gespeent beginnen weer te zuygen.”[513]
On the GOUDSCHE MELKMEID in Amsterdam:--
“Goede Waar en goed bescheid
Krygt gy hier in de GOUDSCHE MELKMEID
Puyk van Verinas en Virginia Tabac
Kunt gy hier rooken op uw gemak.”[514]
Another had:--
“Leckere Neusen, eele baasen,
Die by ’t klinken van de glaasen
Tot het smooken zyt bereyt;
Zoek je ’t beste van den acker
Puyk verynis? komt dan wacker
By de walsse mellik-meid.”[515]
HARVEST-HOME, the pleasant time of congratulation and feasting, must be
an alluring sign for the villagers, calling up recollections of all the
festivities yearly celebrated on that grand occasion, when--
“the harvest treasures all
Are gather’d in beyond the rage of storms,
Sure to the swain.”--_Thomson._
One of the misfortunes of the “nimium fortunati sua si bona norint” is
pictured in the CART OVERTHROWN, which is a public-house sign at Lower
Edmonton; though how it came to be such is difficult to guess. On
Highgate Hill there is an old roadside inn, the Fox and Crown, which
displays on its front a fine gilt coat of arms with the following
inscription underneath:--
+--------------------------------- +
| 6TH JULY 1837. |
| |
| THIS COAT OF ARMS IS A GRANT |
| FROM QUEEN VICTORIA, FOR SER-|
| VICES RENDERED TO HER MAJESTY |
| WHEN IN DANGER TRAVELLING |
| DOWN THIS HILL. |
+--------------------------------- +
The carriage conveying Her Majesty was proceeding down the hill without
a skid on the wheel, when something started the horses, and the
occurrence above narrated took place. The late landlord died in
distressed circumstances, and he stoutly asserted to the last, that
although he made repeated applications to the Government for recompense,
he having imperilled his own life to save that of Her Majesty, all he
ever received for his pains was permission to display the royal arms on
his house front.
The WOODMAN is another very common sign, invariably representing the
same woodman copied from Barker’s picture, and evidently suggested by
Cowper’s charming description of a winter’s morning in the “Task.” The
DROVER’S CALL is still seen on many roadsides, though the profession
that gave rise to it is well-nigh extinct; the herds of steaming,
fierce-looking oxen, formerly driven from all parts of the kingdom,
along the main roads leading to London, there to be devoured, being now
nearly all sent here by rail. A yet older practice produced the sign of
the STRING OF HORSES, which may still be seen on many a highroad in the
North, and dates from times before mail coaches and stage waggons
existed, when all the goods-traffic inland had to be performed by
strings of packhorses, who carried large baskets, hampers, and bales
slung across their backs, and _slowly_, though far from _surely_, wound
their way over miles and miles of uninhabited tracts, moors, and fens,
which lay between the small towns and straggling villages.
Many signs still recall those bygone days: the OLD COACH AND SIX may yet
be seen in some places. There is one, for instance, in Westminster, but
it is no longer a “sign of the times,” for alas!--
“No more the coaches shall I see
Come trundling from the yard,
Nor hear the horn blown cheerily
By brandy-bibbing guard.”
The names of the coaches were often adopted by inns on the road; for
instance, the MAIL, the TELEGRAPH, the DEFIANCE, the BALLOON, the
TALLY-HO, the BANG-UP, the EXPRESS, &c., &c.; but alas! the modern
railroad has swept away the signs as well as the coaches.
In London, there are not less than fifty-two public-houses known as the
COACH AND HORSES, exclusive of beer-houses, coffee-houses, and similar
establishments. Stow says, in his “Summary of English Chronicles,” that
in 1555, Walter Ripon made a coach for the Earl of Rutland, “which was
the first that was ever used in England.” But in his larger Chronicle he
says:--
“In the year 1564 Guilliam Boonen, a Dutchman, became the queen’s
coachman, and was the first that brought the use of coaches into
England. After a while divers great ladies, with as great jalousy of
the queen’s displeasure, made them coaches, and rid up and down the
country in them, to the great admiration of all the beholders, but
then by little they grew usual among the nobility and others of sort,
and within twenty years became a great trade of coachmaking.”
Taylor the Water poet, who, as a waterman of course, bore a grudge to
coaches, said, “It is a doubtful question whether the devil brought
_tobacco_ into England in a _coach_, for both appeared at the same
time.” How common they became in a short time appears from all the
satirists of that period; not only the nobility, but even the citizens
could no longer do without them, after they were once introduced. Not
forty years after their first appearance Pierce Pennyless, speaking of
merchants’ wives, says: “She will not go unto the field to coure on the
green grasse, but she must have a coach for her convoy.”[516] No wonder,
then, that, according to the “Coach and Sedan,” a pamphlet of 1636,
there were then in London, the suburbs, and four miles’ compass without,
coaches to the number of 6000 and odd. These were nearly all private
carriages, for the hackney coaches were only established in 1625 by one
Captain Bailey. Their first stand was at the Maypole in the Strand. They
numbered about twenty, and were attached to the principal inns. In 1636,
the number of hackney coaches was confined to 50; in 1652, to 200; in
1654, to 300; in 1662, to 400; in 1694, to 700; in 1710, to 800; in
1771, to 1000; in 1802, to 1100; but in 1833 all limitation of number
ceased. Besides cabs of various kinds, there are now above a thousand
omnibusses regularly employed in the Metropolis, and the commissioners
of stamps are authorised to license all such carriages _without
limitation as to number_; the proprietor paying the duty of £5 for the
licence, and 10s. per week during its continuance. What a difference
just two centuries ago, when by proclamation of the “Merry Monarch:”--
“The excessive number of hackney coaches [about 400] and coach horses
in London, are found to be a common nuisance to the public damage of
our people, by reason of their rude and disorderly standing, and
passing to and fro, in and about our cities and suburbs; the streets
and highways being thereof pestered and much impassable, the pavement
broken up, and the common passages obstructed and made dangerous.”
Hence orders are given, that “henceforth none shall stand in the
street, but only within their coach-houses, stables, and yards.”
At the Coach and Horses, Bartholomew Close, some vestiges of the ancient
buildings of St Bartholomew’s Hospital and Convent still remain--viz., a
clustered column in the beer cellar, walls of immense thickness, and an
early English window in the taproom, &c. This building occupies the site
of the north cloister.[517] Another Coach and Horses, in Ray Street,
Clerkenwell, is also built on classic ground, for it occupies the site
of the once famous Hockley-in-the-Hole of bear-baiting memory. A comical
alehouse keeper in Oswestry has travestied the sign of the Coach and
Horses into the COACH AND DOGS.
The WHEEL, an object sometimes seen on signboards, may have been derived
from the CATHERINE WHEEL, (the name of a favourite old coaching inn in
Bishopsgate Street,) or from the wheel of fortune; the SADDLE and the
SPUR are both very general on roadside inns, owing to the ancient mode
of travelling on horseback; the WHIP occurs in Briggate, Leeds.
In Norwich there was (and we believe is still) a curious combination,
the WHIP AND EGG, which existed in that locality as early as the year
1750,[518] and which is enumerated in London, under the name of the WHIP
AND EGGSHELL, amongst the taverns in the black letter ballad of
“London’s Ordinarie, or Everie Man in his Humour,” whilst a still
earlier mention occurs in Mother Bunch’s Merriment, (1604,) when the
transformation of pigs into fowls, whereby one of the gulls was so
“sweetly deceyved,” is laid at the Whip and Eggshell. It has been
explained as a corruption of the Whip and Nag, but the combination of
these two would be so obvious that a corruption would scarcely be
possible. In “Great Britain’s Wonder, or London’s Admiration,” a ballad
on the frost of 1685, when the Thames was frozen over, and a fair held
upon it, the following lines occur:--
“In this same street, before the Temple made,[519]
There seems to be a brisk and lively trade,
When ev’ry booth hath such a cunning sign
As seldom hath been seen in former time;
The FLYING P---- POT is one of the same,
The WHIP AND EGGSHELL, and the BROOM by name.”
The Whip and Egg, therefore, figured on the ice, and may have been
brought together from the _whipping_ of _eggs_, in making egg-punch,
egg-flip, and similar beverages, much drunk on the ice in Holland; and
as there were always crowds of Dutchmen on the ice, whenever the river
was frozen over, they may have introduced their favourite drink as well
as their Dutch whirlings, whimsies, and flying boats, and the sign have
been invented in order to indicate the sale of those liquors.
The THREE JOLLY BUTCHERS used to be seen in the neighbourhood of markets
and shambles, either in allusion to the three merry north-country
butchers, who killed nine highwaymen, according to the ballad, or simply
that favourite combination of three which is of such frequent
recurrence. The CLEAVER seems also to be in compliment to this
profession, as well as the MARROWBONES AND CLEAVER. This last is a sign
in Fetter Lane, originating from a custom, now rapidly dying away, of
the butcher boys serenading newly married couples with these
professional instruments. Formerly, the band would consist of four
cleavers, each of a different tone, or, if complete, of eight, and by
beating their marrowbones skilfully against these, they obtained a sort
of music somewhat after the fashion of indifferent bell-ringing. When
well performed, however, and heard from a proper distance, it was not
altogether unpleasant. A largesse of half-a-crown or a crown was
generally expected for this delicate attention. The butchers of Clare
market had the reputation of being the best performers. The last public
appearance of this popular music was at the marriage of the Prince of
Wales, when small bands of them perambulated the town, playing “God Save
the Queen.” This music was once so common that Tom Killigrew called it
the national instrument of England. In 1759 a burlesque Ode on St
Cecilia’s day, written by Bonnell Thornton, was performed at Ranelagh.
Amongst the instruments employed in this there was a band of marrowbones
and cleavers, whose endeavours were admitted by the _cognoscenti_ to
have been “a complete success.”
As the use of coaches gave rise to the sign of the Coach and Horses, so
the Sedan produced some signs, as the SEDAN CHAIR, Broad Quay, Bristol;
North Searle, Newark; the TWO CHAIRMEN, &c., Warwick Street, Cockspur
Street, and other parts of London; and the THREE CHAIRS in the
seventeenth century, a famous tavern in the Little Piazza, Covent
Garden. The Sedan, says Randle Holme, “is a thing in which sick and
crazy persons are carried abroad, which is borne up by the staves by two
lusty men.”[520] The first sedan chair used in England was one that the
Duke of Buckingham had received as a gift from Charles I., when Prince
of Wales, on his return from that romantic “Jean-de-Paris” expedition to
Spain.[521] The use of it got the Duke into trouble, and he was accused
of “degrading Englishmen into slaves and beasts of burden.” Lysons, in
his “Magna Britannia,” gives another origin for them; speaking of
Duncombe at Battlesden, in Bedfordshire, he says:--
“It was to one of this family, Sir Saunders Duncombe, a gentleman
pensioner to King James and Charles I., that we are indebted for the
accommodation of the sedans or close chairs, the use of which was
first introduced by him in this country in the year 1634, when he
procured a patent which vested in him and his heirs the sole right of
carrying persons up and down in them for a certain time.”
Sir Saunders hereupon got forty or fifty sedans made, and sent them
about town, but differences soon arose between the chairmen and the
coachmen. Pamphlets were written,[522] ballads were sung on the
occasion, and the public sided with one or the other, according to
individual taste. A ballad in favour of the sedan said:--
“I love sedans, cause they do plod
And amble everywhere,
Which prancers are with leather shod,
And neere disturb the care.
Heigh downe, dery, dery, downe,
With the hackney coaches downe,
Their jumpings make
The pavement shake,
Their noyse doth mad the towne.”[523]
De Foe, in 1702, says, “We are carried to these places [coffee-houses]
in chairs, which are here very cheap--a guinea a week, or a shilling per
hour--and your chairmen serve you for porters to run on errands, as your
gondoliers do at Venice.” The chairmen of the aristocracy wore gaudy
liveries and plumed hats, and their chairs were richly gilt and painted,
and provided with velvet cushions. They used to be kept in the halls of
their large mansions. As for the chairmen, we may infer from Gay’s
“Trivia” that they were an insolent set of fellows:--
“Let not the chairman with assuming stride
Press near the wall and rudely thrust thy side,
The laws have set him bounds; his servile feet
Should ne’er encroach where posts defend the street.
Yet, who the footman’s arrogance can quell,
Whose flambeau gilds the sashes of Pall Mall,
When in long rank a train of torches flame,
To light the midnight visits of the dame.”
The trumpet-like instruments in which these torches were extinguished,
when arrived at their place of destination, are still seen attached to
the area railings of most of the houses in Grosvenor and St James’
Squares, and various other parts of the town fashionably inhabited at
that period.
Another creature of this class, now as completely extinct as the
Plesiosaurus and the Megatherion, or any other monster of the
pre-Adamite world, was the RUNNING FOOTMAN. We cannot say that there is
not a “sign” of him left, for there is one in Charles Street, Berkeley
Square, representing a man in gaudy attire, running, with a long cane in
his hand--under it, “I AM THE ONLY RUNNING FOOTMAN.” This was a class of
servants used by rich families in former days to run before the
carriage, to clear the way, bear torches at night, pay turnpikes, and
serving also in a great measure for pomp. Generally their livery was
very rich, being somewhat of the Jockey dress, with a silk sash round
the waist; sometimes, instead of breeches, they wore a sort of silk
petticoat with a deep gold fringe. They carried long sticks with silver
heads, which have now descended to their successors the footmen. The
Duke of Queensberry was one of the last noblemen who kept running
footmen. A good story is told of him in connexion with one of these
servants. Whenever his grace wanted to engage one it was his custom to
make him put on his livery and run up and down Piccadilly, whilst he,
from his balcony, watched their paces; and so it happened on a time,
that after one of those fellows had gone through all his evolutions and
presented himself under the balcony, the Duke said: “That will do; you
will suit me very well.” “And so your livery does me,” was the answer,
and off the fellow went running like a deer and was never heard of
afterwards. Another feat on record, somewhat more to the credit of the
fraternity, was that one of them ran for a wager to Windsor against the
Duke of Marlborough in a phaeton with four horses, and lost only by a
short distance; but it cost the poor fellow his life, for he died very
soon after. Most of these running footmen were Irish, hence Decker[524]
says--“The Devil’s footeman was very nimble of his heeles, for no wild
Irishman could outrunne him,” and Brathwaite remarks:--
“For see those thin-breech’d Irish lackies run.”[525]
St Patrick’s day was generally given to them as a holiday, which they
invariably celebrated by purging themselves. In various country places
the sign of the Running Footman has been corrupted into the RUNNING MAN.
Another “domestic” sign is the TRUSTY SERVANT at Minstead, Hants:--
“A trusty servant’s portrait would you see,
This emblematic figure well survey;
The porker’s snout not nice in diet shows,
The padlock shut, no secret he’ll disclose.
Patient the ass his master’s rage will bear,
Swiftness in errand the stag’s feet declare.
Loaden his left hand apt to labour saith,
The vest his neatness: open hand his faith.
Girt with his sword, his shield upon his arm,
Himself and master he’ll protect from harm.”
The origin of this sign is a picture on the wall of one of the rooms,
near the kitchen of Winchester College, where it is accompanied by the
above verses in English and Latin.
Further, there is the STAVE-PORTER, Dockhead, London; the TICKET-PORTER,
near London Bridge; the PORTER’S LODGE, Leicester; and the PORTER AND
GENTLEMAN in three different places in London.
The HUNTSMAN is common in the hunting districts. To the hunt, also, we
must refer such signs as--HARK TO BOUNTY, Staidburn, Clitheroe; HARK UP
TO NUDGER, Dobcross, Manchester; HARK THE LASHER, near Castleton, Derby;
HARK UP TO GLORY, Rochdale, and the CHASE INN in Leamington. In
Cambridge there are two signs of the BIRDBOLT, an implement formerly
used to shoot birds; consequently it must be a sign of some antiquity.
In Nightingale Lane, East Smithfield, there is an EXPERIENCED FOWLER,
who, no doubt, well knows the value of “a bird in the hand,” and at
Oldham and Rochdale there is an equally satirical sign, that of the
TRAP. The ANGLER is common enough in the neighbourhood of trout streams
and other fishing resorts frequented by the disciples of Isaak Walton.
Many professions are only represented by one or two objects relating to
them. The TALLOW CHANDLER, very common among the trades tokens, was
always represented by a man dipping candles. To that trade also seems to
belong the BOWLS AND CANDLE POLES, which occurs in the following
rambling advertisement:--
“STOLEN,
_Lost_, or _Mislaid_,
A Promissory Note for one hundred and twenty Pounds, signed by John
Smallwood and indorsed by John Addams. Whoever will bring the same
note to the House known by the Bowls and Candlepoles in Duke Street,
in the Park, Southwark, shall receive five Guineas Reward; and if
offered to be paid away or any Writ to be taken out for payment of the
said Note, pray stop it and the party, and you shall have the same
Reward.
⁂ THE HOUSE is in Tenements, and some part thereof being a
Pawnbroker’s, was broke open and several things of value missing.
Note, This mischief arrises from a country Butcher, who did strike and
kick an old Gentleman at London Bridge, about three quarters of a year
ago. And all persons who did see the said Assault and will speak the
truth, (for Christ’s sake,) are desired to send their Names and Place
of Abode to the Bowls and Candlepoles and the favour shall be
thankfully acknowledged.”[526]
The SCALES is a common sign referring to various trades: one of the
engraved bill-heads in the Bagford Collection gives the HAND AND
SCALES--viz., a hand holding a pair of scales; this antiquated mode of
representing a hand issuing from the clouds to perform some action, has
given name to a great many signs--all combinations of the hand with some
other object. The SPINNING WHEEL was formerly much more common than now;
there is still a public-house with this sign at Hamsterley near
Darlington. The WOOLSACK was originally a wool-merchant’s sign; it is
often accompanied by the Black Boy. Machyn mentions this sign in 1555:
“The xx day of July was cared to the Toure in the morning erlee iiij
men; on was the goodman of the Volsake with-owt Algatt.” It seems to
have been one of the leading taverns in Ben Jonson’s time, who often
alludes to it in his plays; like the Dagger, it was famous for its pies.
“And see how the factors and prentices play there
False with their masters, and geld many a full pack,
To spend it in pies at the Dagger and the _Woolpack_.”
_The Devil is an Ass_, act i., sc. 1.
“Her Grace would have you eat no more _Woolsack_ pies nor Dagger
furmety.”--_Alchymist_, act v., sc. 2.
In the year 1682, the Woolsack Tavern in Newgate Market attracted great
attention, owing to a wonderful phenomenon there exhibited, and set
forth in the following handbill from the Sloane Collection, No. 958:--
“At the sign of the Woolpack in _Newgate Street_, is to be seen a
strange and wonderful thing, which is, an elm-board, being touch’d
with a hot iron, doth express itself, as if it was a man dying, with
grones and trembling, to the great admiration of all the hearers. It
has been presented before the King and his nobles, and hath given them
great satisfaction. _Vivat Rex._”
Such a curiosity could not fail to prove an object of immense attraction
with our wonder-loving ancestors, particularly after the house had been
visited by his Majesty, and thus acquired additional respectability.
Very soon, however, numerous London taverns claimed public attention for
similar wonders. It was as if the wood used in their construction had
been cut from the myrtle-tree which conversed with Æneas near the river
Hebrus, (“Æneid,” lib. iii. 19,) or from the “fiera selvaggia” Dante saw
in the second circle of Hades, where he
“sentia da ogni parte tragger guai
E non vedea persona che’l facesse.”[527]
_Inferno_, canto xiii.
The mantel-piece at the BOWMAN TAVERN, Drury Lane, expressed its
aversion of a red hot poker as unequivocally as the elm-board at the
Woolsack, and the dresser at the Queen’s Arms in St Martin’s Lane was
evidently a “chip of the same block.” Indeed, boards were cauterised and
groaned all over London.
The BLOCK was a hatter’s sign, or as that trade was sometimes called,
_Bever-cutter_, the block being the mould on which the hat is formed.
Beatrix, in “Much Ado about Nothing,” says: “He wears his faith, but as
the fashion of his hat it ever changes with the next block.” And Decker,
in the “Gull’s Hornbook:” “John, in Paul’s Churchyard, shall fit his
head for an excellent block.” The word was also often used as a synonym
for “hat.”
The POSTBOY was the sign of a fishmonger’s shop in Sherborne Lane, where
in 1759 Green-native Colchester oysters were sold at 3s. 3d. a barrel,
and exceeding fine “Pyfleet oysters” at 4s. 3d. a barrel. The UP AND
DOWN POST used to be, in the good old coaching times, a thriving inn on
the now deserted highway between Birmingham and Coventry. The picture
represented an erect and a prostrate pillar, which after all was only a
rebus or a misunderstanding. In former times, before the mail-coaches
were instituted, the equestrian letter-carriers of the _up and down
mail_ used to meet at this house, exchange their bags and each return
whence they came, thus effecting a considerable saving of time and
trouble. Even washerwomen have been exalted to the signboard, for in
Norwich there was the sign of the THREE WASHERWOMEN in 1750. And one of
the implements of their trade, the GOLDEN MAID, (better known as “the
Dolly,”) may still be seen at a turner’s shop in Dudley.
A few others remain, which cannot, strictly speaking, be called
professions, yet are they--or at least they were--means of making a
living, as the THREE MORRIS-DANCERS, once a very common sign, but now,
like the custom that gave rise to it, almost extinct. There is one still
left, however, at Scarisbrook, Lancashire, and in a few villages a
remnant of the dance is also kept up on certain occasions. They were
called Morris, or Moors, from the Spanish _Morisco_. Black faces were
required for the dance:--
“Nam faciem plerumque inficiunt fuligine et peregrinum vestium cultum
assumunt, qui ludicris talibus indulgent ut Mauriesse videantur, aut e
longius remota patria credantur advolasse atque insolens recreationis
genus advenisse.”[528]
There is a painted glass window at Betley, in Staffordshire, on which
the characters performing the dance in the early part of the sixteenth
century are represented; to these afterwards others were added. The
earliest performers appear to have been called Robin Hood and Little
John, Maid Marian, Friar Tuck, the May queen, the fool, the piper, and
the plain rank and file of dancers variously dressed. To these
afterwards were added a dragon, a hobby-horse, and other quaint types.
Among the characters represented on the painted window are also a
franklein, a churl, or peasant, and a nobleman. The hobby-horseman
occupies the middle of the window, and is said to represent a Moorish
king: he has two swords thrust into his cheeks, which seem to represent
a feat of dexterity performed by Indian and Egyptian jugglers of
throwing a somersault with two swords balanced on each side of the
cheek. The horse (merely a frame covered with long trappings, and only
showing the neck and limbs of a horse, in which the man capered about)
held a ladle in his mouth for collecting money.
The fool was one of the features of the pageant, and on him rested a
great deal of the duties to amuse the public, particularly when the
hobby-horse was not present; hence Ben Jonson:--
“But see the Hobby-Horse is forgot,
Fool, it must be your lot
To supply your wont with faces
And some other buffoon graces.
You know how.”
On May-day, which in those merry days was the merriest of all the year,
they came out in full force, and, along with the milkmaids dancing with
piles of plate on their heads, contributed not a little to give the
streets and thoroughfares a merry aspect. The May-dance of the sweeps is
perhaps the “last stage of decomposition” of this amusement of our
forefathers; their sooty complexions, their clowns, their Lord and Lady
and Jack in the Green, may be all that remain of the morris-dance, the
fool, the Lord and Lady, the hobby-horse, and the rest.
In treating of games, we may advert to a rendering of the FLYING HORSE,
overlooked on a former occasion. Besides its mythological and heraldic
origin, there was another reason which sometimes prompted the choice of
this sign. It was the name of a popular amusement, which consisted in a
swing, the seat of which formed a wooden horse. This the flying
equestrian mounted, and as he was swinging to and fro he had to take
with a sword the ring off a quintain. If he succeeded, his adroitness
was no doubt rewarded either with a number of swings gratis, or a
_quotum_ of beer. Such a Flying Horse served for a sign to an ale-house
of that denomination in Moorfields, in the time of Queen Anne. Swings,
round-abouts, and such-like amusements, were in those days the usual
appendages of suburban ale-houses, and to a certain extent have even
come down to our time.
Oil and colour-shops generally, and some public-houses--mostly near
theatres--adopt the sign of the HARLEQUIN. One of the most noted amongst
the latter was kept in the beginning of this century in Drury Lane, by
the eccentric Richardson, the showman, or, rather, the “Prince of
Showmen,” as he called himself. In this tavern he saved some money,
which enabled him to fit up a travelling theatre, by which he realised
so much, that when he died in 1836, he left £20,000. It used to be one
of his boasts that he had brought out Edmund Kean, and several other
eminent actors. He desired in his will to be buried at Marlow, in Bucks,
(where he was born in the workhouse,) in the same grave with the
“Spotted Boy,” a natural phenomenon which had been one of his luckiest
hits, and brought him a considerable amount of money.
It is curious to observe how the same simple thing has made mankind
laugh for nearly thirty centuries, and that is a black face. In our age
a large proportion of the public seem to find inexhaustible pleasure in
pseudo-negroes, their songs and antics. The Greeks on their stage had a
young satyr, dressed in goat or tiger-skin, with a short stick in his
hand, _a white hat on his head, his hair cut short, and a brown mask_.
This satyr performed some antics, and was the prototype of the
harlequin. The Romans adopted a somewhat similar character under the
name of _planipes_, because he did not wear the tragic cothurna; he also
wore a variegated dress, for Apuleius, in his “Apology,” speaks of the
“mimus centunculus.” From the Romans it descended to the Italians, and
as early as the sixteenth century we find the whole troop complete,
playing in Spain, namely, Harlequin, Pantaloon, Pagliacico, the Doctor,
&c. At a masked ball at the court of Charles IX., in 1572, the king
represented Brighella; the Cardinal of Lorraine, Pantaloon; Catherine de
Medici, Columbine; and the Duke of Anjou, (afterwards Henry III.,)
Harlequin. At that time, or shortly after, the troop of the Gelosi
played the Italian pieces in Paris, in which these characters were
introduced.
For the sign of the GREEN MAN there is a twofold explanation. 1^{o}.
That it represents the green, wild, or wood men of the shows and
pageants, such as described by Machyn in his Diary on Lord Mayor’s Day,
October 29, 1553:--“Then cam ij grett wodyn with ij grett clubes all in
grene and with skwybes [squibs] bornyng . . . . with gret berds and ryd
here and ij targets a-pon their bake.” This green in which they were
dressed consisted of green leaves. When Queen Elizabeth was at
Kenilworth Castle, in 1575, “on the x of Julee met her in the Forest as
she came from hunting one clad like a savage man all in ivie,”[529] who
made a very neat speech to the queen, in which he was kindly assisted by
the echo. Besides wielding sticks with crackers in pageants, these green
men sometimes fought with each other, attacked castles and dragons, and
were altogether a very favourite popular character with the public. One
of their duties seems to have been to clear the way for processions. In
one of the Harleian MSS., entitled “The maner of the showe, that is, if
God spare life and health, shall be seen by all the behoulders upon St
Georges Day next, being the 23 of Aprill, 1610,” we see amongst the
requirements:--
“It. ij men in greene leaves set with work upon their other habet with
black heare & black beards very owgly to behould, and garlands upon
their heads with great clubs in their hands with fireworks to scatter
abroad to maintaine way for the rest of the show.”[530]
This interpretation is also given as the origin of the Green Man by
Bagford:--
“They are called woudmen, or wildmen, thou’ at thes day we in ye signe
call them Green Men, couered with grene bones: and are used for singes
by stillers of strong watters and if I mistake not are y^{e}
sopourters of y^{e} king of Deanmarks armes at thes day; and I am abpt
to beleve that y^{e} Daynes learned us hear in England the use of
those tosticatein lickers [intoxicating] as well as y^{e} breweing of
Aele and a fit emblem for those that use that intosticating licker
which berefts them of their sennes.”[531]
The WILD MAN, therefore, on a sign at Quarry Hill, Ladybridge, Leeds, is
the same as the Green Man.
2^{o}. The second version of this sign is, that it is intended for a
forester, and in that garb the Green Man is now invariably represented;
even as far back as the seventeenth century, it is evident from the
trades tokens that the Green Man was generally a forester, and, in many
cases, Robin Hood himself, which may be inferred from the small figure
frequently introduced beside him, and meant for Little John. The ballads
always described Robin and his merry men as dressed in green, “Lincoln
green.” When Robin meets the page who brings him presents from Queen
Katherine:--
“Robin took his mantle from his backe,
It was of the _Lincoln greene_
And sent that by this lovely page
For a present unto the queene.”[532]
And in the same ballad, when he is going to court, “he clothed his men
in _Lincolne greene_,” &c. Drayton, in his “Polyolbion,” says:--
“An hundred valiant men had this brave Robin Hood
Still ready at his call, that bowmen were right good,
_All clad in Lincoln green_ which caps of red and blue.”
Sometimes it is called Kendal green:--
“All the woods
Are full of outlaws, that in _Kendal green_
Follow the outlawed Earl of Huntingdon.”
Richard, Earl of Huntingdon, 1601, (_i.e._, Robin Hood)
It was, in fact, the ordinary dress of foresters and woodmen, and is so
still in Germany.
“All in a woodman’s jacket he was clad,
Of _Lincoln Green_, belayed with silver lace.”
SPENSER’S _Faery Queene_.
One of the most noted Green Man taverns was that on Stroud Green,
Islington, formerly the residence of Sir Th. Stapleton, of Gray’s Court,
Bart., whose initials, with those of his wife, and the date 1609, were
to be seen on the façade. It was one of the suburban retreats frequented
by the fashion in the days of Charles I., when it had been converted
into a tavern. A century ago the sign bore the following inscription:--
“Ye are wellcome all
To Stapleton Hall.”
A club used to meet annually at this place, styling themselves the Lord
Mayor, Aldermen, and Corporation of Stroud Green.[533] At Dulwich, in
the reign of George II., there was another Green Man, a place of
amusement for the Londoners during the summer season; it is enumerated,
with other similar resorts, in the following stanza:--
“That Vauxhall and Ruckholt and Ranelagh too,
And Hoxton and Sadlers both Old and New,
My Lord Cobham’s Head and the Dulwich Green Man
May make as much pastime as ever they can.[534]
Derry Down,” &c.
_Musick in Good Time, a new Ballad_, 1745.
The MERRY ANDREW was a card-maker’s sign; in the Banks Collection there
is a shopbill of the time of Queen Anne, of Edward Hall, card-maker to
her Majesty at the Merry Andrew, in Piccadilly. The playing-cards at
that time used to have certain heads on the wrapper, according to which
they were denominated. Merry Andrew was one of them. Other sorts had the
Great Mogul, Henry VII., Henry VIII., and the Duke of Savoy, (Prince
Eugene;) second-class cards had the Queen of Hungary, the Spaniard, the
beau, and the Merry Andrew. The original Merry Andrew is said to have
been a certain Doctor Andrew Borde, born at Pevensey in the fifteenth
century, and educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford, but who
obtained his doctor’s degree at Montpellier. His writings abound with
witticisms, which are reported also to have pervaded his speech. He is
said to have frequented fairs, markets, and other “busy haunts of men,”
haranguing the people in order to increase his practice in physic. He
had many followers and imitators, whence it came that those who affected
the same language and gestures were called Merry Andrews.
Notwithstanding all this mirth and animal spirits, he professed himself
a Carthusian, lived in celibacy, drank water three days in the week,
wore a hair shirt, and nightly hung his shroud at the foot of his bed.
He is said to have been physician to King Henry VIII., and member of the
College of Physicians in London. He died a prisoner in the Fleet in
1549. More celebrated than his works on physic are his “Merry Tales of
the Wise Men of Gotham,” and the “Merry History of the Miller of
Abingdon.”
Lower down still in the sphere of callings and professions the signs
will take us. At Oswald Wistle, Accrington, we meet with the TINKER’S
BUDGET. The budget is the tinker’s bag of instruments; we see the word
thus used in Randle Holme:[535]--“A Tinker with his _budget_ on his
back, having always in his mouth this merry cry:--‘Have you any work for
a Tinker?’” And Shakespeare, in the “Winter’s Tale:”
“If tinkers may have leave to live
And bear the sowskin _budget_.”
This inn, then, is certainly very modest in its pretensions; but we
shall descend lower still. Even “poor Tom’s flock of wild geese,”
otherwise TOM OF BEDLAM, we have now to introduce. We find him at
Balsall, Warwick, and no doubt it was formerly not an uncommon sign,
since he was such a favourite in ballads; the MERRY TOM, at Kirkcumbeck,
Cumberland, evidently refers to the same individual. Notwithstanding all
the fantastic ballads that went under Tom’s name, he was but a sorry
rogue. Randle Holme[536] says:--
“The Sow gelder and Tom of Bedlam are both wandering knaves alike, and
such as are seldom or never out of their way, having their home in any
place. The first is described as carrying a long staff, with a head
like a spear or a half pike, and a horn hung by his side from a broad
leather belt or girdle cross his shoulders. Tom of Bedlam is in the
same garb, with a long staff, and a Cow or Ox Horn by his side, but
his cloathing is more fantastic or ridiculous, for being a mad man he
is madly decked and dressed all over with Rubins, Feathers, cuttings
of cloth and what not; to make him seem a madman or one distracted,
when he is no other but a dissembling knave.”
“The Canting Academy,” 1674, gives them a similar attire and
character:--
“Abram-men, otherwise called Tom of Bedlams; they are very strangely
and antickly garbed, with several coloured ribands or tape in their
hats, it may be instead of a feather, a fox tail hanging down a long
stick, with ribands streaming and the like; yet for all their seeming
madness they have wit enough to steal as they go.”[537]
Aubrey says:--
“Before the Civil Warre, I remember Tom o’ Bedlams went about a
begging. They had been such as had been in Bedlam and there recovered
and come to some degree of soberness, and when they were licensed to
goe out they had on their left arme an armilla of tinne (printed)
about three inches breadth, which was sodered on.”[538]
This permission, if ever it was granted, was retracted after the
Restoration, for in the year 1675 the _London Gazette_ contained in
several numbers the following advertisement:--
“Whereas several Vagrant Persons do wander about the city of London
and countries, pretending themselves to be Lunaticks under cure in the
Hospitall of Bethlem, commonly called Bedlam, with brass plates upon
their arms and inscriptions thereon, These are to give notice that
there is no such liberty given to any Patients kept in the Hospital
for their cure, neither is any such plate as a distinction or mark put
upon any Lunatick during their being there or when discharged thence.
And that the same is a false pretence to colour their wandering and
begging and deceive the people to the dishonour of the Government of
that Hospital.”
Not only men but also women of a roving disposition, adopted poor Tom’s
horn, and went wandering, begging, and pilfering under the name of BESS
OF BEDLAM, which is still seen as a sign in Oak Street, Norwich. Bess
was an old companion of poor Tom, for in the play of King Lear, Tom
sings a snatch of a song with the words, “Come over the bourn, Bessy, to
me,” and in the jollities of Plough Monday the fool and Bessy are two
of the principal personages.[539]
A third class of beggars called _Mumpers_, is also found on the
signboard under the name of the THREE MUMPERS.
Thus, after having gone through all ranks of society, from the palace to
the cottage, and from the sceptre to Tom’s staff with a fox-tail, we now
come to the great leveller Death, who also was represented on the
signboard. There were the THREE DEATH’S-HEADS in Wapping, of which house
trades tokens are extant; probably it was an apothecary’s, though it was
a ghastly sign for his customers. Undertakers were also strictly
professional in their choice. In the eighteenth century there were the
FOUR COFFINS over against Somerset House,[540] and another in Fleet
Street, the sign of Stephen Roome,[541] whose son was the unfortunate
author whom Pope has “gibbeted” in the Dunciad, as afflicted with a
“funereal frown.” Savage, one of Pope’s literary _sicarii_, calls Roome
“a perfect town-author,”[542] and has drawn his portrait in “An Author
to be let, by Iscariot Hackney:”--
“Had it not been more laudable for Mr Roome, the son of an undertaker,
to have borne a link and a mourning staff, in the long procession of a
funeral--or even been more decent in him to have sung psalms according
to education, in an Anabaptist meeting, than to have been altering the
_Jovial Crew or Merry Beggars_ into a wicked imitation of the Beggars’
Opera?”
Another undertaker, James Maddox, clerk and coffin-maker of St Olave’s,
had for a sign the SUGAR-LOAF AND THREE COFFINS. The addition of the
sugar-loaf has, of course, nothing to do with his profession, for when
death calls, the sweets of life are past. It was simply the sign of a
former tenant, suspended in front or fixed in the wall of the house.
Although the undertakers of the present day do not display signs as of
old, they advertise their calling quite as effectually. The men who in
their handbills solicit us to try their “economic funerals,” or to test
one of their “three guinea respectable interments,--one trial only
asked,” are commercial with the rest of the age, although we might wish
that they would force themselves a little less upon our attention. One
undertaker recently hit upon what he deemed a brilliant method of
advertising his cheap funerals. He selected some good names from the
“Court Guide,” and sent out hundreds of telegrams announcing the low
prices at which a “body” could be interred. Some reached their
destination just as the lady or gentleman “body” was sitting down to
dinner, others as the “parties” were dressing, or in the act of leaving
home; but although the scheme failed, the name of the undertaker and his
prices were firmly fixed in people’s memories, and he received, instead
of orders, numerous cautions not to telegraph in that way again.
An undertaker in Islington, some years ago, exhibited in his window some
pleasing artistic efforts of his children, which must have greatly
comforted the father. “Master A., aged 12 years,” had produced a
grinning skeleton, garnished with worms and cross-bones; and “Miss B.,
aged 10,” had painted in colours a section of a vault, with coffin
heads, skulls, and sexton’s tools, neatly arranged right and left. The
drawings were framed and glazed, and parental pride had placed them in
the best spot in the windows.
[444] Notes and Queries.
[445] Roxburghe Ballads, iii., fol. 253.
[446] Akerman’s Trades Tokens.
[447] “Richardsoniana,” London, 1776, p. 159.
[448] Preface to his “History of the World.”
[449] Archæologia, ii., p. 169. In an article in “Notes and Queries,”
No. 150, a document is quoted by which George Gower was appointed “the
Queen’s Sargeant Paynter,” and Nicolas Hilliard her miniature portrait
painter. No portraits of the queen painted by Gower appear, however, to
be known.
[450] Lettre à M. Bizotin. “I cannot bear to see the portraits of the
king, of the queen, of the dauphin, and of the other princes and
princesses used as signs for shops; they whose portraits ought to be
reserved for the most celebrated galleries and the most famous
collections only. Would not M. d’Argenson, and you as well, M. le
Commissaire, have very serious reason to be annoyed if you were to see
your portrait as a sign to a public-house or to a rag-shop? Why, then,
are you not annoyed in seeing the king’s portrait in such places?” Mr
Boursault’s flattery is much more evident than his logic.
[451] There is a print of it in _Gentleman’s Magazine_, June 1794.
[452] “Memoirs of J. Decastro, comedian,” London, 1824. See under “Go,”
(as “a go of gin,” “a go of rum,”) in the “Slang Dictionary,” 3d
edition: John Camden Hotten, Piccadilly, London.
[453] _London Gazette_, Nov. 30 to Dec. 4, 1682.
[454] In Lydgate’s ballad of “London Lyckpenny,” _temp._ Henry VI.
[455] This touting, or standing at the door inviting the passers by to
enter, was at one time a universal practice with all kind of shops, both
at home and abroad. The regular phrase used to be “What do ye lack? What
do ye lack?” The French _dits_ and _fabliaux_ teem with allusions to
this custom. In the story of “Courtois d’Arras,”--a travesty of the
prodigal son, in a thirteenth century garb--Courtois finds the host
standing at his door shouting, “Bon vin de Soissons à 6 deniers le lot.”
And in a mediæval mystery, entitled “Li jus de S. Nicholas,” the
innkeeper roars out, “Céans il fait bon diner, céans il y a pain chaud
et harengs chauds et vin d’Auxerre à plein tonneau.” In “Les trois
Aveugles de Compiegne,” mine host thus addresses the thirsty
wanderers:--
“Ci a bon vin fres et nouvel,
Ça d’Ancoire, ça de Soissons
Pain et char et vin et poissons,
Céens fet bon despendre argent,
Ostel i a à toute gent,
Céens fet moult bon heberger.”
And in the “Debats et facétieuses rencontres de Gringalet et de Guillot
Gorgen son maistre,” the servant who had taken advantage of the host’s
invitation, excuses himself, saying, “Le tavernier a plus de tort que
moy, car passant devant sa porte, et luy étant assiz, (ainsi qu’ils sont
ordinairement), il me cria me disant: Vous plaist-il de dejeuner céans?
Il y a de bon pain, de bon vin et de bonne viande.” This touting at
tavern doors was still practised in the last century, as appears from
the following passage in Tom Brown:--“We were jogging forward into the
city, when our Indian cast his eyes upon one of his own complexion, at a
certain coffee-house which has the _Sun_ staring its sign in the face,
even at midnight, when the moon is queen regent of the planets, and,
being willing to be acquainted with his countryman, gravely inquired
what province or kingdom of India he belonged to; but the sooty dog
could do nothing but grin, and show his teeth, and cry, _Coffee, sir,
tea, will you please to walk in, sir; a fresh pot, upon my word_.”--TOM
BROWN, vol iii., p. 17. Not only taverns but all sorts of shops kept
these barking advertisements at the door. The ballad of “London
Lyckpenny” enumerates a quantity of them. “What do you lack?” was the
stereotype phrase. The “Buy, buy, what’ll you buy?” of the butchers, is
one of the last remains in London of this custom. At Greenwich, the
practice of touting at the doors of the small coffee-houses is still
kept up; and throughout the United States and Canada the custom of
waiting at steamboat wharves and railway termini, to catch passengers,
and worry them with recommendations to this or that hotel, is
unpleasantly prevalent. The touters there are known as hotel runners.
[456] “Wine one pint for a pennie, and bread to drink it _was_ given
free in every tavern.”--Note by STOW. The imperfect tense shows that
this excellent custom had already fallen into disuse in Stow’s time.
[457] Will Herbert, “History of the Twelve Great Living Companies,” vol.
ii. p. 197.
[458] _Weekly Journal_, April 26, 1718.
[459] _Ibid._, July 12, 1718.
[460] Harl. MSS. 5910, part II.
[461] “Account of London,” p. 60, 1813.
[462] Pepys’s Memoirs, Sept 18, 1660.
[463] “London Spy,” 1706.
[464] Wilkinson’s “Londina Illustrata.”
[465] Boswell’s Life of Johnson, vol. i., p. 272.
[466] Erskine used to send somewhat similar cards of invitation when on
the Bench, by drawing a turtle on a card, and sending it to a friend,
with the day and hour.
[467] Maitland’s History of London, 1739, p. 647.
[468] “The Quack Vintners, or a Satyr against Bad Wine,” 1713; probably
a pamphlet got up by the London vintners against Brook and Hilliers, the
famous wine merchants recommended by the _Spectator_.
[469] Hatton’s New View of London, 1708, p. 32.
[470]
“Saint Dominic be always our friend,
Who sing thy praises daily in our pulpit,
From the veins of our hearts, after we have emptied our flagons;
Therefore if thou rejoicest to hear us set forth thy praise,
Make that in Easter time we of spring water
Need not drink, for if that were to happen, everywhere
They will be mute monks, who do not run about unless they be friars.”
[471]
“To drink like a Capuchin,
Is to drink poorly;
To drink like a Benedictine,
Is to drink deeply;
To drink like a Dominican,
Is pot after pot;
But to drink like a Franciscan,
Is to drink the cellar dry.”
[472]
“We are ten, all deep drinkers,
Jolly topers, and good smokers,
Who, never giving over drinking
And eating,
Scorn the favours of love.”
[473] The Plague, by De Foe.
[474] Beaufoy Trades Tokens.
[475] A proclamation of Queen Elizabeth restricted the length of the
sword, rapier, and such like weapons to “one yard and half a quarter of
the blade at the uttermost,” and the point of the buckler not above two
inches in length, under the penalty of a “fine at the Queen’s pleasure,
and the weapon to be forfayted, and if any such persons shall offend a
second time, then the same to be banished from the place and towne of
his dwelling.”
[476] Misson’s Travels, p. 307.
[477] Stow’s Chronicle, Thom’s edition, p. 83.
[478] Merry Jests of old Hobson the Londoner, 1611
[479] J. T. Smith’s Antiquarian Ramble in the Streets of London, edited
by Charles Mackay, 1846.
[480] Nicolas’s Life and Times of Sir Christopher Hatton, p. 7.
[481] Ned Ward’s Frolic to Horn Fair, 1703.
[482] Walpole’s Anecdotes of Painting, p. 132.
[483]
“Whoever outsails me under the lee,
shall have a dollar and drink scot-free.”
[484] Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches.
[485] _Intelligencer_, Jan. 27--Feb. 4, 1652.
[486] Unless it be another version of the Lamb and Anchor, see p. 300.
Ship and Sheep, however, were formerly used promiscuously. Thus there is
a token of William Eye “at the Sheep,” in Rye, 1652, representing a
ship, whilst Decker, in Histrio-mastrix, 1602 says, “and this _ship_skin
cap shall be put off.”
[487] Still in existence in Upper Fore Street, Lambeth.
[488] Thomas Allen’s History of Lambeth, 1827, p. 367.
[489] See Louisa Twining’s Symbols of Christian Art.
[490] See p. 228.
[491] Hone’s Every Day Book, vol. ii.
[492] Stowe’s Survey of London.
[493] _Daily Courant_, Dec. 17, 1718.
[494] See under HUMOROUS SIGNS.
[495] Hollinshed’s Chronicles, iv., p. 330.
[496] The whole history of this calligraphic contest, written by Bale
himself, is preserved amongst the Harl. MSS., No. 675.
[497] “Twelve Sonatas in two parts; the first part solos for a violin, a
bass violin, viol and harpsichord; the second Preludes, Almands,
Corants, Sarabands and Jigs, with the Spanish Folly. Dedicated to the
Electress of Brandenburgh by Archangelo Corelli; being his fifth and
last _opera_, etc. Price 8 shillings, or each part single 5
shillings.”--_London Gazette_, August 26-29, 1700. The use of the word
_opera_ here is somewhat peculiar.
[498] Hawkins’s History of Music, vol. ii., p. 107.
[499] _London Gazette_, December 30 to January 2, 1700.
[500]
“He came to an inn,
In the Rue de la Mortellerie,
Where the sign of the Pestle hangs out,
At which place there is good entertainment to be had.”
This poet-swindler, Villon, used to go about with a few friends, who
robbed and cheated landlords, and obtained good dinners without paying
for them, whence he called them “_Repues Franches_.” Too frequently he
got off safe, but occasionally he would get a caning in the bargain to
assist his digestion. These predatory dinners he has related in an
_épopée_ which has come down to us.
[501] It is to be observed that these soap-basins are now always of
_brass_, and also that on the continent their place is taken by a
shallow brass basin to contain hot water--Don Quixote’s helmet of
Mambrino, held under the chin of the person to be shaved, with a hollow
space in the rim to fit the neck, and a cavity into which the soap is
deposited during the operation.
[502] Vossius, “De Poematum Cantu et viribus Rythmi,” Oxford, 1673, p.
62. Isaac Vossius was an eccentric Dutchman, who died a canon of Windsor
in 1689. In the above treatise on rhythm he says:--“I remember that more
than once I have fallen into the hands of men of this sort who could
imitate any measure of song in combing the hair, so as sometimes to
express very intelligibly iambics, trochees, dactyls, &c., from whence
there arose to me no small delight.”
[503]
“_Note_--Of gin and bitters, all for a penny ½d.
Come in, Jolly Tars, and be scraped across the line.”
[504] “People made younger here,” alluding to the youthful appearance of
a man without a beard.
[505]
“Nature gives beard and hair,
And I cut them both.”
or--
“I devote my razors to all faces,
And can stand the test of the truest looking-glasses.”
[506] Tavern Anecdotes, 1825.
[507] Remarkable Trials, vol. ii., p. 14. 1765.
[508] Stow. p. 128.
[509] The court before which persons aggrieved in the Fair might have a
“speedy relief.”
[510] H. Morley, Memoirs of Bartholomew Fair, p. 237. See also Hone’s
Every-day Book, Sept. 5, vol. i.
[511] Boswell’s Life of Johnson, vol. ii., p. 63.
[512] Formerly a dangerous pond in Old Street Road, in which a number of
people were drowned, whence it obtained its name of _perilous Pond_. In
1713 it was walled in by one Kemp, who on that occasion altered its name
into Peerless Pool, by a similar process as the Pontus αξενος,
inhospitable, was called ευξεινος, hospitable, by the Greeks.
[513]
“Tobacco is a noble weed, as many can testify.
Numbers of people who were long since weaned begin to suck again.”
[514]
“Here at the Milkmaid of Gouda
You will receive good articles and civil treatment,
Here you may smoke at your ease
Tip-top Varinas and Virginia tobacco.”
[515]
“Dainty noses, noble masters,
Who, by the jingling of the glasses,
Are prepared for a ’smoke;’
If you look for the finest growth,
The best Varinas? Come then at once
To the Walloon Milkmaid,” &c.
[516] Pierce Pennyless, Supplication to the Devil, 1593.
[517] These remains are engraved in Archer’s Vestiges of Old London.
[518] _Gentleman’s Magazine_, March 1842.
[519] A row of booths on the ice opposite the Temple.
[520] Randle Holme, book iii, ch. viii., p. 345.
[521] Dr Johnson’s explanation that they received their name from the
town of Sedan, whence they were introduced into England, is evidently a
mistake--for the French copied them from us. See Tallemant des Réaux,
“Contes et Historiettes,” vol. vii., p. 102.
[522] Coach and Sedan pleasantly disputing for Place and Precedence.
4to, 1636.
[523] Roxburghe Ballads, vol. i., fol. 546, entitled “The Coaches
Overthrow, or a joviall Exaltation of divers tradesmen and others for
the suppression of troublesome Hackney Coaches.”
[524] Decker’s English Villanies, 1632.
[525] Brathwaite’s Strapado for the Diuell, 1615. Notes in Percy Society
edition.
[526] Newspaper cutting of the year 1762, probably from the _London
Register_.
[527] “--heard groans from every side, but saw nobody who uttered them.”
[528] Junius’ Etymologia: “For those that take part in these games,
besmear their faces with soot and adopt outlandish garments, so that
they may look like Moors, or as if they had come from distant countries,
and thence had introduced this quaint amusement.”
[529] Nicholl’s Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, vol. i., p. 494.
[530] Harl. MSS., No. 2150, fol. 356.
[531] Harl. MSS., No. 5900.
[532] Roxburghe Ballads, vol. i., f. 375.
[533] Lewis’s History of Islington, p. 281.
[534] Ruckholt was a reputed mansion of Queen Elizabeth, at Leyton, in
Essex. Being opened to the public in 1742, it became a fashionable
summer drive during a couple of seasons; public breakfasts, weekly
concerts, and occasional oratorios were numbered amongst its
attractions. The house was pulled down in 1745. Old and New Sadler’s
Wells relates to the well-known place in Islington, at that period a
music house. Lord Cobham’s Head has been noticed on p. 97.
[535] Book iii., ch. iii., p. 181
[536] Book iii., ch. iii., p. 181.
[537] Canting Academy, second edition, 1674, as quoted in Malcolm’s
“Manners and Customs,” vol. i., p. 322.
[538] Lansdowne MS., No. 231 “Remains of Judaisme and Gentilisme.”
[539] There is a very unfavourable parallel between the Ladies and
Besses of Bedlam in the Muse’s Recreation, 1656, entitled:--“Upon the
naked Bedlams and spotted Beasts we see in Covent Garden,” beginning:--
“When Besse! she ne’re was half so vainly clad,
Besse ne’re was half so _naked_, half so mad;
Again, this raves with lust, for love Besse ranted,
Then Besse’s skin is tanned--this is painted.”
[540] Advertisement in the original edition of the _Spectator_, No.
clxxxvi.
[541] City Mercury, or Advertisements concerning Trade. November 4,
1675.
[542] _London Gazette_, May 30-June 3, 1681, where he gives a most
dismal catalogue of what he could do.