Tavern sign

“ This seems about all the political wisdom the tavern sign has to suggest; but if we investigate more closely the varying forms and continual changes of the sign we shall discover in its evolution nothing less than a little history of civilization in pictures. Every great event in the world’s history finds its echo in some transformation of the sign, that proves itself a sensitive indicator for the popular valuation of leading men and important occurrences. ”

“ Fifty miles it could run in one day in the sand sea—i.e., desert—the text said, and in summer it could live three months without drinking “ohne sauffen.” This last-mentioned quality seemed to predestine the animal to a temperance sign, but fortunately the description added, “when it drinks it drinks much at one time,” and so the tavern-keepers did not hesitate to adopt it as a tavern sign. As an example we might quote the inn “Zum Kameeltier” in Strassburg. ”

“ But to comfort the feminists we should speak of a host truly gallant, who had a great white sign made, with the inscription below, “The Good Man.” To the universal inquiry, “Where is the good man? I can’t see him,” he made answer, “Well, you see that is why I have left the blank space; if only I could find him.”
Since there is a saint for every day of the calendar, we must not be astonished to find names among those adopted for tavern signs which to us bear no relation to sanctity; such as St. Fiacre over a drivers’ bar, which seems rather the invention of some wag. ”

“ In fact, the tavern sign seems to have come late into Greece, through Roman influence. We hear of a tavern “The Camel” at the Piræus, also of a sailors’ inn having the sign in relief: a boiled calf’s head and four calf’s feet.
We shall later see what an important part signs played in directing travelers in a city through the Middle Ages and even in modern times. They took the place of house numbers and street names. In ancient Rome a whole quarter was often named after an inn, like the “Bear in the Cap” (“vicus ursi pileati”) . This is the longest-lived bear in history: he lives even to-day. ”

“ Let the comfort-seeker go to the modern prosaic hotel outside the city wall!
The iron helmet is not the only martial tavern sign. Other names sounded equally [Pg 80] well to the soldier’s ear: in France “Le Haubert” (iron shirt) , for instance, that might remind us of the old English inn, “The Tabard,” in which Chaucer gathered his joyous pilgrims for happy meals and amusing conversations; the sword, St. Peter’s attribute, was used as tavern sign in his holy city Rome in the sixteenth century (“alla spada”) ; the cannon was very popular as “canone d’oro” in northern Italy; and many others. ”

“ The tavern signs so common in New England were known only in the earlier days of the Cumberland Road as many of the tavern names show. The majority of the great taverns bore on their signs only the name of their proprietor, the earliest landlord’s name often being used for several generations. The advancing of the century can be noticed in the origin of such names as the National House, the United States Hotel, the American House, etc. The evolution in nomenclature is, plainly, from the sign or symbol to the landlord’s name, then to a fanciful name. ”

“ The widespread popularity of these Biblical stories and holy legends need cause no wonder that the angel was a favorite subject for tavern signs in the Middle Ages, and that even at this day he takes so many an old inn under the patronage of his benevolent wings. It has been asserted that the angel sign originated in the age of the Reformation, simply by leaving out the figure of the Virgin Mary from the portrayal of the scene of the Annunciation. But against this theory stands the fact that there were simple angel signs in the Middle Ages as well as Annunciation signs. ”

“ The barroom of the Munroe Tavern contains, among other relics, the remains of a British bullet hole in the ceiling and the original tavern sign, cut out of one piece of hard white pine, which hung outside the door. ”

“ The sense of the nearness of the gods at mealtime and the beautiful old custom of pouring out a bit of wine for the invisible holy guest, were preserved down to the time of the later Romans. We find the custom in vogue with such old sinners as Horace and Juvenal. We shall recall the significance of the wreath as a symbol when we meet the ivy wreath later as a tavern sign. ”

“ The tavern sign has its moral lesson for all concerned, guests and landlords alike. From its modest and unknown creators the modern artist too may receive many a valuable inspiration. When the poet Seume, in December, 1801, started from Grimma in Saxony on his long pilgrimage to Syracuse, his way seems to have led him soon to a knightly George, who fights the dragon in all Christian lands, over many a tavern door for centuries and whom Shakespeare celebrated in the verses ”

“ The Tavern, 1628,
Is a degree, or (if you will) a pair of stairs above an ale-house, where men are drunk with more credit and apology. If the vintner’s nose be at the door, it is a sign sufficient, but the absence of this is supplied by the ivy-bush: the rooms are ill breathed like the drinkers that have been washed well over night, and are smelt-to fasting next morning. It is a broacher of more news than hogsheads, and more jests than news, which are sucked up here by some spungy brain, and from thence squeezed into a comedy. Men come here to make merry, but indeed make a noise ”

“ Most naturally the evolution of the sign runs parallel to the evolution of the tavern, and in a time of flourishing inns we may expect to find highly developed tavern signs. “From a very early period,” says Macaulay, in a chapter on the social condition of England in 1685, “the inns of England had been renowned. Our first great poet had described the excellent accommodation which they afforded to the pilgrims of the fourteenth century. Nine and twenty persons, with their horses, found room in the wide chambers and stables of the Tabard in Southwark. ”

“ Early in the Middle Ages we find this most curious of strange animals on the tavern signs. “L’Ostel des Singes,” sometimes called “The Green [Pg 91] Monkeys,” in Senlis, France, is first mentioned in the year 1359. Our “Affenwagen” is a Swiss sign, artfully carved in wood, and dates from the Renaissance times, as does the inn “Zum Rohraff” in Strassburg, often referred to in the sermons of Geiler von Kaisersberg. ”

“ The number of taverns in these ten shires was “686, or thereabouts.”
[18] “The original court roll of this presentation is still to be found amongst the records of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster.”—Lyson’s Env. of London, vol. iii. p. 74.
[19] “Whosoever shall brew ale in the town of Cambridge, with intention of selling it, must hang out a sign, otherwise he shall forfeit his ale.”
[20] “Art. XXIII.—Tavernkeepers must put up signboards and a bush. . . . Nobody shall be allowed to open a tavern in the said city and its suburbs without having a sign and a bush.” ”

“ Our first parents, naturally, could not enjoy the blessings of hospitality. And still, in later ages, they have not infrequently been depicted on signs which hosts have hung [Pg 5] out to proclaim a hospitality not gratuitous but hearty. So in one of Hogarth’s drawings, of the year 1750, “The March of the Guards towards Scotland,” which the artist himself later etched, and dedicated to Frederick the Great, we see Adam and Eve figuring on a tavern sign. No visitor to London [Pg 6] should fail to see this work of the English painter-satirist. ”

“ Besides wreath and pentagram, we find among the ancients a third customary sign of hospitality, namely, a chessboard, which invited the passer-by to a game of draughts along with a draught of wine. The game was not chess, for that came to Europe from the East in the post-classical age. Hogarth’s [Pg 34] engraving “Beerstreet” shows us that this sign prevailed in old England, for the characteristic signpost in front of the tavern door is painted in black and white checkered squares.
Painted and carved animal images also served as signs in Roman times. ”

“ We miss only the sportive ladies who dip their kerchiefs of lace in the poor devil’s blood to show that they, too, were in at the finish. This sign, by the way, was used long centuries ago, since we hear of a “Fox and Hounds Inn” in Putney that claims to be over three hundred years old.
The German Nimrod took no less pleasure than his English cousin in seeing a hunter’s sign on the tavern door, as is amply proved by the many golden harts, flying in great bounds, or our George sign from Degerloch, daintily wrought in iron. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To the artist’s eyes they were charming things, combining happily great lanterns with the sign into a harmony which we so often find lacking in modern days, where beautiful old signs through the addition of ugly modern lamps lose all their artistic charm of yore.
·THE·DOG·IN·SHOREDITCH·
[Pg 271]
Mercier’s “Tableau de Paris” tells us of ridiculously great signs: spurs as large as a wheel, gloves big enough to house a three-year-old babe, and the like. In old Germany, too, the sight of the giant signs, as Victor Hugo describes them from Frankfurt-on-the-Main, must have been fantastic enough. ”

“ Lovers of cards invented the amusing distortion of “Pique and Carreau” into “The Pig and Carrot.” The popular political sign of “The Four Alls,” representing a King (“I rule all”) , a Priest (“I pray for all”) , a Soldier (“I fight for all”) , and John Bull as farmer (“I pay for all”) , was changed into “Four Awls,” a sign which presented infinitely less difficulties to a painter of few resources. Sometimes the Devil is added as fifth figure saying, “I take all.”
Cromwell’s soldiers once took offense at the sign of a tavern where they were obliged [Pg 256] to put up for the night. ”

“ In all impartiality we have to admit that really the sign lost by and by its usefulness as a street-guide, since the trades and crafts occupying a house changed often, while the old signs, especially those which formed a part of its architecture, remained unchanged, thus producing the most ridiculous contradictions against which the above-mentioned reformer of “The Spectator” protested not without reason, saying: “A cook should not live at ‘The Boot’ nor a shoemaker at ‘The Roasted Pig.’”
But the most ruthless enemy of the sign became the police itself, who once protected 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. ”

“ The butchers seldom show the cruel axe, far oftener the poetical lamb, their oldest sign being the Pascal lamb holding the little flag of the resurrection. A patriotic English landlord in the neighborhood of Bath changed the flag into a Union Jack, forgetting all about the religious meaning of the sign as it still appears in a French relief “L’Agneau Pascal” in Caen, Rue de [Pg 86] Bayeux. The tavern “Zum guldin Schooffe” in Strassburg, “la vieille ville allemande” as Victor Hugo called the city quite frankly, is perhaps the oldest sign of this group. ”

“ Washington Tavern, Westfield, Massachusetts.
The taproom was usually the largest room of the tavern. It had universally a great fireplace, a bare, sanded floor, and ample seats and chairs. Usually there was a tall, rather rude writing-desk, at which a traveller might write a letter, or sign a contract, and where the landlord made out his bills and kept his books. ”

“ The Sugar-loaf is also a public-house sign, though not a very appropriate one. The Blue Bowl, suggestive of punch-making, occurs on three public-houses in Bristol; but much more significant for a resort of thirsty souls is that of the Three Funnels, (les Trois Entonnoirs,) which in the time of Louis XIV. was the sign of a tavern in Paris, mostly patronised by the University people. An equally expressive sign, the Sieve, was used by John Johnson, in Aldermansbury, 1669, and “Richard Harris in Trinity Minories.” ”

“ In the reign of Henry VIII, a tavern called “The Running Horses” existed in Leatherhead, a place not exactly fitted for noble hunters, since a contemporary poet complains about the beer being served there “in rather disgusting conditions.” Not infrequently we find more or less happy portraits [Pg 248] of famous race-horses, such as “The Flying Dutchman” and “Bee’s Wing”; sometimes even a hound was honored in this way, guarding the entrance of a tavern as his famous Roman colleague, pictured in mosaic, did in the days of antiquity. “The Blue Cap” in Sandiway (Cheshire) was such a sign. ”