There is still an old stone carving of the Pelican walled in the front of a house in Aldermanbury, and as a sign the bird appears to be a great favourite at the present day. An anecdote is told of Jekyl’s dissatisfaction at the prices at the Pelican Inn, Speenham Land, and of his writing the following epigram upon the same:—
Longfellow made a similar epigram on the Raven Inn at Zurich:—
It is amusing to see how wit runs in the same channel. In “Scrapeana, a Collection of Anecdotes, 1792,” a similar anecdote is fathered upon Foote. “Pray what is your name?” said Foote to the Master of the Castle Inn at Salthill. “Partridge, sir!”—“Partridge! it should be Woodcock by the length of your bill!”
But the coincidence is most amusing in the case of Longfellow. It is observed by a contributor to Notes and Queries,[282] that the verses may be a plagiarism; at any rate they have a strange family resemblance to the following, said to have been written by a commercial traveller on an inside window shutter of the Golden Lion, Brecon, kept by a Mr Longfellow, alias Tom Longfellow:—
And long, doubtless, was his face when he read the above.
The Raven, or the Black Raven, is still a common inn sign. There is one in Bishopsgate yet in existence, of which trades tokens of the seventeenth century are extant; and on the Great Western Road between Murrell Green and Basingstoke, the Raven Inn is still, or was not many years ago, to be seen, in which Jack the painter, alias James Aitken, the man who set fire to Portsmouth Dockyard, Dec. 7, 1776, was taken prisoner. This house was built in 1653, and has preserved much of its original appearance. In 1711 the Raven or the Black Raven was the sign of S. Popping, bookseller in Paternoster Row; and about the same time John Dunton published at the Black Raven, in the Poultry, the earliest printed review of literary works, under the name of “Literature from the North, and News from all Nations.” What the work was worth we may judge from D’Israeli’s description of the man: “a crack-brained, scribbling bookseller, who boasted he had a thousand projects, fancied he had methodised six hundred, and was ruined by the fifty he executed.” Notwithstanding this, his autobiography, under the name of the “Life and Errors of John Dunton,” is one of the most curious works in existence. In Molesworth Street, Dublin, there is a sign of the Three Ravens, which may be called a living sign, for there are always some ravens kept on the premises. The Raven was the badge of the old Scotch kings, and thus may have been adopted as a kind of Jacobite symbol. To this may be attributed its frequency on the signboard as well as some other sable birds. The common occurrence of the Blackbird and the Cock and Blackbird as signs had long puzzled us, till one day turning over some old Scotch ballads we came upon one, which Allan Ramsay gives as a favourite old Scotch song. We shall merely quote the first two stanzas, (there are six in all,)—quite sufficient, as far as the poetry is concerned:—
To which dark-haired prince of the Stuart family the song alludes is not known; but there is a passage in a letter of Sir John Hinton, physician to Charles II., which seems to imply that the black boy was a nickname for Charles II.
“The day before General Monk went into Scotland he dined with me; and after dinner he called me into the next room, and after some discourse, taking a lusty glass of wine, he drank a health to his bonny black boy, (as he called Your Majesty,) and whispered to me, that if ever he had power, he would serve Your Majesty to the utmost of his life.”[283]
What lends strength to the supposition is the occurrence of such a sign as the Crow in the Oak, at Foleshill, Coventry, which seems to have been a covert way of representing the royal oak during the times of the Commonwealth, the disguise continuing after there was no more need of it, similar to the “Cat and Wheel,” and other signs dating from the same period, for no other reason than because the house had become known by them. In the same manner the Oak and Black Dog, (at Stretton on Dunsmoor,) if not a combination of two signs, may have been put up in derision of the Prince in the Royal Oak. The Crow or the Black Crow, is also a common sign; so are the Three Blackbirds;[284] then there is the Chough, at Chard in Sommerset, the Three Choughs at Yeovil; the Three Crows,—all of which belong to the same family, and seem to have the same origin.
On Friday, August 27, 1770, at the Three Crows in Brook Street, Holborn, the coroner sat on the body of Thomas Chatterton, and the ten jurymen returned a verdict of felo de se. One cannot think of this sign and the crowner (as the vulgar still term this officer) sitting on the body of poor Chatterton without calling to mind the ballad of the three corbies; but the poor suicide had no “fallow doe” that
He was interred in the burying ground of Shoelane workhouse; at the present day Farringdon market-place occupies the spot.
The Stork now is of frequent occurrence, although it does not occur among the older English signs. Coryatt thus speaks of these birds:—
“There, [at Fontainebleau] I saw two or three birds that I never saw before; yet I have much read of admirable things of them, in Aelianus the Polyhistor, and other historians, even Storckes, which do much haunt many cities and towns of the Netherlands, especially in the sommer. For in Flushing, a towne of Zeland, I saw some of them, those men esteeming themselves happy in [on] whose houses they harbour, and those most unhappy whom they forsake. It is written of them that when the old one is become so old that it is not able to helpe itselfe, the young one purveyeth foode for it, and sometime carryeth it about on his backe, and if it seeth it so destitute of meate, that it knoweth not where to get any sustenance, it casteth out that which it hath eaten the day before, to the end to feede his damme. This bird is called in Greeke πελαργος where hence cometh the Greeke word αντιπελαργειν which signifieth to imitate the stork in cherishing our parents.”[285]
This fabled virtue of the stork suggested the sign to many Continental booksellers and printers. The Two Storks was the sign of Martin Nutius of Antwerp, 1550, and his son, Philip Nutius. Their colophons, which were varied continually, all represent a young stork feeding an old one, sometimes carrying him on his back, with the motto: “pietas homini . tutissima . virtus.” A similar sign was used, circa 1682, by Franciscus Canisius; and, in 1651, by Joan. Bapt. Verdussen, both of Antwerp. The Parisian booksellers adopted it as well, for we find it on the titlepages of Sebastien Nivelle, and of Sebastien Cramoisy, the king’s printer, of the Rue St Jacques, 1636. He used a Scripture motto with it: “honora patrem tuum et matrem tuam ut sis longaevus super terram, Ecc. XX.” In the Banks’ Collection of Bills there is one of the Stork Hotel at Basle, of the end of the last century. It gives the address in four languages. The English stands thus:—Christophe Imhoff, “a the Seigne off the Storgk at Basel.”
The Three Cranes was formerly a favourite London sign. With the usual jocularity of our forefathers, an opportunity for punning could not be passed, so instead of the three cranes, which in the vintry used to lift the barrels of wine, three birds were represented. The Three Cranes in Thames Street, or in the vicinity, was a famous tavern as early as the reign of James I. It was one of the taverns frequented by the wits in Ben Jonson’s time. In one of his plays he says:—
“A pox o’ these pretenders to wit, your Three Cranes, Mitre and Mermaid men! not a corn of true salt, not a grain of right mustard among them all!”—Bartholomew Fair, a. i. s. 1.
On the 23d of January 16612, Pepys suffered a strong mortification of the flesh in having to dine at this tavern with some poor relations. The sufferings of the snobbish secretary must have been intense:—
“By invitation to my uncle Fenner’s and where I found his new wife, a pitiful, old, ugly, ill-bred woman in a hatt, a midwife. Here were many of his and as many of her relations, sorry mean people; and after choosing our gloves we all went over to the Three Cranes Taverne, and though the best room of the house in such a narrow dogghole we were crammed, and I believe we were near 40, that it made me loath my company and victuals and a very poor dinner it was too.”
Opposite this tavern people generally left their boats to shoot the bridge, walking round to Billingsgate, where they would re-enter them.
The Cock occurs almost as frequently on the signboard as alive at the head of his family in the farm yard. It is one of the oldest signs, already in use at the time of the Romans, who record that one Eros, a freeman of Licius, Africanus Cerealis, kept an inn at Narbonne at the sign of the Cock—“a gallo gallinaceo.” In Christian times the sign acquired a new prestige. The cock is thus mentioned in “The Armory of Byrdes:”—[286]
This bird, in the legends of the middle ages, was surrounded with a mystical, religious halo:—
“It was about the time of cock-crowing when our Saviour was born,—the circumstance of the time of cock-crowing being so natural a figure and representation of the Morning of the Resurrection; the Night as shadowing out the night of the Grave; the third Watch being as some suppose the time our Saviour will come to judgment at; the noise of the cock awakening sleepy man and telling him as it were the night is far spent, and the day is at hand, representing so naturally the voice of the Archangel awakening the dead and calling up the righteous to everlasting day; so naturally does the time of cock-crowing shadow out these things, that probably, some good, well meaning men might have been brought to believe that the very devils themselves when the cock crew and reminded them of them did fear and tremble and shun the light.”[287]
Ideas such as these continued a long time in the popular mind, for Aubrey tells us that in his younger days people “had some pious ejaculation too when the cock did crow, which put them in mind of ye Trumpet at ye Resurrection.”[288]
One of the oldest Cock taverns in London is the Cock in Tothill Street, Westminster, lately re-christened as the Cock and Tabard. An ancient coat of arms, carved in stone, England quartered with France, discovered in this house, is now walled up in the front of the building. In the back parlour is a jolly, bluff-looking man in a red coat, said to represent the driver of the first mail to Oxford, which started from this tavern. Tradition says that the workmen employed at the building of Westminster Abbey, in the reign of Henry VII., used to receive their wages at this house. It was formerly entered by steps; the building now exhibiting traces of great antiquity, and appears at one time to have been a house of considerable pretensions. The rafters and timber are principally of cedar wood. There is a curious hiding-place on the staircase, and a massive carving of Abraham about to offer his son Isaac; and another, in wood, representing the Adoration of the Magi, said to have been left in pledge, at some remote period, for an unpaid score. The cock may have been adopted as a sign here on account of the vicinity of the Abbey, of which St Peter was the patron, for in the middle ages a cock crowing on the top of a pillar was often one of the accessories in a picture of the apostle. This certainly was a very unkind allusion for the poor saint, particularly when accompanied with such a sneering rhyme as that under the sign of the Red Cock in Amsterdam in 1682. On the one side was written:—
On the reverse:—
The Cock in Bow Street witnessed a disgraceful scene in the reign of Charles II.:—
“Sackville, who was then Lord Buckhurst, with Sir Charles Sedley and Sir Thomas Ogle, got drunk at the Cock, in Bow Street, by Covent Garden, and going into the balcony, exposed themselves to the public, in very indecent postures. At last, as they grew warmer, Sedley stood forth naked, and harangued the populace in such profane language, that the public indignation was awakened. The crowd attempted to force the door, and being repulsed, drove in the performers with stones, and broke the windows of the house. For this demeanour they were indicted, and Sedley was fined £500. What was the sentence of the others is not known. Sedley employed Killigrew and another to procure a remission of the king, but (mark the friendship of the dissolute!) they begged the fine for themselves and exacted it to the last groat.”[290]
It was on his way home from supper at this house, December 21, 1670, that Sir John Coventry was attacked by several men, and had his nose cut to the bone. Sir John had remonstrated in the House of Commons against the improper distribution of public money, and proposed to lay a tax on the theatres; this was opposed by the Court, the players being “the king’s servants and a part of his pleasure;” upon which Sir John asked “whether the king’s pleasure lay among the men or among the women that acted?” The assault was committed by Simon Parry, Miles Reeves, O’Brian, and Sir Thomas Sandys, instigated by the Duke of Monmouth.
Pepys much praises the Cock in Suffolk Street:—
“15th March 1669.—Mr Hewes and I did walke to the Cocke, at the end of Suffolke Street, where I never was, a great ordinary mightily cried up, and there bespoke a pullet, which, while dressing, he and I walked into St James’s Park, and thence back and dined very handsome with a good soup and a pullet for 4s. 6d. the whole.”
This first visit evidently had given great satisfaction, for, three weeks after, he took Mrs P. and some friends there, and was, as usual, “mighty merry, this house being famous for good meat, and particularly pease porridge.”
At the same period there was another celebrated Cock Tavern in Fleet Street, near Temple Bar, properly called the Cock and Bottle, a sign still of daily occurrence, which seems to be a figurative rendering of liquor on draught and in bottle, cock being an old English, and still provincial word for the spigot or tap in a barrel.[291] The sign is, however, generally represented by a cock standing on a bottle. The present sign of the house, still conspicuous in gilt over the door, is said to have been carved by no less a hand than Grinling Gibbons. During the plague time of 1665, the following advertisement appeared in the Intelligencer:—
“THIS is to certify that the Master of the Cock and Bottle, commonly called the Cock alehouse, at Temple Bar, hath dismissed his servants and shut up his house for this long vacation, intending (God willing) to return at Michaelmass next so that all persons who have any accounts or farthings belonging to the said house are desired to repair thither before the 8th of this instant July and they shall receive satisfaction.”
Certainly those were dull times, and well might that fashionable establishment close for the “long vacation,” for the plague was then coming to its highest pitch; all the gallant customers had fled town, and according to Defoe’s computation, “not less than 10,000 houses were forsaken of the inhabitants in the city and suburbs:”—
“There was not so much velvet stirring as would have bene a cover to a little booke in octavo, or seamde a Lieftenant’s Buff-doublet; a French hood would have been more wondered at in London, than the Polonyans with their long-tayld Gaberdynes; and, which was most lamentable, there was never a Gilt spur to be seene all the Strand over, never a feather wagging in all Fleet Streete, vnlesse some country Fore-horse came by, by meere chaunce with a Raine-beaten Feather in his costrill; the streete looking for all the world like a Sunday morning at six o’Clocke, three hours before service, and the Bells ringing all about London, as if the Coronation day had beene a half a yeare long.”[292]
But there was a good time coming after the plague and fire, when troops of gay courtiers might quaff their wine and sparkling ale, as happy as the “merry monarch” himself. Amongst them, our friend Pepys, who informs us, that on the 23d of April 1668, he went “by water to the Temple, and then to the Cock alehouse, and drank and eat a lobster, and sang, and mighty merry. So almost night, I carried Mrs Pierce home, and then Knipp and I to the Temple again and took boat, it being darkish, and to Foxhall, it being now night, and a bonfire burning at Lambeth for the king’s coronation day.”
Exactly one hundred years later, the Cock is named with encomiums on its porter, in the “Art of Living in London;” but it is to be hoped the porter was better than the poetry:—
In William Waterproof’s Monologue, the fame of a waiter of this tavern is handed down to posterity in the harmonious verses of the Poet Laureate.
Jackson the pugilist, who has a pompous epitaph on his grave in the Brompton burial-ground, kept for some time the Cock alehouse, Sutton, on the Epsom Road; but being patronised by the Prince of Wales and a great many of the leading members of the “nobility and gentry,” he was in a very short time enabled to retire with a £10,000 fortune. Finally, some twenty years ago, there was a Cock and Bottle public-house in Bristol kept by a man named John England, who added to his sign the well known words:—
The sign of the Three Cocks occurs in the following advertisement:—
“ALL persons that have any Household Goods, Plate, Rings, Watches, Jewels, Wearing Apparel, etc., in the hands of Thomas Bastin, at the Three Cocks in St John’s Lane, Pawnbroker, which were pledged to him before the 25th of December 1709, are desired to fetch them away by the 25th of March next, or they will be disposed off.”—London Gazette, Jan. 18-21, 1711.
From this and innumerable other similar advertisements, it appears that pawnbrokers in those days did not always rigorously adhere to the Three Balls; that is to say, they were occasionally goldsmiths, and in that capacity used any sign.
It is rarely that the sign of the Cock designates any particular colour. There is a Black Cock in Owen Street, Tipton; a cock of this colour was always considered something more than an ordinary bird; with the Greeks it was a grateful sacrifice to Esculapius and Pluto, and in the middle ages it played a prominent part in matters of witchcraft. The Blue Cock is a sign at Leicester; but neither colour is common. At Hargrave, near Bury St Edmunds, there is a Cock’s Head, put up either in imitation of a nag’s,—bull’s,—bear’s,—or boar’s head, or as the crest of a fool’s cap, which, in old times, usually terminated with a cock’s head.
Though some sort of religious prestige may at first have prompted the choice of the cock, more profane ideas latterly contributed to make it popular, such as the pastimes of cock-throwing, or “shying,” and cock-fighting. To this first practice alludes the sign of William Brandon, on Dowgate Hill, which was called, Have at it; his token representing a man about to throw a stick at a cock. This cruel game was very common in alehouses in former times; the whole sport consisting in throwing a stick at an unfortunate cock tied to a stake; if the animal was killed it was the thrower’s property; if not, he forfeited the small sum paid for each “shy.” What a slaughter of cocks was carried on in this way may be judged from the following:—
“Last Tuesday a Brewer’s servant in Southwark took his walk round Towerhill, Moorfield, and Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and knocked down so many cocks that by selling them again, he returned home twenty shillings odd pence richer man than he came out.”[294]
Medals are extant of the reign of William III., on which John Bull is represented throwing sticks at the French cock: not a very lofty allegory, it must be confessed; but in those days the public taste was not very refined; thus, after the victory of Blenheim, the simile was in equal bad taste, the same idea being expressed by a huge lion tearing an unfortunate cock in pieces.
Cock-fighting was a favourite diversion with the Romans, and we find continual traces of it during their occupation here. Fitz-Stephen says, it was the sport of schoolboys in his time; but as they grew up it seems the taste adhered to them. That sturdy bluebeard-king, Henry VIII., though always ready to chop off the heads of his subjects, felt his heart melt at the miseries of the cocks, and made edicts against cock-fights, yet with the inconsistency that marked his other tastes built a cock-pit unto himself at Whitehall. James I., also, was a great amateur. Though habitually suppressed by various sovereigns, the evil would always break out again, till it was finally abolished by an Act of Parliament in the 12 & 13 Queen Victoria. In Staffordshire, and other counties where this sport is still practised “on the sly,” the Fighting Cocks is a favourite sign.
The cock occurs in innumerable combinations with all kinds of heterogeneous objects, many of which seem merely selected for their oddity: among the most explicable is the Cock and Bottle, of which we have offered a solution, (p. 207) and which again occurs in the following title:—
“Just Published,
“A full account of the Life and Visions of Nicholas Hart who has every year in his Life past, on the 5th of August, fall’n into a Deep Sleep and cannot be awaked till 5 Days and Nights are expired, and then gives a surprising Relation of what he hath seen in the other World. Taken from[211] his own mouth in September last; after he had slept 5 days in St Bartholomew’s Hospital, the August before. By William Hill, of Lincoln’s Inn. The Truth of all which the said Nicholas Hart hath attested under his Hand, the 3d Day of August 1711, before several credible Witnesses, and declared his Readiness to take oath of the same. He began to sleepe as usual the 5th Day of this instant August 1711 at Mr Dixies at the Cock and Bottle in Little Britain. Entered according to Law. Printed for J. Baker, at the Black Boy, in Paternoster Row, price 2d.”[295]
This same book, under the title of “Life and Visions of William Hart, in which are particularly described the state of the Blessed Spirits in the Heavenly Canaan, and also a Description of the Condition of the Damned in a State of Punishment, etc., by Will. Hill, senior of Lincoln’s Inn, London,” is still sold as a chapbook by the “running stationers.” The Spectator did not believe in Nicholas Hart, and introduced the subject to the public with his usual humour in No. 191. Hart seems to have tested the truth of the proverb which says, that fortune comes whilst we are sleeping, for he certainly made more by sleeping than many others by waking. Stow tells a similar story of one William Foxley, potmaker to the mint, who slept full fourteen days and fifteen nights, and when he woke up “was in all points found as if he had slept but one night.”
The Cock and Trumpet is a common sign, typifying those ideas about the cock expressed on p. 205. This simile is constantly used by the poets; and most beautifully enlarged upon by Shakespeare:—
The Cock and Bell, if not a simple combination of two signs, may be derived from a custom formerly practised in some parts of England, for boys to have cock-fights on Shrove Tuesday; the party whose cock won the most battles, was held victorious in the cock-pit, and gained the prize—a small silver bell suspended to the button of the victor’s hat, and worn for three successive Sundays. It is an old sign, and occurs on a Birchin Lane trades token between 1648 and 1672.
The Cock and Breeches originated in a favourite form of gilt gingerbread at Bartholomew Fair, although the very objectionable anecdote of Joe Miller concerning such a sign is generally believed to have had something to do with its origin.
The Cock and Bull is still frequently seen, but though the meaning of the phrase is well understood, neither its origin, nor the meaning of the two animals on the signboard, have as yet been properly explained. As we have no sound theory to offer, we shall abstain from entering on the subject, for fear of giving an illustration of what a cock-and-bull story is, rather than clearing up the mystery of the signboard. It occurs amongst the seventeenth century trades tokens.
The Cock and Dolphin was the sign of one of the London carriers’ inns:—
“James Nevil’s Coach to Hampstead comes to the Cock and Dolphin in Gray’s Inn Lane, in and out every day.”—De Laune’s Present State of London, 1681.
Hatton, in 1708, placed this inn “on the east side of Gray’s Inn Lane, near the middle.” At the present day it is a public-house sign in Kendal, Westmoreland. It is more likely to be a combination of two signs, than to refer to the French Cock and the Dolphin in the arms of the Dauphin. The same applies to the Cock and Anchor in Gateshead and Dublin; the Cock and Swan, and the Cock and Crown, both in Wakefield; and the Cock and Bear at Nuneaton; whilst the Cock and House in Norwich may originally have been the cocking-house of the district,—that is, the house where cock-fights were held.
Fully as general as the sign of the Cock is that of the Swan; the reason why, is perhaps truly, though coarsely, expressed under an old Dutch signboard:—
Not only is there a conformity of æsthetic symbolism in various parts of Europe, observable in the constant recurrence of the same objects on signboards, but even the same jokes are found. Thus the Swan at Bandon, near Cork, has the following rhymes, nearly akin to the Dutch epigram above, but strongly flavoured with Hibernian wit:—
Another Milesian at Mallow, also near Cork, has it thus modified:—
In London it was always a favourite sign by the river side:—
“‘I find the Swan to be your usual sign by the River,’ said I. ‘Why, yes,’ replied George. ‘I don’t know what a Coach or a Waggon and Horses or the High-mettled Racer have to do with our River.’ ‘Pray, now,’ said I to my oracle, ‘do enumerate the signs of the Swan remaining [this was in 1829] on the Banks of the River, between London and Battersea Bridges.’ ‘Why, let me see, Master, there’s the Old Swan at London Bridge, that’s one—there’s the Swan in Arundel Street, two,—then ours here, (Hungerford Stairs,) three,—the Swan at Lambeth; that’s down though. Well, then the Old Swan at Chelsea, but that has long been turned into a Brewhouse, though that was where our people [the Watermen] rowed to formerly, as mentioned in Doggett’s will; now they row to the sign of the New Swan, beyond the Physick Garden; we’ll say that’s four, then there’s the two Swan signs at Battersea, six.’”[298]
The Swan, by London Bridge, was a very ancient house, and gave a name to the Swan stairs. Trades tokens of this house are extant, representing a Swan walking on Old London Bridge, with the date 1657. This feat was performed by the Swan on the token, to intimate that it was the Swan above the Bridge in contradistinction to another tavern known as the Swan below the Bridge. Pepys once dined at this house; and though always very ready to be pleased, he has not much good to say about it. “27 June, 1660. Dined with my Lord and all the officers of his regiment, who invited my Lord and his friends, as many as he would bring to dinner, at the Swan at Dowgate, a poor house and ill dressed, but very good fish and plenty.” The landlady of this tavern is mentioned in a curious manner in a tract printed in 1712, entitled “The Quack Vintners:”—
Previous to 1598 there was a Swan Theatre on the Bankside, near the Globe; so named from “a house and tenement called the Swan,” mentioned in a charter of Edward VI., granting the manor of Southwark to the City of London. It fell into decay in the reign of James I., was closed in 1613, and subsequently only used for gladiatorial exhibitions. Yet, in its time, it had been well frequented, for a cotemporary author says—“it was the Continent of the world, because half the year a world of beauties and brave spirits resorted to it.” One of the oldest Swan signs on record is that of the old printer, Wynkyn de Worde, assistant, and finally successor to Caxton, who, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, issued some works “emprynted at the signe of the Swane in Fletestrete.”
From an anecdote preserved by Aubrey, iii. 415, it appears that Ben Jonson did not always “go to the Devil,” but was also in the habit of having his cup of sack at a Swan tavern near Charing Cross:—
“The king was mighty inquisitive to know who this Ralph was. Ben told him ’twas the drawer at the Swanne Taverne by Charing-crosse, who drew him good canarie. For this drollerie, his Matie gave him an hundred poundes.”
Tokens of this house of the plague year are extant, representing a Swan with a sprig in its mouth, and the inscription, “Marke Rider at the Swan against the Mewes,[299] 1665. His Halfe Penny.”
The Swan at Knightsbridge had a reputation which we should call “fast.” It was well known to young gallants, and was the terror of all such jealous husbands and fathers as the Sir David Dunce who figures in Otway’s “Soldier of Fortune,” 1681:—
“I have surely lost and never shall find her more. She promised me strictly to stay at home till I came back again; for ought I know, she may be up three pairs of stairs in the Temple now, or it may be taking the air as far as Knightsbridge with some smoothfaced rogue or another; ’tis a damned house that Swan; that Swan at Knightsbridge is a confounded house!”
Tom Brown also alludes to it; Peter Pindar (Dr Woolcot) commemorates a vestry dinner there:—
The old house was pulled down in 1788, and its name transferred to a public-house in Sloane Street, which, with three other houses, occupies the site of the old Swan.
The Swan tavern in Exchange Alley, Cornhill, was well known among the musical world in the last century. In this house, some celebrated concerts were given, at a time when there were no proper concert-rooms; they commenced in 1728, under the management of one Barton, formerly a dancing-master, and continued for twelve years, when the place was burnt down; at the rebuilding, it was christened the King’s Head.
In 1825, the landlord of the Swan tavern at Stratford, near London, recommended the charms of his place in the following poetical strain:—
The Black Swan, though formerly considered a rara avis in terris, may now be seen in every town and village, swinging at the door of mine host, the picture painted just as fancy may have suggested, long before the actual bird was brought over from Australia. At the Black Swan tavern in Tower Street, the Earl Rochester, when banished from the Court, took lodgings under the name of Alexander Bendo, his profession that of an Italian quack, and there he had those comical adventures with the waiting-maids of the Court. Hamilton says in his “Memoires de Grammont,” that the adventures Rochester had in this disguise are by far the most amusing given in his works. Another Black Swan alehouse is named in a broadside of 1704:—
“A most strange but true account of a very large sea monster that was found last Saturday in a common-shore in New Fleet Street in Spittlefields, where at the Black Swan alehouse thousands of people resort to see it,” &c.
This dreadful monster was simply “a dead Porpoise of a very large size, it being above Four Foot in length, and Three Foot about,” and the fact of it “leaving the deep to rove up into Fresh Water Rivers, and more especially to crawl up so far a common-shore,” prognosticated, it was thought, some dire calamities, which are told in not very parliamentary language.
The Swan with Two Necks is another lusus naturæ observable on the signboard, said to owe its origin to the corruption of the word nick into neck.[300] This explanation, however ingenious, is somewhat “sujet à caution,” for this reason: it is a well-known and established fact that the London signs of old had no inscriptions under them. Now, considering the small size of the nicks in question, they would scarcely have been perceptible at the height on which the sign was generally suspended, and even if visible, would never have been sufficiently noticed or understood to give a name to the sign. We shall not venture to propose another solution, as nothing of a sufficiently distinct character occurs to us: but it is just possible that a sign of two swans represented swimming side by side may have given rise to the “Swan with two necks,” or that the symbol of two birds’ necks encircled by a coronet which was used by a foreign publisher—taken, it has been conjectured, by him from the arms of some trade company—may have been the origin.
Machyn, in his “Diary,” mentions the sign of “the Swane with the ij nekes at Mylke Street end,” in 1556, when on the 5th of August, a woman living next door to that sign drowned herself in Moorfields.
In 1636, the Two Necked Swan was already to be seen in Berkshire, at the town of Lamburne, where Taylor the water poet names it as the sign of a tavern. In later years it was a famous carriers’ inn in Lad Lane, Cheapside, whence, for more than a century and a half, passengers and goods were despatched to the North. To this inn the following couplet alludes:—