Notwithstanding the “double bill” suggested by the two heads, it still continues a favourite inn sign. Four is rather an unusual number on the signboard, but we have this quadruple alliance in one solitary instance, the Four Swans, Bishopsgate, which is internally one of the best remaining examples of those famous galleried inns of old London.

The Swan and Bottle, Uxbridge, is a variation of the Cock and Bottle; the Swan and Rummer was a coffee-house near the Exchange, during the South Sea bubble—the Rummer, a common addition, being simply joined to the Swan, to intimate that wine was sold; the Swan and Salmon are combined on many signs, doubtless in honour of the two ornaments of our English rivers. The very name is sufficient to call up a pleasant picture.

The Swan and Hoop, Moorfields, was the birthplace of Keats the poet. The Swan on the Hoop, “on the way called old Fysshe Strete,” is mentioned as early as 1413.[301] The same combination may still be seen on London signboards.

With regard to the Swan and Sugarloaf, which occurs amongst the trades tokens, and is still seen, (as in Fetter Lane, for instance,) the sugarloaf was at first added by a grocer, whose sign having gained popularity as a noted landmark, or from other causes, was imitated by rivals or juniors, particularly on account of its presenting the favourite alliteration. Combinations with the sugarloaf are very common, all arising from its being the grocer’s sign: thus the Three Crowns and Sugarloaf, Kidderminster; Wheatsheaf and Sugarloaf, Ratcliff Highway, seventeenth century, (trades token;) Tobacco Roll and Sugarloaf, Gray’s Inn Gate, Holborn;[302] the Three Coffins and Sugarloaf, Fleet Street, 1720.

In the sign of the Swan and Rushes, at Leicester, the rushes were merely a pictorial accessory, placed in the background to bring out the white plumage of the Swan, whilst the Swan and Helmet, at Northampton, no doubt originated from a helmet with a Swan for crest.

In one instance, a Drake occurs as a sign, namely, on the token of Will. Johnson, at “ye Drake in Bell Yard,” near Temple Bar, 1667. The Duck is only to be seen in company with the Dog; in one instance it accompanies a Mallard. This last animal was otherwise well known to the Londoners, since in 1520, amongst “the articles of good gouernãce of the cite of London,” it was recommended to magistrates—“also ye shall enquyre, yf ony person kepe or norrysh hoggis, oxen, kyen, or mallardis within the ward in noying of ther neyhbours.”[303] The Duck and Mallard was the sign of a lock (and probably gun-) smith in East Smithfield in 1673.[304]

The Pigeon was a tavern at Charing Cross in 1675.[305] The Three Pigeons were very common; there still exists an inn of this name at Brentford:—

“It is a house of interest as being in all likelihood one of the few haunts of Shakespeare now remaining; as being indeed the sole Elizabethan tavern existing in England, which in the absence of direct evidence, may fairly be presumed to have been occasionally visited by him.”[306]

It was kept at one time by Lowin, one of the original actors in Shakespeare’s plays, and is often named by the old dramatists:

“Thou art admirably suited for the Three Pigeons at Brentford. I swear I know thee not.”—The Roaring Girl.

There, also, George Peel played some of his merry pranks. In the parlour is an old painting dated 1704, representing a landlord attending to some customers seated at a table in the open air, with these lines:—

Bat Pidgeon, the famous hairdresser, immortalised by the Spectator, lived at the sign of the Three Pigeons, “in the corner house of St Clement’s Churchyard, next to the Strand.” There he remained as late as 1740, when he cut the “boyish locks” of Pennant.

In 1663 it was the sign of a bookseller in St Paul’s Churchyard,[307] and in 1698 of John Newton, also a bookseller over against Inner Temple Gate, Fleet Street.

The Dove was the sign of a coffeehouse on the riverside, between the two malls at Fulham. “In a room in this house, Thomson wrote part of his ‘Winter.’ He was in the habit of frequenting the house during the winter season, when the Thames was frozen and the surrounding country covered with snow. This fact is well authenticated, and many persons visit the house to the present day.”[308] The Stockdove is a sign at Romiley, Stockport; the Dovecote is a public-house at Laxton, Carlton-on-Trent, probably on account of the pigeons constantly flying out and in; and there is a Pigeon Box at Prior’s Lee, near Shiffnall. The pigeon-shooting matches may have something to do with the selection of this sign.

The Falcon was another of the devices used by Wynkyn de Worde over his shop in Fleet Street. Falcon Court, in that locality, perhaps derives its name from this house. Subsequently, Gordobuc, the earliest English tragedy, was “imprynted at London, in Flete Strete, at the sign of the Faucon,” no doubt Wynkyn’s house, by William Griffiths in 1565; and in 1612, Peacham’s “Garden of Heroical Devises” was published by Wa. Dight at the sign of the Falcon in Shoe Lane. These booksellers, perhaps, borrowed their device from the stationers’ arms, which are, argent on a chevron between three bibles, or, a falcon volant between two roses, the Holy Ghost in chief; it was also a badge of some of the kings. At the Falcon inn, Stratford-on-Avon, there is still a shovelboard on which William Shakespeare is said often to have played. Another Falcon Tavern connected with Shakespeare’s name used to stand on the Bankside, where he and his companions occasionally refreshed themselves after the fatigues of the performances at the Globe. It long continued celebrated as a coaching inn for all parts of Kent, Surrey, and Sussex, till it was taken down in 1808. The name is still preserved in the Falcon Glass-house, which stands opposite its site, and in the Falcon Stairs. There was another Falcon Inn in Fleet Street, bequeathed to the company of cordwainers, by a gentleman named Fisher, under the obligation that they were yearly to have a sermon preached in the Church of St Dunstan, in the West, on the 10th of July. Formerly, on that day, sack and posset used to be drunk by those concerned, in the vestry of the church, if not to the health, at least to the “pious memory” of this Fisher; but that good custom has long since been abandoned.

The Falcon on the Hoop is named in 1443. “In the xxj yer of Kyng Harry the vj^te,” the brotherhood of the Holy Trinity received “for the rent of ij yere of Wyllym Wylkyns for the Sarrecyn Head v li. vj s. viij d., paynge by the yer liij s. iiij d. and of the Faucon on the Hope, for the same ij yer vi li., that is to say paynge by the yer iij li.” Rent, it must be confessed, seems small, and landlords exceedingly accommodating in those days. Six days before that period, there is an entry in the church-wardens’ accounts for “kervyng and peinting of the seigne of the Faucon vj sh.”[309] This mention of the sign clearly shows that it was not a picture, but a carved and coloured falcon, suspended in a hoop, whence the name of the sign.

The Magpie being a bird of good omen, was, on that account, very often chosen; with this another reason concurred, namely, the sign of the eatable pie falling into disuse, it was transformed into the Magpie, (see Cock and Pie;) and this transition was so much the easier as the original name of the magpie was pie, (Latin pica, French pie,) and only subsequently for its knowing antics, did it receive the nickname of maggoty[310] pie, which gradually was abbreviated into Magpie. The full form of the epithet is preserved in the nursery rhyme:—

The Maggoty Pie was an inn in the Strand during the reign of James I.: it is alluded to in Shirley’s Comedy of “The Ball,” a. i. sc. 1, where Freshwater, the Italianised Englishman, says:—

“I do ly at the signe of Dona Margaretta de Pia in the Strand.”

which his man Gudgin explains to mean, “the Maggety Pie in the Strand, sir.”

As late as 1654, we find the name “maggoty pie” used in “Mercurius Fumigosus, or the Smoking Nocturnal,” July 26 to August 3, where the Welshman’s arms are described as a fly, a maggoty pie, &c.[311] The Magpie and Stump represents the magpie sitting on the stump of a tree; it was the sign of one of the Whig pothouses in the Old Bailey during the riots of 1715. There is still an old house with such a sign in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. The Magpie and Pewter Platter, in Wood Street, originated from a magpie standing by a dish and picking out of it. The Magpie and Crown, says the author of “Tavern Anecdotes,” (1825,) is a ridiculous association; but when once joined is not to be separated without injury to the concern, as it happened in the case of a Mr Renton, who was originally waiter at a house of this name in Aldgate, famous for its ale, which was sent out in great quantities. The landlord becoming rich, pride followed, and he thought of giving wing to the Magpie, retaining only the royal attribute of the crown. The ale went out for a short time, as usual, but it was not from the Magpie and Crown, and the customers fancied it was not so good as usual; consequently the business fell off. The landlord died, and Renton purchased the concern, caught the Magpie, and restored it to its ancient situation; the ale improved in the opinion of the public, and its consumption increased so much, that Renton, at his death, left behind him property amounting to £600,000, chiefly the profits of the Magpie and Crown ale. This danger of altering a sign is also illustrated by another example. When Joseph II., emperor of Germany, was at Maestricht, in the Netherlands, he stayed at the Gray Ass Inn, (L’Ane Gris,) in honour of which imperial visit the landlord discarded his humble quadruped sign, and put up the Emperor’s Head. The customers seeing the Old Gray Ass gone, thought the business had fallen into other hands, and so went to various inns in the neighbourhood, and particularly to a New Gray Ass, which had just then opened in the same street. The landlord seeing his business falling off, through the change of his sign, yet unwilling to part with his Emperor’s head, after long thinking and pondering, at last hit upon a clever compromise: he kept up the portrait of the Emperor, but wrote under it, “At the Original Gray Ass, (au veritable Ane Gris.)”

The Parrot, or Popinjay, is an old sign now almost out of fashion, the Green Parrot, Swinegate, Leeds, being one of the few remaining. Andrew Maunsell, a bookseller and printer, resided at the Parrot in St Paul’s Churchyard in 1570, and continued to trade under this sign till 1600. Taylor, the water poet, mentions the Popinjay at Ewell, in 1636. It was a very appropriate sign for quacks, and one of these, at all events, had candour enough to adopt it. His handbill begins in a grandiloquent style:—

“Noble or Ignoble, you may be foretold anything that may happen to your Elementary Life: as at what time you may expect prosperity; or if in Adversity the End thereof, or when you may be so happy as to enjoy the Thing desired. Also young Men may foresee their Fortunes as in a Glass, and pretty Maids their Husbands in this Noble, yea, Heavenlie art of Astrologie. At the sign of the Parrot opposite to Ludgate Church within Blackfriars’ Gateway.”[312]

The Parrot and Cage, in St Martin’s Lane, Strand, advertised in 1711 as a “just and substantial office of insurance” on marriages, births, &c. This office, apparently, had chambers in some bird-fancier’s house, at all events to that class of the community the sign belonged more exclusively. In 1787, there was one near the monument, the sign of a cagemaker who sold “likewise parrots and other forring birds.”

The Peacock, in ancient times, was possessed of a mystic character. The fabled incorruptibility of its flesh led to its typifying the Resurrection; and from this incorruptibility, doubtless, originated the first idea of swearing “by the Peacock,” an oath that was to be inviolably kept. Its first introduction on the signboard is lost in the unrecorded wastes of time; but the oath was a common one in early times, especially on occasions of military adventures. Near the Angel in Clerkenwell, there is the Peacock public-house, which bears the date 1564. This was formerly a great house of call for the mail and other coaches travelling on the Great North Road, much the same as the Elephant and Castle was for the southern counties. The Peacock and Feathers was a sign in Cornhill in 1711.

The Ostrich seems more common at present than in ancient times. There is one on a stone-carved sign in Bread Street, probably the sign of a feather shop. Generally, the ostrich is represented with a horseshoe in his mouth, in allusion to its digestive powers; for this reason Cade says to Iden:—

“I’ll make thee eat iron like an ostrich, and swallow my sword like a great pin.”—Henry VI., 2d Part, a. iv. sc. 10.

The landlord of an alehouse at Calverley, near Leeds, has put his premises under the protection of Minerva’s bird, the Owl. At St Helens, Lancashire, there is a still more curious sign, viz., the Owl’s Nest, or the Owl in the Ivy Bush. A bush or tod of ivy was formerly supposed to be a favourite place for the owl to make its nest in. The old dramatists abound in allusions to this:

In a masque of Shirley’s, entitled “The Triumph of Peace,” 1633, one of the scenes represented a wild, woody landscape, “a place fit for purse-taking,” where, “in the furthest part was seene an ivy-bush, out of which came an owle.” Opinion, one of the dramatis personæ, informed the public, that this scene was intended for “a wood, a broad-faced owl, an ivy-bush, and other birds beside her.”[314]

In districts where Grouse and Moorcock are found, these birds frequently court the patronage of the thirsty sportsman at the village alehouse door. One publican, at Upper Haslam, Sheffield, invites at once the follower of Nimrod and of Walton: his sign is the Grouse and Trout.

The last bird-sign which remains to be noticed, is unquestionably the most puzzling of all. It occurs on an old trades token of Cornhill, and is there called “The Live Vulture.” That the man should have kept a live vulture at his door seems very improbable. The only explanation which occurs to us, is the possibility that, at some period or other, a live vulture had been exhibited at this house, and that from this event its name was derived.[315]

A curious instance of a tradesman exhibiting a living bird as an attraction to his house, is supplied us in a recent letter of a Paris correspondent, which gives at the same time an amusing anecdote of the well-known Alexandre Dumas. The writer, speaking of a magnificent new café which had recently been completed, says:—

“Writing of this newly started restaurant naturally recals the fact of the disappearance of the historic pavilion of Henry IV. at St Germain-en-Laye, kept for many years by the Duchess of Berry’s maître d’hôtel, Collinet. He was the pupil of Carême, and learnt to make sauces from Richout, saucemaker to the last of the Condés, and pastry from Heliot, “Ecuyer ordinaire de la bouche de Madame la Dauphine,” a title I have vainly searched for in the list of the queen’s household. The result of this combination of culinary instructions was that his “Bifsteaks à la Bearnaise,” and his woodcock pies, attracted not only all the fashionable world, but a brilliant galaxy of literary celebrities to the “Pavilion Henry IV.” Alexandre Dumas’s château of Monte Christo was close to St Germain. He sent daily for his cutlets to Collinet, who let his bill run on till it amounted to 25,000f. (£1000), in payment of which the distinguished chef received an autograph letter from the great novelist, accompanied by a live eagle. Alexandre Dumas expressed his regret at not being able to pay the bill, but suggested his exhibiting the eagle and the letter, which exhibition would inevitably attract crowds to his hotel, and there I myself have seen the eagle and read the letter.”

CHAPTER VI.
FISHES AND INSECTS.

The Mermaid, as a sign, must have had great attractions for our forefathers. Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and other dramatists, notice this taste for strange fishes. The ancient chronicles teem with captures of mermen, mermaids, and similar creatures. Old Hollinshed gives a detailed account of a merman caught at Orford, in Suffolk, in the reign of King John. He was kept alive on raw meal and fish for six months, but at last “fledde secretelye to the sea, and was neuer after seene nor heard off.” Another chronicler says, “About this time [1202] fishes of strange shapes were taken, armed with helmets and shields like armed men, only they were much bigger.” And Gervase of Tilbury roundly asserts that mermen and mermaids live in the British Ocean. Even in more modern times, every now and then a mermaid (the mermen seem to have been more scarce) made her appearance. In an advertisement at the beginning of the seventeenth century, we find:—

“IN Bell Yard, on Ludgate Hill, is to be seen, at any hour of the day, a living Mermaid, from the waist upwards of a party colour, from thence downwards is very strange and wonderful.

Mulier formosa superne
Desinit in piscem.”

After which follows a most promising and tempting little bit of information in French:—“Son corps est de divers couleurs avec beaucoup d’autres curiosités qu’on ne peut exprimer.” Again, in 1747:—

“We hear from the north of Scotland, that some time this month a sea creature, known by the name of Mermaid, which has the shape of a human body from the trunk upwards, but below is wholly fish, was carried some miles up the water of Devron.”[316]

In 1824, a mermaid or merman (for the sex was discreetly left in dubio) made its appearance before “an enlightened public,” when, as the papers inform us, “upwards of 150 distinguished fashionables” went to see it. At Bartholomew Fair, in 1830, a stuffed mermaid was exhibited; but if once she had been such a “mulier formosa” as captivated the ancient mariners, she was certainly much altered.[317] A very different specimen had been exhibited in Fleet Street in 1822; but she disappeared all at once most mysteriously, not, however, without a rumour of her being under the protection of the Lord Chancellor, which, as she was a comely maiden with flaxen hair, “mulier superne et inferne,” lies within the range of possibilities. The sea-serpent has now almost done away with the mermaid; yet, as late as 1857, there appeared an article in the Shipping Gazette, under the intelligence of 4th June, signed by some Scotch sailors, and describing an object seen off the North British coast, “in the shape of a woman, with full breast, dark complexion, comely face,” and the rest.

At one time it appears to have been a very common sign, if we may judge from the way in which it is mentioned by Brathwait in his New Cast of Characters, (1631):—

“If she [the hostess] aspire to the conceit of a sine and device, her birch pole pull’d downe, he will supply her with one, which he performes so poorely as none that sees it, but would take it for a sign he was drunk when he made it. A long consultation is had before they can agree what sign must be reared. ‘A meere-mayde’ says she, ‘for she will sing catches to the youths of the parish.’ ‘A lyon,’ says he, for that is the onely sign he can make; and this he formes so artlessly, as it requires his expression, this is a lyon. Which old Ellenor Rumming, his tapdame, denies, saying it should have been a meere-mayde.”

Among the most celebrated of the Mermaid taverns in London, that in Bread Street stands foremost. As early as the fifteenth century, it was one of the haunts of the pleasure-seeking Sir John Howard, whose trusty steward records, anno 1464:—“Paid for wyn at the Mermayd in Bred Stret, for my mastyr and Syr Nicholas Latimer, x d. ob.” In 1603, Sir Walter Raleigh established a literary club in this house, doubtless the first in England. Amongst its members were Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Selden, Carew, Martin, Donne, Cotton, &c. It is frequently alluded to by Beaumont and Fletcher in their comedies, but best known is that quotation from a letter of Beaumont to Ben Jonson:—

There was another Mermaid in Cheapside, frequented by Jasper Mayne, and in the next reign by the poet laureate, John Dryden. Mayne mentions it in “The City Match,” (1638:)—

At one time the landlord’s name was Dun, which is told us in a somewhat amusing anecdote:—“When Dun, that kept the Meremaid Tavern in Cornhill, being himself in a room with some witty gallants, one of them (which, it seems, knew his wife) too boldly cryd out in a fantastick humour, ‘I’ll lay five pound there’s a cuckhold in this company.’ ‘’Tis Dun,’ says another.”[318] In 1681, there was a Mermaid in Carter Lane, which had a great deal of traffic as a carriers’ inn.[319]

The sign was also used by printers. John Rastall, for instance, brother-in-law of Sir Thomas More, “emprynted in the Cheapesyde at the sygne of the Meremayde; next to Poulysgate in 1527;” and in 1576 a translation of the History of Lazarillo de Tormes, dedicated to Sir Thomas Gresham, was printed by Henry Binnemann, the queen’s printer, in Knight-rider Street, at the sign of the Mermaid. A representation of this fabulous creature was generally prefixed to his books.

The Seahorse may be seen in Birmingham, York, and various other places. Bossewell, in his peculiar mixture of English and Latin, gives a quaint description of this animal:—

“This waterhorse of the sea is called an hyppotame, for that he is like an horse in back, mayne, and neying: rostro resupinato a primis dentibus: cauda tortuosa, ungulis binis. He abideth in the waters on the day, and eateth corn by night et hunc Nilus gignit.”[320]

The Dolphin is another sign of very old standing. One of the first instances of its use was probably the following inn:—

“The other side of this High Street, from Bishopsgate and Houndsditch, the first building is a large inn for the receipt of travellers, and is called the Dolphin, of such a sign. In the year 1513, Margaret Ricroft, widow, gave this house, with the gardens and appurtenances, unto William Gam, R. Clye, their wives, her daughters, and to their heirs, with condition they yearly do give to the warders or govornors of the Greyfriars’ Church, within Newgate, 40 shillings, to find a student of divinity in the university for ever.”[321]

Moser, in his “Vestiges Revived,” mentions this same inn as the Dolphin, or rather, Dauphin Inn; and says that it was adorned with fleur-de-lys, cognisances, and dolphins; and was reported to have been the residence of one of the dauphins of France, probably Louis, the son of Philip August, who, in 1216, came to England to contest the sceptre with King John.[322] The house was still in existence at the end of the seventeenth century, when it was a famous coaching inn. Perhaps it was to this tavern that Pepys and his company adjourned on 27th March 1661:—

“To the Dolphin to a dinner of Mr Harris’s, where Sir William and my Lady Batten and her two daughters, and other company, when a great deal of mirth, and there staid till 11 o’clock at night, and in our mirth I sang and sometimes fiddled, (there being a noise of fiddlers there,) and at last we fell to dancing, the first time that ever I did in my life, which I did wonder to see myself to do. At last we made Mingo, Sir W. Batten’s black, and Jack, Sir W. Penn’s, dance, and it was strange how the first did dance with a great deal of skill.”

Pepys might well wonder what a man may come to, he who had been born when “lascivious dancing” was considered a heinous crime. Another Dolphin, well worthy of remembrance, was the sign of Sam. Buckley, a bookseller in Little Brittain, at whose house Steele and Addison’s Spectator was published.

Ancient naturalists made a wonderful animal of the dolphin. Bossewell, for instance, from whom we have just quoted, tells most extraordinary stories about him; but they are unfortunately too long to quote. Londoners formerly might have seen the living fish from the river banks, for old chroniclers every now and then have entries to the effect that dolphins paid London a visit. Thus: “3 Henry V. Seven dolphins came up the river Thames, whereof 4 were taken.” “14 Rich. II. On Christmas day a dolphin was taken at London Bridge, being 10 ft. long, and a monstrous grown fish.”[323] The Dolphin and Anchor is still a common sign; and the Fish and Anchor, at North Littleton, Warwickshire, evidently implies the same emblem. Aldus Manutius, the celebrated Venetian printer, was the first to use the sign, adopting it from a silver medal of the Emperor Titus, presented to him by Cardinal Bembo, with the motto, σπευδε βραδεως. Camerarius thus (in our translation) mentions this sign in his book on Symbols:—

“That the dolphin wound round the anchor was an emblem of the Emperors August and Titus, to represent that maturity in business which is the medium between too great haste and slowness; and that it was also used in the last century by Aldus Manutius, that most famous printer, is known to everybody. Erasmus clearly and abundantly explains the import of that golden precept.

“Our emblem is taken from Alciatus, and has a different meaning. He reports, namely, that ‘when violent winds disturb the sea, as Lucretius says, and the anchor is cast by seamen, the dolphin winds herself round it, out of a particular love for mankind, and directs it, as with a human intellect, so that it may more safely take hold of the ground; for dolphins have this peculiar property, that they can, as it were, foretell storms. The anchor, then, signifies a stay and security, whilst the dolphin is a hieroglyphic for philanthropy and safety.’”—Joach. Camerarius, “Symbolorum et Emblematum Centuriæ Quatuor.” Centuria iv. p. 19; Moguntia, 1697.

This sign was afterwards adopted by William Pickering, a worthy “Discipulus Aldi,” as he styled himself; Sir Egerton Bridges made some verses upon it, amongst which occur the following:—