Note 54 — Chapter II · HISTORIC AND COMMEMORATIVE SIGNS.

Lloyd’s Evening Post, February 11-13, 1761.

[55] Horace Walpole’s Letters. Thirteenth Letter to Mr Conway, April 16, 1747.

[56] In the Print-room of the British Museum.

[57] Pennant’s History of London, vol. i. p. 99.

[58] “The Quack Vintners, 1710,” a tract written against Brooke and Hilliers, the famous wine-merchants of that time, frequently mentioned by the Spectator.

[59] Newcastle Journal, June 28, 1746.

[60] Nugæ Antiquæ, vol. i. p. 348.

[61] Barrow’s Life of Peter the Great.

[62] Gent. Mag., March 1842.

[63] Peacham’s Compleat Gentleman, p. 79.

[64] The taverns of the seventeenth century appear in many instances to have been upstairs, above shops. In 1679, there was a “Mr Crutch, goldsmith, near Temple Bar, at the Palsgrave Head.” In a similar way, a bookseller lived at the sign of the Rainbow, at the same time as one Farr, who opened this place as a coffee-house. Another bookseller, James Roberts, who printed most of the satires, epigrams, and other wasp-stings against Pope, lived at the Oxford Arms, a carriers’ inn in Warwick Lane. Finally, Isaac Walton sold his “Complete Angler” “at his shopp in Fleet Street, under the King’s Head Tavern.”

[65] Macaulay’s Biographical Essays, Frederick the Great.

[66] Goldsmith’s Essay on the Versatility of Popular Favour.

[67] For more particulars about Topham, see p. 88.

[68] Trades tokens in the Beaufoy Collection.

[69] For several centuries, Fleet Street was the head-quarters for shows and exhibitions out of fair-time. Ben Jonson speaks of “the City of Nineveh at Fleetbridge.” This was in the reign of James I. Mrs Salmon’s waxworks were among the last remaining sights in that locality.

[70] Richardsoniana, p. 140.

[71] Grosley, in his Tour to London, 1772, vol i. p. 150, mentions this society, which at that period was held at the Robin Hood, and says it was a semi-public club, into which all sorts of people were admitted, and all sorts of topics, religious as well as political, were discussed. He makes an odd mistake, however, when he says that the president was a baker by trade.

[72] This John Marshall afterwards, when he was appointed the king’s optician, changed his sign into the Archimedes and King’s Arms, under which we find him, in 1718, advertising his “chrystall dressing-glasses for ladies, which shew the face as nature hath made it, which other looking-glasses do not.”

[73] Banks’s Collection.

[74] Banks’s Collection.

[75] The Angler. Hawkins’s edition. 1784.

[76] Bagford Bills, Bib. Harl. 5964.

[77] “On the chair of Ben Johnson, now remaining at Robert Wilson’s, at the sign of the Johnson’s Head, in the Strand.”—Wit and Drollery, 1655, p. 79.

[78] The Newes, August 24, 1655. This may have been the above-mentioned tavern, as York House was situated in the Strand on the site of the present York Buildings.

[79] Addison’s Lion’s Head, the box for the deposition of the correspondence of the Guardian, was originally placed at Button’s, over against Tom’s in Great Russell Street. “After having become a receptacle of papers and a spy for the Guardian, it was moved to the Shakespeare’s Head Tavern, under the Piazza in Covent Garden, kept by a person named Tomkins, and in 1751 was for a short time placed in the Bedford Coffeehouse, immediately adjoining the Shakespeare Tavern, and there employed as a medium of literary communication by Dr John Hill, author of the ‘Inspector.’ In 1769, Tomkins was succeeded by his waiter, named Campbell, as proprietor of the tavern and Lion’s Head, and by him the latter was retained till 1804, when it was purchased by the late Charles Richardson, after whose death in 1827 it devolved to his son, and has since become the property of his Grace the Duke of Bedford.”—Till, in his Preface to Descriptive Catalogue of English Medals.

[80] Our slang friends the burlesque writers and parodists, would probably say something about mopping.—Ed.

[81] An “Apollo in his glory” is a charge in the apothecaries’ arms.

[82] Aubrey, Remains of Gentilisme and Judaism. Lansdowne MSS. 231, p. 106.

[83] At the Vulcan. He lights his pipe at the fire;—whosoever wants to buy good tobacco let him come here;—you will get a pipe filled into the bargain, and a glass of strong beer in fair time.

[84] Vulcan, that lame blacksmith, when he got tired over his work, sat down a while to rest his limbs. The gods saw it; he took his cutty pipe and his tobacco box out of his pocket and smoked a pipe of tobacco.

[85] Gent. Mag., March 1842.

[86] The History of Tom Jones, book xvi. ch. ii.

[87] Lond. Gaz., June 18-22, 1674.

[88] This was not true, for Pepys went (24th Oct. 1667) to hear the same instrument played by a Mr Prin, a Frenchman, “which he do beyond belief, and the truth is, it do so far outdo a trumpet as nothing more, and he do play anything very true. The instrument is open at the end I discovered, but he would not let me look into it.” Philips, in his “New World of Words,” 1696, describes it as “an instrument with a bellows, resembling a lute, having a long neck with a string, which being struck with a hairbow sounds like a trumpet.”

[89] Aubrey, Miscellanies upon various subjects.

[90] See in Bib. Top. Brit., vol. iv., a Critical Memoir on the Story of Guy of Warwick, by the Rev. Samuel Pegge, who supposes that Guy lived in Saxon times, and was the son of Simon, Baron of Wallingford. He married Felicia, (Phillis,) the daughter and heiress of Rohand, Earl of Warwick, who flourished in the reign of Edward the Elder, and so became Earl of Warwick.

[91] In Ritson’s Ancient Songs and Ballads.

[92] The “pindar” was the man who took care of stray cattle, which he kept in the pinfold, or pound, until it was claimed and the expenses paid.

[93] Daily Courant, Feb. 19, 1711.

[94] The “Dropping Well,” one of the most noted petrifying springs in England, and so named on account of its percolating through the rock that hangs over it.

[95] This information we gather from a chapbook entitled “The Strange and Wonderful History and Prophecies of Mother Shipton, by Ferraby, printer on the Market Place, Hull.” It is evidently a reprint of a chapbook of the time of Charles II., as appears from many allusions.

[96] Once there was a man who led a holy life, and was a prophet, who could see what would come to pass; his name was Merlin, and he was the offspring of an evil and fiendish spirit. But though born from such a father, he shone forth in virtue, and after his death, became a companion of the saints.

[97] Henry Peacham’s Compleat Gentleman.

[98] John Collet’s Historical Anecdotes, Add. MSS. 8890, p. 113.

[99] In the Banks Collection.

[100] This broadside is reprinted in Notes and Queries for January 15, 1859. Sussex had its snake as late as 1614. There is a pamphlet In the Harl. Collection, entitled, “True and Wonderful—a discourse relating a strange and monstrous serpent, (or dragon,) lately discovered, and yet living, to the great annoyance and divers slaughter both of men and cattell, by his strong and violent Poyson, in Sussex, two miles from Horsam, in a woode called St Leonard’s Forrest, and thirtie miles from London, this present month of August 1614.” That this Sussex snake caused a great sensation, appears from the fact that seventeen years after, it is alluded to in “Whimsies: or, A New Cast of Characters,” 1631: “Nor comes his [the ballad-monger’s] invention far short of his imagination. For want of truer relations for a neede, he can find you out a Sussex dragon, some sea or inland monster, drawn out by some Shoe Lane man, [i.e., a sign-painter; they all lived in Harp Alley, Shoe Lane,] in Gorgon-like features, to enforce more horror in the beholder.”

[101] The title of Cooper’s novel seems to have taken hold of the popular fancy to an astonishing degree: not only are there several public-houses who have adopted it as their sign, but also race-horses, ships, and locomotive engines have been named after it. There is even a baked potato-can in the streets of London, decorated with that name; it is built in the shape of a locomotive-engine, japanned red, and wheeled about the streets by an old woman. The name on a brass plate is screwed to the can, similar to the names of locomotive-engines.

[102] Introduction to Tarlton’s Jests, by J. O. Halliwell.

[103] Harl. MSS. 3885.

[104] Gray’s Letter to Chute. Mitford, ii. 138.

[105] Banks’s Collection.

[106] This is engraved in Caulfield’s Portraits of Remarkable and Eccentric Characters, as well as the wooden figure in the Tower.

[107] MSS. Reg., 2 A. xvi.

[108] Fairholt, Remarkable and Eccentric Characters, p. 56.

[109] Fuller’s Worthies, voce Monmouthshire.

[110] This is an old “dodge,” mentioned long ago by Decker in his “Seven Deadly Sins, seven times pressed to Death,” &c.:—“Then you have another brewing called Huff’s ale, at which, because no man must have but a pot at a sitting, and so be gone, the restraint makes them more eager to come in, so that by this policie one may huffe it four or five times a day.”

[111] Journey through England, vol. i. p. 175.

[112] Metamorphosis of the Town; or, a View of the Present Fashions. London: Printed for J. Wilford at the Three Flower de Luces, behind the Chapter House in St Paul’s Churchyard, 1730.

[113] Oddly enough, both Cave and Ponto are terms of some games at cards.

[114] There is a copy in the British Museum.

[115] This motto was: “Misura della Colonna di Christo n^ro,” i.e., Measure of the column of our Saviour.

[116] A brother Boniface, Adams, “at the Royal Swan in Kingsland Road, leading from Shoreditch Church,” (1756) had also a knackatory, which, from his catalogue, looks very like a parody on the Don’s. He exhibited, for instance, “Adam’s eldest daughter’s hat;” “the heart of famous Bess Adams, that was hanged with Lawyer Carr, January 18, 1736-37;” “the Vicar of Bray’s clogs;” “an engine to shell green peas with;” “teeth that grew in a fish’s belly;” “Black Jack’s ribs;” “the very comb that Adam combed his son Isaac’s and Jacob’s head with;” “rope that cured Captain Lowry of the headach, earach, toothach, and bellyach;” “Adam’s key to the fore and back door of the garden of Eden,” &c., &c., and 500 other curiosities.

[117] Her portrait, with a poem upon her, too long to quote, occurs in “Portraits and Lives of Remarkable and Eccentric Characters,” Westminster, 1819.

[118] Harl. MSS. 5900.

[119] Bagford Bills. Harl. MSS. 5962.

[120] London, Past and Present, p. 48.