Chapter XIV: Humorous and Comic (2)

The LABOUR IN VAIN occurs among the trades tokens, and such a sign gave its name to Old Fish Street, which Hatton, in his “New View of London,” 1708, p. 405, calls “Old Fish Street, or Labour in Vain Hill.” The sign represented two women scrubbing a negro; hence it was called by the lower classes, the DEVIL IN A TUB. “To wash an Æthiop,” is a proverbial expression, often met with in ancient dramatists, for labour in vain.[652] THE CASE IS ALTERED, generally alludes to some alteration in the affairs of the landlord, either “for better or for worse.” A public-house near Banbury was so called on account of being built on the site of a mere hovel. Another house of the same name was, in 1805, erected on the road between Woodbridge and Ipswich, to meet the demand of the thirsty sons of Mars then quartered in those two towns. Its sign in those days was the Duke of York, or some such name. But when, after the downfall of the “Corsican Tyrant,” and the subsequent declaration of peace, the barracks were pulled down, the soldiers disbanded, and the benches of the ale-house remained empty, the old sign was removed, and in its place put up the sad truth--“The Case is Altered.” In another instance, the sign was adopted at Oxford as a quiet hint by a sharp business man, who succeeded as landlord to an easy-going Boniface, under whose sway the customers had been allowed to run up debts; but the case was altered under the new regulations. A correspondent of _Notes and Queries_ (Nov. 21, 1857) gives the following example:--“I saw this sign once pictorially represented in the West of England thus:--A person, with a large wig and gown, and seated at a table; another, dressed like a farmer, stood talking to him. In the distance, seen through the open door, was a bull. The story, of course, is that related of Plowden, the celebrated lawyer,[653] and which is now in most books of fables. The farmer told Plowden that his (the farmer’s) bull had gored and killed the latter’s cow. ‘Well,’ said the lawyer, ‘the case is clear, you must pay me her value.’ ‘Oh! but,’ said the farmer, ‘I have made a mistake. It is _your_ bull which has killed my cow.’ ‘Ah! the case is altered,’ quoth Plowden. The expression had passed into a proverb in Old Fuller’s time.” This sign also occurs in some London localities, as at Upper Kensal Green, and elsewhere.

The GRINDING YOUNG is a very curious sign at Harold’s Cross, Dublin. The subject is taken from the old ballad of the “Miller’s Maid Grinding Old Men Young,” commencing--

“Come, old, decrepit, lame, or blind,
Into my mill to take a grind.”

It is also a favourite subject on old chap-prints, which represent a kind of hand-mill, into the funnel-shaped top of which various decrepit-looking old men creep by a ladder, most of them glass in hand, greatly elated at the prospect of a renewal of youth. Meanwhile, a young maid is turning the handle of the mill, from the bottom of which the patients come out, quite young and new--if not better--men. Pretty girls stand at the side, ready to receive the rejuvenated creatures and walk off with them, their arms affectionately twined round their necks, and evidently preparing to play the old game over again, for “the cordial drop of life is love alone”--the whole affair a very decided improvement upon the usual way of entering the stage of this world.

A somewhat similar sign, though not quite so anacreontic, is of frequent occurrence in France, namely The FOUNTAIN OF JUVENCA,--_la Fontaine de Jouvence_. A stone bas-relief of this subject, a carving of the sixteenth century, still remains in the Rue du Four, in Paris. The story was borrowed by the French romancers from the Eastern tales.

The sign of the last house in a row on the outskirts of a town, used frequently to be the WORLD’S END. This was represented in various punning ways; sometimes by a globe in clouds, as on the trades token of Margaret Tuttlesham, of Golden Lane, Barbican, in 1666. Others rendered it by a fractured globe in a dark background, with fire and smoke bursting through the rents, and thus it was represented at the World’s End in the King’s Road, Chelsea, in 1825. At Ecton, Northampton, it is typified, with a truly classical notion of physical geography, by a horseman whose steed is rearing over an abyss on the edge of a world terminated perpendicularly. A fourth, and more homely, way of representing it was a man and a woman walking together on the margin of a landscape, with this distich:

“I’ll go with my friend
To the world’s end.”

The out-of-the-way sites of such houses was the cause of their not enjoying the very best of reputations. Those, at least, of the World’s End at Chelsea and at Knightsbridge were rather exceptionable. Both these houses were much patronised by the gallants of the reign of Charles II. when breaking the seventh commandment; hence the altercation between two sisters in Congreve’s play of “Love for Love:”

“_Mrs Foresight._ I suppose you would not go alone to the World’s End?

“_Mrs Frail._ The World’s End! What, do you mean to banter me?

“_Mrs Foresight._ Poor innocent; you don’t know that there is a place
called the World’s End. I’ll swear you can keep your
countenance--surely you’ll make an admirable player.

“_Mrs Frail._ I’ll swear you have a great deal of impudence, and in my
mind too much for the stage.

“_Mrs Foresight._ Very well, that will appear who has most. You never
were at the World’s End? eh.”

Pepys also honoured a World’s End, the “drinking-house by the Park,” with an occasional visit. On Sunday, the 9th of May 1669, for instance, he went to church at St Margaret’s, Westminster, and that duty performed, walked “towards the park, but too soon to go in, so went on to Knightsbridge, and there eat and drank at the World’s End, _where we had good things_, and then back to the park, and there till night, being fine weather and much company, and so home.” The “good things” evidently proved a strong attraction, for three weeks after he went again, “and there was merry, and so home late.” In 1708 Tom Brown thus alluded to its equivocal reputation. “The lady must take a tour as far as Knightsbridge or Kensington, stop, maybe, at the World’s End or the Swan; offer my spark a small treat,” &c.[654] Under the name of _le Bout du Monde_, the same sign was common in France, where in ancient Paris it gave a name to the street now called Rue du Cadran. With that inveterate weakness for punning inherent to sign-painters--those of the French nation in particular--it was sometimes represented by a he-goat (_bouc_) and a world.

THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN is still common, being generally represented by a man walking at the south pole; in that guise it was to be seen some twenty-five years ago on the Greenwich Road. But the meaning of the sign is a state of things the opposite of what is natural and usual,--a conceit in which the artists of former ages took great delight, and which they represented by animals chasing men, horses riding in carriages, and similar pleasantries. This also was a Dutch sign under the name of DE VERKEERDE WERELD, (_the world reversed_.) It was used by a publican in the seventeenth century in Holland, with this inscription:

“De wereld staat niet regt,
Voor de deur hangt hy verkeerd
‘K Heb wyn en bier, en ’t geen gy meer begeert.”[655]

Of the MOONRAKERS we only know one instance, that in Great Suffolk Street, Borough, where it has been for at least half a century. The original of this may have been one of the stories of the Wise Men of Gotham. A party of them going out one bright night, saw the reflection of the moon in the water; and, after due deliberation, decided that it was a green cheese, and so raked for it. Another version is, that some Gothamites, passing in the night over a bridge, saw from the parapet the moon’s reflection in the river below, and took it for a green cheese. They held a consultation as to the best means of securing it, when it was resolved that one should hold fast to the parapet whilst the others hung from him, hand-in-hand, so as to form a chain to the water below, the last man to seize the prize. When they were all in this position, the uppermost, feeling the load heavy, and his hold giving way, called out, “Halloo! you below, hold tight while I take off my hand to spit on it!” The wise men below replied, “All right!” upon which he let go his hold, and they all dropped down into the water, and were drowned.

A Moonraker is also the nickname for a native of Wiltshire, and a very silly story is told there as its origin. Some Wiltshire smugglers, on one of their nightly expeditions, being surprised by excisemen, were compelled to hide a barrel of brandy in a pond, which one of the gang at the first opportunity privately fished out for his own personal benefit. A few nights after, when the Argus eyes of the Excise were soundly closed, the rest of the band availed themselves of a clear moonlight to return to the spot in order to “call the spirits from the vasty deep,” and began raking the water to their hearts’ content, for, taking the reflection of the moon to be the top of the barrel, they could not be convinced that the “spirit was departed,” till morning came and showed them that their barrel was all “moonshine.” Another version substitutes thieves and a cheese for the smugglers and the brandy barrel.

The CRADLE AND THE COFFIN, or FIRST AND LAST, was formerly a sign in Norwich, and one can still be seen on the South Quay, Yarmouth. This combination may have its moral; not so the equally serious MORTAL MAN, in the little village of Troutbeck, near Ambleside, for there the denomination is simply borrowed from the beginning of the inscription which has nothing of the _memento mori_ about it:--

“Thou mortal man that liv’st by bread,
What is it makes thy nose so red?”

“Thou silly elf with nose so pale,
It is with drinking Burkett’s ale.”

This imaginary dialogue is supposed to be held by the two figures on the signboard, the one a poor miserable-looking object, the other, who indulged in Burkett’s ale, the chubby picture of health, with a nose like that of Bardolph, “clothed in purple.” This sign was the work of Ibbetson; the picture is now gone, but the verses remain.[656]

At Hedenham, on the road between Norwich and Bungay, there is a sign called TUMBLE-DOWN DICK, representing on one side Diogenes, on the other, a drunken man, with the following distich:

“Now Diogenes is dead and laid in his tomb,
Tumble-down Dick is come in his room.”

At Alton, in Hants, a drunken man is represented upsetting a table covered with cups and glasses. The verses underneath this picture are the same as at Hedenham, except that it is “Barnaby” who is said to be defunct, and not Diogenes. At Woodton in Norfolk, another sign with this name represents a jolly old farmer in a red coat, with bottle and glass in his hand, falling off his chair in a state of _Bacchi plenus_. The earliest mention we find of the sign is in the _Original Weekly Journal_ for April 26--May 3, 1718, where a murder is reported to have been committed at the Tumbling-down Dick in Brentford. “Tumble-down Dick, in the borough of Southwark,” says the _Adventurer_, No. 9, 1752, “is a fine moral on the instability of greatness, and the consequences of ambition.” As such it was set up in derision of Richard Cromwell, the allusion to his fall from power, or “tumble down,” being very common in the satires published after the Restoration, and amongst others, Hudibras; thus, part iii., canto ii., 231:--

“Next him his son and heir apparent
Succeeded, though a lame viceregent,
Who first laid by the Parliament,
The only crutch on which he leant;
And then sunk underneath the state
That rode him above horseman’s weight.”

The same idea, and almost the identical words, occur again in his “Remains,” in the tale of the Cobbler and the Vicar of Bray:--

“What’s worse, old Noll is marching off,
And Dick, his heir apparent,
Succeeds him in the Government,
A very lame Vice-regent;
He’ll reign but little time, poor tool,
But sinks beneath the state,
That will not fail to ride the fool
‘Bove common horseman’s weight.”

We meet it also in the ballad, “Old England is now a brave Barbary,” _i.e._ horse, from a “Collection of Loyal Songs,” reprinted in 1731, vol. ii., p. 231,--

“But _Nol_, a rank rider, gets first in the saddle,
And made her show tricks, and curvate, and rebound;
She quickly perceiv’d he rode widdle-waddle,
And like his coach-horses[657] threw his highness to ground.

“Then _Dick_, being lame, rode holding the pummel,
Not having the wit to get hold of the rein;
But the jade did so snort at the sight of a Cromwell,
That poor _Dick_ and his kindred turn’d footmen again.”

Dick’s bacchic propensities are also sung in many an old song. Two of the Luttrell Ballads, vol. ii., pp. 11 and 36, allude to his weakness in this respect:--

“Then thirdly Oliver he took place,
And set up young Dick the fool of his race;
_Dick loved a cup of nectar_.”

In another:--

“Drunken Dick was a lame Protector.”

Perhaps to the same origin may be referred the sign of SOLDIER DICK, which occurs near Disley, Stockport; and HAPPY DICK, at Abingdon. Tumbling-down Dick was also the name of a dance in the last century, which gives additional strength to the supposition that Dick Cromwell was intended, since otherwise an ordinary signboard would scarcely have come to such honour.

The JOLLY TOPER is a common public-house sign, probably put up as a good example to the customers; in London, there is a TIPPLING PHILOSOPHER, “the right man in the right place,” for he “hangs out” in _Liquor Pond_ Street, opposite Reid’s great brewery. Here we have _l’embarras du choix_; which philosopher was intended by the sign, for they all, more or less, “pleaded guilty to the soft impeachment.” Theophrastus, in his “Treaty on Drunkenness,” tells us that the seven sages of Greece often met together to indulge in a cheerful glass. Plato not only excuses a drop too much occasionally, but even orders it. Heraclitus, the weeping philosopher, never laughed but when he was “half seas over.” Xenocrates gained a golden crown, awarded by Dionysius the tyrant to the deepest drinker. Seneca states that Solon and Arcesilaus are believed to have “indulged in wine,” and Cornelius Gallus says that Socrates “carried off the palm from his contemporaries by his drinking capacities.” Cato, we know from various sources, liked his glass; Horace tells us--

“Narratur et prisci Catonis
Sæpe mero caluisse virtus;”[658]

and Seneca says of him: “Cato vinum laxabat animum curis publicis fatigatum;”[659] elsewhere he remarks: “Catoni ebrietas objecta est, at facilius efficiet quisquis qui objecerit honestum quam turpe Catoni.”[660] Seneca was certainly a biassed judge, for he says: “Habebitur aliquando ebrietas honor et plurimum meri cepisse virtus erit.”[661] Other tippling philosophers are enumerated in the following quaint Latin verses, the author of which is not known:--

“Tunc vix Democritus poterat compescere risum,
Riderent cum sibi vina labris.
Tergeret ut fletus contrarius alter amaros,
Sugebat lacrymas saepe, lagena, tuas.
Divinum ut Bacchi semper spiraret odorem,
Diogenes medii vixit in orbe cadi.
Dicitur ardentem cum sese misit in Æthnam,
Empedocles modico non caluisse mero.
Teque ferunt veteres guttas, Epicure, Lyæi
Vel minimas atomis antetulisse tuis.
Talia ne dubiter potare exempla secutus,
Qui sapit ille bibit, qui bibit ergo sapit.”[662]

In Holland they have a curious practice, which the _Spectator_ thus describes:--

“The Dutch who are more famous for their industry than for their wit
and humour, hang up in several of their streets what they call the
sign of the GAPER; that is, the head of an idiot dressed in a cap and
bells and gaping in a most immoderate manner; this is a standing jest
in Amsterdam.”

But the statement is slightly--probably wilfully--incorrect. Carved wooden busts of Gapers are still used at the present day in Holland, but are, and have always been, chemists’, or rather, druggists’ signs, to intimate that narcotics are sold within, as gaping or yawning is a precursor of sleep. The costume of these busts is generally somewhat Oriental, as Eastern nations were supposed to be not only expert in herbs and medicines, but also, because opium came from Eastern climes.

A very curious and rare sign is to be seen in the little village of Nidd, near Knaresborough; this is the ASS IN THE BAND-BOX. We find it mentioned in 1712 in Partridge’s MS. book of “Celestial Motions.”[663] In the month of October of that year he entered the following memorandum:--“At the end of this month the villains made the Band-box plot, to blow up Robin and his family with a couple of inkhorns, and that rogue Swift was at the opening of the band-box and the discovery of the plot. The truth of it all was: ‘---- in a Band-box.’”[664] It figured also as one of the signs in Bonnel Thornton’s signboard exhibition of 1762.[665] It seems to have originated from an extremely indelicate joke called “selling bargains,” with which the maids of honour amused themselves in Swift’s time, (see his “Polite Conversation;”) unless it be a vernacular reading of some crest, such as an antelope or a unicorn issuing out of a mural crown.

In the borough of Southwark is a sign on which is inscribed “The OLD PICK-MY-TOE,” which, in the absence of any better origin, we may suppose to be a vulgar representation of the Roman slave who, being sent on some message of importance, would not stop to pick a thorn out of his foot, until he had completed his mission. Probably this was the same sign as that represented on the trades token of Samuel Bovery in George Lane, a naked figure picking one of its feet; but the name of the house is not given on the token. JACK OF BOTH SIDES, at Reading, is so named because the house stands at a point where two roads meet in the form of a Y, and the house being wedge-shaped, has an entry at each side. Such a house in London is often called by the vulgar a “Flat-iron.”

The OLD SMUGS is a sign on the trades token of Joseph Hall, at Newington Butts, 1667, representing a smith and an anvil; but whether John Hall himself was “old Smvgs,” or whether he kept a tavern frequented by blacksmiths, history does not inform us. This last is also the name of one of the characters in the “Merry Devil at Edmonton.” The BATTERED NAGGIN (_sic_ for Noggin) is an Irish sign, it being in that country a figurative expression for a man who has got more than is good for him,--“he has got a lick of a battered naggin.” The NOGGIN, without the adjective, occurs at a few places in Lancashire and Yorkshire. The TUMBLING SAILORS, representing three seamen “half-seas-over,” and reeling arm-in-arm down a street, may be seen near Broseley, at Dudley, and in other places. The CRIPPLE’S INN at Stockingford, Warwick, is doubtless nothing more than a very “lame” attempt at comicality. The HAT IN HAND, in Portsea, promises a polite host; but what can be expected of OLD CARELESS, the ominous name of a public-house at Stapleford, Notts, of SPITE HALL at Brandon, Durham, or of OLD NO, which occurs in Silver Street, Sheffield? SLOW AND EASY is the unpromising name of an ale-house at Lostock, Chester; let us hope that it may be meant for a version of the Italian proverb, “_chi va piano va sano_,” meaning that the landlord will be content with small and fair profits, and acquire fortune by slow and easy steps.

[627] The “goose’s foot” she obtained was most probably that at the corner of her eye--_i.e._, she became an old woman--for the French call _patte d’oie_--goose’s foot--that first attack of time upon beauty which we term the crow’s foot.

[628] A whetstone was anciently the name given in derision to a liar. The reason of it is explained in the following rhymes under an old engraving in the Bridgewater collection, representing a man with a whetstone in his hand:--

“The whettstone is a man that all men know,
Yet many on him doe much cost bestowe:
Hee’s us’d almost in every shoppe, but why?
An edge must needs be set on every lye.”

How old is this connexion between lies and whetstones may be seen from Stow:--“Of the like counterfeit physition have I noted (in the Summarie of my Chronicles, anno 1382,) to be set on horsebacke, his face to the horsetaile, the same taile in his hand as a bridle, a collar of jordans about his necke, _a whetstone on his breast_, and so led through the citie of London with ringing of basons, and banished.”--_Stow’s Chronicle_, Howe’s edition, 1614, p. 604. It is a curious coincidence that in France and Germany a knife--the Rodomont knife--was handed over to outrageous liars. A vestige of this custom was still preserved at the university of Bonn at the end of the last century, where, when one of the company at the students’ mess drew the long bow a little too strongly, it was customary for all who sat at the table, without making any remarks, to lay their dinner knives on the top of their glasses, all pointing towards the offender.

[629] _London Gazette_, Dec. 23-26, 1700.

[630] _Ibid._, Jan. 10-14, 1678.

[631] James Christopher le Blond, a Fleming by birth, obiit 1740, made preparations to copy the Hampton Court tapestry cartoons. For this purpose he built a house in Mulberry Gardens, Chelsea, but the project failed.

[632] A Walk from London to Fulham. By the late T. C. Croker. 1860.

[633] Antiquarian Repertory, vol. i.

[634] “The ox gives the shoemaker leather of which he makes boots to be worn. As a grateful return I have ordered the ox to be portrayed here in boots and spurs.”

[635]

“Look here, this cow wears boots;
Were it a bull it would be less odd.”

[636] “This is the Cock in Boots. Christ has been crucified, with a crown of thorns on His head. He that does not believe it is as bad as Thomas.”

[637]

“At the brave Jackass in Boots,
There is tobacco, brandy, and gingerbread for sale.”

[638] Boswell’s Life of Johnson, vol. iii., p. 261. 1819.

[639] A Trip to Stirbitch Fair, 1703.

[640] Sometimes it is conveyed in an ingenious manner by a watch face without pointers accompanied by the significant words, NO TICK.

[641] “To-day for money, to-morrow for nought.”

[642]

“When this cock shall crow,
Credit will be given.”

[643] “Credit is dead: he has been killed by bad payers.”

[644] Harl. MSS., No. 6200.

[645] Cambridge Jests; or, Witty Alarums for Melancholy Spirits. Printed at the Looking-Glass, on London Bridge, for Thomas Morris.

[646]

“You may fight, you may pray, you may plead,
But I am the farmer who lays the eggs,”--_i.e._, finds the money.

[647] Annotations to Ames’s Typographical Antiquities.

[648] MS. Harleian. 4690, 19 Edw. III.

[649]

“Here you may find a good woman,
Faithfully portrayed from the life.
Nothing is wanting but her head,
Because that turns about with every wind.
If the head had been left her,
She would never have been good in all her life.”

[650]

“Women are a plague to man,
And though young ’spoons’ are fond of them.
As soon as their fire is quenched,
They wish her head was off.”

[651] Gull’s Hornbook.

[652] Massinger’s Parliament of Love, ac. ii., sc. 2; Roman Actor, ac. iii., sc. 2, &c.

[653] Edmund Plowden, obiit 1584, was buried and has a monument in the Temple Church.

[654] Walk round London and Suburbs, 1708, p. 46.

[655]

“The world does not go right,
Before my door it hangs upside down.
I sell wine and beer, and all that you may desire.”

[656] A somewhat different version of these rhymes is given on page 40.

[657] In allusion to Cromwell’s accident in Hyde Park, October 1654, when his coach-horses ran away, and his highness, who was driving, fell from the box between the traces, and was dragged along for a considerable distance.

[658] “It is said that the virtue of Cato the elder was frequently warmed by wine.”

[659] “Cato refreshed his mind with wine when it was wearied with the cares of the commonwealth.”

[660] “Cato has been blamed for drunkenness, but it is easier to find reason to praise, than to blame Cato.”

[661] “Drunkenness will be sometimes considered as honourable, and to drink a great quantity of pure wine as a virtue.”

[662] “When the wine sparkled on the lips of Democritus, it was then that he could not restrain himself from laughter. Another [Heraclius] on the contrary, often drank thy tears, O bottle, in order to dry his own tears. Diogenes lived in a barrel so that he might always smell the odour of divine wine. It is said that Empedocles, when he jumped down burning Etna, had first warmed himself with no small quantity of wine. They also say that thou, O Epicurus, didst prefer even the smallest drops of old wine to thine atoms. In imitation of these examples, I do not hesitate in drinking, for he who tastes drinks, consequently he that drinks is wise.” It is almost impossible to translate this last line, on account of the pun contained in the verb _sapere_, which at the same time means “to taste” and “to be wise.” The second line is evidently imperfect.

[663] Harl. MSS., 6200, p. 68.

[664] This alludes to the well-known plot of a bandbox sent to the Lord Treasurer, containing a very poor infernal machine, made of inkhorns. The affair, however, has never been satisfactorily cleared up. Swift is called a rogue by the indignant Partridge, because he had made a droll ballad and epitaph upon the “Supposed death of Partridge, the Almanac-maker,” which Swift had predicted and Partridge publicly denied.

[665] See Appendix.