Old Tavern Signs Part 3

Another saint, deservedly in great favor, is St. George, who slew the dragon, a knightly patron who smooths the traveler's path and makes it safe by brushing aside all its threatening dangers. Two of the finest hostelries still existing are named after him: the "Ritter" in Heidelberg, and the "George," more ancient yet by a century, in the time-hallowed town of Glas...o...b..ry. Two miracles have drawn pilgrims to the latter place since olden times, the "Holy Thornbush," which had blossomed forth from the staff of Joseph of Arimathea and bloomed every Christmas, and the "Holy Well," in the garden of the cloister school, now deserted, whose waters were to heal the bodily ailments of the pious pilgrims. The throng of wayfarers to the convent, whose gigantic abbot's kitchen is eloquent of hospitality on a large scale, made the establishment of a pilgrim's inn outside the walls imperative. First they erected the "Abbot's Inn," and when this proved insufficient--at the end of the fifteenth century--the elegant Gothic structure was erected, which bears to this day the ensign "Pilgrim's Inn," but is popularly known as "The George," from a likeness of the saint which once adorned the handsome bracket so happily wedded to the architecture of the house. The tourist undaunted by fearsome reminiscences may ask to be given the choice apartment there, the so-called "abbot's chamber," where Henry VIII rested on the day when he ordered the last abbot hung on the town gate. The fine four-poster, it is true, has been sold to a fancier of antiquities and replaced by a new canopied bed, but despite this the room retains its mediaeval appearance.

About a hundred years later, the delightful Renaissance structure, "Zum Ritter," was erected in Heidelberg. Originally the house of a wealthy Frenchman, it was subsequently changed into a hostelry and took its name from the knight on the peak of the gable. Doubtless no one has ever sung the praise of this n.o.ble building more worthily than Victor Hugo, who visited Heidelberg in 1838, and pa.s.sed by the house of St. George every morning, as he said, "pour faire dejeuner mon esprit." Jokingly he observes that the Latin inscription (Psalm 127, I) has protected the inn better than the little iron plate of the insurance firm. As a matter of fact neither the great conflagration of 1635, during the Thirty Years' War, nor the fires started under Melac and Marechal de Lorges, in 1689 and 1693, could harm this inn, while "all the other houses built without the Lord were burnt to the ground."

In England the good knight St. George was an especial favorite; even in the middle of the last century there were in London alone no less than sixty-six hostelries of that name. Truly, the pious meaning of old a.s.sociated with the sign had long been forgotten by hosts and guests alike, so that as early as the seventeenth century these mocking lines were penned:--

"To save a mayd St. George the Dragon slew-- A pretty tale, if all is told be true.

Most say there are no dragons, and 'tis said There was no George; pray G.o.d there was a mayd."

The pictures of the "valiant knight's" mount were often so dubious that a connoisseur of horses like Field Marshal Moltke, writing from Kosen, Thuringia, construed it as the picture of a mad dog. On the other hand, we have such charming conceptions of St. George as the sign here shown, from the hamlet of Degerloch, delightfully situated on the heights overlooking Stuttgart, a notable artistic achievement in wrought iron, interesting, moreover, for the a.s.sociations of merry chase linked with the saint in the mind of the country folk.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Degerloch]

Among other saints frequently chosen for tavern signs, St. Martin must be mentioned. At times he appears in like manner as does St.

Christopher; for instance, on the large reliefs decorating the facade of the minster in Basle: a friend of the needy, dividing his cloak with his sword, to share it with them; thus the pious saint lives on in the minds of the people. At the season of the new wine, the 21st of November, the Church commemorates his name: "A la saint Martin, faut goter le vin," is the French saying.

At the sign of St. Dominic too, whose meaning of religious hospitality had been utterly perverted in the course of time, stanch topers used to congregate for joyous orgies. Proudly they called themselves "Dominican"; and

"Bons ivrognes et grands fumeurs Qui ne cessent jamais de boire"

is their interpretation of such strange affiliation, in a song of the seventeenth century.

St. Urban has likewise figured on many a tavern sign. Once upon a time he took refuge from his pursuers behind a grapevine, and for that reason he has become a patron saint of vintners and tavern hosts.

"Alas," exclaims the refined Erasmus of Rotterdam, "mine host is not always as 'urbane' as he should be to justify this patronage."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GOOD WOMAN]

There is one sign whose religious origin is not self-evident, namely, the "Femme sans tete." Yet the figure has its origin, no doubt, in mediaeval representations of saints after decapitation, sometimes shown with the head in the hands. Whoever has perused the ill.u.s.trated "Lives of the Saints" with their many horrible mutilations of the martyrs depicted in woodcuts, must have realized that their moral influence on the popular imagination cannot have been of a beneficial nature. Even great artists did not hesitate to celebrate such awful scenes with the power of their genius. Among the drawings of Durer we see the executioner with his great sword ready to behead St. Catherine.

Nothing so disgusted Goethe in his Italian journey as all the painted atrocities perpetrated on the martyrs. The most peculiar example of this form of art is probably that in the Tower of London. It is a set of horse armor presented, apparently without malice, by Emperor Maximilian to Henry VIII of England, embellished with the most gruesome scenes of martyrdom. In the Tower, where so much innocent blood has flowed, one feels doubly repulsed by such excrescences of so-called religious art: one is even tempted to accept the popular conception of these beheaded saints as comforting symbols of forgetfulness. In fact, the oil merchants chose the "woman without head" as their sign, as one of the foolish virgins of the parable who had neglected to provide themselves in good time with the necessary oil: a warning example to delaying, unwilling customers.

A coa.r.s.er interpretation of the figure styles it as the "silent woman," or as the "good woman," who can no longer do mischief with her tongue. Moreover, one finds this most gallant of signs--which should be unmentionable in these days of woman's emanc.i.p.ation--not only in outspoken Holland, with the words: "Goede vrouw een mannen plaag" but also in Italy; in Turin, for instance, styled as "La buona moglie."

The most polite people on earth--I do not mean the Chinese, but the French--have named a street in Paris the "Rue de la Femme sans Tete"

after a tavern of like appellation. Young Gavarni stayed awhile in the "Auberge de la Femme sans Tete" in Bayonne, as the Goncourts tell us, and waxed eloquent about the dainty charms of the "vierge du cabaret,"

the tavern-keeper's daughter.

Ben Jonson, who loved to discuss with Shakespeare in the Siren Club and to "anatomize the times deformity," may have been stimulated to write his comedy "The Silent Woman" by the tavern sign of that name.

In Jonson's play, a Mr. Morose, an original old fellow, who holds all noise in detestation, weds a young lady, whose barely audible voice and scant replies have charmed him. When after the ceremony she reveals herself a loquacious scold and he gives vent to his disappointment, she replies with these endearing words: "Why, did you think you had married a statue, or a motion only? one of the French puppets, with the eyes turned with a wire? or some innocent out of the hospital that would stand with her hands thus, and a plaise mouth, and look upon you?"

But to comfort the feminists we should speak of a host truly gallant, who had a great white sign made, with the inscription below, "The Good Man." To the universal inquiry, "Where is the good man? I can't see him," he made answer, "Well, you see that is why I have left the blank s.p.a.ce; if only I could find him."

Since there is a saint for every day of the calendar, we must not be astonished to find names among those adopted for tavern signs which to us bear no relation to sanct.i.ty; such as St. Fiacre over a drivers'

bar, which seems rather the invention of some wag.

We must needs realize that all these religious signs have their origin in a time when popular imagination was mainly filled with the happenings of the Bible and the legends of the saints; when religion had not yet grown to be a Sunday occupation of a couple of hours, but was most intimately interwoven with the life of every day. Hence we find among subjects for signs not the saints only, whose human errors and sufferings have riveted a bond between them and the common people, but also the Deity itself. "La Trinite" was one of the latter in mediaeval France, as evidenced by this pa.s.sage in the song of a pilgrim:--

"De la alay plus oultre encore En un logis d'antiquite Qui se nomme la Trinite."

Other pilgrim taverns styled themselves "A l'image du Christ." We also meet with such inscriptions as "L'Humanite de Jesus Christ, notre sauveur divin"; the birth of Christ as a child, as in the charming old Swiss sign "Hie zum Christkindli"; the Madonna and scenes of her life like the "Annunciation," called Salutation in England. These and many other signs, such as "Purgatory," "h.e.l.l," and "Paradise," which have been revived in modern Paris on fantastic cabarets, meet our eyes on tavern signs. An old enumeration of London bars of the seventeenth century begins with the words:--

"There has been great sale and utterance of wine Besides beer and ale, and ipocras fine In every country region and nation Chefely at Billingsgate, at the Salutation...."

And when the author tires of mentioning them all by name, he concludes with:--

"And many like places that make noses red."

Finally, we must turn to those signs, not religious at first sight, which may well have their origin in attributes of the saints. Thus, we meet in Swiss towns, which have St. Gall as their local patron, with the sign of the "Bear"; "Crown" and "Star" are the symbols of the three magi who followed the star to the lowly tavern in Bethlehem; the "Wheel" reminds us of the martyrdom of St. Catherine; the "Stag" may be a reminder of the legend of St. Hubert; while the "Bell," once used by St. Anthony to drive away the demons by its sound, was fastened on the neck of animals to preserve them from epidemic diseases. We often see the bell, in old woodcuts, fastened round the neck of the little pig which accompanies the saint. The bell a.s.sumed a very worldly meaning, when it called the tipplers to their merry gatherings, which called forth in England the patriotic rhyme:--

"Let the King Live Long!

Dong Ding Ding Dong!"

The Tower of St. Barbara grew into an independent tavern sign, which, misunderstood, occasionally changed into a cage. Even the platter on which rested the head of the Baptist is deformed into the "Plat d'argent" over a tavern door. Hogarth does not refrain from introducing a sign in his engraving "Noon," of 1738, showing the Baptist's head on a charger, with the cynical inscription "Good Eating." Whether such coa.r.s.enesses were actually perpetrated, even under the lax regime of Charles II in England, when frivolity reigned after the fall of Cromwell, it is hard to decide. Possibly they may be set down as brutal outcroppings of the satirist's truth-deforming brain. The fact is, that even in the sixteenth century the abuse of religious subjects for the most disreputable resorts roused the indignation of serious, thinking men. Thus a certain Artus Desire indignantly laments, in a rhymed broadside, that the tavern-keepers dare place over houses where the great h.e.l.l devil himself is lodged the images of G.o.d and the saints to advertise their vine:--

"De dieu les Sainctz sont leur crieurs de vin Tant au citez que villes et villages, Et vous mettront dessus les grands pa.s.sages Au lieux d'horreur et d'immondicite Des susditz sainctz les devotes images En prophanant leur preciosite."

CHAPTER IV

SECULAR HOSPITALITY: KNIGHTLY AND POPULAR SIGNS

[Ill.u.s.tration: Adler Leonberg, Wurttemberg]

CHAPTER IV

SECULAR HOSPITALITY: KNIGHTLY AND POPULAR SIGNS

"In bibliis ich selten las viel lieber in dem Kruge sa.s.s."

RINGWALDT, 1582.

The heavy castle gates in mediaeval times were gladly opened to the minstrels who came to charm with their art the banquets of the n.o.ble lords and ladies--troubadours and minstrels, the ancestors of that vast and still thriving fraternity of poets whose blood runs too quickly through their veins to keep them content in the quiet monotony of a home. With the sailing clouds, with the migrating birds, and the rising sun they wander through woods and fields "to be like their mother the wandering world." With Walt Whitman they love the open road and hate the confinement of the stuffy room:--

"Afoot and light-hearted, I take the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me, The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose."

Never do they feel happier than when the long, long road lies before them, which now seems to dip down into the green sea of the forests and now to climb straight into the bright blue heaven. Jean Richepin, himself a "chemineau," now well settled as an honorable member of the French Academy, has sung the open road's praise. All poets feel deeply the words of Kleist, "Life is a journey." And how bitter the journey often was in the days of the minstrels, how glad they were when the dark forests and unsafe roads lay behind them and the big hearth-fire of the castle hall brightened face and soul! Gratefully they praised the n.o.ble lord for his hospitable reception and his kindly welcome.

Thus Walter von der Vogelweide, Germany's greatest minstrel:--

"Nun ich drei Hofe weiss, wo Ehrenmanner hausen, Fehlt mir es nicht an Wein, kann meine Pfanne sausen...

Mir ist nicht not, da.s.s ich nach Herberg fernumher noch streiche."

Impoverished knights may have occasionally hung out an iron helmet over the castle door as a sign that they were willing to receive and to entertain paying guests: certainly a more honorable method of gaining one's livelihood than to plunder the pa.s.sing merchant or even one's own peasants, as was the n.o.ble fashion at the end of mediaeval times. But it is more likely that such poor n.o.blemen would first think of using their city houses for such commercial purposes and not their lonely and uninviting fortified castles. Here on one of their city houses, where they used to lodge in time of markets or city festivities, the first iron helmet perhaps appeared as a knightly sign. Certain it is that we find inns of such name in France as well as in Germany, the most famous one in Rothenburg on the Tauber, the best preserved mediaeval city in existence, infinitely more charming than the much-talked-about Carca.s.sonne, reconstructed by Viollet-le-Duc with such cold correctness. Here in the quaint hall of the "_Eisenhut_," under the glittering arms of knights dead and gone, we will rest awhile and gladden our heart with the golden Tauber wine.

Let the comfort-seeker go to the modern prosaic hotel outside the city wall!

The iron helmet is not the only martial tavern sign. Other names sounded equally well to the soldier's ear: in France "Le Haubert"

(iron shirt), for instance, that might remind us of the old English inn, "The Tabard," in which Chaucer gathered his joyous pilgrims for happy meals and amusing conversations; the sword, St. Peter's attribute, was used as tavern sign in his holy city Rome in the sixteenth century ("alla spada"); the cannon was very popular as "canone d'oro" in northern Italy; and many others.