Old Tavern Signs Part 9

The tender relationship between the landlady and the poet-guest has given birth to numerous songs, from which we select the famous German Lied by Rudolf Baumbach:

"Angethan hat mir's dein Wein Deiner auglein h.e.l.ler Schein Lindenwirtin, du junge!"

and the not less charming poem of Moliere's successor, Dancourt, composed in honor of the landlady of the "Cabaret du pet.i.t pere noire":--

"Si tu veux sans suite et sans bruit Noyer tous tes ennuis et boire a ta maitresse, Viens, je sais un reduit Inaccessible a la tristesse La nous serons servis de la main d'une hotesse Plus belle que l'astre qui luit, Et melant au bon vin quelque peu de tendresse, Contents du jour, nous attendrons la nuit."

The cla.s.sical literary tavern of England was without doubt "The Mermaid Tavern," once situated in Bread Street not far from Milton's birthplace. Here the famous club, founded by Ben Jonson, in 1603, a.s.sembled, among them the immortal Shakespeare. The fascination of this mermaid was still in the nineteenth century so great as to inspire Keats with his charming "Lines on the Mermaid Tavern," which we feel inclined to quote in full from Anning Bell's ill.u.s.trated edition, where it stands under a graceful reconstruction of the sign:--

"Souls of Poets dead and gone, What Elysium have ye known, Happy field or mossy cavern, Choicer than the _Mermaid Tavern_?

Have ye tippled drink more fine Than mine host's Canary wine?

Or are fruits of Paradise Sweeter than those dainty pies Of venison? O generous food!

Drest as though bold Robin Hood Would, with his maid Marian, Sup and browse from horn and can.

"I have heard that on a day Mine host's sign-board flew away n.o.body knew whither, till An astrologer's old quill To a sheepskin gave the story, Said he saw you in your glory, Underneath a new-old sign Sipping beverage divine, And pledging with contented smack The Mermaid in the Zodiak.

"Souls of Poets dead and gone, What Elysium have ye known, Happy fields or mossy cavern, Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?"

Truly a capricious wind has carried away the old Mermaid sign into far and unknown regions, and to-day the scholars are disputing where really the famous house stood.

Two other taverns, less roughly handled by Father Time, may claim to be next in literary rank: "The Cheshire Cheese" and "The c.o.c.k," both in Fleet Street. "Ye olde Cheshire Cheese," or simply "The Cheese," is not easy to find because it really stands on a narrow side-lane, the Wine Office Court. It has the great advantage of having preserved unchanged the character of a seventeenth-century tavern. Although venerable, it is not the original building, which was destroyed, together with many other public-houses in the great fire of 1666.

Pious souls saw in the fact that the conflagration started in Pudding Lane and ended at Pie Corner an evident proof that the fire was sent from Heaven as punishment for "the sin of gluttony." Shakespeare is said to have turned in not unfrequently at the old house of the "Cheshire Cheese" on his way to the Blackfriars' Theatre in the Playhouse Yard, Ludgate Hill, where he was director for a time, or coming back for a twilight drink after the performance, which in those times closed as early as five o'clock. In spite of the warning fire of 1666 the sin of gluttony is still readily committed in the "Cheshire Cheese," whose specialty, a meat pudding,--containing not only roast beef, kidneys, and oysters, but sky-larks too!--might even be called a sin against the holy ghost of poetry. Once immersed in this pudding the divine singers are silent forever without the consolation of the children's book:--

"And when the pie was opened The birds began to sing."

Some of these lark puddings are even shipped to Yankeeland, which sends every year countless pilgrims to the "Cheshire Cheese." If possible, the American father of a family will take the seat of Dr.

Samuel Johnson, the famous lexicographer, lean his head against the old paneling, which clearly shows the marks of the greasy wigs of the Doctor and his friend Oliver Goldsmith, and look at chick and child with an Olympian air, as if he wanted to say: "I am Sir Oracle, and when I ope my mouth let no dog bark."

Among the guests and visitors at this "house of antique ease" we find many famous names beside Johnson and the author of the "Vicar of Wakefield," who dwelt in the neighboring house, No. 6, Wine Office Court; men like Swift, Addison, Sheridan, Pope, even Voltaire, who must have felt rather out of place in this atmosphere of beefsteak and ale. Among modern poets Thackeray and d.i.c.kens are foremost,--d.i.c.kens who has studied so intimately the taverns and inns of his country.

Under the spell of these souls of poets dead and gone, writers of the present generation love to gather here in literary clubs, such as the Johnson Club, which has adopted as its device the Doctor's cla.s.sical definition of the word "club": "An a.s.sembly of good fellows meeting under certain conditions." Johnson, who spent almost all his life in taverns, favored not only "The Cheese" with his presence, but others, too, as "The Mitre," in whose dark coffee-room Hawthorne once dined.

This old house has entirely vanished from the ground, just as the still older inn "The Devil"--who, following his old custom of settling near a church, had established himself opposite St. Dunstan's. Thus we no longer "go to The Devil," but if we have some serious business on hand we may step into "Child's Bank," which stands exactly on his former spot.

How important a role the waiters played in these old taverns we may realize from the fact that the portraits of two former head waiters decorate the walls of "The Cheshire Cheese." Tennyson has celebrated another of these dignitaries in a long poem written in the c.o.c.k Tavern, beginning in this cla.s.sical fashion:--

"O plump head-waiter at The c.o.c.k, To which I most resort, How goes the time? 'T is five o'clock.

Go fetch a pint of port; But let it not be such as that You set before chance-comers, But such whose father-grape grew fat On Lusitanian summers."

Dreaming over his gla.s.s of wine the poet sees in a sudden vision the prototype of the c.o.c.k who once brought the head-waiter as a round country boy to the city, to the great bewilderment of his church-tower colleagues who witnessed his audacious flight:--

"His brothers of the weather stood Stock-still for sheer amazement."

The description of this legendary c.o.c.k, inspired evidently by the beautiful work of Gibbon's master-hand, still to be seen in the modern c.o.c.k Tavern in Fleet Street, might well be called cla.s.sical, and shall not be withheld from our readers:--

"The c.o.c.k was of a larger egg Than modern poultry drop, Stept forward on a firmer leg, And cramm'd a plumper crop, Upon an ampler dunghill trod, Crow'd l.u.s.tier late and early, Sipt wine from silver, praising G.o.d, And raked in golden barley."

Everybody who knows and loves the Swabian poet Morike, the music for whose songs, composed by Hugo Wolff, have become the property of the international brotherhood of music-lovers, will think of his "Old Church-Tower c.o.c.k," strangely similar in feeling to Tennyson's poem of "The c.o.c.k" and his brothers of the weather.

We are not surprised to find that the poets of the land of Wanderl.u.s.t give special attention to taverns and signs. Besides Morike, and Uhland, whose "Inn" we quoted above, Johann Peter Hebel, a son of the Black Forest, has always shown a special predilection for the sign and its wonders. In an untranslatable poem, "On the death of a tippler,"

he celebrates his man as a diligent astronomer who never tires looking for shining "Stars," a brave knight always ready to hunt up "Bears"

and "Lions," a pious Christian willing to do penitence at the "Cross,"

a man who frequented the best society, including "The Three Kings,"

his most intimate friends.

Germany may boast, too, of a cla.s.sical literary tavern, the "Bratwurstglockle" in Nuremberg, built directly against the walls of a church, the Gothic Moritz-Kapelle. Among its famous guests were the Mastersinger, Hans Sachs, and Durer, Germany's greatest artist. Like a house out of a fairy tale it stands before us; we are only surprised that no fence of sausages surrounds it and that its door and window shutters are ordinary wood and not gingerbread!

CHAPTER IX

POLITICAL SIGNS

[Ill.u.s.tration: The King of Wurttemberg Stuttgart]

CHAPTER IX

POLITICAL SIGNS

"Au-dessus de ma tete, Charles Quint, Joseph II ou Napoleon pendus a une vieillie potence en fer et faisant enseigne, grands empereurs qui ne sont plus bons qu'a achalander une auberge."

VICTOR HUGO, _Le Rhin_.

At the first glance our peaceful sign seems to have nothing to do with politics whatsoever, except perhaps in so far as under its symbol the Philistines a.s.semble, not only to drink and be merry, but, as a side-issue, to solve the world's problems. The contrast of human strife and battle outside, somewhere in distant lands, with the undisturbed comfort of the tap-room has been for ages one of the chief fascinations of the tavern, and none has described this selfish att.i.tude of the Philistine more graphically than Goethe in the conversation of the two citizens in his "Faust":--

"On Sundays, holidays, there's naught I take delight in, Like gossiping of war, and war's array.

When down in Turkey, far away, The foreign people are a-fighting.

One at the window sits, with gla.s.s and friends, And sees all sorts of ships go down the river gliding: And blesses then, as home he wends At night, our times of peace abiding."

This opinion the other citizen, who reminds us curiously of certain modern neutrals, approves with the following words:--

"Yes, Neighbor! that's my notion too: Why, let them break their heads, let loose their pa.s.sions, And mix things madly through and through, So, here, we keep our good old fashions!"

This seems about all the political wisdom the tavern sign has to suggest; but if we investigate more closely the varying forms and continual changes of the sign we shall discover in its evolution nothing less than a little history of civilization in pictures. Every great event in the world's history finds its echo in some transformation of the sign, that proves itself a sensitive indicator for the popular valuation of leading men and important occurrences. In the eagle-names of the Roman signs we seem to hear the conquering wings of the Roman eagles soaring over the world, and on the Cymbrian shield over the c.o.c.ktavern on the Forum we read the pride of the victorious Roman soldier.

In our chapter on "Heraldic Signs" we recognized the relationship between the landlords and the ruling powers. The swinging sign of a "crown" means the rule of kings, and thankful subjects who enjoy the peace secured by their monarch and the comfort of settling down in "The Crown" to a blessed meal. It means good times, efficient landlords and easy food-supply, if you get such an excellent and abundant dinner as Heine was offered on his wanderings through the Harz by the tavern-keeper of "The Crown" in Klausthal: "My repast consisted of spring-green parsley-soup, violet-blue cabbage, a pile of roast veal which resembled Chimborazo in miniature and a sort of smoked herrings, called Buckings from their inventor William Bucking, who died in 1447, and who, on account of the invention, was so greatly honored by Charles V that the great monarch in 1556 made a journey from Middleburg to Bievlied in Zealand for the express purpose of visiting the grave of the great fishdrier. How exquisitely such dishes taste when we are familiar with their historical a.s.sociations!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: Degerloch]

And do not the kings themselves appear on the sign? The "Three Kings"

were originally the "Wise Men" from the East. How the Catholic Church came to represent them as kings we read in Fischart's quaint old German of his amusing "Bienenkorb" of 1580: "Und das sie weiter auss den treien Weisen aus Morgenland trei Konig gemacht hat und den eynen so Bechschwarz als eynen Moren, ist aus den Weissagungen Salomonis oder Davids gefischet, die da sagen, da.s.s die Konig aus Morenland Christum anzubeten kommen werden." The East, the land of the morn, was thus confused with the land of the Moors which we should rather seek to the south of Bethlehem. On "Three Kings' Day," of course, the taverns of this name were scenes of special merriment, the good Catholics joyfully shouting, "The King drinks." "The three gentlemen,"

as Carlyle calls them disrespectfully, are buried in the Cologne Cathedral, but their memory is honored still by many a visitor of a "Three Kings" tavern in good Rhenish wine which our forefathers called the theological wine. We find the sign of the famous travelers from distant lands especially on the great roads of commerce leading from Italy over the Alps, so in Augsburg and Basle. Originally a royalist symbol of the landlord's loyalty to monarchy, of his eagerness to serve crowned guests if fortune should lead them his way, it was changed in the times of the Revolution to the democratic "Three Moors," and the first landlord who is said to have deprived his three kings of their crowns was the landlord in Basle. Maybe time helped him to make this change, slowly wearing away the gilded glitter of the crowns and darkening the kings to black-a-moors. To-day the famous house in Augsburg, where Charles V once lodged as guest of the rich banker Fugger for more than a year, is called "Three Moors." The traveler still may see the big fireplace in which the generous merchant burned all the imperial promissory notes.

But whatever the explanation of this "Three Moors'" sign may be, there can be no doubt that the Revolution had a noticeable influence on signs in general. The inn "Zum Rosenkrantz" in Stra.s.sburg was called after 1790 "A la couronne civile," to please the rationalistic worshipers of the "Supreme Being," and countless king-signs were sold as old iron. Sebastien Mercier, in his "Tableau de Paris," has given a merciless report of this great catastrophe which swept away so many of the signs which we have learned to respect and to love: "Chez les marchands de ferrailles du quai de la Megisserie, sont des magazins de vieilles enseignes, propre a decorer l'entree de tous les cabarets et tabagies des faubourgs et de la banlieu de Paris. La tous les rois de la terre dorment ensemble: Louis XVI et Georges III se baisent fraternellement; le roi de Prusse couche avec l'imperatrice de Russie, l'empereur est de niveau avec les electeurs; la enfin la tiare et le turban se confonde. Un cabaretier arrive, remue avec le pied toutes ces tetes couronnees, les examine, prend au hasard la figure du roi de Pologne, l'emporte et ecrit dessous: Au grand vainqueur. Un autre gargotier demande une imperatrice; il veut que sa gorge soit boursouflee, et le peintre, sortant de la taverne voisine, fait present d'une gorge rebondie a toutes les princesses d'Europe. Le meme peintre coiffe d'une couronne de laurier une tete de Louis XV lui ote sa perruque et sa bourse, et voila, un Cesar.--Toutes ces figures royales ont d'etranges physionomies et font eternellement la moue a la populace qui les regarde. Aucun de ces souverains ne sourit au peuple, meme en peinture; ils out tous l'air hagard ou burlesque, des yeux erailles, un nez de travers, une bouche enorme...."