CHAPTER IX

A Monkey, a Magpie, and a WifeIs the true Emblem of Strife.

A somewhat similar sign exists at the present time at Madingley, near Cambridge.

THE “MAN LOADED WITH MISCHIEF.”

The correctness, or otherwise, of the Oxford Street sign being attributed to Hogarth has never been determined, but it is quite characteristic of him, and all through Hogarth’s works there runs a curious familiarity with, and insistence upon, signs. You find the sign of the “Duke of Cumberland” pictorially insisted upon in his “Invasion of England,” although it is merely an accessory to the picture; and in “Gin Lane,” “Southwark Fair,” the “March to Finchley,” and others, every detail of incidental signs is shown. This distinguishing characteristic is nowhere more remarkable than in his “Election: Canvassing for Votes,” where, above the heads of the rival agents in bribery is the sign of the “Royal Oak,” half obscured by an election placard. In the distance is seen a mob, about to tear down the sign of the “Crown,” and above the two seated and drinking and smoking figures in the foreground is part of the “Portobello” sign. A curious item in this picture is the fierce effigy of a lion, looking as though it had been the figurehead of a ship, and somewhat resembling those still existing atthe “Star” inn, Alfriston, and the “Red Lion,” Martlesham.

The classic instance of the dissolute artistic genius, ever drinking in the wayside beerhouse, and leaving long trails of masterpieces behind him in full settlement of paltry scores, is George Morland. He painted exquisitely, for the same reason that the skylark sings divinely, because he could not do otherwise; and no one has represented so finely or so naturally the rustic life of England at the close of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, as he. His chosen companions were “ostlers, potboys, pugilists, moneylenders, and pawnbrokers”—the last two classes, it may be suspected, less from choice than from necessity. He painted over four thousand pictures in his short life of forty-one years, and died in a “sponging-house” for debtors, leaving the all-too-true epitaph for himself, “Here lies a drunken dog.”

He lived for a considerable time opposite the “White Lion” inn, at the then rural village of Paddington, and his masterpiece, the “Inside of a Stable,” was painted there.

Morland was no neglected genius. His natural, unaffected style, that was no style, in the sense that he showed rustic life as it was, without the “classic” artifice of a Claude or the finicking unreality of a Watteau, appealed alike to connoisseurs and to the uneducated in art; and he might, but for his own hindrance, have been a wealthy man. Dealers besieged him, purse in onehand and bottle in the other. He paid all debts with pictures, and in those inns where he was known the landlords kept a room specially for him, furnished with all the necessaries of his art: only too pleased that, in his ready-made fame, he should settle scores in his characteristic way.

Oddly enough, although Morland is reputed to have painted many inn-signs, not one has survived; or perhaps, more strictly speaking, not one of the existing paintings by him has been identified with a former sign.

Morland died in 1824, and twenty years later one “J. B. P.,” inThe Somerset House Gazette, described how, walking from Laleham to Chertsey Bridge, and sheltering at the “Cricketers,” a small public-house there, he noticed, while sitting in the parlour, a painting of a cricket-match. The style seemed familiar, and he at last recognised it as Morland’s. Questioning the landlord, he learned that forty-five years earlier the inn was the “Walnut Tree,” and that a “famous painter” had lodged there and painted the picture. It grew so popular with local cricketers that at last the name of the house was altered.

The stranger offered to buy, but the landlord declared he would not sell. It seemed that he took it with him when he set up a booth at Egham and Staines races, “an’ cricket-matches and such-like.” It was, in fact, his trade-mark.

Mine host thought in shillings, but the stranger in guineas.

“How,” he asked, “if I offered you £10 10s.?”

“Ah, well!” rejoined the publican: “it should go, with all my heart,”—and go it did.

Thus did the purchaser describe his bargain: “The painting, about a yard in length and of a proportionate height, is done on canvas, strained upon something like an old shutter, which has two staples at the back, suited to hook it for its occasional suspension on the booth-front in the host’s erratic business at fairs and races. The scene I found to be a portrait of the neighbouring cricket-green called Laleham Borough, and contains thirteen cricketers in full play, dressed in white, one arbiter in red and one in blue, besides four spectators, seated two by two on chairs. The picture is greatly cracked, in the reticulated way of paint when much exposed to the sun; but the colours are pure, and the landscape in a very pleasing tone, and in perfect harmony. The figures are done as if with the greatest ease, and the mechanism of Morland’s pencil and his process of painting are clearly obvious in its decided touches, and in the gradations of the white particularly. It cannot be supposed that this freak of the pencil is a work of high art; yet it certainly contains proof of Morland’s extraordinary talent, and it should seem that he even took some pains with it, for there are marks of his having painted out and re-composed at least one figure.”

The appreciation of Morland in his lifetime is well shown by a story of himself and Williams, the engraver, tramping, tired, hungry, thirsty and penniless, from Deal to London. They cameat last to “the ‘Black Bull’ on the Dover Road”—wherever precisely that may have been—and Morland offered the landlord to repaint his faded sign for a crown, the price of a meal. The innkeeper knew nothing of Morland, and was at first unwilling; but he at length agreed, and rode off to Canterbury for the necessary materials.

The friends eventually ran up a score a few shillings in excess of that contemplated originally by the landlord, and left him dissatisfied with his bargain. Meanwhile, artist and engraver tramped to town, and, telling the story to their friends in the hearing of a long-headed admirer of Morland’s work, he rode down and, we are told, purchased the “Black Bull” sign from the amazed landlord for £10 10s.

The story is probably in essentials true, but that unvarying ten-guinea price is inartistic and unconvincing.

Richard Wilson, an earlier than Morland, fought a losing fight as a landscape painter, and “by Britain left in poverty to pine,” at last died in 1782. Classic landscape in the manner of Claude was not then appreciated, and the unfortunate painter sold principally to pawnbrokers, at wretched prices, until even they grew tired of backing him. He lived and died neglected, and had to wait for Fame, as “Peter Pindar,” that shrewdest and best of art-critics, foretold,

Till thou hast been dead a hundred year.

He painted at least one inn-sign: that of the “Loggerheads” at Llanverris, in Denbighshire;a picture representing two jovial, and not too intellectual, grinning faces, with the inscription, “We Three Loggerheads Be.” The fame of this sign was once so great that the very name of the village itself became obscured, and the place was commonly known as “Loggerheads.” Wilson’s work was long since repainted.

But whatisa “loggerhead,” and why should the two grinning faces of the sign have been described as “three”? The origin of the term is, like the birth of Jeames de la Pluche, “wrop in mistry”; but of the meaning of it there is little doubt. A “loggerhead” is anything you please in the dunderhead, silly fool, perfect ass, or complete idiot way, and the gaping stranger who looks inquisitively at thetwologgerheads on the sign-board automatically constitutes himself thethird, and thus completes the company. It is a kind of small-beer, fine-drawn jape that has from time immemorial passed for wit in rustic parts, and may be traced even in the pages of Shakespeare, where, in Act II. Scene 2 ofTwelfth Night, it is the subject of allusion as the picture of “We Three.”

The “Mortal Man” at Troutbeck, in the Lake district, once possessed a pictorial sign, painted by Julius Cæsar Ibbetson, a gifted but dissolute artist, friend of, and kindred spirit with, Morland. It represented two faces, the one melancholy, pallid and thin, the other hearty, good-humoured, and “ruddier than the cherry.” Beneath these two countenances was inscribed a verse attributedto Thomas Hoggart, a local wit, uncle of Hogarth, the painter:

“Thou mortal man, that liv’st by bread,What makes thy face to look so red?”“Thou silly fop, that look’st so pale,’Tis red with Tony Burchett’s ale.”

First went the heads, and at last the verses also, and to-day the “Mortal Man” has only a plain sign.

John Crome, founder of the “Norwich School” of artists, known as “Old” Crome, in order to distinguish him from his son, contributed to this list of signs painted by artists. It is not surprising that he should have done so, seeing that he won to distinction from the very lowest rungs of the ladder; leaving, as a boy, the occupation of running errands for a doctor, and commencing art in 1783 as apprentice to a coach-, house-, and sign-painter. One work of his of this period is the “Sawyers” sign. It is now preserved at the Anchor Brewery, Pockthorpe, Norwich. Representing a saw-pit, with two sawyers at work, it shows the full-length figure of the top-sawyer and the head and shoulders of the other. It is, however, a very inferior and fumbling piece of work, and its interest is wholly sentimental.

J. F. Herring, afterwards famous for his paintings of horses and farmyard scenes, began as a coach-painter and sign-board artist at Doncaster, in 1814. He painted at least twelve inn-signs in that town, but they have long since become things of the past.

Charles Herring never reached the heights of fame scaled by his brother, and long painted signs for a great firm of London brewers.

However difficult it might prove nowadays to rise from the humble occupations of house- or coach-painter, to the full glory of a Royal Academician, it seems once to have been a comparatively easy transition. All that was requisite was the genius for it, and sometimes not very much of that. A case in point is that of Sir William Beechey, who not only won to such distinction in 1793 from the several stages of house-painter and solicitor’s clerk, but achieved the further and more dazzling success of knighthood, although never more than an indifferent portrait-painter. A specimen of his art, in the shape of the sign-board of the “Dryden’s Head,” near Kate’s Cabin, on the Great North Road, was long pointed out.

The painting of sign-boards, in fact, was long a kind of preparatory school for higher flights of art, and indeed the fashion of pictorial signs nursed many a dormant genius into life and activity. Robert Dalton, who rose to be Keeper of the Pictures to George the Third, had been a painter of signs and coaches; Gwynne, who first performed similar journey-work, became a marine-painter of repute; Smirke, who eventually became R.A.; Ralph Kirby, drawing-master to the Prince of Wales, afterwards George the Fourth; Thomas Wright, of Liverpool, and many more, started life decorating coach-panels or painting signs. Opie,the Cornish peasant-lad who rose to fame in paint, declared that his first steps were of the like nature: “I ha’ painted Duke William for the signs, and stars and such-like for the boys’ kites.”

The Royal Academicians of our own time did not begin in this way, and as a pure matter of curious interest it will be found that your sucking painter is too dignified for anything of the kind, and that modern signs painted by artists are usually done for a freak by those who have already long acquired fame and fortune. It is an odd reversal.

Thus, very many years ago, Millais painted a “George and Dragon” sign for the “George” inn, Hayes Common. There it hung, exposed to all weathers, and at last faded into a neutral-tinted, very “speculative” affair, when the landlord had it repainted, “as good as new,” by some one described as “a local artist.” Now even the local painter’s work has disappeared, and the great hideous “George” is content without a picture-sign.

The most famous of all signs painted by artists is, of course, that of the “Royal Oak” at Bettws-y-Coed, on the Holyhead Road. It was painted by David Cox, in 1847, and, all other tales to the contrary notwithstanding, it wasnotexecuted by him, when in sore financial straits, to liquidate a tavern score. David Cox was never of the Morland type of dissolute artist, did not run up scores, paid his rates and taxes, never bilked a tradesman, and was just a home-loving,domesticated man. That he should at the same time have been a great artist, supreme in his own particular field, in his own particular period, is so unusual and unaccountable a thing that it would not be surprising to find some critic-prophet arising to deny his genius because of all those damning circumstances of the commonplace, and the clinching facts that he never wore a velvet jacket, and had his hair cut at frequent intervals.

SIGN OF THE “ROYAL OAK,” BETTWS-Y-COED.

The genius of David Cox was not fully realised in his lifetime, and he received very inadequate prices for his works, but he was probably never “hard up,” and he painted the sign-board of the “Royal Oak” merely as a whimsical compliment to his friend, Mrs. Roberts, the landlady of the house, which was still at that time a rural inn.

The old sign had become faded by long exposure to the weather, and was about to be renewed at the hands of a house-painter, when Cox, who happened then to be on one of his many visits to Bettws, ascended a short ladder reared against the house and repainted it, then and there.The coaching age still survived in North Wales at that period, and Bettws was still secluded and rustic, and he little looked for interruption; but, while busily at work, he was horrified by hearing a voice below exclaim, “Why, itisMr. Cox, I declare!” A lady, a former pupil of his, travelling through the country on her honeymoon, had noticed him, and although he rather elaborately explained the how and the why of his acting the part of sign-painter, it seems pretty clear that it was from this source the many old stories derived of Cox being obliged by poverty to resort to this humble branch of art.

In 1849 he retouched the sign, and in 1861, two years after his death, it was, at the request of many admirers, removed from the outside wall and placed in a situation of honour, in the hall of what had by that time become an “hotel.”

The painting, on wooden panel, is a fine, bold, dashing picture of a sturdy oak, in whose midst you do but vaguely see, or fancy you see, His Majesty, hiding. Beneath are troopers, questing about on horseback. It is very Old Masterish in feeling, low-toned and mellow in colour, and rich in impasto. It is fixed as part of a decorative overmantel, and underneath is a prominent inscription stating that it “forms part of the freehold of the hotel belonging to the Baroness Howard de Walden.” Sign and freehold have now descended to the Earl of Ancaster.

Behind that inscription lies a curious story of disputed ownership in the painting. It seemsthat in 1880 the then landlady of the “Royal Oak” became bankrupt, and the trustees in bankruptcy claimed the sign as a valuable asset, a portion of the estate; making a statement to the effect that a connoisseur had offered £1,000 for it. This at once aroused the cupidity of the then Baroness Willoughby de Eresby, owner of the freehold, and an action was brought against the trustees, to determine whose property it was. The trustees in the first instance, in the Bangor District Court of Bankruptcy, were worsted by Judge Horatio Lloyd, who held that it was a fixture, and could not be sold by the innkeeper. This decision was challenged, and the question re-argued before Sir James Bacon, who, in delivering judgment for the trustees, said the artist had made a present of the picture, and that it belonged to the innkeeper as much as the coat or the dress on her back. He therefore reversed the decision of the Judge in Bankruptcy; but the case was carried eventually to the Supreme Court, and the Lords finally declared the painting to be the property of the freeholder.

Their decision was based upon the following reasoning: “Assuming that the picture was originally what may be called a ‘tenant’s fixture,’ which he might have removed, it appeared that he had never done so. Therefore, the picture not having been removed by the original tenant within his term, on a new lease being granted it became the property of the landlord, and had never ceased to be so.”

In these days of the revival of this, of that, and of t’ other, you think inevitably of that very wise saying of the Preacher in Ecclesiastes: “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun.”

SIGN OF THE “GEORGE AND DRAGON,” WARGRAVE-ON-THAMES.Painted by G. D. Leslie, R.A.

The most readily allowed excuse for anything in such times as these is the plea that it is a revival of something that existed of old. That at once sets upon it—little matter what it be—the seal of approval. Of late years there has in this way been a notable revival of inn-signs painted by artists of repute.

The oldest of these moderns is perhaps that of the “George and Dragon” at Wargrave-on-Thames: a double-sided sign painted by the two Royal Academicians, G. D. Leslie and J. E. Hodgson. In a gossipy book of reminiscences Mr. Leslie tells how this sign came to be painted, about 1874: “It was during our stay at Wargrave that my friend Mr. Hodgson and I painted Mrs. Wyatt’s sign-board for her—the ‘Georgeand Dragon.’ I painted my side first, a regular orthodox St. George on a white horse, spearing the dragon. Hodgson was so taken with the idea of painting a sign-board that he asked me to be allowed to do the other side, to which I, of course, consented, and as he could only stop at Wargrave one day, he managed to do it on that day—indeed, it occupied him little more than a couple of hours. The idea of his composition was suggested by Signor Pellegrini, the well-known artist ofVanity Fair. The picture represented St. George, having vanquished the dragon and dismounted from his horse, quenching his thirst in a large beaker of ale. These pictures were duly hung up soon after, and very much admired. They have since had a coat of boat-varnish, and look already very Old Masterly. Hodgson’s, which gets the sun on it, is a little faded; but mine, which faces the north, towards Henley, still looks pretty fresh.”

SIGN OF THE “GEORGE AND DRAGON,” WARGRAVE-ON-THAMES.Painted by J. E. Hodgson, R.A.

Goring-on-Thames has a now very faded pictorial sign, the “Miller of Mansfield,” painted by Marcus Stone, R.A. The Thames-side villages are indeed especially favoured, and at Wallingfordthe sign of the “Row Barge,” by G. D. Leslie, is prominent in a bye-street. The inn itself is a very modest and very ancient place of entertainment. A document is still extant which sets forth how the licence was renewed in 1650, when, owing to the puritanical ways of the age, many other houses in the same town had to forfeit theirs, and discontinue business. Once the property of the Corporation of Wallingford, it seems to have obtained its unusual name from having been the starting-point of the Mayor’s State Barge. With these facts in mind, the artist painted an imaginary state barge, pulled by six sturdy watermen, and containing the Mayor and Corporation of Wallingford, accompanied by the mace-bearer, who occupies a prominent position in the prow. G. D. Leslie also painted the sign of the “King Harry” at St. Stephen’s, outside St. Albans, but it has long been replaced by a quite commonplace daub.

THE “ROW BARGE,” WALLINGFORD.Painted by G. D. Leslie, R.A.

THE “SWAN,” PRESTON CROWMARSH.

This does not quiteexhaust the list of riverside places thus distinguished, for “Ye Olde Swan,” Preston Crowmarsh, has a sign painted by Mr. Wildridge. It overlooks one of the prettiest ferries on the river.

THE “WINDMILL,” TABLEY.

THE “SMOKER” INN, PLUMBLEY.

Two modern artistic signs in Cheshire owe their existence to a lady. These are the effective pictures of the “Smoker” inn at Plumbley and the “Windmill,” Tabley. They are from the brush of Miss Leighton, a niece of the late Lord de Tabley. The “Smoker” by no means indicates a place devoted with more than usual thoroughness to smoking, but is named after a once-famous race-horse belonging to the family in the early years of the nineteenth century. On one side of the sign is a portrait of the horse, the reverse displaying the arms of the De Tableys, supported by two ferocious-looking cockatrices.

The sign of the “Windmill” explainsitself: it is Don Quixote, tilting at one of his imaginary enemies.

THE “FERRY” INN, ROSNEATH.

In 1897 the Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll, designed and painted a pictorial sign for the “Ferry” inn at Rosneath. It is only remarkable as being the work of a Royal Princess. The three-masted ancient ship, or galleon, is the heraldic charge known as a “lymphad,” borne by many Scottish families, among them the Campbells, Dukes of Argyll.

Some three years later Mr. Walter Crane enriched the little Hampshire village of Grayshott with a pictorial sign for the “Fox and Pelican,” a converted inn conducted on the principles of one of the feather-brained nostrums of the age.

THE “FERRY” INN, ROSNEATH.

The name of the house commemorates Fox, the great Bishop of Winchester, whose device was “A Pelican in her Piety.” It represents a pelican guarding a nest of three young birds, andfeeding them with blood from her breast. The device is painted on one side of the board, and the name of the house is inscribed on a scroll on the other.

THE “FOX AND PELICAN,” GRAYSHOTT.

Many other pictorial inn-signs have of late years replaced the merely lettered boards, and although the artists are not famous, or even well-known, the average merit of the work is high. A particularly good example is the double-sided sign of a little thatched rural inn, the “Cat and Fiddle,” between Christchurch and Bournemouth; where on one side you perceive the cat seated calmly, in a domestic manner, while on the other he is reared upon his hind-legs, fiddle-playing, according to the nursery-rhyme:

Hey, diddle, diddle,The Cat and the Fiddle,The Cow jumped over the Moon,The Little Dog laughed to see such sport,And the Dish ran away with the spoon.

Serious antiquaries—a thought too serious—have long attempted to find a hidden meaning in the well-known sign of the “Cat and Fiddle.” According to some commentators, it derived from “Caton fidèle,” one Caton, a staunch Protestant governor of Calais in the reactionary reign ofQueen Mary, who could justly apply to himself the praise: “I have fought the good fight, I have kept the Faith,” while in the rhyme it has been sought to discover some veiled political allusion, carefully wrapped up in nursery allegory, in times when to interfere openly in politics, or to criticise personages or affairs of State was not merely dangerous, but fatal. Ingenious people have discovered in the wild jingle an allusion to Henry the Eighth and the Disestablishment of the Monasteries, and others have found it to be a satire on James the Second and the Great Rebellion. Given the requisite ingenuity, there is no national event to which it could not be compared; but why not take it merely for what it is: a bundle ofinconsequent rhymes for the amusement of the childish ear?

THE “CAT AND FIDDLE,” NEAR CHRISTCHURCH.

From every point of view the revival and spread of the old fashion of artistic sign-boards is to be encouraged, for it not only creates an interest in the different localities, but serves to perpetuate local history and legend.

A remarkable feature of the “Swan” at Fittleworth is the number of pictures painted by artists on the old panelling of the coffee-room.

Caton Woodville painted a sign for this house, but it has long been considered too precious to be hung outside, exposed to the chances of wind and wet, and perhaps in danger of being filched one dark night by some connoisseur more appreciative than honest. It has therefore been removed within. It represents on one side the swan, ridden by a Queen of the Fairies, while a frog, perched on the swan’s tail, holds a lantern, whose light is in rivalry with a star.

On the other side a frog, seated in a pewter pot, is observed contentedly smoking a “churchwarden” pipe while he is being conveyed down stream.

QUEER SIGNS IN QUAINT PLACES

Thus did Horace Walpole moralise over the fickleness of sign-board favour:

“I was yesterday out of town, and the very signs, as I passed through the villages, made me make very quaint reflections on the mortality of fame and popularity. I observed how the ‘Duke’s Head’ had succeeded almost universally to ‘Admiral Vernon’s,’ as his had left but few traces of the ‘Duke of Ormonde’s.’ I pondered these things in my breast, and said to myself, ‘Surely all glory is but as a sign.’”

True, and trite. He might even, perhaps, by dint of scraping, have found upon those old sign-boards whole strata of discarded heroes, painted one over another. Vernon was, of course, the dashing captor of Portobello, in 1739. There were “Portobellos” and “Admiral Vernons” all over the country, for some years, but one would need to travel far and search diligently before he found an “Admiral Vernon” in these days. Six years only was his term of popularity, and there was no renewal of the lease. The Duke of Cumberland displaced him, and he, the victor of Colloden—little enough of a hero—was painted out in favour of ourally, the “King of Prussia” (Frederick the Great) about 1756. The “King of Proosher,” as the rustics commonly called him, had an extraordinary vogue, and the sign is still occasionally to be found, even in these days, when everything German is, with excellent reason, detested. But, as the poet remarks, “all that’s bright must fade,” and the greater number of “Kings of Prussia” were abolished after the battle of Minden, in 1759, in favour of the “Marquis of Granby.” The “Markis o’ Granby” is associated, in the minds of most people, with Dorking, with thePickwick Papers, and with the ducking in a horse-trough of a certain prophet; but when the sign first became popular, it stood for military glory. The Marquis himself was the eldest son of the third Duke of Rutland: a soldier who rose to distinction in our wars upon the Continent, became Commander-in-Chief, and at length died in his fifty-eighth year, in 1779. There was another special appropriateness in selecting him for a tavern sign; for he was one of the deepest drinkers among the hard-drinking men of his age.

The actual labour of converting the Duke of Cumberland into the King of Prussia, and his Most Protestant Majesty into the Marquis of Granby could have been but small, for they were all represented in profile, and all were clean-shaven, and wore a uniform and a cocked hat; and it is probable that in most cases the sole alteration that took place was in the lettering.

But the vogue of all other heroes was asnothing beside that of Nelson. He, at least, is permanent, and the sign-boards in this significant instance justify themselves. Other heroes won a victory, or victories, and conducted successful campaigns. They were incidents in the history of the country; but Nelson saved the nation, and died in the act of saving it.

This exception apart, nothing is so fleeting as sign-board popularity. The hero of yesterday is sacrificed without a pang, and the idol of to-day takes his place; and just as inevitably the popular figure of to-day will yield to the hero of to-morrow. Would you blame mine host of the “Duke of Wellington” because he changes his sign for that of a later captain? Not at all; for we are not to suppose that the original sign was chosen from any motive of personal loyalty. The Duke was selected because of his popularity with all classes; for the reasoning was that the inn bearing his name would secure the most custom. He was the last of the giants, and no other military commander has come within leagues of his especial glory.

The sign of the “Duke of Wellington” long ceased to specially attract, but it survived for many years because of his own greatness, and, inversely, because of the smallness of the men who commanded our armies in the Crimean War, at the end of the long thirty-nine years’ peace between Waterloo and the Alma. It is true that there were, and still perhaps are, inns and public-houses named after Lord Raglan, the Commander-in-Chief in the Crimea, but they were comparatively few.In short, the line of heroes ceased with “the Duke,” and later generals have been not only intrinsically lesser personalities, but have suffered from being engaged in smaller issues, and under the eye of the “special correspondent,” whose foible has ever been to criticise the general-commanding in detail, to teach him his business, and show a gaping public what had been “a better way” in attack, in strategy, or in tactics. Indeed, one sometimes doubts if even “the Duke” himself would have become the great figure he still remains had the “special correspondent” been in existence during his campaigns.

The lineal successor of Lord Raglan and Lord Napier was Sir Garnet Wolseley, who first adorned a sign-board at the close of his successful campaign in Ashanti, in 1874. He was long “our only general,” and was such a synonym for rightness and efficiency that he even gave rise to a popular saying. “That’s all Sir Garnet” was for some years a Cockney vulgarism, but after the fall of Khartoum, in 1885, it was heard no more. For two reasons: the military knight had become a peer and his Christian name was being forgotten; and the failure of his Nile Expedition to the relief of Gordon broke the tradition of unvaried success.

The true story of a public-house at Dover—doubtless one of many such instances—points these remarks. It was originally the “Sir Garnet Wolseley,” and then the “Lord Wolseley,” and is now the “Lord Roberts.” “Alas!” said the Chairman of the local Licensing Committee, in1906, “such is popularity!” He was evidently, equally with Horace Walpole, a moralist.

Lord Roberts is now the risen star on the public-house firmament. Sometimes Lord Kitchener shines with, and in a few instances has even occluded, him.

But when does a sign begin to be “queer,” and where does the quality of “quaintness” commence? Those are matters for individual preference, for that which is to one person unusual and worthy of remark is to another the merest commonplace. For my part, for instance, I regard the sign of the “Swan” at Charing as decidedly unusual, and of the quaintness of the old village of Charing there is surely no need to insist.

THE “SWAN,” CHARING.

It is essentially the business of a sign to be in some way queer, for by attracting attention you also secure trade. The first problem of sign-painters was to attract the attention and to reach the intelligence of those who could not read—a class in times not so long since very large and grossly ignorant. For their benefit the barber displayed his parti-coloured pole, the maker of fishing-tackle hung out his rod and fish, the hosier showed his Golden Fleece, and the pawnbroker the three golden balls. In the same way the “Lions” of the various inns in town and country were pictured red, white, black, or even blue, so that the unlettered but not colour-blind should at least be able to use the sense that nature gave them, and from the rival lions make a choice. But lions were never familiar objects in the Britishlandscape, and the sign-painter, lacking a model, in presenting his idea of that “king of beasts” often merely succeeded in picturing something that, unlike anything on earth, was often styled by Hodge a “ramping cat.” In such a manner the former “Cats” inn at Sevenoaks obtained its name. Its signboard originally displayed the arms of the Sackvilles, with their supporters, two white leopards, spotted black; but partly, no doubt, because the painting was bad, and in part because leopards did not come within the everyday experience of the Kentish rustic, the house became known by the more homely name. The “Leather Bottle” was once a sign understood by all; but in its last years that of the “Leather Bottle” public-house, in Leather Lane, Holborn, became something of a puzzle.

SIGN OF THE “LEATHER BOTTLE,” LEATHER LANE.Removed 1896.

Perhaps the most ingenious and unusual sign it is possible to find throughout the whole length and breadth of the country is that of the littleunassuming inn in Castlegate, Grantham, known indifferently as the “Beehive” and the “Living Sign.” A sapling tree growing on the pavement in front of the house has a beehive fixed in its branches, with an inscribed board calling attention to the fact during those summer months when foliage obscures it:

Stop, traveller, this wondrous Sign explore,And say, when thou hast viewed it o’er and o’er,“Grantham, now two rareties are thine,A lofty steeple and a living Sign.”

The beehive being generally occupied, the invitation to “explore” it is perhaps an unfortunate choice of language. At any rate, the traveller is much more likely to explore the house than the sign of it.

The “Pack Horse and Talbot” may now, by sheer lapse of time, be regarded as a queer sign. It is the name of what was once an inn but is now a public-house, on the Chiswick High Road, Turnham Green—a thoroughfare which is also the old coach-road to Bath. The painted sign is a pictorial allusion to the ancient wayfaring days when packmen journeyed through the country with their wares on horseback, and accompanied by a faithful dog who kept guard over his master’s goods. This type of dog—the “talbot,” the old English hound—is now extinct. Probably not one person in every thousand of those who pass the house could explain what the “Talbot” in the sign means, or would think of associating it with the dog seen in the picture.

SIGN OF THE “BEEHIVE,” GRANTHAM.

Another London sign that tells of manners and customs long since obsolete is that of the “Running Footman,” Hay Hill, Berkeley Square, picturing a gaily uniformed man running, with a wand of office in his hand. In the middle of the eighteenth century it was as much the “correct thing” for noble families to keep a running footmanto precede them on their journeys as it was for their Dalmatian dogs to trot beneath their carriages. Those “plum-pudding dogs” finally went out of fashion about half a century ago, but the running footmen became extinct half a century earlier. Extraordinary tales were told of the endurance of, and the long distances covered by, these men.

Everywhere we have the “Cat and Fiddle,” a sign whose origin still troubles some people, who seek a reason for even the most unreasonable and fantastic things, and lose sight of the fact that a whimsical fancy, a kind of nursery-lore imagination, in all likelihood originated the sign, which is probably not any debased and half-forgotten allusion to “Caton le Fidèle,” the brave Governor of Calais, to “Catherine la Fidèle,” the French sobriquet for the wife of the Czar Peter, or to “Santa Catherina Fidelius,” but simply—the “Cat and Fiddle,” neither more nor less. The rest of it is all “learned” fudge, and stuff and nonsense. Serious persons will object that cats do not play the fiddle; but they do—in nursery-land, where cows have for many centuries jumped over the moon and the table utensils have eloped together, and where pigs have played whistles from quite ancient times, a little to the confusion of those who derive the “Pig and Whistle” sign from some supposed Saxon invocation to the Virgin Mary: “Pige Washail!” ’Tis a way they have in the nursery, which nobody will deny.

SIGN OF THE “PACK HORSE AND TALBOT.” TURNHAM GREEN.

THE “RUNNING FOOTMAN.” HAY HILL.

SIGN OF THE “LION AND FIDDLE,” HILPERTON.

In some cases the “Cat and Fiddle” has become the “Lion and Fiddle”: notably at Hilperton, in Wiltshire, where a picture-sign represents a very mild and apologetic-looking lion walking on his hind-legs, with his tail humbly tucked between them, and playing a tune upon a fiddle—doubtless something doleful, to describe the folly of giving trust.

At Moulsford, on the banks of the Thames, is the rustic inn displaying the sign of the “Beetle and Wedge,” a puzzling conjunction, until we learn that the “beetle” in this case is no insect, but a heavy wooden mallet, and the wedge a wooden, iron, or steel instrument struck by it in splitting timber.

THE “SUGAR-LOAVES,” SIBLE HEDINGHAM.

At Sible Hedingham, in Essex, the sign of the “Sugar-loaves” strikes the traveller as curious,both in name and in shape. Sugar-loaves, of course, we never see nowadays, now that cube sugar prevails; and grocers no longer, as they did of old, receive their sugar in pyramidical-shaped loaves and cut it up themselves.

Manchester people are familiar with a very curious sign indeed: that which hangs from the “Old Rock House” inn at Barton. On the sign is seen the figure of a man wearing a “fool’s cap” and intent upon threshing corn, and in his hands is an uplifted flail, bearing the mysterious inscription, “Now Thus.”

The origin of this is found in the local story of how William Trafford, a staunch Royalist, outwitted Cromwell’s soldiery. Trafford owned South Lamley Hall, and when the troops of the Parliament were heard approaching, he caused all his servants and farm stock to be stowed away in a remote glen called “Solomon’s Hollow,” leaving him alone in the great house. When they were all gone, he collected his jewellery and plate, and, having buried them in a secret place, disguised himself in rough clothes, being discovered when the Roundheads arrived threshing corn over the place where the valuables were hidden.

As they entered the barn they heard him repeating mechanically at intervals the solitary expression, “Now thus”; and although he was questioned by the officers, who took him to be a servant, they could get nothing else out of him, being at length obliged to depart, with the belief that they had been talking to a harmless lunatic.

INTERIOR OF “UNCLE TOM’S CABIN.”

“UNCLE TOM’S CABIN.” BLUEPITTS, NEAR ROCHDALE.

The De Traffords still live on this estate, whose wealth was thus saved by their ready-witted ancestor.

It will be conceded that the “Boar” inn, more generally known as “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” between Heywood and Castleton, on the Rochdale Canal, is not only a queer sign, but a queer house, being nothing other than an old passenger barge that used formerly to ply along the Bridgewater Canal, between Heywood and Bluepitt.

The railway at last took away all the passenger traffic of the canal, and the old barge, after many years of usefulness, ceased to run. It was purchased by a man named Butterworth, who had it drawn on rollers to a position some three miles from the “cut,” and built walls against the sides, and roofed it over.

SIGN OF THE “OLD ROCK HOUSE” INN, BARTON.

One of the finest and most artistic old signs in the country is that of the “Three Horseshoes,” a little weather-boarded ale-house at Great Mongeham, which is, in a contradictory way, quite asmall village, between Sandwich and Deal. It is a rare instance of the use of wrought iron, not as the support of a sign, but as a sign itself, and is so strikingly like a number of wrought-iron signs in Nottingham Castle Museum, the work of that famous artist in iron, Huntingdon Shaw, who wrought the celebrated iron gates of Hampton Court, that it would seem to be a product of his school. The vogue of the artistic sign is returning, and a good example of modern work in iron is to be found at Great Missenden, in Buckinghamshire, where the “Red Lion” inn displays an heraldic lion in silhouette, ramping on his heraldic wreath,and clawed and whiskered in approved mediæval style.

THE “THREE HORSESHOES,” GREAT MONGEHAM.

SIGN OF THE “RED LION,” GREAT MISSENDEN.

At Stourbridge, in Worcestershire, and at some other places, the sign of the “Labour in Vain” is met with, representing two busy persons in the act of trying to scrub a nigger white. The Stourbridge example shows two very serious-looking maid-servants striving to perform that impossible task, while the nigger, whose head and shoulders are seen emerging from a dolly tub, has a large, superior smile, only sufficiently to be expressed by a foot-rule.

SIGN OF THE “LABOUR IN VAIN.”

Queer signs are often the product of ignorant alteration of old signs whose original meaning has become obscured by lapse of time. The “Mourning Bush,” for example, was a sign set up originally by a Royalist innkeeper, grieving for the death of Charles the First. A bush, or bundle of twigs, was at that time the usual sign of an ale-house, and he swathed his in black. What if he could revisit this earth after these two hundred and fifty years, and find that sign corrupted, at a little inn near Shifnal, Shropshire, into the “Maund and Bush,” the sign representinga hardy-looking laurel and a basket—“maund” being a provincialism for a wicker basket!

The “Coach and Dogs” sign at Oswestry, a queer variant of the more usual “Coach and Horses” found so numerously all over the country, takes its origin from an eccentric country gentleman, one Edward Lloyd, of Llanforda, two miles from Oswestry, whose whim it was to drive to and from the town in a diminutive chaise drawn by two retrievers.

The “Eight Bells” at Twickenham, in itself no more than a commonplace public-house, has for a sign an oddly assorted group of eight actual bells, apparently gathered at haphazard from various marine-stores, for no two are exactly of a size. Hanging as they do from a wooden bracket, projecting over the pathway, and showing prominently against the sky, they help to make the not very desirable bye-lane picturesque. It is a lane that runs down to the river, where the Twickenham eyots divide the stream in two, and has not yet been levelled to the ordinary suburban respectability of the neighbourhood. Waterside folk and other queer fish reside in, and resort to it, and on Saturday evenings the usual beery hum proceeding o’ nights from the “Eight Bells” develops into a spirituous tumult, ending at closing-time with stumbling steps and incoherent snatches of song, as the revellers, at odds with kerbstones and lamp-posts, make their devious way home.

THE “EIGHT BELLS,” TWICKENHAM.

At Bricket Wood, Hertfordshire, a Temperance Hotel displaying the unique sign of “The Old Fox with His Teeth Drawn” may be seen. It was, until 1893, a rural inn called the “Old Fox,” but was then purchased by the Hon. A. H. Holland-Hibbert, son-in-law of Sir Wilfrid Lawson, and, like him, a total abstinence enthusiast, who made the changes noted above. At his house at Great Munden he has a collection of the signs of inns he has in the same way converted.

SIGN OF THE “STOCKS” INN, CLAPGATE, NEAR WIMBORNE.

The “Stocks” inn, at Clapgate, near Wimborne, displays a miniature model of “stocks for three” over its porch, while the “Shears” inn at Wantage, a rustic ale-house in an obscure corner of that town, with the odd feature of a blacksmith’s forge attached, exhibits a gigantic pair of shears.

THE “SHEARS” INN, WANTAGE.

A sign that certainly, if not in itself unusual,is nowadays in an unwonted place, is that of the old “White Bear,” a galleried coaching inn that stood in Piccadilly, on the site of the present Criterion Restaurant, until about 1860. It is a great white-painted wooden effigy that is now to be found in the garden of the little rustic inn of the same name at Fickles Hole, a quiet hamlet on the Surrey downs to the south-east of Croydon. To the stranger who first catches sight of it, this polar bear among the geraniums and the sweet-williams is sufficiently startling.

SIGN OF THE “WHITE BEAR.” FICKLES HOLE.

At Nidd, Yorkshire, we have the odd sign of the “Ass in the Bandbox”; at Brixham, South Devon, the “Civil Usage”; at Chepstow the “Old Tippling Philosopher”; the “Cart Overthrown,” at Edmonton; the “Trouble House,” near Tetbury; the “Smiling Man,” at Dudley. At Bridgwater, Somerset, the pilgrim finds both the “Ship Aground” and the “Ship Afloat”; and a somewhat similar sign, the “Barge Aground,” in those places of barges and canals, Brentford and Stratford, at the western and eastern extremities of London.

The “World Turned Upside Down” is the name of a large public-house in the Old Kent Road and the sign of an inn near Three Mile Cross, Reading, where a rabbit is pictured on one side with a gun, out man-shooting; while on the other is a donkey seated in a cart, driving a man.

The sign “Who’d have thought it?” at Barking, is said to express the surprise of the original proprietor at obtaining a licence; while the “Why not?” at Dover is probably a suggestion to the undecided wayfarer to make up his mind and have some refreshment. There are at least four of the “Hark to!”—hunting signs: “Hark to Jowler” at Bury, Lancashire; “Hark to [or “Hark the”] Lasher” at Castleton, Derbyshire; “Hark to Bounty,” at Staidburn, and “Hark to Nudger,” at Dobcross, near Manchester.

Of signs such as “The Case is Altered” and the “Live and Let Live” there is no end; nor is there any finality in the many versions of the incidents that are said to have originated them. The real original story of “The Case is Altered” is said to be that of the once-celebrated lawyer, Edward Plowden, who died in 1584: to him came a farmer whose cow had been killed by the lawyer’s bull. He was suspicious, as it seems, of lawyers, and came cunningly prepared with a trap to catch him out.

“My bull,” said the farmer, “has gored and killed your cow.”

“The case is clear,” said the lawyer, “you must pay me her value.”

“I’m sorry,” then said the farmer, but with a contradictory gleam of triumph in his eye: “Ishouldhave said that it wasyourbull killed my cow.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Plowden, resignedly, “the case is altered.”

THE “CROW-ON-GATE” INN, CROWBOROUGH.

Nowadays, many of these signs no doubt derive merely from an improvement in the conduct of the house, indicating that better drinks and superior accommodation are to be had within, the “Case is Altered” in such cases being just a permanent form of the familiar and more usual and temporary notice, “Under New Management.”

The popularity of the “Gate” sign has already been mentioned. An odd variation of it is to be seen at Crowborough, in Sussex, where the “Crow-on-Gate” inn, itself thene plus ultraof thecommonplace, displays a miniature gate with the effigy of a crow over it.

THE “FIRST AND LAST” INN, SENNEN.

Land’s End, in Cornwall, is notable from our present point of view because it possesses no fewer than three inns, or houses of public refreshment, each one claiming to be the “First and Last House in England.” The real original “First and Last” is the inn, so-called, that stands next to the grey, weatherbeaten granite church in the weatherbeaten and grey village of Sennen, one mile distant from the beetling cliffs of Land’s End itself; but in modern times, since touring has brought civilisation and excursion brakes and broken bottles and sandwich-papers to the old-time savage solitudes of this rocky coast, there have sprung up, almost on the verge of those cliffs, twoother houses—an ugly “hotel” and a plain white-washed tea-house—that have cut in to share this peculiar fame. The tiny tea-house, where you get tea and picture-postcards, and are bothered to buy shells, and tin and copper-bearing quartz, is actually the most westerly, and therefore the “Last” or the “First,” according to whether you are setting out from Penzance, or returning.

THE “FIRST AND LAST,” LAND’S END.

The “Eagle and Child,” a sign common in Cheshire and Lancashire, is heraldically described as “an eagle, wings extended or, preying on an infant in its cradle proper, swaddled gules, the cradle laced or.” The eagle is generally represented on inn-signs without the cradle. In the mere straightforward, unmystical language of every day, the eagle thus fantastically described is golden, the infant is naturally coloured, and the swaddling is red.

The origin of this curious sign is found in the fourteenth-century legend which tells how SirThomas de Latham was walking in his park with his lady, who was childless, when they drew near to a desert and wild situation where it was commonly reported an eagle had built her nest. Approaching the spot, they heard the cries of a young child, and, on bursting through thickets and brambles, the attendant servants found a baby-boy, dressed in rich swaddling-clothes, in the eagle’s nest. The knight affected astonishment; the good dame, unsuspecting, or, like the Lady Mottisfont who, under somewhat similar circumstances, in one of Mr. Thomas Hardy’sGroup of Noble Dames, thought strange things but said nothing, was wisely silent and accepted the “gift from Heaven.” As the old ballad has it:

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