Signs
and Symbols
BEFORE named streets with numbered houses came into
existence, and when few persons could read, painted
and carved sign-boards and figures were more useful
than they are to-day; and not only innkeepers, but men
of all trades and callings sought for signs that
either for quaintness, appropriateness, or costliness
would attract the eyes of customers and visitors, and
fix in their memory the exact locality of the
advertiser. Signs were painted and carved in wood;
they were carved in stone; modelled in terra-cotta and
plaster; painted on tiles; wrought of various metals;
and even were made of animal' heads stuffed.
As education progressed, signs were less needed,
and when thoroughfares were named and sing-posts set
up and houses numbered, the use of business signs
vanished. They lingered sometimes on account of their
humor, sometimes because they were a guarantee of an
established business, but chiefly because people were
used to them.
The shops in Boston were known by sign-boards. In
1761 Daniel Parker, goldsmith, was at the Golden Ball,
William Whitmore, grocer, at the Seven Stars, Susannah
Foster was "next the Great Cross," and John
Loring, chemist, at the Great Trees. One hatter had a
"Hatt & Beaver," another a "Hatt
& Helmit"; butter was sold at the "Blue
Glove" and "Brazen Head"; dry-goods at
the "Sign of the Stays" and at the
"Wheat Sheaf"; rum at the "Golden
Keys"; pewter ware at the "Crown and
Beehive"; knives at the "Sign of the Crown
and Razor." John Crosby, for many years a noted
lemon trader, had as a sign a basket of lemons. In
front of a nautical instrument store on the corner of
State and Broad streets, Boston, still stands a quaint
wooden figure of an ancient naval officer resplendent
in his blue coat, cocked hat, short breeches,
stockings, and buckles, holding in his hand a
quadrant. The old fellow has stood in this place,
continually taking observations of the sun, for
upwards of one hundred years. It will be seen that
these signs were often incongruous and
non-significant, both as to their relation to the
business they indicated, and in the association of
objects which they depicted.
Many of the apparently meaningless names on tavern
signs come through the familiar corruptions of
generations of use, through alterations both by the
dialect of speakers and by the successive mistakes of
ignorant sign-painters. Thus "The Bag o'
Nails," a favorite sign, was originally "The
Bacchanalians." The familiar "Cat and
Wheel" was the "Catherine Wheel," and
still earlier "St. Catherine's Wheel," in
allusion to the saint and her martyrdom. The
"Goat and Compass" was the motto "God
encompasseth us." "The Pig and Carrot"
was the "Pique et Carreau" (the spade and
diamond in playing cards). Addison thus explains the
"Bell Savage," a common sign in England,
usually portrayed by an Indian standing beside a bell.
"I was formerly very much puzzled upon the
conceit of it, till I accidentally fell into the
reading of an old romance translated out of the
French, which gives an account of a very beautiful
woman who was found in a wilderness, and is called in
French, La Belle Sauvage, and is everywhere translated
by our countrymen the Bell Savage."
"The Bull and Mouth" celebrates in
corrupt wording the victory of Henry VIII. in "Boulougne
Mouth" or Harbor. In London the Bull and Mouth
Inn was a famous coach office, and the signboard bore
these lines:--
"Milo the Cretonian
An ox slew with his fist,
And ate it up at one meal,
Ye Gods! what a glorious twist."
Twist was the old cant term for appetite.
The universal use of sign-boards furnished
employment to many painters of inferior rank, and
occasionally even to great artists, who, either as a
freak of genius, to win a wager, to crown a carouse,
or perhaps to earn with ease a needed sum, painted a
sign-board. At the head of this list is Hogarth.
Richard Wilson painted "The Three
Loggerheads" for an ale-house in North Wales.
George Morland has several assigned to him: "The
Goat in Boots," "The White Lion,"
"The Cricketers." Ibbetson paid his bill to
Landlord Burkett after a sketching and fishing
excursion by a sign with one pale and wan face and one
equally rubicund. The accompanying lines read:--
"Thou mortal man that livest by bread,
What makes thy face to look so red?
Thou silly fop that looks so pale,
'Tis red with Tommy Burkett's ale."
Benjamin West painted many tavern signs in the
vicinity of Philadelphia, among them in 1771 that of
the Three Crowns, a noted hostelry that stood on the
King's High-way in Salisbury Township, Lancaster
County. This neighborhood was partly settled by
English emigrants, and the old tavern was kept by a
Tory of the deepest dye. The sign-board still bears
the marks of the hostile bullets of the Continental
Army, and the proprietor came near sharing the bullets
with the sign. This Three Crowns was removed in 1816
to the Waterloo Tavern, kept by a relative of the old
landlord. The Waterloo Tavern was originally the
Bull's Head, and was kept by a Revolutionary officer.
Both sides of the Three Crowns sign-board are shown on
page 143. By tradition West also painted the
sign-board of the old Hat Tavern shown on page 147.
This was kept by Widow Caldwell in Leacock Township,
Lancaster County, on the old Philadelphia road.
The Bull's Head Inn of Philadelphia had a sign
suited to its title; it was sold in the middle of this
century to an Englishman as the work of Benjamin West.
The inn stood in Strawberry Alley, and West once lived
in the alley; and so also did Bernard Wilton, a
painter and glazier, in the days when the inn was
young and had no sign-board. And as the glazier sat
one day in the taproom, a bull ran foaming into the
yard and thrust his head with a roar in the tavern
window. The glazier had a ready wit, and quoth he:
"This means something. This bull thrust his head
in as a sign, so it shall be the sign of the inn, and
bring luck and custom forever." I think those
were his words; at any rate, those were the deeds.
West also painted the "Ale Bearers." One
side had a man holding a glass of ale and looking
through it. The other side showed two brewers' porters
carrying an ale cask slung with case hooks on a
pole--as was the way of ale porters at that day. It is
said that West was offered five hundred dollars for a
red lion sign-board he had painted in his youth. In
the vicinity of Philadelphia several taverns claimed
to have sign-boards painted by the Peales and by
Gilbert Stuart, and an artist named Hicks is said to
have contributed some wonderful specimens to this
field of art.
General Wolfe was a favorite name and figure for
pre-Revolutionary taverns and sign-boards. There was a
Wolfe Tavern near Faneuil Hall in Boston; and the
faded sign-board of the Wolfe Tavern of Brooklyn,
Connecticut, is shown on page 211 as it swung when
General Israel Putnam was the tavern landlord. These
figures of the English officer were usually removed as
obnoxious after the Declaration of Independence. But
the Wolfe Tavern at Newburyport continued to swing the
old sign "in the very centre of the place to be
an insult to this truly republican town." This
sign is shown in its spruce freshness on page 180. It
is a great contrast to "Old Put's" Wolfe
sign-board.
The Revolutionary War developed originality in
American tavern signs. The "King's Arms,"
"King's Head," "St. George and the
Dragon," and other British symbols gave place to
rampant American eagles and portraits of George
Washington. Every town had a Washington Tavern, with
varied Washington sign-boards. That of the Washington
Hotel at Salem, Massachusetts, is on page 63.
The landlord of the Washington Inn at Holmesburg,
Pennsylvania, one James Carson, issued this address in
1816:--
"Ye good and virtuous Americans--come! whether
business or pleasure be your object--call and be
refreshed at the sign of Washington. Here money and
merit will secure you respect and honor, and a hearty
welcome to choice liquors and to sumptuous fare. Is it
cold? You shall find a comfortable fire. Is it warm?
Sweet repose under a cool and grassy shade. In short,
every exertion shall be made to grace the sign of the
hero and statesman who was first in war, first in
peace, and first in the hearts of his
countrymen."
On Beach Street a tavern, with the name Washington
Crossing the Delaware, had as a sign-board a copy of
Sully's famous picture. This must have been a costly
luxury. A similar one used as a bridge sign-board is
on page 239.
About 1840 one Washington Tavern in Philadelphia,
on Second and Lombard streets, displayed a sign which
was a novelty at that time. It was what was known as a
"slat-sign"; perpendicular strips or slats
were so set on the sign that one view or picture was
shown upon taking a full front view, a second by
looking at it from one side, a third from the other.
The portrait of Washington and other appropriate
pictures were thus shown.
Other patriotic designs became common,--the
Patriotic Brothers having a sign representing the
Temple of Liberty with weapons of war. On the steps of
the temple a soldier and sailor grasp hands, with the
motto, "Where Liberty dwells, there is my
country."
top |