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."