Stage-coach and Tavern Days

Canary soon displaced sack in popular affection, and many varieties of closely allied wines were imported. Sir Edmund Andros named in his excise list “Fayal wines, or any other wines of the Western Islands, Madeira, Malaga, Canary, Tent, and Alcant.” Claret was not popular. The consumption of sweet wines was astonishing, and the quality was exceeding good. Spiced wines were much sold at taverns, sangaree and mulled wines. Brigham’s Tavern at Westborough had a simple recipe for mulled wine: simply a quart of boiling hot Madeira, half a pint of boiling water, six eggs beaten to a froth, all sweetened and spiced. Nutmeg was the favorite flavoring, and nutmegs gilded and beribboned were an esteemed gift. The importation of them was in early days wholly controlled by the Dutch. High livers —bon vivants– carried nutmegs in their pockets, fashionable dames also. One of the prettiest trinkets of colonial times is the dainty nutmeg holder, of wrought silver or Battersea enamel, just large enough to hold a single nutmeg. The inside of the cover is pierced or corrugated to form a grater. The ones now before me, both a century and a half old, when opened exhale a strong aroma of nutmeg, though it is many a year since they have been used. With a nutmeg in a pocket holder, the exquisite traveller, whether man or woman, could be sure of a dainty spiced wine flavored to taste; “atop the musky nut could grated be,” even in the most remote tavern, for wine was everywhere to be found, but nutmegs were a luxury. Negus, a washy warm wine-punch invented in Queen Anne’s day by Colonel Negus, was also improved by a flavoring of nutmeg.

CHAPTER VII

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 animals’ heads stuffed.

As education progressed, signs were less needed, and when thoroughfares were named and sign-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.

A rhyme printed in the British Apollo in 1710 notes the curious combination of names on London sign-boards: —

“I’m amazed at the signs
As I pass through the town;
To see the odd mixture
A Magpie and Crown,
The Whale and the Crow,
The Razor and Hen,
The Leg and Seven Stars,
The Axe and the Bottle,
The Sun and the Lute,
The Eagle and Child,
The Shovel and Boot.”

Addison wrote nearly two centuries ago on the absurdity and incongruity of these sign-boards, in The Spectator of April 2, 1710. He says, advocating a censorship of sign-boards: —

“Our streets are filled with blue boars, black swans, and red lions; not to mention flying pigs, and hogs in armour, with many other creatures more extraordinary than any in the deserts of Africa. My first task therefore should be like that of Hercules, to clear the city from monsters. In the second place I would forbid that creatures of jarring and incongruous natures should be joined together in the same sign; such as the bell and the neat’s tongue; the dog and the gridiron. The fox and goose may be supposed to have met, but what have the fox and the seven stars to do together? And when did the lamb and dolphin ever meet, except upon a sign-post? As for the cat and fiddle there is a conceit in it, and therefore I do not intend that anything I have said should affect it. I must, however, observe to you upon this subject, that it is usual for a young tradesman, at his first setting up, to add to his sign that of the master whom he has served; as the husband, after marriage, gives a place to his mistress’s arms in his own coat. This I take to have given rise to many of those absurdities which are committed over our heads; and as, I am informed, first occasioned the three nuns and a hare, which we see so frequently joined together.”

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 sign-board 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.”

Gérôme, Cox, Harlow, and Millais swell the list of English sign-painters, while Holbein, Correggio, Watteau, Gerriault, and Horace Vernet make a noble company. The splendid “Young Bull” of Paul Potter, in the museum of The Hague, is said to have been painted for a butcher’s sign.

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 Highway 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 (#Page_143). By tradition West also painted the sign-board of the old Hat Tavern shown on page 147 (#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 (#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 (#Page_180). It is a great contrast to “Old Put’s” Wolfe sign-board.

A Philadelphia tavern with a clumsy name, though a significant one, was the Federal Convention of 1787 Inn. I cannot imagine any band of tavern tipplers or jovial roisterers ever meeting there, but it was doubtless used for political gatherings. It had a most pretentious sign painted by Matthew Pratt, a pupil of Benjamin West. It was said that his signs were painted in a style that should have given them place in a picture gallery, had it not been that the galleries of those days were few, and artists found their most lucrative employment in painting signs for taverns and stores. This inn kept first by a man named Hanna, then by George Poppal, was at 178 South Street, near Fifth Street. The sign was a painting of the National Convention which met May 14, 1787, in the State House or Independence Hall to frame the Constitution of the United States. George Washington was president, Mayor William Jackson was secretary. The convention met in the East Room, which was distinctly and correctly represented on the sign-board; its wainscoting, the Ionic pilasters supporting a full entablature beneath a coved ceiling, all were taken down by a “Commissioner of Repairs,” and all now are happily reproduced and restored. On one side of the sign-board Washington was seen seated under the panel bearing the arms of Pennsylvania. The dignified Judge Wilson occupied the chair, and Franklin sat near. All the heads were portraits. On both sides of the sign-board were the lines: —

“These thirty-eight men together have agreed
That better times to us shall very soon succeed.”

Watson, writing in 1857, tells of the end of this historic sign-board: —

“This invaluable sign, which should have been copied by some eminent artist and engraved for posterity, was bandied about like the Casa Santa of Lorretto from post to pillar till it located at South Street near the Old Theatre. The figures are now completely obliterated by a heavy coat of brown paint on which is lettered Fed. Con. 1787.”

This offence against historic decency can be added to the many other crimes against good taste which lie heavily on the account of the middle of the nineteenth century. The fin du siècle has many evils which are daily rehearsed to us; but the middle of the century was an era of bad taste, dulness, affected and melancholic sentimentality and commonplaceness in dress, architecture, household furnishings, literature, society, and art – let us turn from it with haste. It is equalled only in some aspects by some of the decades of dulness in England in the reign of George III.

Another sign-board painted by Woodside is described in Philadelphia newspapers of August, 1820: —

“UNION HOTEL

“Samuel E. Warwick respectfully informs his friends and the public generally that he has opened a house of Entertainment at the northeast corner of Seventh and Cedar Streets, and has copied for his sign Mr. Binn’s beautiful copperplate engraving of the Declaration of Independence, by that justly celebrated artist, Mr. Woodside: —

“Whate’er may tend to soothe the soul below,
To dry the tear and blunt the shaft of woe,
To drown the ills that discompose the mind,
All those who drink at Warwick’s Inn shall find.”

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.”

A very interesting sign is in the possession of the Connecticut Historical Society. It is shown on page 28 (#Page_27). This sign is unusual in that it is carved in good outline on one side with the British coat of arms, and on the other a full-rigged ship under full sail, flying the Union Jack. At the top on each side are the letters U. A. H., and 1766. It is enclosed in a heavy frame, with heavy hangers of iron keyed to suspend from a beam.

The initials U. A. H. stand for Uriah and Ann Hayden, who kept the tavern for which this board was the sign. It stood near the river in Essex, then Pettspung Parish, in the town of Saybrook, Connecticut. The sign was relegated to a garret when the British lion and unicorn were in such disrepute in the new land of freedom, and, being forgotten, was thus preserved to our own day.

An old sign shown on pages 151 and 153 (#Page_153) swung for nearly a century by the roadside before a house called Bissell’s Tavern, at Bissell’s Ferry, East Windsor, Connecticut. Originally it bore an elaborate design of thirteen interlacing rings, each having in its centre the representation of some tree or plant peculiar to the state it designated. These interlacing links surrounded the profile portrait of George Washington. Above this was the legend, “The 13 United States.” Beneath this, “Entertainment by David Bissell, A.D. 1777.” Ten years later the words David Bissell were painted out and E. Wolcott substituted. The date 1787 was also placed in both upper corners of the board. In 1801 the sign and house came to Joseph Phelps. A new design was given: a copy of the first gold eagle of 1795, and on the other the reverse side of same coin and the name J. Phelps. In 1816 J. Pelton bought the Ferry Tavern, and he painted out all of J. Phelps’s name save the initials, which were his own. He hung the sign on the limb of a big elm tree over the Ferry road.

Arad Stratton, who kept the old tavern at Northfield Farms, had a splendid eagle on his sign-board, which is shown on page 140. This tavern built in 1724 was pulled down in 1820.