But the vogue of all other heroes was as nothing 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, in 1906, “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.