There is still an Adam and Eve public-house in the High Street, Kensington, where Sheridan, on his way to and from Holland House, used to refresh himself, and in this way managed to run up rather a long bill, which Lord Holland had to pay for him. A still older place of public entertainment was the Adam and Eve Tea-gardens, in Tottenham Court Road, part of which was the last remaining vestige “of the once respectable, if not magnificent, manor-house appertaining to the Lords of Tottenhall.” Richardson, in 1819, said that the place had long been celebrated as a tea-garden; there was an organ in the long room, and the company was generally respectable, till the end of last century, when highwaymen, footpads, pickpockets, and low women, beginning to take a fancy to it, the magistrates interfered. The organ was banished, and the gardens were dug up for the foundation of Eden Street. In these gardens Lunardi came down after his unsuccessful balloon ascent from the Artillery ground, May 16, 1783. Hogarth has represented the Adam and Eve in the March of the Guards to Finchley. Upon the signboard of the house is inscribed, “Tottenham Court Nursery,” in allusion to Broughton’s Amphitheatre for Boxing, erected in this place. How amusing is this advertisement of the great Professor’s “Nursery:”—
“From the Gymnasium at Tottenham Court
on Thursday next at Twelve o’clock will begin:A lecture on Manhood or Gymnastic Physiology, wherein the whole Theory and Practice of the Art of Boxing will be fully explained by various Operators on the animal Œconomy and the Principles of Championism, illustrated by proper Experiments on the Solids and Fluids of the Body; together with the True Method of investigating the Nature of all Blows, Stops, Cross Buttocks, etc., incident to Combatants. The whole leading to the most successful Method of beating a Man deaf, dumb, lame, and blind.
by Thomas Smallwood, A.M.,
Gymnasiast of St. Giles,
and
Thomas Dimmock, A.M.,
Athleta of Southwark,
(Both fellows of the Athletic Society.)*** The Syllabus or Compendium for the use of students in Athleticks, referring to Matters explained in this Lecture, may be had of Mr Professor Broughton at the Crown in Market Lane, where proper instructions in the Art and Practice of Boxing are delivered without Loss of Eye or Limb to the student.”
The tree with the forbidden fruit, always represented in the sign of Adam and Eve, leads directly to the Flaming Sword, “which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life.” Being the first sword on record, it was not inappropriately a cutler’s sign, and as such we find it in the Banks Collection, on the shop-bill of a sword cutler in Sweeting’s Alley, Royal Exchange, 1780. It is less appropriate at the door of a public-house in Nottingham, for the landlord evidently cannot desire to keep anybody out, whether saint or sinner. The vessel by which the life of the first planter of the vine was preserved, certainly well deserves to decorate the tavern: hence Noah’s Ark is not an uncommon public-house sign, though it looks very like a sarcastic reflection on the mixed crowd that resort to the house,—not to escape the “heavy wet,” as the animals at the Deluge, but in order to obtain some of it. Toy-shops also constantly use it, since Noah’s Ark is generally the favourite toy of children. Evelyn, in 1644, mentions a shop near the Palais de Justice in Paris:
“Here is a shop called Noah’s Ark, where are sold all curiosities, natural or artificial, Indian or European, for luxury or use, as cabinets, shells, ivory, porcelain, dried fishes, insects, birds, pictures, and a thousand exotic extravagances.”[373]
The Deluge was one of the standard subjects of mediæval dramatic plays. In the third part of the Chester Whitsun plays, for instance, Noah and the Flood make a considerable item; and at a much later period the same subject was exhibited at Bartholomew Fair. A bill of the time of Queen Anne[374] informs us that—
“AT Crawley’s Booth, over against the Crown Tavern in Smithfield, during the time of Bartholomew Fair, will be presented a little Opera, called the Old Creation of the World, yet newly revived, with the addition of Noah’s Flood; also several fountains playing water during the time of the play. The last scene presents Noah and his family coming out of the Ark, with all the beasts, two by two, and all the fowls of the air, seen in a prospect, sitting upon trees. Likewise over the Ark is seen the sun rising in a most glorious manner: moreover, a multitude of angels will be seen, in a double rank, which presents a double prospect—one for the sun, the other for a palace, where will be seen 6 angels ringing of bells, etc.”
The Deluge was the mystery performed at Whitsuntide by the company of dyers in London, and from this their sign of the Dove and Rainbow might have originated, unless it were adopted by them on account of the various colours of the rainbow. On the bill of John Edwards, a silk-dyer in Aldersgate Street, the Dove, with an olive branch in her mouth, is represented flying underneath the Rainbow, over a landscape, with villages, fenced fields, and a gentleman in the costume of the reign of Charles II. Besides this there are various other dyers’ bills with the sign of the Dove and Rainbow, both among the Bagford and Banks Collections. A few public-houses at the present day still keep up the memory of the sign; there is one at Nottingham, and another in Leicester.
“Abraham Offering his Son” was the sign of a shop in Norwich in 1750. A stone bas-relief of the same subject (Le Sacrifice d’Abraham) is still remaining in the front of a house in the Rue des Prêtres, Lille, France. A Dutch wood-merchant, in the seventeenth century, also put up this sign, and illustrated its application by the following rhyme:—
“’T Hout is gehakt, opdat men ’t zou branden,
Daarom is dit in Abram’s Offerhande.”[375]
Thus, though the wood of the sacrifice played a very insignificant part in the story, yet the simple mention of it was enough to make it a fit subject for a Dutchman’s signboard. We have a similar instance in Jacob’s Well, which is common in London, as well as in the country. The allusion here is to the well at which Christ met the woman of Samaria, who said to him: