“If lur’d to roam in Summer Hours,
Your Thoughts incline tow’rd Tott’nham Bow’rs.[418]
Here end your airing Tour and rest
Where Cole invites each friendly Guest:
Intent on signs, the prying Eye,
The George and Vulture will descry;
Here the kind Landlord glad attends
To wellcome all his chearfull Friends
Who, leaving City smoke, delight
To range where various scenes invite.
The spacious garden, verdant Field,
Pleasures beyond Expression yield,
The Angler here to sport inclined
In his Canal may Pastime find.
Neat racy Wine and Home-brew’d Ale
The nicest Palates may regale,
Nectarious Punch—and (cleanly grac’d)
A Larder stor’d for ev’ry Taste.
The cautious Fair may sip with Glee
The fresh’st Coffee, finest Tea.
Let none the outward Vulture fear,
No Vulture host inhabits here,
If too well us’d you deem ye—then
Take your Revenge and come again.”
St Paul, the patron saint of London, was formerly a common sign in the metropolis. One of the trades tokens of a house or tavern in Petty France, Westminster, represents the saint before his conversion, lying on the ground, with his horse standing by him; this house was called “the Saul.” Perhaps this was a monkish pleasantry of the period, (as Westminster was under the patronage of St Peter,) representing an unpleasant event in the history of the great patron, and showing, by simple analogy, the vast superiority of the converted St Peter. The usual way, however, of commemorating the saint on the signboard was the St Paul’s Head. This was the sign of a very old inn in Great Carter Lane, (Doctors’ Commons,) opposite which Bagford lived in 1712. As an inn, it is mentioned by Machyn, in his Diary, in 1562. “The 25 may was a yonge man did hang ymseylff at the Polles Head, the inn in Carterlane.” Trades tokens of this house are extant in the Beaufoy Collection. In the eighteenth century, most of the celebrated libraries were sold at this inn:[419] amongst others that of the bibliomaniac, Tom Rawlinson—the Tom Folio of the Tatler, whose books were brought to the hammer between 1721-33—the sale extending to seventeen or eighteen separate auctions. The disposal of his MSS. alone occupied sixteen days. To this tavern formerly the new sheriffs, after having been sworn in, used to resort to receive the keys of the different jails; that ceremony terminated, they were regaled with sack and walnuts by the keeper of Newgate. The St Paul’s Coffee-house is built on the site of this old inn. About 1820 there was another Paul’s Head in Cateaton Street, where a literary club used to be held “for the cultivation of forensic eloquence.” It was under the patronage of several distinguished characters, and had for a motto the modest words, “Sic itur ad astra.” The vicinity of the cathedral evidently had suggested both these signs, as well as that exhibited by Philip Waterhouse, a bookseller “at the St Paul’s Head in Canning Street near Londonstone” in 1630. On another sign, in the same locality, the two saints were united, viz., the Saint Peter and Saint Paul, St Paul’s Churchyard. Of this house, also, trades tokens are extant.
Although St Peter was, doubtless, as common on the signboard before the Reformation as the other great saints of religious history, yet no instances of this have come down to us. His keys, however—the famous Cross Keys—are very common. At Dawdley, and on the road between Warminster and Salisbury, there is a very curious sign called Peter’s Finger, which is believed to occur nowhere else. In all probability this refers to the benediction of the Pope, the finger of his Holiness being raised whilst bestowing a blessing. St Peter being the first of the Papal line, was doubtless often represented with his finger raised in old pictures and carvings. The following passage from Bishop Hall’s “Satires” alludes to the finger:—
“But walk on cheerly ’till thou have espied
St Peter’s finger, at the churchyard side.”—Book v., sat. 2.
St Dunstan, the patron saint of the parish of that name in London, was godfather to the Devil,—that is to say, to the sign of the famous tavern of the Devil and St Dunstan, within Temple Bar. The legend runs, that one day, when working at his trade of a goldsmith, he was sorely tempted by the devil, and at length got so exasperated that he took the red hot tongs out of the fire and caught his infernal majesty by the nose. The identical pinchers with which this feat was performed are still preserved at Mayfield Palace, in Sussex. They are of a very respectable size, and formidable enough to frighten the arch one himself. This episode in the saint’s life was represented on the signboard of that glorious old tavern. By way of abbreviation, this house was called The Devil, though the landlord seems to have preferred the other saint’s name; for on his token we read: “The D—— (sic) and Dunstan,” probably fearing, with a classic dread, the ill omen of that awful name.
Allusions to this tavern are innumerable in the dramatists; one of the earliest is in 1563, in the play of “Jack Jugeler.” William Rowley thus mentions it in his comedy of a “Match by Midnight,” 1633:—
“Bloodhound. As you come by Temple Bar make a step to the Devil.
Tim. To the Devil, father?
Sim. My master means the sign of the Devil, and he cannot hurt you, fool; there’s a saint holds him by the nose.
Tim. Sniggers, what does the devil and a saint both on a sign?
Sim. What a question is that? What does my master and his prayer-book o’ Sundays both in a pew?”
So fond was Ben Jonson of this tavern, that he lived “without Temple Bar, at a combmaker’s shop,” according to Aubrey, in order to be near his favourite haunt. It must have been, therefore, in a moment of ill-humour, when he found fault with the wine, and made the statement that his play of the “Devil is an Ass,” (which is certainly not amongst his best,) was written “when I and my boys drank bad wine at the Devil.” But surely he would not have established his favourite Apollo Club at a place where they sold bad wine. He himself composed the famous “Leges Conviviales” for this club, which are still preserved, with the respect due to so sacred a relic, in the banking house of Messrs Child & Co., erected in 1788 on the place where the tavern formerly stood. They are twenty-four in number, some of them rather characteristic:—
“4. And the more to exact our delight whilst we stay,
“4. Let none be debarr’d from his choice female mate.“5. Let no scent offensive the chamber infest.
10. Let our wines without mixture or scum be all fine,
10. Or call up the master and break his dull noddle.16. With mirth, wit, and dancing, and singing conclude,
16. To regale every sense with delight in excess.21. For generous lovers let a corner be found,
21. Where they in soft sighs may their passions relieve.”
The last clause was, “Focus perennis esto,” which proves that rare old Ben understood comfort. Latin inscriptions were also in other parts of the house. Over the clock in the kitchen might have been seen, as late as 1731, “Si nocturna tibi noceat potatio vini, hoc in mane bibis iterum, et erit medicina.”[420] An elegant rendering of the well-known phrase, “A hair of the dog that bit you.” Not only Ben Jonson, but almost all the great poets of two centuries, honoured this house with their presence. “I dined to-day,” says Swift, in one of his letters to Stella, “with Dr Garth and Mr Addison, at the Devil Tavern, near Temple Bar, and Garth treated.” Numerous similar quotations might be found, showing the visits to this place of nearly all the great literary stars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.