One of the misfortunes of the “nimium fortunati sua si bona norint” is pictured in the Cart Overthrown, which is a public-house sign at Lower Edmonton; though how it came to be such is difficult to guess. On Highgate Hill there is an old roadside inn, the Fox and Crown, which displays on its front a fine gilt coat of arms with the following inscription underneath:—
6th July 1837.
This Coat of Arms is a Grant
from Queen Victoria, for Ser-
vices rendered to Her Majesty
when in Danger Travelling
down this Hill.
The carriage conveying Her Majesty was proceeding down the hill without a skid on the wheel, when something started the horses, and the occurrence above narrated took place. The late landlord died in distressed circumstances, and he stoutly asserted to the last, that although he made repeated applications to the Government for recompense, he having imperilled his own life to save that of Her Majesty, all he ever received for his pains was permission to display the royal arms on his house front.
The Woodman is another very common sign, invariably representing the same woodman copied from Barker’s picture, and evidently suggested by Cowper’s charming description of a winter’s morning in the “Task.” The Drover’s Call is still seen on many roadsides, though the profession that gave rise to it is well-nigh extinct; the herds of steaming, fierce-looking oxen, formerly driven from all parts of the kingdom, along the main roads leading to London, there to be devoured, being now nearly all sent here by rail. A yet older practice produced the sign of the String of Horses, which may still be seen on many a highroad in the North, and dates from times before mail coaches and stage waggons existed, when all the goods-traffic inland had to be performed by strings of packhorses, who carried large baskets, hampers, and bales slung across their backs, and slowly, though far from surely, wound their way over miles and miles of uninhabited tracts, moors, and fens, which lay between the small towns and straggling villages.
Many signs still recall those bygone days: the Old Coach and Six may yet be seen in some places. There is one, for instance, in Westminster, but it is no longer a “sign of the times,” for alas!—
“No more the coaches shall I see
Come trundling from the yard,
Nor hear the horn blown cheerily
By brandy-bibbing guard.”
The names of the coaches were often adopted by inns on the road; for instance, the Mail, the Telegraph, the Defiance, the Balloon, the Tally-Ho, the Bang-up, the Express, &c., &c.; but alas! the modern railroad has swept away the signs as well as the coaches.
In London, there are not less than fifty-two public-houses known as the Coach and Horses, exclusive of beer-houses, coffee-houses, and similar establishments. Stow says, in his “Summary of English Chronicles,” that in 1555, Walter Ripon made a coach for the Earl of Rutland, “which was the first that was ever used in England.” But in his larger Chronicle he says:—