In Paris, in the sixteenth century, the pastry-cooks used at nights to place a kind of lamp in their windows, which acted as magic lanterns. They were made of transparent paper, covered with rudely-painted figures of men and animals. Regnier mentions them in his eleventh satire:—
“Ressemblait transparent une lanterne vive,
Dont quelques patissiers amusent les enfants,
Où des oysons bridez, guenuches, elefans,
Chiens, chats, lièvres, renards, et mainte estrange beste
Courent l’une après l’autre.”[549]
A Dutch grocer, in the seventeenth century, put up the sign of the Burning Lamp, and wrote under it the following distich:—
“Myn lampje brant uyt den Orienten,
Ik verkoop oly, vygen en krenten.”[550]
The Brass Knocker in the Great Gardens, Bristol, is another sign taken from the exterior of the house; also the Flower-pot, which was very common in old London: one of the last remaining stood at the corner of Bishopsgate and Leadenhall Streets. It dated from an early period, and was, in the heyday of its fame, a celebrated coaching inn. The introduction of railroads, however, gave it a death-blow; for some time it continued to languish as a starting-point for omnibuses, and was finally demolished to make room for merchants’ offices in 1863. Trades tokens of this inn are extant in the Beaufoy collection. Mr Burn, the compiler of the catalogue of this collection, suggests that the Flower-pot was originally the vase of lilies, always represented in the old pictures of the Salutation or Annunciation; according to his theory the Angel and the Virgin were omitted at the Reformation, and nothing but the vase left. This, however, seems somewhat improbable. There is no apparent reason why it should not have been a real flower-pot, or rather vase, which our ancestors frequently had on the top of the pent-houses above their shops. In order to distinguish them from ordinary flower-pots, some painted theirs blue, thus the sign of the Blue Flower-pot, as appears from the advertisement of Cornelius a Tilborgh, who styles himself “sworn chirurgeon in ordinary to King Charles II., to our late sovereign King William, as also to her present majesty Queen Anne.” This worthy lived in Great Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Holborn Row, and besides the Blue Flower-pot at his front door, his customers might recognise the house, by “a light at night over the door,” and a Blue Ball at the back-door. The Two Blue Flower-pots used to be a sign in Dean Street, Soho; and the Two Flower-pots and Sun Dial in Parker’s Lane, near Drury Lane, (London Gazette, Sept. 16-19, 1700.)
Innumerable objects from the interior of the house were likewise adopted as signs, such as furniture of all kinds, and domestic utensils. The upholsterers, for instance, generally selected pieces of furniture. At the end of the last century The Royal Bed was a great favourite, as may be seen from engravings on several of the shop bills in the Banks collection; the bed in olden times was a very important article in a household, and was always particularly named in the will. Upholsterers in those days were also frequently called bed-joiners. Next we have the Board or Table, still a great favourite in the north—in Durham alone at least sixty public-houses with that sign could be named.
The mention of the Table affords an opportunity for particularising those good things which usually grace the festive board. First of all there is the Salt Horn, (at Bradford and Leeds,) which formerly at dinner marked the line of demarcation; for whether a guest was to be placed above or below the salt was a matter of etiquette strictly to be attended to. In Dudley we find a very substantial and tempting Round of Beef, with the following rhymes:—
“If you are hungry or a-dry,
Or your stomach out of order,
There’s sure relief at the Round of Beef,
For both these two disorders.”
The roast beef of old England is further represented by The Ribs of Beef, in Wensum Street, Norwich. The Flank Of Beef at Spalding, the much less tempting Cow Roast at Hampstead, besides a couple of unpretending Beef-steaks in Bath. Our bill of fare also contains plenty of mutton, sometimes rehaussé with a poetic sauce, as one that was at Hackney in the last century, The Shoulder of Mutton and Cat, having the following rhymes:—
“Pray Puss, don’t tear,
For the Mutton is so dear;
Pray Puss, don’t claw,
For the Mutton yet is raw.”