On a house in the Rue Etoupée, at Rouen, there is a stone carved sign of Jerusalem, represented as a fortified town, with a figure arriving on each side, evidently meant for pilgrims. A similar idea seems to be conveyed by the sign of Trip to Jerusalem, a public-house in Nottingham, and the Pilgrim in Coventry. There is still an Old Jerusalem tavern in Clerkenwell, so called after the Knights of St John, of whose hospital this house was the principal gateway.
Mount Pleasant is a name frequently bestowed upon public-houses, not always with any allusion to such a locality, but simply on account of its being an alluring name of the same maudlin class as Cottage of Content, Bank of Friendship, &c. There is said to be a mountain of that name in America, which obtained some celebrity from being the locality on which the sassafras (Orchis mascula) was gathered, the plant which produces the saloop. This drink came in vogue at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Reide’s coffee-house in Fleet Street was the first respectable house where it was sold. When it was opened in 1719, the following lines, painted on a board, hung in front of the house; in latter times, until the closing of the establishment in 1833, they were preserved in the coffee-room:—
“Come all degrees now passing by,
My charming liquor taste and try;
To Lockyer[625] come and drink your fill,
Mount Pleasant has no kind of ill.
The fumes of wines, punch, drams, or beer,
It will expel; your spirits cheer;
From drowsiness your spirits free;
Sweet as a rose your breath shall be.
Come taste and try, and speak your mind,
Such rare ingredients here are joined.
Mount Pleasant pleases all mankind.”
Lockyer had begun life with half-a-crown, and by selling salop, or saloop, at Fleet-ditch, amassed sufficient to open the above place in Fleet Street, where he died worth £1000, in March 1739.[626]
Our old friend Pepys mentions going to China Hall, but gives no further particulars. It is not unlikely that this was the same place which, in the summer of 1777, was opened as a theatre. Whatever its use in former times, it was at that period the warehouse of a paper manufacturer. In those days the West-end often visited the entertainments of the East, and the new theatre was sufficiently patronised to enable the proprietors to venture upon some embellishments. The prices were—boxes, 3s.; pit, 2s.; gallery, 1s.; and the time of commencing varied from half-past six to seven o’clock, according to the season. “The Wonder,” “Love in a Village,” the “Comical Courtship,” and the “Lying Valet,” were among the plays performed. The famous Cooke was one of the actors in the season of 1778. In that same year the building suffered the usual fate of all theatres, and was utterly destroyed by fire.
One name we omitted to notice when speaking of signs derived from European cities—Copenhagen House. Until very recently, this stood isolated in the fields north of the metropolis, near the old road to Highgate. It was said to have derived its name from the fact of a Danish prince or ambassador having resided in it during a great plague in London. Another tradition is to the effect that, early in the seventeenth century, upon some political occasion, great numbers of Danes left that kingdom, and came to London; whereupon the house was opened by an emigrant from Copenhagen, as a place of resort for his countrymen resident in the metropolis. This tradition probably refers to the reign of James I., who was visited in London by his brother-in-law, the King of Denmark, at which time it is very probable that there was a considerable influx of persons from the Danish capital. Coopen-Hagen is the name given to the place in the map accompanying Camden’s Britannia, 1695. For many years previous to its demolition, the house had a great reputation amongst Cockney excursionists, and its tea-gardens, skittle-ground, Dutch pins, and particularly Fives Play, were great attractions. For this last game especially the place was very famous. The house possessed another attraction. From its windows a very fine view of London, the Thames, and the Surrey hills beyond, was obtainable. The New Cattle Market now occupies its site, and a modern public-house only perpetuates the name.
Besides the above-mentioned geographical signs, we have others of more modern introduction, such as the South Australian in Cadogan Street, Chelsea, and the North Pole in Oxford Street, which last commemorates one of those equally brave and unsuccessful expeditions that have taken place every now and then since Admiral Frobisher first started on the discovery of the Meta Incognita.
There exists a class of signs in some respects geographical, yet, from their indefinite character, they are more adapted for insertion in the following chapter than here. We allude to such tavern decorations as that picture of the fiery sun going down behind a hill, which is called The World’s End, at St George’s, near Bristol; The First and Last Inn in England, a sign which may be seen in many other localities besides at the Land’s End, in Cornwall; and No Place Inn, a public-house in the suburbs of Plymouth, the sign representing an old woman standing at the door, accosting her husband, just arrived—“Where have you been?” “No place.” Many others of an equally indefinite character might be given here, but they would be found to be even less topographical than those just named.
[600] Aubrey, Remains of Judaisme and Gentilisme. MS. Lansdowne Collection.