Atlas carrying the World was the very appropriate sign of the map and chart makers. In 1674 there was one in Cornhill,[87] and under a print of Blanket fair (the fair held on the Thames when frozen over) occurs the following imprint:—“A map of the river Thames merrily called Blanket-fair, as it was frozen in the memorable year 1683-4, describing the Booths, Footpaths, Coaches, Sledges, Bull-baitings, and other remarks. Sold by Joseph Moxon on the West side of Fleet ditch, at the sign of the Atlas.” Equally appropriate was Orpheus as the sign of the music shop of L. Peppard, next door to Bickerstaffe’s coffee-house, Russell Street, Covent Garden, 1711. No fault either can be found with the Golden Fleece as the sign of a woollen draper—Jason’s golden fleece being an allegory of the wool trade, but at the door of an inn or public-house it looks very like a warning of the fate the traveller may expect within—in being fleeced. In the seventeenth century there was a Fleece Tavern in St James’s:—
“A RARE Consort of four Trumpets Marine, never heard of before in England.[88] If any person desire to come and hear it, they may repair to the Fleece Tavern near St James’s about 2 o’clock in the afternoon every day in the week except Sundays. Every consort shall continue one hour and so to begin again. The best places are 1 shilling, the others sixpence.”—London Gazette, Feb. 1-4, 1674.
This is amongst the earliest concerts on record in London. Another example of this sign worth mentioning was the Fleece Tavern, (in York Street,) Covent Garden, which, says Aubrey, “was very unfortunate for homicides; there have been several killed—three in my time. It is now (1692) a private house. Clifton, the master, hanged himself, having perjured himself.”[89] Pepys does not give this house a better character:—“Decemb. 1, 1660. Mr Flower did tell me how a Scotch knight was killed basely the other day at the Fleece in Covent Garden, where there had been a great many formerly killed.” On the Continent, also, this symbol was used; for instance, in 1687, by Jean Camusat, a printer in the Rue St Jacques, Paris; his colophon represented Jason taking the golden fleece off a tree, with the motto—“Tegit et quos tangit inaurat.”
Another sign, of which the application is not very obvious, is Pegasus or the Flying Horse, unless it refers to this rhyme:—
“If with water you fill up your glasses,
You’ll never write anything wise;
For wine is the horse of Parnassus,
Which hurries a bard to the skies.”
“John Gay, at the Flying Horse, between St Dunstan’s Church and Chancery Lane, 1680,” is an imprint under many ballads. John Gay undoubtedly had adopted this sign as a compliment to the Templars, in whose vicinity he lived, and whose arms are a Pegasus on a field arg. As for the poor balladmongers, whose works Gay printed, they certainly put Pegasus too much to the plough, to imagine that he alluded to theirs as a Flying Horse. Instead of the Flying Horse, a facetious innkeeper at Rogate Petersfield, has put up a parody in the shape of the Flying Bull.
The Hope and the Hope and Anchor are constant signs with shop and tavern keepers. Pepys spent his Sunday, the 23d September 1660, at the Hope Tavern, in a not very godly manner; and his account shews the curious business management of the taverns in the time:—
“To the Hope and sent for Mr Chaplin, who with Nicholas Osborne and one Daniel come to us, and we drank of two or three quarts of wine, which was very good; the drawing of our wine causing a great quarrel in the house between the two drawers which should draw us the best, which caused a great deal of noise and falling out, till the master parted them, and came up to us and did give us a long account of the liberty he gives his servants, all alike, to draw what wine they will to please his customers; and we eat above two hundred walnuts.”
In consequence of these excesses Master Pepys was very ill next day, but the particulars of the illness, though very graphically entered into the diary, are “unfit for publication.”
The Fortune was adopted from considerations somewhat similar to those that prompted the choice of the Hope. It occurs as the sign of a tavern in Wapping in 1667. The trades tokens of this house represent the goddess by a naked figure standing on a globe, and holding a veil distended by the wind,—a delicate hint to the customers, for it is a well-known fact that a man who has “a sheet in the wind” is as happy as a king. Doubtless the name of the Elysium, a public-house in Drury Lane about thirty years ago, had also been adopted as suggestive of the happiness in store for the customers who honoured the place by their company.