CHAPTER I.
HUMAN SIGNS.
‘Be sure observe the signs, for signs remain
Like faithful landmarks to the walking train.’
Gay: Trivia.
UNTIL the early part of the eighteenth century, when the plan of numbering came into vogue, not only inns and taverns, but shops and other houses, were distinguished by signs. The wholesale traders, indeed, were as a rule sufficiently well known not to require this distinctive mark. In the ‘Little London Directory’ for the year 1677—the oldest printed list of the kind—hardly any of the merchants have signs. The reverse is the case with the bankers, who, as ‘goldsmiths that keep running cashes,’ had then hardly emerged from the shopkeeper class. Nevertheless, signs were exceedingly common; on the rebuilding of the city, immediately after the Great Fire, many of them, instead of being painted and hung out—though this continued to be the more usual method—were carved in stone and built into the plain brick fronts of the new houses, generally above or below a first-floor window. In some cases also, the name of a court or alley was thus indicated—a useful method when a large number of the population could neither read nor write. It is curious that signs of a very similar description were used by the Romans; for instance, the well-known terra-cotta bas-relief of two men carrying an amphora, and a figure of a goat, both found at Pompeii; the former almost identical in design with our conventional representation of the Two Brewers. These, however, were cast in a mould which was probably used again and again. They therefore, perhaps, indicated a trade rather than a particular house; like our modern pawnbrokers’, tobacconists’, and gold-beaters’ signs. I shall presently call attention to a London seventeenth-century sign repeated in the same way.
Our plan seems to have been adopted from the Continent, where many stone signs are still to be found. They are commonest in Holland and the Low Countries. Here, perhaps ever since the Roman occupation, certainly since the days of Charlemagne, brick has been the usual building material, for it must have been that which was most easily available. Fortunately many of the old Dutch houses still survive; they hang together with wonderful pertinacity in spite of bad foundations, and beautiful specimens of picturesque architecture they are, with their step gables and stone ornamentation. The Dutch signs are often spirited and elaborate in design; they are to be found of all ages from about the year 1550 till near the end of the eighteenth century, but as might be expected, the earlier ones, which are often historical, are the best. They were placed like those in London, and generally had an ornamental border. Sometimes in place of a sign there was a pious distich or inscription, sometimes merely a date. A capital book on Dutch signs by J. Van Lennep and J. Ter Gouw has lately been published. Many of these signs from buildings now destroyed are to be seen in an annexe of the fine modern picture-gallery in Amsterdam. I am glad to say that our City authorities have shown a like respect for similar relics of old London, and some interesting specimens have found a home in the Guildhall Museum. Others have disappeared, and a certain number are still more or less in their original positions.
In the following pages I shall try to describe all the London sculptured signs of which we have any record; for convenience I have classified them, and naturally begin with those in which human beings are represented. One of the most interesting and best known is the sign of the Boy and Panyer, which is still to be seen, its base resting on the ground, and let into the wall between two houses on the eastern side of Panyer Alley, a narrow passage leading from Paternoster Row to Newgate Street. It represents a naked boy seated on a pannier or basket, and holding what, in Strype’s time, appeared to be a bunch of grapes between his hand and foot, ‘in token perhaps of plenty,’ as he suggests. Within an ornamental border, apparently on a separate stone below, is the following inscription:
‘When ye have sought the Citty round,
Yet still this is the highest ground.