‘Many things of worthy memory.’
Shakespeare: Taming of the Shrew.
I SHALL close my account with a few miscellaneous signs and inscriptions which I could not appropriately fit in elsewhere. Several eminent banking firms carefully preserve the signs which were used by them before their houses were numbered; but they have been so ably described by Mr. Hilton Price and others, that little more need be said. The Marygold is in the front shop of Messrs. Child and Co.’s premises, Fleet Street; it is of oak, the ground stained green, with a sun and a gilt border: the motto underneath is, ‘Ainsi mon âme.’ The Three Squirrels of Messrs. Gosling are worked in iron and attached to the bars which protect their central window, and the original sign of copper is preserved in the front office. From Mr. Price I learn that as early as the year 1684, and perhaps earlier, James Chambers kept a goldsmith’s shop at the Three Squirrels over against St. Dunstan’s Church, Fleet Street; and it is a curious fact that one family of Chambers bears the three squirrels in its arms. Hoare’s Golden Bottle hangs over the doorway of their banking-house. Sir Richard Colt Hoare thought it was a barrel sign adopted by James Hore, of Cheapside, because his father, Ralph, was a member of the Coopers’ Company. More likely, however, it was a sign of the same description as the Black Jack and the Leathern Bottle, of which a genuine specimen from the corner of Charles Street, Leather Lane, has lately found its way into the Guildhall Museum. Unfortunately, the Grasshopper—the old sign of Messrs. Martin and Co., in Lombard Street—has not been preserved. It was the crest of Sir Thomas Gresham, who is believed to have here carried on his business. A most interesting history of the house has lately been written by Mr. J. B. Martin, one of the partners. A quaint and charming sign is the little carved figure of a naval officer taking an observation—the Wooden Midshipman of Dombey and Son. He may still be seen in the Minories, having migrated from Leadenhall Street some years ago. Not long since the owners sent him for change of air to the Naval Exhibition. The figure and its associations form the subject of a capital paper by Mr. J. Ashby-Sterry in All the Year Round for October 29, 1881.
At the corner of Charlotte Street and the Blackfriars Road there is a figure of a dog overturning a three-legged iron pot, in its eagerness to get at the contents; this is the sign of a wholesale ironmonger’s establishment said to date from 1783. The Dog’s Head in the Pot, as it is called, seems, of late years at any rate, to have been usually adopted by members of this trade, because the vessel represented is of iron. The sign is said to indicate a dirty, slovenly housewife. Larwood and Hotten mention a coarse woodcut of the beginning of last century (to judge from the costumes, copied from an older original) which represents two old women in a disorderly room or kitchen. One of them wipes a plate with the bushy tail of a large dog whose head is buried in a pot. Under it are the lines:
‘All sluts behold, take view of me,
Your own good husbandry to see.’
A Dutch saying, to anyone late for dinner, is that he will find the dog in the pot; in other words, that the remains of the dinner have been handed over to the dog to finish.
The Dog’s Head in the Pot is a very old London sign, being mentioned in a tract from the press of Wynkyn de Worde called ‘Cocke Lorell’s Bote.’ The person who dwelt at this sign was therein described as ‘Annys Angry with the croked buttock—by her crafte a breche maker.’ A later notice occurs in the will (dated September 3, 1563) of Thomas Johnson, citizen and haberdasher, of London, who gave £13 4s. annually to the highways between Barkway and Dog’s Head in the Pot, otherwise called ‘Horemayd,’ probably a house of entertainment in the parish of Great or Little Hormead, in Hertfordshire, by the side of the road from Barkway to London. At a house in Westgate Street, Gloucester, some beautifully carved Tudor panels have lately come to light. One of them has on it a dog or leopard eating out of a three-legged pot. A seventeenth-century trade-token, issued from Red Cross Street, and another from Old Street, St. Luke’s, have the device of the Dog’s Head in the Pot.
A medallion in plaster or terra-cotta, which looked as if it might have been copied from a classical coin, was till lately to be seen on the gable of a little fishmonger’s shop in Cheyne Walk. This, though a humble specimen of its class, belonged to a style of decoration once common. I have before me a view, dated 1792, of a house on Tower Hill with similar medallions. Sometimes the heads of Roman Emperors were thus placed, sometimes the cardinal virtues or other emblematic figures. In the third edition of Stow, by Anthony Munday, occurs the following passage, descriptive of Aldgate: ‘The old ruinous Gate being taken downe, and order provided for a new foundation, divers very ancient peeces of Romane coyne were found among the stones and rubbish, which, as Mr. Martin Bond (a Worshipful Citizen, and one of the Surveyors of the worke) told me, two of them (according to their true forme and figure) he caused to be carved on stone, and fixed on eyther side of the Gates Arch without, eastward.’ These coins were of the Emperors Trajan and Diocletian. Martin Bond laid the foundation-stone of the new gate in 1607. The little house in Cheyne Walk was formerly a freehold with the right of pasturage on Chelsea Common; it was pulled down in October, 1892. I have drawn it for the frontispiece of this volume; the lower part appears in a delightful etching by Whistler, called ‘The Fish-shop.’
One of the most interesting signs in existence belongs to my friend Mr. F. Manley Sims. It does not, however, strictly belong to London, having been brought from Poole some years ago; its earlier history has yet to be discovered. This is a doctor’s signboard, excellently carved, with figures in high relief. It is divided into compartments: in the centre—more important than the rest—is the doctor himself, in Jacobean costume, his potions ranged on shelves behind him; around, in seven compartments, are represented various operations of surgery; and below, in relief, appear the words from Ecclesiasticus, ‘Altissimus creavit de terra medicynam et vir prudens non abhorebit illam.’ Anno Domini 1623. There are traces of paint and gilding; the whole is enclosed within an ornamental border, and has a highly decorative effect.
Somewhat akin to the sculptured street signs are the tablets on which are inscribed the names of the streets, and often the dates of their building or completion. They have historical value where, as is not unfrequently the case, they record a name now in danger of being forgotten, and some of them are designed with a good deal of taste. So many of these tablets remain that I shall not attempt a list, but shall only mention a few good examples. One of the oldest is in Great Chapel Street, Westminster, and is inscribed: ‘This is Chappeil Street, 1656.’