Volume Ii Part 12 (2/2)
May every man who meets, your praise rehea.r.s.e!
May mirth, as plenty, crown your cheerful board, And ev'ry one part happy--as a lord!
That when at home, (by such sweet verses fir'd) Your families may think you all inspir'd.
So wishes he, who pre-engag'd, can't know The pleasures that would from your meeting flow.”
The proper sign is the Salutation and Cat,--a curious combination, but one which is explained by a lithograph, which some years ago hung in the coffee-room. An aged dandy is saluting a friend whom he has met in the street, and offering him a pinch out of the snuff-box which forms the top of his wood-like cane. This box-n.o.b was, it appears, called a ”cat”--hence the connection of terms apparently so foreign to each other. Some, not aware of this explanation, have accounted for the sign by supposing that a tavern called ”the Cat” was at some time pulled down, and its trade carried to the Salutation, which thenceforward joined the sign to its own; but this is improbable, seeing that we have never heard of _any_ tavern called ”the Cat”
(although we _do_ know of ”the Barking Dogs”) as a sign. Neither does the _Salutation_ take its name from any scriptural or sacred source, as the _Angel and Trumpets_, etc.
More positive evidence there is to show of the ”little smoky room at the _Salutation and Cat_,” where Coleridge and Charles Lamb sat smoking Oronoko and drinking egg-hot; the first discoursing of his idol, Bowles, and the other rejoicing mildly in Cowper and Burns, or both dreaming of ”Pantisocracy, and golden days to come on earth.”
”SALUTATION” TAVERNS.
The sign Salutation, from scriptural or sacred source, remains to be explained. Mr. Akerman suspects the original sign to have really represented the Salutation of the Virgin by the Angel--”Ave Maria, gratia plena”--a well-known legend on the jettons of the Middle Ages.
The change of representation was properly accommodated to the times.
The taverns at that period were the ”gossiping shops” of the neighbourhood; and both Puritan and Churchman frequented them for the sake of hearing the news. The Puritans loved the good things of this world, and relished a cup of Canary, or Noll's nose lied, holding the maxim--
”Though the devil trepan The Adamical man, The saint stands uninfected.”
Hence, perhaps, the Salutation of the Virgin was exchanged for the ”booin' and sc.r.a.pin'” scene (two men bowing and greeting), represented on a token which still exists, the tavern was celebrated in the days of Queen Elizabeth. In some old black-letter doggrel, ent.i.tled _News from Bartholemew Fayre_ it is mentioned for wine:--
”There hath been great sale and utterance of wine, Besides beere, and ale, and Ipocras fine; In every country, region, and nation, But chiefly in Billingsgate, _at the Salutation_.”
_The Flower-pot_ was originally part of a symbol of the Annunciation to the Virgin.
QUEEN'S ARMS, ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD.
Garrick appears to have kept up his interest in the City by means of clubs, to which he paid periodical visits. We have already mentioned the Club of young merchants, at Tom's Coffee-house, in Cornhill.
Another Club was held at the Queen's Arms Tavern, in St. Paul's Churchyard, where used to a.s.semble: Mr. Samuel Sharpe, the surgeon; Mr. Paterson, the City solicitor; Mr. Draper, the bookseller; Mr.
Clutterbuck, the mercer; and a few others.
Sir John Hawkins tells us that ”they were none of them drinkers, and in order to make a reckoning, called only for French wine.” These were Garrick's standing council in theatrical affairs.
At the Queen's Arms, after a thirty years' interval, Johnson renewed his intimacy with some of the members of his old Ivy-lane Club.
Brasbridge, the old silversmith of Fleet-street, was a member of the Sixpenny Card-Club held at the Queen's Arms: among the members was Henry Baldwyn, who, under the auspices of Bonnel Thornton, Colman the elder, and Garrick, set up the _St. James's Chronicle_, which once had the largest circulation of any evening paper. This worthy newspaper-proprietor was considerate and generous to men of genius: ”Often,” says Brasbridge, ”at his hospitable board I have seen needy authors, and others connected with his employment, whose abilities, ill-requited as they might have been by the world in general, were by him always appreciated.” Among Brasbridge's acquaintance, also, were John Walker, shopman to a grocer and chandler in Well-street, Ragfair, who died worth 200,000_l._, most a.s.suredly not gained by lending money on doubtful security; and Ben Kenton, brought up at a charity-school, and who realized 300,000_l._, partly at the Magpie and Crown, in Whitechapel.
DOLLY'S, PATERNOSTER ROW.
This noted tavern, established in the reign of Queen Anne, has for its sign, the cook Dolly, who is stated to have been painted by Gainsborough. It is still a well-appointed chop-house and tavern, and the coffee-room, with its projecting fireplaces, has an olden air.
Nearly on the site of Dolly's, Tarlton, Queen Elizabeth's favourite stage-clown, kept an ordinary, with the sign of the Castle. The house, of which a token exists, was destroyed in the Great Fire, but was rebuilt; there the ”Castle Society of Music” gave their performances.
Part of the old premises were subsequently the Oxford Bible Warehouse, destroyed by fire in 1822, and rebuilt.
The entrance to the Chop-house is in Queen's Head pa.s.sage; and at Dolly's is a window-pane painted with the head of Queen Anne, which may explain the name of the court.
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