Part 12 (1/2)

”'O, my Billy, my constant Billy, When shall I see my Billy again?'

'When the fishes fly over the mountain, Then you'll see your Billy again.'”

[Ill.u.s.tration: SALUTATION INN IN MANGOTSFIELD]

Our design of two gentlemen saluting each other politely is such a club sign, reproducing in miniature the sign of the ”Salutation Inn”

in Mangotsfield, and representing the last link in the chain of salutation signs, which began with the old religious scene of Mary saluted by the angel.

Price Collier, in his book ”England and the English,” has dedicated a whole chapter to English sport, on which the nation spends every year $223,888,725, more than the cost of her entire military machine, navy and army together. On fox hunting alone she spends $43,790,000. This love of sport is an old English trait, shared by both s.e.xes. One of the first books printed in England was a book on sport, ”The Bokys of Haukyng and Huntyng,” supposed to be written by a lady, Juliana Berners, the prioress of the nunnery of Sopwell, and published for the first time in the new black art in 1486. A schoolmaster of the abbey school of St. Albans had arranged the edition, and it is therefore sometimes quoted as ”The Book of St. Albans.” No wonder, then, that such a popular subject was readily chosen by the sign painters, and that they love to picture the hunted animals, the white hart and the fox, and not less often the faithful companions of the hunter, dog and horse, hawk and falcon.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PACK-HORSE IN CHIPPENHAM]

A great role is played by the horse, not only as the heraldic animal in the coat of arms of the Saxons and of the House of Hanover, but the real beast, from the good old pack-horse to the lithe-limbed racer. In the early Middle Ages, when the roads were so bad that it was impossible for heavy wagons to travel on them, the pack-horse was the only medium for the transportation of goods, post-packages, and mail.

Those were hard days for impatient lovers, who would have preferred to send their _billets-doux_ in Shakespearean fas.h.i.+on, ”making the wind my post-horse.” Sometimes the horse's burden, the wool-pack--the wool business being the chief trade in England in the twelfth century--appears on the signboard. In fact, in the time of Ben Jonson ”The Woolpack” was one of the leading hostelries of London.

Another sign is the race-horse, celebrated by Shakespeare in such lines as:--

”And I have horse will follow where the game Makes way, and run like swallows o'er the plain.”

from ”t.i.tus Andronicus” (II, ii), or those other lines in ”Pericles”

(II, i):--

”Upon a courser, whose delightful steps Shall make the gazer joy to see him tread.”

In the reign of Henry VIII, a tavern called ”The Running Horses”

existed in Leatherhead, a place not exactly fitted for n.o.ble hunters, since a contemporary poet complains about the beer being served there ”in rather disgusting conditions.” Not infrequently we find more or less happy portraits of famous race-horses, such as ”The Flying Dutchman” and ”Bee's Wing”; sometimes even a hound was honored in this way, guarding the entrance of a tavern as his famous Roman colleague, pictured in mosaic, did in the days of antiquity. ”The Blue Cap” in Sandiway (Ches.h.i.+re) was such a sign.

In Chaucer's time it was a popular fas.h.i.+on to decorate the horses with little bells, as we may infer from the Abbot's Tale:--

”When he rode men his bridle hear, Gingling in a whistling wind as clere, And eke as loud as doth a chapel bell.”

Curiously enough, these bells, sometimes of silver and gold, are designated in old ma.n.u.scripts by the Italian word _campane_, as if this custom had been adopted by the English gentry from Italy. The ”gentyll horse” of the Duke of Northumberland, the old doc.u.ments would tell us, was decorated with ”campane of silver and gylt.” Most naturally such valuable bells were very welcome as prizes in the sporting world; in Chester, for instance, the great prize of the annual race on St. George's Day consisted of a beautiful golden bell richly adorned with the royal escutcheon. But independent of this custom the bell has always been very popular in England. The great German musician Handel has even called it the national musical instrument, because nowhere else, perhaps, do the people delight so much in the chimes of their churches. We find it, therefore, everywhere on the tavern sign, sometimes in absurd combinations like ”Bell and Candlestick” or ”Bell and Lion”; very prettily in connection with a wild man, ”Bell Savage,” which is changed under gallant French influence into ”Belle Sauvage,” or even ”La Belle Sauvage.” ”c.o.c.k and Bell” points again to a popular sport, the c.o.c.k-fight. Like the little slant-eyed j.a.panese, the small boys of Old England loved to watch this exciting game; on Lent-Tuesday special c.o.c.k-fights were arranged for them, and the happy little owner of the victorious animal was presented with a tiny silver bell to wear on his cap. No wonder that ”The Fighting c.o.c.ks” themselves appear on the signboard. We find them on taverns in Italy, too, where the popularity of this sport goes back to the Roman days. The Bluebeard King Henry VIII issued an order prohibiting all c.o.c.k-fights among his subjects, all the while establis.h.i.+ng for himself a c.o.c.kpit in White Hall as a royal prerogative. In the days of Queen Victoria the rather cruel sport was definitely abolished.

Another not less cruel sport still lives in the tavern sign ”Dog and Duck.” The birds were put into a small pond and chased by dogs.

Watching the frightened creatures dive to escape their pursuers const.i.tuted the chief joy of the performance. We may still hear the wild cries of the spectators urging on the dogs, when we read the old rhyme:--

”Ho, ho, to Islington; enough!

Fetch Job my son, and our dog Ruffe!

For there in Pond, through mire and muck, We'll cry: hay Duck, there Ruffe, hay Duck!”

An old stone sign of such a ”Dog and Duck” tavern, dated 1617, can still be seen in London outside of the Bethlehem Hospital in St.

George's Field. The popular name of this lunatic asylum is Bedlam--favorite word of Carlyle to designate confusion and chaos.

Here in South London special arenas were built for the spectacle of bear-baiting, and it is no chance that as early as in the time of Richard III the most popular tavern of this quarter was called ”The Bear.” It stood near London Bridge, and was frequented especially by aristocratic revelers. In these scenes of rough amus.e.m.e.nts for the people the muse of Shakespeare introduced the gentle dramatic arts.

Here his ”Henry V” was introduced for the first time, perhaps, with its solemn chorus: ”Can this c.o.c.kpit hold the vasty fields of France?”

Still more than these artificial and butchery sports of the citizen, the real joys of the hunter found their echo in the productions of the sign-painters. There is hardly an English town without a ”White Hart Inn.” Since the days of Alexander the Great, who once caught a beautiful white hart and decorated his slender neck with a golden ring, since Charlemagne and Henry the Lion, the white hart has been a special favorite of the hunter, whose joys no poet perhaps has sung so charmingly as Shakespeare in these lines of ”t.i.tus Andronicus” (II, ii and iii):--