CHAPTER VIII

THE SIGN IN POETRY

“Er ging nicht in den Krug, Er wohnte gar darinnen.”

JOACHIM RACHEL.

Like a prophetic star the sign seems to stand over the birth-house of many a poet. Or shall we not agree with Chateaubriand who saw in the eagle on the house in Bread Street, London, where Milton was born, an “augure et symbole”? And is it not a curious coincidence that the greatest French comedy-writer was born “à l’enseigne du Pavillon des Cinges dans la Rue des Étuves Saint-Honoré” in Paris? One of the most ingenious reconstructions of Robida (the architect of Vieux Paris, never to be forgotten by any visitor of the Parisian World’s Fair of 1900) was this birthplace of Molière’s that took its name from the mighty corner-beam, covered with carved monkeys. Truly, Milton had hoped less from the eagle on his father’s house than from the gentle star of Venus under which he was born. In his family Bible, one of the many autograph treasures of the British Museum, he has registered his birth with his own hand: “John Milton was born the 9th of December, 1608, die Veneris, half an hour after 6 in the morning.” It availed him little to be born on the day of Venus, and the promise given to the “children of Venus” by an old German calendar of 1489, “They shall sing joyfully and free from care,” was not fulfilled in his life. His marriage was an unhappy one. Taine said of him: “Ni les circonstances ni la nature l’avaient fait pour le bonheur.” But the eagle on the house of his childhood proved to be a true symbol of his great future, for like an eagle he soared to the highest heights of poetical creation. Schiller was born in Marbach in the neighboring house to the “Golden Lion,” whose landlord his grandfather had been.

Considering that all houses in earlier times were distinguished by such symbols, even the most pious could not help being born under a sign. Calvin, the French Puritan, was even born in an inn, the “grasse hôtellerie des Quatre Nations” at Noyen in Picardy. On the other hand, merry souls seem to have preferred saints as patrons of their birthplace, for Gavarni, the ingenious cartoonist, came into the world at Paris “à l’enseigne de Sainte Opportune, Rue des Vieilles Haudriettes.”

Sometimes Fate seems to mock the highflying ambitions of a great poet, by changing the house of his birth into a common public-house, as happened in the case of Chateaubriand, “the gentilhomme né” and his birthplace in the Rue des Juifs at Saint-Malo. On the other hand, Rabelais’s birthplace in Chinon, which became a tavern after his death, should have been one from the first hour of his life; for his was like the “étrange nativité” of his hero Gargantua: “Soubdain qu’il fut né, ne cria comme les aultres enfans: ‘Mies, mies’; mais à haulte voix s’escrioit: ‘À boire, à boire, à boire!’ comme invitant tout le monde à boire.” A little poem tells us the story how his study was transformed into a wine-cellar for merry revelers:--

“Là chacun dit sa chansonette Là le plus sage est le plus fou

* * * * *

La cave s’y trouve placée Où fut jadis le cabinet, On n’y porte plus sa pensée Qu’aux douceurs d’un vin frais et net.”

The oldest poetical tradition of tavern signs we find, perhaps, in the songs of Villon, who sometimes has been called the Paul Verlaine of the fifteenth century, on account of his similar vicissitudes in life. A child of the people, he is not ashamed of his low origin:--

“Sur les tumbeaux de mes ancestres Les âmes desquels Dieu embrasse, On n’y voyt couronnes ne sceptres.”

Living the life of the common people, he mingles freely with them, and in his wordly poems many a tavern adventure is told with zest. As a roaming scholar he wanders from place to place and, having rarely a penny in his purse, he acquires easily the art of dining without paying:--

“C’est bien trompé, qui rien ne paye, Et qui peut vivre d’advantaige, Sans débourser or ne monnoye En usant de joyeux langaige.”

And although he arrives at the tavern door riding shank’s mare, poor devil that he is,--

“Il va à pied, par faulte d’asne,”--

he is rich in fascinating stories to win the landlord’s favors and to secure ample credit. Full of self-assurance, he demands always the best of everything, “boire ypocras à jour et à nuyctée” (day and night to sip Hypokras), one of Falstaff’s various favorite drinks.

Curious sign-names Villon mentions; as, the tin plate,--

“le cas advint an Plat d’estain,”--

or, the golden mortar (“le mortier d’or”), and even “the pestle.” The mortar was really a chemist’s sign. To-day, even, we may see, in a little French provincial town over the door of a druggist, a bear diligently braying some wholesome herb, in a mortar, an “Ours qui pile.”

“Or advint, environ midy, Qu’il estoit de faim estourdy; S’en vint à une hostellerie Rue de la Mortellerie, Où pend l’enseigne du Pestel À bon logis et bon hostel; Demandant s’en a que repaistre. Ouy vraiment, ce dist le maistre, Ne soyez de rien en soucy Car vous serez très bien servy, De pain, de vin et de viande.”

The animal kingdom is represented by the mule, “la Mulle,” an inn frequented by Rabelais, too, the red donkey (“un asne rouge”), and the white horse that, like all the painted horses, had the bad habit of never moving (“le cheval blanc qui ne bouge”). We have seen above that the “White Horse” was popular in Italy, too, although an old Italian proverb pretends that it is just as capricious as a beautiful woman and a source of continual annoyances:--

“Chi hà cavallo bianco e belle moglie Non è mai senza doglie.”

The most famous of all the cabarets immortalized by Villon is “le trou de la Pomme de Pin,” as he usually calls it. In the “Repues Franches,” from which we quoted the story of the Hotel du Pestel we read:--

“Et vint à la Pomme de Pin

* * * * *

Demandant s’ils avoient du bon vin, Et qu’on luy emplist du plus fin Mais qu’il fust blanc et amoureux.”

We see that our poet-tramp hated adulteraters of wine (“les taverniers qui brouillent nostre vin”) not less sincerely than his old Roman colleague Horace. In his older days he regretted the dissipation of his youth, sadly reflecting upon what a comfortable age he could have now if ...

“J’eusse maison et couche molle! Mais quoy? je fuyoye l’escolle, Comme faict le mauvays enfant.... En escrivant cette parole A peu que le cueur ne me fend.”

The tavern of the “Pomme de Pin” stood near the Madeleine Church--not the famous one we all know, but an old building in the “cité,” Rue de la Lanterne, which was pulled down in the time of the Revolution. Rabelais loved the place and praised this pineapple higher than the golden apple that young Paris once gave to Venus, thus creating endless troubles among men and gods:--

“La Pomme de Pin qui vaut mieux Que celle d’or, dont fut troublée Toute la divine assemblée.”

Sainte-Beuve has called this tavern, connected with so many proud names in French literature, “la véritable taverne littéraire, le vrai cabaret classique,” a title which to-day is deserved by the “Cabaret du Chat Noir,” the creation of such gifted artists as Henri Rivière, Willette, and, last but not least, Steinlen, the painter of its sign.

Next in literary celebrity stands “La Croix de Lorraine,” where Molière used to relax from his strenuous life as poet and actor and get merry over the blinking glass, “assez pour vers le soir être en goguettes.” Among the guests ponderous Boileau sometimes appeared, although he seems to have taken his admonition in the “Art poétique,” “connaissez la ville,” rather seriously and to have made quite extensive studies of the Parisian public-houses. We find him in the “Diable,” who had his quarters in those days very near the Sainte Chapelle, and in “La Tête Noire,” a counterpart of “The Golden Head” in Malines where Dürer lodged on his journey through the Netherlands.

It would be amusing to count how many immortal works have been created over a tavern table. Have we not heard that in our days Mascagni wrote the incomparable overture to his “Cavalleria Rusticana” on the little marble table of a modern café? Racine is supposed to have written his “Plaideurs” on the tavern table of the “Mouton Blanc” in Paris, and this happy circumstance seems to have affected his style very agreeably and to have made the play easier for a modern reader than the solemn dramas which are so difficult to enjoy if one does not happen to be a Frenchman. How attractive a place this “Mouton Blanc” was we might imagine from the little rhyme:--

“Ah! que n’ai-je pour sépulture Les Deux Torches ou le Mouton!”

What gifted fathers earned through tavern creations the prodigal sons sometimes lost again in gambling. Louis Racine spent the little fortune his father had left him in the “Epée de bois,” the same place where the comedy-writer Marivaux once gambled away his paternal heritage, regaining it soon, to be sure, by new and charming productions. It is mostly the stimulating company of comrades and fellow-artists, the freedom from petty household cares, that draws the poet to a quiet tavern corner; but sometimes, too, a charming landlady is the attractive force which may become so irresistible as to bind him forever in marriage bonds. Maybe, too, the tavern-bill was growing so hopelessly big that the poor dreamer saw no other solution. This was the reason why La Serre married the landlady of the “Trois ponts d’or,” it being understood that “contrat de mariage valait quittance alors entre cabaretière et poète,” as Michel-Fournier expresses the matter.

The tender relationship between the landlady and the poet-guest has given birth to numerous songs, from which we select the famous German Lied by Rudolf Baumbach:

“Angethan hat mir’s dein Wein Deiner Äuglein heller Schein Lindenwirtin, du junge!”

and the not less charming poem of Molière’s successor, Dancourt, composed in honor of the landlady of the “Cabaret du petit père noire”:--

“Si tu veux sans suite et sans bruit Noyer tous tes ennuis et boire à ta maîtresse, Viens, je sais un réduit Inaccessible à la tristesse Là nous serons servis de la main d’une hôtesse Plus belle que l’astre qui luit, Et mêlant au bon vin quelque peu de tendresse, Contents du jour, nous attendrons la nuit.”

The classical literary tavern of England was without doubt “The Mermaid Tavern,” once situated in Bread Street not far from Milton’s birthplace. Here the famous club, founded by Ben Jonson, in 1603, assembled, among them the immortal Shakespeare. The fascination of this mermaid was still in the nineteenth century so great as to inspire Keats with his charming “Lines on the Mermaid Tavern,” which we feel inclined to quote in full from Anning Bell’s illustrated edition, where it stands under a graceful reconstruction of the sign:--

“Souls of Poets dead and gone, What Elysium have ye known, Happy field or mossy cavern, Choicer than the _Mermaid Tavern_? Have ye tippled drink more fine Than mine host’s Canary wine? Or are fruits of Paradise Sweeter than those dainty pies Of venison? O generous food! Drest as though bold Robin Hood Would, with his maid Marian, Sup and browse from horn and can.

“I have heard that on a day Mine host’s sign-board flew away Nobody knew whither, till An astrologer’s old quill To a sheepskin gave the story, Said he saw you in your glory, Underneath a new-old sign Sipping beverage divine, And pledging with contented smack The Mermaid in the Zodiak.

“Souls of Poets dead and gone, What Elysium have ye known, Happy fields or mossy cavern, Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?”

Truly a capricious wind has carried away the old Mermaid sign into far and unknown regions, and to-day the scholars are disputing where really the famous house stood.

Two other taverns, less roughly handled by Father Time, may claim to be next in literary rank: “The Cheshire Cheese” and “The Cock,” both in Fleet Street. “Ye olde Cheshire Cheese,” or simply “The Cheese,” is not easy to find because it really stands on a narrow side-lane, the Wine Office Court. It has the great advantage of having preserved unchanged the character of a seventeenth-century tavern. Although venerable, it is not the original building, which was destroyed, together with many other public-houses in the great fire of 1666. Pious souls saw in the fact that the conflagration started in Pudding Lane and ended at Pie Corner an evident proof that the fire was sent from Heaven as punishment for “the sin of gluttony.” Shakespeare is said to have turned in not unfrequently at the old house of the “Cheshire Cheese” on his way to the Blackfriars’ Theatre in the Playhouse Yard, Ludgate Hill, where he was director for a time, or coming back for a twilight drink after the performance, which in those times closed as early as five o’clock. In spite of the warning fire of 1666 the sin of gluttony is still readily committed in the “Cheshire Cheese,” whose specialty, a meat pudding,--containing not only roast beef, kidneys, and oysters, but sky-larks too!--might even be called a sin against the holy ghost of poetry. Once immersed in this pudding the divine singers are silent forever without the consolation of the children’s book:--

“And when the pie was opened The birds began to sing.”

Some of these lark puddings are even shipped to Yankeeland, which sends every year countless pilgrims to the “Cheshire Cheese.” If possible, the American father of a family will take the seat of Dr. Samuel Johnson, the famous lexicographer, lean his head against the old paneling, which clearly shows the marks of the greasy wigs of the Doctor and his friend Oliver Goldsmith, and look at chick and child with an Olympian air, as if he wanted to say: “I am Sir Oracle, and when I ope my mouth let no dog bark.”

Among the guests and visitors at this “house of antique ease” we find many famous names beside Johnson and the author of the “Vicar of Wakefield,” who dwelt in the neighboring house, No. 6, Wine Office Court; men like Swift, Addison, Sheridan, Pope, even Voltaire, who must have felt rather out of place in this atmosphere of beefsteak and ale. Among modern poets Thackeray and Dickens are foremost,--Dickens who has studied so intimately the taverns and inns of his country. Under the spell of these souls of poets dead and gone, writers of the present generation love to gather here in literary clubs, such as the Johnson Club, which has adopted as its device the Doctor’s classical definition of the word “club”: “An assembly of good fellows meeting under certain conditions.” Johnson, who spent almost all his life in taverns, favored not only “The Cheese” with his presence, but others, too, as “The Mitre,” in whose dark coffee-room Hawthorne once dined. This old house has entirely vanished from the ground, just as the still older inn “The Devil”--who, following his old custom of settling near a church, had established himself opposite St. Dunstan’s. Thus we no longer “go to The Devil,” but if we have some serious business on hand we may step into “Child’s Bank,” which stands exactly on his former spot.

How important a rôle the waiters played in these old taverns we may realize from the fact that the portraits of two former head waiters decorate the walls of “The Cheshire Cheese.” Tennyson has celebrated another of these dignitaries in a long poem written in the Cock Tavern, beginning in this classical fashion:--

“O plump head-waiter at The Cock, To which I most resort, How goes the time? ’T is five o’clock. Go fetch a pint of port; But let it not be such as that You set before chance-comers, But such whose father-grape grew fat On Lusitanian summers.”

Dreaming over his glass of wine the poet sees in a sudden vision the prototype of the cock who once brought the head-waiter as a round country boy to the city, to the great bewilderment of his church-tower colleagues who witnessed his audacious flight:--

“His brothers of the weather stood Stock-still for sheer amazement.”

The description of this legendary cock, inspired evidently by the beautiful work of Gibbon’s master-hand, still to be seen in the modern Cock Tavern in Fleet Street, might well be called classical, and shall not be withheld from our readers:--

“The Cock was of a larger egg Than modern poultry drop, Stept forward on a firmer leg, And cramm’d a plumper crop, Upon an ampler dunghill trod, Crow’d lustier late and early, Sipt wine from silver, praising God, And raked in golden barley.”

Everybody who knows and loves the Swabian poet Mörike, the music for whose songs, composed by Hugo Wolff, have become the property of the international brotherhood of music-lovers, will think of his “Old Church-Tower Cock,” strangely similar in feeling to Tennyson’s poem of “The Cock” and his brothers of the weather.

We are not surprised to find that the poets of the land of Wanderlust give special attention to taverns and signs. Besides Mörike, and Uhland, whose “Inn” we quoted above, Johann Peter Hebel, a son of the Black Forest, has always shown a special predilection for the sign and its wonders. In an untranslatable poem, “On the death of a tippler,” he celebrates his man as a diligent astronomer who never tires looking for shining “Stars,” a brave knight always ready to hunt up “Bears” and “Lions,” a pious Christian willing to do penitence at the “Cross,” a man who frequented the best society, including “The Three Kings,” his most intimate friends.

Germany may boast, too, of a classical literary tavern, the “Bratwurstglöckle” in Nuremberg, built directly against the walls of a church, the Gothic Moritz-Kapelle. Among its famous guests were the Mastersinger, Hans Sachs, and Dürer, Germany’s greatest artist. Like a house out of a fairy tale it stands before us; we are only surprised that no fence of sausages surrounds it and that its door and window shutters are ordinary wood and not gingerbread!