The Project Gutenberg eBook, Old Tavern Signs, by Fritz August Gottfried Endell This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Old Tavern Signs An Excursion in the History of Hospitality Author: Fritz August Gottfried Endell Release Date: January 18, 2013 [eBook #41869] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLD TAVERN SIGNS*** E-text prepared by Chris Curnow, Matthew Wheaton, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (http://archive.org) Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See http://archive.org/details/oldtavernsignsex00enderich Old Tavern Signs by Fritz Endell Old Tavern Signs Old Dutch Signs From a Painting by Gerrit and Job Berkheyden Old Tavern Signs An Excursion in the History of Hospitality by F ritz Endell With Illustrations by the Author Published by Houghton Mifflin Company Printed at The Riverside Press Cambridge Mdccccxvi COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published November 1916 THIS EDITION, PRINTED AT THE RIVERSIDE PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, CONSISTS OF FIVE HUNDRED AND FIFTY NUMBERED COPIES, OF WHICH FIVE HUNDRED ARE FOR SALE. THIS IS NUMBER 5 Preface For a sign! as indeed man, with his singular imaginative faculties, can do little or nothing without signs. Carlyle The author’s love of the subject is his only apology for his bold undertaking. First it was the filigree quality and the beauty of the delicate tracery of the wrought-iron signs in the picturesque villages of southern Germany that attracted his attention; then their deep symbolic significance exerted its influence more and more over his mind, and tempted him at last to follow their history back until he could discover its multifarious relations to the thought and feeling of earlier generations. For the shaping of the English text the author is greatly indebted to his American friends Mr. D. S. Muzzey, Mr. Emil Heinrich Richter, and Mr. Carleton Noyes. Contents I. Hospitality and its Tokens 1 II. Ancient Tavern Signs 23 III. Ecclesiastical Hospitality and its Signs 47 IV. Secular Hospitality: Knightly and Popular Signs 75 V. Traveling with Shakespeare and Montaigne 101 VI. Tavern Signs in Art—especially in Pictures by the Dutch Masters 127 VII. Artists as Sign-Painters 141 VIII. The Sign in Poetry 167 IX. Political Signs 187 X. Traveling with Goethe and Frederick the Great 217 XI. The English Sign and its Peculiarities 235 XII. The Enemies of the Sign and its End 259 Envoy: And the Moral? 277 Bibliography 291 Index 297 Illustrations Old Dutch Signs Frontispiece From a painting by Gerrit and Job Berkheyden Zum Schiff, in Stuttgart Title-Page Zum Ochsen, in Bietigheim, Württemberg vi The Cock, in Fleet Street, London 2 Adam and Eve 5 From an engraving by Hogarth Elefant and Castle, London 7 From an old woodcut Engel, in Murrhardt, Württemberg 11 Zum Goldnen Anker in Besigheim, Württemberg 20 Engel, in Winnenden, Württemberg 24 Zum Rad, in Ravensburg, Württemberg 37 Zum Wilden Mann, in Esslingen, Württemberg 38 Roman Tavern Sign from Isernia, Italy 43 Campana and Canone d’Oro, in Borgo San Dalmazzo, Italy 44 Lamm, in Erlenbach, Württemberg 48 Zum Ritter, in Degerloch, Württemberg 65 The Good Woman, Old English Sign 67 Hie zum Kindli, in the Collection of the Antiquarian Society in Zürich 71 Adler, in Leonberg, Württemberg 76 Zum Rössle, in Bozen, Austria 83 Le Chat qui Dort, Musée Carnavalet, Paris 89 Affenwagen, Old Swiss Sign 91 Eagle and Child, Guildhall Museum, London 100 Krone, in Leonberg, Württemberg 102 The Falcon, in Chester, England 105 The Old Blue Boar, in Lincoln, England 115 Rose, in Murrhardt, Württemberg 121 The Rowing Barge, in Wallingford, England 125 The Trumpeter before a Tavern 128 From a painting by Du Jardin in Amsterdam A Baker’s Sign in Borgo San Dalmazzo, Italy 135 The Half-Moon 136 From a painting by Teniers in London Zur Post, in Leonberg, Württemberg 137 A Sign-Painter 142 From an engraving by Hogarth Enseigne du Rémouleur, Paris 153 The Goat, in Kensington, London 163 Zum Goldnen Hirsch, in Leonberg, Württemberg 168 Trattoria del Gallo, in Tenda, Italy 184 Zum Löwen, in Bietigheim, Württemberg 186 The King of Württemberg, in Stuttgart 188 Zur Krone, in Degerloch, Württemberg 191 Butcher Sign in Oberstenfeld, Württemberg 197 The Dog and Pot, in London 214 Zur Post, in Bietigheim, Württemberg 218 Aux Trois Lapins, Old Parisian Sign 227 Lamb and Flag, in East Bath, England 236 The Swan, in Wells, England 238 Four Swans, in Waltham Cross, England 240 Salutation Inn, in Mangotsfield, England 244 A club sign from the museum in Taunton, England The Pack-Horse, in Chippenham, England 246 Zum Hirschen, in Winnenden, Württemberg 253 Cavallo Bianco, in Borgo San Dalmazzo, Italy 260 Three Squirrels, in London 262 Zur Glocke, in Winnenden, Württemberg 264 Zum Schlüssel, in Bozen, Austria 267 The Dog in Shoreditch 270 From a woodcut in “A Vademecum for Malt-Worms,” in the British Museum The Queen, in Exeter, England 272 Zum Storchen, a Modern Sign in Bietigheim 274 Zur Traube, in Stuttgart, Kolbstrasse 14 276 Sonne, in Neckarsulm, Württemberg 278 An Old Landlord 281 From the “Schachbuch,” Lübeck, 1489 Death and the Landlord 283 From a Dance of Death printed in the Fifteenth Century, now in the Court Library in Stuttgart Zur Sonne in Winnenden, Württemberg 284 The George and Dragon, in Wargrave, England 286 Zum Postgarten, in München, Bavaria 289 The Cover-Design is from the sign of the “Goldene Sonne” in Leonberg, Württemberg Old Tavern Signs THE COCK FLEET-STREET LONDON CHAPTER I HOSPITALITY AND ITS TOKENS “Und es ist vorteilhaft, den Genius Bewirten: giebst du ihm ein Gastgeschenk, So lässt er dir ein schöneres zurück. Die Stätte, die ein guter Mensch betrat, Ist eingeweiht....” Goethe. “To house a genius is a privilege; How fine so e’er a gift thou givest him, He leaves a finer one behind for thee. The spot is hallowed where a good man treads.” Without a question, the first journey that ever mortals made on this round earth was the unwilling flight of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden out into an empty world. Many of us who condemn this world as a vale of tears would gladly make the return journey into Paradise, picturing in bright colors the road that our first parents trod in bitterness and woe. Happy in a Paradise in which all the beauties of the first creation were spread before their eyes, where no enemies lurked, and where even the wild beasts were faithful companions, Adam and Eve could not, with the least semblance of reason, plead as an excuse for traveling that constraint which springs from man’s inward unrest striving for the perfect haven of peace beyond the vicissitudes of his lot. And as Adam and Eve went out, weak and friendless, into a strange world, so it was long before their poor descendants dared to leave their sheltering homes and fare forth into unknown and distant parts. Still, the bitter trials which the earliest travelers had to bear implanted in their hearts the seeds of a valor which has won the praise of all the spiritual leaders of men, from the Old Testament worthies, with their injunction “to care for the stranger within the gates,” to the divine words of the Nazarene: “I was a stranger, and ye took me in.... Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” Our first parents, naturally, could not enjoy the blessings of hospitality. And still, in later ages, they have not infrequently been depicted on signs which hosts have hung out to proclaim a hospitality not gratuitous but hearty. So in one of Hogarth’s drawings, of the year 1750, “The March of the Guards towards Scotland,” which the artist himself later etched, and dedicated to Frederick the Great, we see Adam and Eve figuring on a tavern sign. No visitor to London should fail to see this work of the English painter-satirist. One may see a copy of it, with other distinguished pictures, in the large hall of a foundling asylum established in 1739, especially for the merciful purpose of caring for illegitimate children in the cruel early years of their life. This hall, which is filled with valuable mementos of great men, like Händel, is open to visitors after church services on Sundays. And we would advise the tourist who is not dismayed by the thought of an hour’s sermon to attend the service. If he finds it difficult to follow the preacher in his theological flights, he has but to sit quiet and raise his eyes to the gallery, where a circlet of fresh child faces surrounds the stately heads of the precentor and the organist. At the end of the service let him not forget to glance into the dining-hall, where all the little folks are seated at the long fairy tables, with a clear green leaf of lettuce in each tiny plate, and each rosy face buried in a mug of gleaming milk. This picture will be dearer to him in memory than many a canvas of noted masters in the National Gallery. The present-day tourist who takes the bus out Finchley Road to hunt up the old sign will be as sorely disappointed as if he expected to find the “Angel” shield in Islington or the quaint “Elephant and Castle” sign in South London. Almost all the old London signs have vanished out of the streets, and only a few of them have taken refuge in the dark sub-basement of the Guildhall Museum, where they lead a right pitiable existence, dreaming of the better days when they hung glistening in the happy sunshine. There were “Adam and Eve” taverns in London, in “Little Britain,” and in Kensington High Street. In other countries, France and Switzerland, for example, they were called “Paradise” signs. A last feeble echo of the old Paradise sign lingers in the inscription over a fashion shop in modern Paris, “Au Paradis des Dames,” the woman’s paradise, in which are sold, it must be said, only articles for which Eve in Paradise had no use. ELEFANT·AND·CASTLE·LONDON· Gavarni, who spoke the bitter phrase, “Partout Dieu n’est et n’a été que l’enseigne d’une boutique,” made bold in one of his lithographs of “Scènes de la vie intime” (1837) to inscribe over the gates of Paradise, from which the “tenants” were flying: “Au pommier sans pareil.” Schiller tells us that the world loves to smirch shining things and bring down the lofty to the dust. This need not deter us from reading in the old Paradise signs a reminder of the journey of our first parents, and to enjoy thankfully the blessings of ordered hospitality to-day. Until this ordered hospitality prevailed, however, many centuries had to elapse, and for the long interval every man who ventured out into the hostile wilderness resembled Carlyle’s traveler, “overtaken by Night and its tempests and rain deluges, but refusing to pause; who is wetted to the bone, and does not care further for rain. A traveler grown familiar with howling solitudes, aware that the storm winds do not pity, that Darkness is the dead earth’s shadow.” Only the strong and bold could dare to defy wild nature, especially when there was need to cross desolate places, inhospitable mountains like the Alps. So the ancients celebrated Hercules as a hero, because he was the pioneer who made a road through their rough mountain world. A still longer time had to elapse ere the traveler could rejoice in the beauties of nature which surrounded him. The civilizing work of insuring safe highways had to be done before what Macaulay names “the sense of the wilder beauties of nature” could be developed. “It was not till roads had been cut out of the rocks, till bridges had been flung over the courses of the rivulets, till inns had succeeded to dens of robbers ... that strangers could be enchanted by the blue dimples of the lakes and by the rainbow which overhung the waterfalls, and could derive a solemn pleasure even from the clouds and tempests which lowered on the mountain-tops.” No wonder, then, that the literature of olden times, when traveling was so dangerous an occupation, is filled with admonitions to hospitality. The finest example of it, perhaps, is preserved in the Bible story of the visit of the angels to Abraham, and later to Lot. This story deserves to be read again and again as the typical account of hospitality. As is the custom to speak in the most modest terms of a meal to which one invites a guest, calling it “a bite” or “a cup of tea,” so Abraham spoke to the angels, “I will fetch a morsel of bread, and comfort ye your hearts.” Then Abraham told his wife to bake a great loaf, while he himself went out to kill a fatted calf and bring butter and milk. In like fashion Lot extends his hospitality, providing the strangers with water to refresh their tired feet, and in the night even risking his life against the attacking Sodomites, to protect the guests who have come for shelter beneath his roof. The feeling that a guest might be a divine messenger, nay, even Deity itself, continued into the New Testament times, as St. Paul’s advice to the Hebrews shows: “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” And did not the disciples, too, at times, receive their Master as a guest in their homes, the Son of Man, the Son of God? William Allen Knight has dwelt on this thought very beautifully in his little book called “Peter in the Firelight”: “The people of Capernaum slept that night with glowings of peace lighting their dreams. But in no house where loved ones freed from pain were sleeping was there gladness like in Simon’s; for the Master himself was sleeping there.” Murrhardt A later type of legend pictures the angels, not as guests, but as benefactors, preparing a wonderful meal for starving monks who in their charity have given away all their possessions to the poor, and have no bread to eat. The tourist, walking through the seemingly endless galleries of the Louvre, will pause a moment before the beautiful canvas on which Murillo has depicted this story. The French call it “la cuisine des anges.” It is a historical fact that many cloisters were reduced to poverty in the Middle Ages on account of their generous almsgiving. Not all of them could lay claim to the holy Diego of Murillo’s painting, who could pray with such perfect trust in Him who feeds the sparrows that angels came down from heaven into the cloister kitchen to prepare the meal. The widespread popularity of these Biblical stories and holy legends need cause no wonder that the angel was a favorite subject for tavern signs in the Middle Ages, and that even at this day he takes so many an old inn under the patronage of his benevolent wings. It has been asserted that the angel sign originated in the age of the Reformation, simply by leaving out the figure of the Virgin Mary from the portrayal of the scene of the Annunciation. But against this theory stands the fact that there were simple angel signs in the Middle Ages as well as Annunciation signs. We learn that the students of Paris in the year 1380 assembled for their revels in the tavern “in angelo.” The records of these same Parisian students tell us how they lingered over their cups in the tavern “in duobus angelis,” in the year of grace 1449. We may remark here in passing that the linen drapers’ guild in London had as its escutcheon the three angels of Abraham. One need only to recall the full, flowing garments of Botticelli’s angels to understand in what great respect the linen merchant would hold the angels as good customers of the drapery trade. An angel in beggar’s form brought St. Julian the good news of the pardon of the sins of his youth. In a wild fit of anger the headstrong young Julian had killed his parents. As atonement for his dreadful crime he had done penance and built a refuge in which for many long years he freely cared for all travelers who came his way. At last the angel’s reward of hospitality was vouchsafed to him, and in memory of his good works tavern-keepers chose him as their patron saint. The stern Consistory of Geneva had evidently forgotten all these beautiful legends and their deep symbolical meaning, when in the year 1647 it forbade a tavern-keeper to hang out an angel sign, “ce qui est non accoutumé en cette ville et scandaleux.” Perhaps the grave city fathers of Geneva remembered their by-gone student days in Paris, and the handsome angel hostess in the city on the Seine, where a contemporary of Louis XIV celebrated in song:— “Un ange que j’idolâtre À cause du bon vin qu’il a.” The most attractive angel tavern that the author has met in his travels is in the quiet little English town of Grantham, although he has to confess, in the words of the German song:— “Es giebt so manche Strasse, da nimmer ich marschiert, Es giebt so manchen Wein, den ich nimmer noch probiert.” It was a sharp autumn day. The wind that whistled about the lofty cathedral of Lincoln had searched us to the marrow, and we were well content after our ride from the station to find a kindly welcome at the “Angel.” The façade of the dignified tavern, which once belonged to the Knights’ Templars, and which saw the royal guests, King John in 1213, and King Richard III in 1483, entertained within its walls, is one of the most splendid architectural monuments that we saw in England. As everywhere in this garden-land, the ivy winds its green arms around the stiffer forms of the English Gothic, which often lack the warm picturesqueness of architectural detail that makes the wonderful charm of the French and the South German Gothic. Over the lintel of the door of the tavern the sculptured angel shone resplendent in his golden glory. A charming little balcony rested on his wings and his hands held out a crown of hospitable welcome to royal and common guests alike. All these winged messengers of hospitality seem to say in the words of the Old Testament: “The stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” The bitter experience of their own distress in a strange land planted in the hearts of the Israelitish people a kindly feeling toward the stranger. For all that, much was permitted in dealing with a stranger which was forbidden in the case of a brother Israelite. The stranger might be made to pay interest, and it was no infraction of the Mosaic Law to make him and his children men-servants and maidservants. While, then, the law of the exclusive Jews accorded certain rights to the stranger which the children of Israel were warned not to impair, the Græco-Roman world, on the other hand, recognized no claim of the stranger. “Il n’y a jamais de droit pour l’étranger,” says Fustel de Coulanges in “La Cité antique.” The same word in Latin means originally both enemy and stranger. “Hostilis facies” in Virgil, means the face of a stranger. To avoid all chance of encountering the sight of a stranger while performing his sacred office, the Pontifex performed the sacrifice with veiled face. In spite of this, the stranger met with favorable consideration both at Athens and at Rome, in case he was rich and distinguished. Commercial interests welcomed his arrival and bestowed on him the “jus commercii”— (the right to engage in trade). Yet he came wholly within the protection of the laws only when he chose one of the citizens as his “patron.” It seems as if it must have been embarrassing in those days to have shown one’s “hostilis facies” in foreign lands and cities in the course of a journey undertaken for pleasure or to seek the cures at the bathing resorts. Still we know that the Romans, in their enthusiasm for this kind of travel, built villas, theaters, temples, and baths at some of the most celebrated watering-places of modern days, like Nice and Wiesbaden. The stiff and almost hostile attitude of classical antiquity toward the stranger was relieved by the hospitable custom which made the stranger almost a member of the family as soon as he had been received at the family hearth and had partaken of the family meal. This function was a sacred one among the ancients, for they believed that the gods were present at their table: “Et mensæ credere adesse deos,” says Ovid in the “Fastes.” At especially festal meals it was the custom to crown the head with wreaths, as in the case of the public meals, where chosen delegates of the city, clad in white, met to partake of the food which was the symbol of their common life of citizenship; or in the case of the bridal meals, where the maiden, veiled in white, pledged herself forever to the bridegroom. There was no rich wedding-cake, like those common in England and America, but a simple loaf, “panis farreus,” which after the common prayer they ate in common “under the eyes of the family gods.” “So,” says Plato, “the gods themselves lead the wife to the home of her husband.” The custom of wearing a crown at solemn feasts was founded on the ancient belief that it was well pleasing to the gods. “If thou performest thy sacrifice [and the meal was a sacrifice] without the wreath upon thy head, the gods will turn from thee,” says a fragment from Sappho. The sense of the nearness of the gods at mealtime and the beautiful old custom of pouring out a bit of wine for the invisible holy guest, were preserved down to the time of the later Romans. We find the custom in vogue with such old sinners as Horace and Juvenal. We shall recall the significance of the wreath as a symbol when we meet the ivy wreath later as a tavern sign. But even in classical antiquity the exercise of free hospitality demanded certain tokens to preserve it from abuse at the hands of fraudulent strangers. For example, the so-called “tessera hospitalis,” a tiny object in the shape of a ram’s head or a fish, was split in halves and shared by each party to the agreement of hospitality. By presenting his half of the “tessera” the stranger could always prove his identity and his claims to a hospitable reception by the family to which he came. Other tokens were small ivory or metal hands carved with appropriate inscriptions. The latter were also sometimes exchanged on the negotiation of treaties between nations. In the medallion cabinet at Paris there is one of these treaty-hands in bronze, commemorating a treaty between the Gallic tribe of the Velavii and a Greek colony—probably Marseilles. This hand of hospitality, like the wreath, was a frequent motive in the development of the tavern sign. In fact, it was so frequent in the German lands that the people were accustomed to call the tavern, in figurative speech, the “place where the good God stretched out his hands.” If we recall the deep symbolic meaning of such signs, we shall not find this naïve expression of the people shocking, like the Puritan Consistory at Geneva, whose narrow- minded prohibition of the angel sign we have already noticed. BESIGHEIM Now, before passing to the study of the origins of entertainment for pay, with its signs (which were really the first tavern signs) let us turn back to the old Germans, to note their idea of hospitality. The German fathers, too, tell in a beautiful story of the reception of a divine guest in the cottage of a mortal, and of a reward like that which Abraham had for his spirit of friendly aid. In one of the religious songs of the “Edda,” which probably originated in the North-Scottish islands, we read how the god Heimdall, in the disguise of a humble traveler, visited the hut of an aged couple, and was honorably received by them:— “Then Edda brought forward a loaf of graham bread, Firm, thick and full of hulls; And more, too, she brought to the table, And set thereon the bowl of soup.” Rigspula, 4. In the sayings of Hars (i.e., of Odin) the Lofty, the rule of hospitality is stated:— “Hail to the Givers! a guest enters. Say where he shall sit. He cannot stay long Who must seek his living in the chase on snowshoes. · · · · · · · He who comes from afar needs fire, For his knees are stiff with the cold. He who has crossed the mountain cliffs, Needs food and clothing sore. Water and welcoming greeting he needs And the towel to dry him from the bath.” So even the old Germans had felt the blessings of hospitality, and received the angel’s reward. An old poet expressed it in a simple phrase:— “A bit of bread, and the offer of the cup Won me a noble friend.” Engel Winnenden, Württemberg CHAPTER II ANCIENT TAVERN SIGNS “La bourse du voyageur, cette bourse précieuse, contient tout pour lui, puisque la sainte hospitalité n’est plus là pour le reçevoir au seuil des maisons avec son doux sourire et sa cordialité auguste.” Victor Hugo (Le Rhin). We must now take leave of “holy hospitality” which is written in the hearts of men and truly needs no outward sign, and must follow Iago’s counsel: “Put money in thy purse!” For our journey is no longer from friend to friend, but from host to host and from sign to sign. Regret it as we may, a hospitality for profit’s sake had to succeed the old free hospitality of friends. The widening commerce of the Roman world-empire could hardly have existed without a well-regulated business of entertainment along those magnificent roads by which the empire was bound together. The traveler was more and more unlikely, with every extension of the area of his far journeyings, to find houses to which he was bound by the friendly ties of genuine hospitality; while he who remained quietly by his own fireside (“qui sedet post fornacem”) would find the constantly increasing duties of the voluntary host growing to be so great a burden that he would be relieved to see the establishment of public inns. Indeed, he may himself, at first, have sought relief by charging his guests a nominal sum to defray their expense. At any rate, it would be very difficult to fix an exact line between these two forms of entertainment, which existed side by side for long ages of antiquity. Certain it is that at some moment, we know not just when, there appeared the Pompeian inscription over the tavern door: “Hospitium hic locatur.” (Hospitality for hire.) That was the birth-hour of the tavern sign. We cannot hide the fact that the beginnings of business hospitality were of a very unedifying character, under the plague of Mammon. In Jewish and Gentile society alike they must have been closely akin to that kind of hospitality against whose smooth speech and Egyptian luxury the wise old Solomon warned foolish youth in his Proverbs. Witness the identical word in Hebrew to denote a courtesan and a tavern hostess; witness Plato’s exclusion of the tavern-keeper from his ideal republic; witness the reluctance of the respectable Greek and Roman to enter a tavern. In the Berlin collection of antiques there is a stone relief which has been pronounced an old Roman tavern sign. On it the “Quattuor sorores,” or four sisters, are represented as frivolous women. And there are charges entered on old Roman tavern bills which could not possibly appear on a hotel bill to-day. Both the rich and the poor were imbued with the spirit of Horace’s words:— “Pereant qui crastina curant, Mors aurem vellens: Vivite, ait, venio.” (Dismiss care for the morrow, Death tweaks us by the ear and says, Drink, for I come.) This spirit reveals itself in a dance of death, which decorated the beautiful silver tankards found in Boscoreale, a Pompeian suburb. And so we must not be surprised to see later, during the Middle Ages, even on tavern signs the grim figure of Death; as for example, on the French tavern, “La Mort qui trompe.” The magnificent frescoes of the rich in Pompeian art show us a palatial feasting-hall with the inscription, “Facite vobis suaviter” (Enjoy your life here); and at the same time the tavern guests for a few pennies woo the philosophy of “carpe diem”—the careless abandonment to pleasure that knows no concern for the morrow. Another inscription found in Pompeii makes the tavern Hebe say: “For an as [penny] I give you good wine; for a double as, still better wine; for four ases, the famed Falerian wine of song.” To be sure, the wine was often pretty bad in these greasy inns—Horace’s “uncta popina.” One guest relieved his mind of his complaint by writing on the chamber wall: “O mine host, you sell the doctored wine, but the undiluted you drink yourself.” On the same wall, which seems to have served as a kind of “guest-book” (“libro dei forestieri”) are the names of many guests, one of whom complains in touching phrase that he is sleeping far away from his beloved wife for whom he yearns: “urbanam suam desiderabat.” In spite of the contempt which ancient writers all manifest for these wine-shops and inns, we remark that men of the senatorial order, like Cicero, did not scorn at times to stop for a few hours on their summer journey at some country inn like the “Three Taverns,” in the neighborhood of Rome, to call for a letter or to write one. This was the same “Tres Tabernæ” to which the Roman Christians went out to meet the Apostle Paul, to welcome him with brotherly greetings after the trials of his Christian Odyssey. We read in the Acts of the Apostles how great his joy was when he saw them, and how “he thanked God and took courage.” He had no need, however, of the tavern. The hospitality of Christian fraternity, which he had praised so beautifully in his message to the Roman community, now received him with open arms. The very name “tavern,” which in its Latin original means a small wooden house built of “tabulæ,” or blocks, indicates the very modest origins of professional hospitality. And we must distinguish, in the olden times as in the Middle Ages, between hospitality proper, which takes the guest in overnight, and the mere charity which refreshes him with food and drink and sends him on his way. The original sign of the tavern-keeper is the wreath of ivy with which Bacchus and his companions are crowned, and which twines around the Bacchante’s thyrsos staff. As the ivy is evergreen, so is Bacchus ever young (“juvenis semper”), Shakespeare’s “eternal boy.” As the ivy winds its closely clinging vine around all things, so Bacchus enmeshes the senses of men. Thus the custom grew of crowning the wine-jars with ivy, a custom which Matthias Claudius, in his famous Rhine wine song, has described thus:— “Crown with ivy the good full jars And drink them to the lees. In all of Europe, my jolly tars, You’ll find no wines like these.” Now, whether a good wine really needed the recommendation of the wreath was a question on which experts were not agreed. In general, the ancients leaned to the opinion that “good wine needs no bush”—“Vino vendibili suspensa hedera non opus est.” The French later expressed the same idea in their proverb, “À bon vin point d’enseigne”; though La Fontaine seems to have been of a different mind when he said, “L’enseigne fait la chalandise.” And Shakespeare enters the controversy in his epilogue to “As You Like It,” when he makes Rosalind say, “If it be true that good wine needs no bush, ’tis true that a good play needs no epilogue.” An English humorist, George Greenfield of Henfield (whoever he may be), is fully of the opinion that there is no need of the bush: “No, certainly not,” says he; “all that is wanted is a corkscrew and a clean glass or two.” It is perfectly natural that gloomy and distrustful natures like Schopenhauer’s should have no confidence in the sign. He uses the word “sign” always as a synonym for deceit. He calls academic chairs “tavern signs of wisdom”; and illuminations, bands, processions, cheers, and the like, “tavern signs of joy”—“whereas real joy is generally absent, having declined to attend the feast.” Wieland shows the same mistrust in his verses of Amadis:— “The finest looks prove only for the soul What gilded signs prove for the tavern-bowl.” On the other hand, happy optimistic natures like Fischart’s, the author of the famous “Ship of Fools” (“Narrenschiff”), and perhaps of its jolly woodcuts as well, give full credence to a handsome sign. “How shall you think,” says he, “that poor wine can go with so brave a sign displayed, or that so neat an inn can harbor a slovenly host or guest?” We can see what an important business the making of wreaths was in ancient times by the place which the Amorettes, who were