204 SIGNS. 



SIGNS. 



D'Urfey, in his poem on Knole, speaks of " The Cats " 

 at Sevenoaks. 



" The Cat" or " Cats " is by no means a common sign. 

 The subject is well alluded to in "The Cat, Past and 

 Present," from the French of M. Champfleury, translated 

 by Mrs. Cashel Hoey, at page 33. A sign is pictured from 

 the Lombards' quarter, Paris. It is there over a con- 

 fectioner's shop, and is a cat seated, or rather two, a sign 

 being placed on either side of the corner. Underneath 

 one is " Au Chat," the other, " Noir." I may add the work 

 is a most excellent and amusing collection of much apper- 

 taining to cats, and is well worthy of a place in the cat-lover's 

 library. 



In Larwood and Hotten's '' History of Signboards," a 

 work of much research and merit, occurs the following : 

 " As I was going through a street of London where I had 

 never been till then, I felt a general damp and faintness all 

 over me which I could not tell how to account for, till I 

 chanced to cast my eyes upwards, and found I was passing 

 under a sign-post on which the picture of a caf was hung." 

 This little incident of the cat-hater, told in No. 538 of T/ie 

 Spectator^ is a proof of the presence of cats on the sign- 

 board, where, indeed, they are still to be met with, but very 

 rarely. There is a sign of "The Cat" at Egremont, in 

 Cumberland, a "Black Cat" at St. Leonard's Gate, Lan- 

 caster, and a "Red Cat" at Birkenhead; and a "Red 

 Cat" in the Hague, Holland, to which is attached an 

 amusing story worthy of perusal. 



"The Cat and Parrot" and "The Cat and Lion" 

 apparently have no direct meaning, unless by the former 

 may be inferred that if you lap like a cat of the liquids sold 

 at the hostelry, you will talk like a parrot ; yet, according 

 to Larwood and Hotten, it was a bookseller's sign. 



"The Cat and Cage" and "The Cat in Basket" were 

 signs much in vogue during the frost fair on the Thames in 



