In the narrowest part of the narrow precincts of Cloth Fair there once stood a long, rambling, low-roofed, gable-fronted hostelrie, with carved monsters frightfully deformed, and of hideous obesity, grinning down upon the passengers from every side. Its exterior colour was a dingy yellow; it had little antique casements, casting “a dim,” if not a “religious light,” within; the entrance was by a low porch, with seats on each side, where, on summer days, when leaves are green, the citizen in the olden time might breathe the fresh air of the surrounding meadows, and rest and regale himself! The parlour was panelled with oak, and round it hung The March to Finchley, the Strolling Players, and Southwark Fair, half obscured by dust, in narrow black frames, with a tarnished gold beading. An ancient clock ticked (like some of the customers!) in a dark corner; on the high grotesquely carved mantelpiece piped full-dressed shepherds and shepherdesses, in flowery arbours of Chelsea china; from the capacious ingle projected two wooden arms, on which the elbows of a long race of privileged old codgers had successively rested for more than three centuries; the egg* of an ostrich tattooed by the flies, and a silent aviary of stuffed birds, (monsters of fowls Î) which had been a roost for some hundreds of generations of spiders, depended from a massy beam that divided the ceiling; a high-backed venerable arm-chair, with Robin Hood and his merry men in rude effigy, kept its state under an old-fashioned canopy of faded red arras; a large fire blazed cheerfully, the candles burned bright, and a jovial party, many of whose noses burned blue, were assembled to celebrate for the last time their nocturnal merriments under the old roof, that on the morrow (forimprovementhad stalked into the Fair!) was to be levelled to the ground.
“Gentlemen,” said the President, who was a rosy evergreen, with “fair round belly,” and a jolly aspect, “a man and boy, for forty years, have I been a member of theRobin Hood, and fanned down my punch in this room! What want we with mahogany, French-polished, and fine chim-ney-glasses? Cannot every brother see his good-looking face in a glass of his own? Or a gas-lamp before the door, with a dozen brass burners? Surely our 'everlasting bonfire lights' will show us the way in! This profanation is enough to make our jovial predecessors, the heroes of the Tennis Court, the Mohocks, and Man-hunters of Lincoln's Inn Fields tremble in their tombs!—But I don't see Mr. Bosky.”
It would have been odd if the President had seen Mr. Bosky; for he sat wedged betwixt two corporation members, whose protuberances, broad shoulders, and dewlaps effectually obscured him from view.
“Here am I, Mr. President.”
“But where is Uncle Timothy?”
“That,” replied the Lauréat, “can my cousin's wife's uncle's aunt's sister best say. Three hours ago I left him on the top of St. Paul's; by this time he may be at the bottom of the Thames Tunnel, or at Madame Tussaud's,tête-à-têtewith Oliver Cromwell, Napoleon, and Young Oxford.” A murmur of disappointment rose from the brethren, with a benediction on distant relations that did not keep a hundred miles off.
“Gentlemen,” resumed the President, “'if sack and sugar be a sin, God help the wicked!' Since we cannot have Uncle Timothy's good company, we will have his good health. Uncle Timothy, with three!”
A heartfelt cheer made the old hostelrie ring again.
Uprose the Lauréat—but a twinkle from the eye of the President to a covey of intelligent cronies, on whom the scarlet rays of his countenance more intensely fell, produced a supplementary cheer that shook the Cloth-quarter.
Mr. Bosky was thrown a little off his balance. He paused—flushed—but his heart having left his mouth, he replenished the vacuum with a bumper, assuring the company that they might as soon expect from him a long face as a long speech. For their kind wishes to Uncle Timothy he thanked them from the bottom of his soul—and glass!
“Gentlemen, when the money-grub retires, no regrets follow him to his unsociable crib; nothing misses him but the everlasting counter, to which cupidity has so long nailed his bird-limed fingers. How different with a generous spirit! with whom are associated the remembrance of happy hours snatched from the dull realities of life! This day terminates the mercantile career of our worthy President. May he be blest in his retirement! Gentlemen, the health of Mr. Deputy Doublechin—(no skylights, Brother Blizzard!)—upstanding, with all the honours!”
The two corporation members having taken “their whack,” were not to be roused without a smart thump on the shoulder. The deputy returned thanks in a pleasant vein.
“My friends,” he added, “short reckonings—you know the old adage—I am a song in your debt, and as the one I now volunteer will be the last of the many I have sung in this cosey corner, my vocal Vale shall be our tutelary freebooter.”
And with “full-throated ease” this jovial impersonation of John Bull chanted—
Robin Hood! Robin Hood I a lawgiver good.
Kept his High Court of Justice in merry Sherwood.
No furr'd gown, or fee, wig, or bauble had he;
But his bench was a verdant bank under a tree!
And there sat my Lord of his own good accord,
With his Peers of the forest to keep watch and ward;
To arbitrate sure between rich and poor,
The lowly oppress'd and the proud evil doer.
His nobles they are without riband or star,
No 'scutcheon have they with a sinister bar;
But Flora with leaves them a coronet weaves,
And their music is—hark! when the horn winds afar.
The chaplain to shrive this frolicsome hive
Is a fat curtail Friar, the merriest alive!
His quarter-staff, whack! greets a crown with a crack!
And, 'stead of rough sackcloth, his penance is sack!
The peerless in beauty receives their fond duty,
Her throne is the greensward, her canopy flowers!
What huntress so gay as the Lady of May?
The Queen of the Woodlands, King Robin's, and ours!
His subjects are we, and'tis centuries three
Since his name first re-echo'd beneath this roof-tree!
With Robin our King let the old rafters ring!
They have heard their last shout! they have seen their
last spring!
And though we may sigh for blythe moments gone by,
Yet why should we sorrow, bold foresters, why?
Since those who come after their full share of laughter
Shall have, when death's sables have veil'd you and I.
As the club was literary as well as convivial, such of the members as the gods had made poetical, critical, or historical, favoured the company at these appointed meetings with their lucubrations. Uncle Timothy's had been antiquarian and critical, Mr. Bosky's facetious and vocal:—
A merry song is better far
Than sharp lampoon or witty libel.
One brother, Mr. Boreum, who had got the scientific bee in his bonnet, was never so happy as when he could detect afaux pasin the sun's march, discover a new mountain in the moon, or add another stick to the bundle that has been so long burthensome to the back of the man in it! and Mr. Pigtail Paddlebox, a civil engineer, maintained, by knock-me-down-proof-positive, that Noah's Ark was an antediluvian steamer of some five hundred horse-power! The evening's contribution was Uncle Timothy's, The Second Part of theMerrie Mysteries of Bartlemy Fair, which Mr. Bosky having promised to read with good emphasis and discretion, the President's hammer commanded silence, and he proceeded with his task.
The world is a stage; men and women are the players; chance composes the piece; Fortune (blind jade!) distributes the parts; the fools shift the scenery; the philosophers are the spectators; the rich occupy the boxes; the powerful, the pit; and the poor, the gallery. The forsaken of Lady Fortune snuff the candles,—Folly makes the concert,—and Time drops the curtain!
In a half sportive, half melancholy mood, we record this description of the tragi-comedy of human life. To weep, like Heraclitus, might exalt us to philanthropists; to make the distresses of mankind a theme of derision would brand us as buffoons. Though inclining to the example of Democritus,—for life is too short seriously to grapple with the thousand absurdities that daily demand refutation,—we take the middle course.
Far be from us the reproach of having no regard for our fellow-men, or pity for their errors!
Every one views a subject according to his particular taste and disposition. * Some happy fancies can find
“Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.”
* To view Niagara's Falls one dayA Priest and Tailor took their way;The Parson cried, while wrapt in wonder,And listening to the cataract's thunder,“Lord! how thy works amaze our eyes,And fill our hearts with vast surprise!”The Tailor merely made this note:—“Lord! what a place to sponge a coat!”
Such would draw a truth from a tumbler, and a moral from a mountebank!
“Look through my glass,” says the philosopher, “Through mine” says the metaphysician. “Will your honour please to take a peep through my glass?” inquires the penny showman. The penny showman's glass for our money!
We are not to be hoodwinked by high-sounding authorities, who, like Tom Thumb, manufacture the giants they take the credit of killing! Bernier tells us, that whenever the Great Mogul made a remark, no matter how commonplace, the Omrahs lifted up their hands and cried “Wonder! wonder! wonder!” And their proverb saith, If the King exclaims at noon-day, “It is night” you are to rejoin, “Behold the moon and stars!”
Curious reader, picture to yourself a town-bred bachelor, with flowing wig, brocaded waistcoat, rolled silk stockings, and clouded cane, marching forth to take a survey of Bartholomew Fair, in the year 1701. Fancy the prim gentleman describing what he saw to some inquiring country kinsman in the following laconic epistle, and you will have a lively contemporary sketch of Smithfield Rounds.
Cousin Corydon,
Having no business of my own, * nor any desire to meddle with other people's, no wife to chin-music me, no brats to torment me, I dispelled the megrims by a visit to St. Bartholomew.
* “A Walk to Smith-field; or, a True Description of theHumours of Bartholomew Fair. 1701.”
The fair resembled a camp; only, instead of standing rank and file, the spectators were shuffled together like little boxes in a sharper's Luck-in-a-Bag. With much ado I reached Pye-Corner, where our English Sampson exhibited. Having paid for a seat three stories high in this wooden tent of iniquity, I beheld the renowned Man of Kent, * equipped like an Artillery Ground champion at the mock storming of a castle, lift a number of weights, which hung round him like bandaliers about a Dutch soldier.
“He fired a cannon, and with his own strength
Lifted it up, although 'twas of great length;
He broke a rope which did restrain two horses,
They could not break it with their two joint forces!'
* “The English Sampson, William Joy, aged twenty-four years,was horn in the Isle of Thanet, in Kent. He is a man ofprodigious strength, of which he hath given proofs beforehis Majesty King William the Third, at Kensington, theirRoyal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Denmark, andmost of the nobility, at the Theatre Royal in Dorset Garden.AD. 1699.”“James Miles, from Sadler's Wells in Islington, now keepsthe Gun Musick Booth in Smithfield Rounds where the FamousIndian Woman lifts six hundred weight with the hair of herhead, and walks about the booth with it.”Topham, the Strong Man, lifted three hogsheads of water,weighing 183 lbs. the 28th of May 1741, in honour of AdmiralVernon, before thousands of people, in Bath Street, Cold-Bath-Fields. In his early years he exhibited at BartholomewFair. He united the strength of twelve men. The ostler ofthe Virgin's Inn having offended him, he took one of thespits from the kitchen and bent it round his neck like ahandkerchief; but as he did not choose to tuck the ends inthe ostler's bosom, the iron cravat excited the laughter ofthe company, till he condescended to untie it. He died byhis own hand, on the 10th August 1749, the victim of hiswife's infidelity.“The Wonderful Strong and Surprising Persian Dwarf, threefeet six inches high. He is fifty-six years old, speakseighteen languages, sings Italian songs, dances toadmiration, and with ropes tied to his hair, when put overhis shoulders, lifts the great stone A.” This “great stone”is half as big as the little Sampson himself!
I then jostled to a booth, in which was only a puppet-show, * where, for twopence, I saw Jepthas rash Vow; or, The Virgins Sacrifice. In I went, almost headlong, to Pinkethmans Medley, ** to see the Vaulting of the horse, and the famous wooden puppets dance a minuet and a ballet.
* Only a Puppet-show!—Marry-come-up! Goodman Chronicler,doth not the mechanist, a very Prometheus, give life,spirit, and motion to what was a mopstick or the leg ofajoint-stool?** “At Pinkethman, Mills, and Bullock's booth, over-againstthe Hospital Gate, will be presented The Siege of Barcelona,or the Soldier's Fortune; containing the comical exploits ofCaptain Blunderbuss and his man Squib; his adventures withthe Conjuror, and a surprising scene where he and Squib areenchanted. Also the Diverting Humours of Corporal Scare-Devil. To which will be added, The wonderful Performance ofMr. Simpson, the vaulter, lately arrived from Italy. Themusick, songs, and dances are by the best performers, whomMr. Pinkethman has entertained at extraordinary charge,purely to please the town.”
At the Dutch Womans booth, * the Wheelbarrow dance, by a little Flemish girl ten years old, was in truth a miracle! A bill having been thrust into my hand, of a man and woman lighting for the breeches. **
* “You will see the famous Dutchwoman's side-capers,upright-capers, cross-capers, and back-capers on the tightrope. She walks, too, on the slack rope, which no woman butherself can do.”—“Oh, what a charming sight it was to seeMadam What-d'ye-call-her swim it along the stage between hertwo gipsy daughters! You might have sworn they were of rightDutch extraction.”—A Comparison between the Two Stages,1702.Dancing on the rope was forbidden by an order of Parliament,July 17, 1647. The most celebrated rope-dancer on record isJacob Hall, who lived in the reign of King Charles theSecond. His feats of agility and strength, and thecomeliness of his person, gained him universal patronage,and charmed, in particular, that imperious wanton, theDuchess of Cleveland. Henry the Eighth, in one of his“Progresses” through the city of London, “did spye a manupon the uppermost parte of St. Powle's Church: the man didgambol and balance himself upon his head, much to the frightand dismay of the multitude that he might breake his necke.On coming down, he did throw himselfe before the Kingbeseechingly, as if for some reward for the exployt;whereupon the King's highness, much to his surprise, orderedhim to prison as a roge and sturdy vagabonde.”—Black-Letter Chronicle, Printed in 1565.** Our facetious friends, Messrs. Powell and Luffingham, at“Root's Booth”
I had the curiosity to look at this family picture, which turned out to be the Devil and Doctor Faustus, * the wife representing the Devil, and the husband the Doctor!
0120m
The tent of the English rope-dancers ** the rabble took by storm;—
* In a Bartlemy Fair bill, temp. James II. after therepresentation of “St. George for England,” wherein is shownhow the valiant “saint slew the venomous Dragon,” the publicwere treated with “the Life and Death of Doctor Foster,(Faustus?) with such curiosity, that his very intrails turnsinto snakes and sarpints!”** On the top of the following bill is a woodcut of the“Ladder Dance,” and the “two Famous High German children”vaulting on the tight rope. “At Mr. Barnes's Booth, betweenthe Croton Tavern and the Hospital Gate, with the EnglishFlag flying on the top, you will see Mr. Barnes dancing witha child standing upon his shoulders; also tumbling throughhoops, over halberds, over sixteen men's heads, and over ahorse with a man on his back, and two boys standing uprightupon each arm! With the merry conceits of Pickle Herring andhis son Punch.”
—but myself and a few heroes stood the brunt of the fray, and saw the Ladder Dance, and excellent vaulting on the slack and tight rope, by Mr. Barnes and the Lady Mary; I had a month's mind to a musick booth; but the reformation of manners having suppressed them all but one, I declined going thither, for fear of being thought an immoral person, and paid my penny to take a peep at the Creation of the World. Then
“To the Cloisters ** I went, where the gallants resort,
And all sorts and sizes come in for their sport,
Whose saucy behaviour and impudent air
Proclaim'd them the subjects of Bartlemy Fair!
There strutted the sharper and braggart, (a brace!)
And there peep'd a goddess with mask on her face!=——
I view'd all the shops where the gamblers did raffle,
And saw the young ladies their gentlemen baffle;
For though the fine sparks might sometimes have good
fate,
The shop had the money, the lass had the plate.”
* The Lady Mary, the daughter of a noble Italian family, wasborn in Florence, and immured in a nunnery, but eloped witha Merry Andrew, who taught her his professional tricks. Shedanced with great dexterity on the rope, from which (whenurged by the avarice of her inhuman partner to exhibitduring a period of bodily weakness) she fell, and diedinstantaneously.** “The Cloister in Bartholomew Fair, a poem, London.
Thus ends the ramble, Cousin Corydon! of (Thine, as thy spouse's own,) Ingleberry Griskin.
Thanks! worthy chronicler of ancient St. Bartlemy.
Will Pinkethman was a first-rate comedian. The biographer of his contemporary, Spiller, says, “the managers of the Haymarket and Drury Lane always received too much profit from Pinkey's phiz, to encourage anybody to put that out of countenance!” And Pope refers to one popular qualification that he possessed, viz. eating on the stage (as did Dicky Suett, in after days, Dicky Gossip, to wit!) with great comic effect.
“And idle Cibber, how he breaks the laws,
To make poor Pinkey eat with vast applause!”
He was celebrated for speaking prologues and epilogues. * He realised a good fortune by his Puppet-show, and kept a booth at Bartholomew Fair. Two volumes of “Jests” * bear his name. Many of them are as broad as they are long. His love-letter to Tabitha, the fair Quakeress, signed “Yea and Nay, from thy brother in the light,” is wickedly jocose.
Thus Bartholomew Fair, in 1701, boasted its full complement of mimes, mountebanks, vaulters, costermongers, *** gingerbread women, (“ladies of the basket!”) puppet-shows, **** physiognoscopography,—
* Particularly “The New Comical Epilogue of Some-Body andNo-Body, spoken by way of Dialogue between Mr. Pink-ethmanand Jubilee Dicky” (Norris, so christened from his playingBeau Clincher in Farquhar's Trip to the Jubilee.)** “Pinkethman's Jests, or Wit Refin'd, being a new year'sgift for young gentlemen and ladies, 1721, First and SecondParts.'7 A fine mezzotinto portrait of Pinkethman,represents him in a laced coat and a flowing wig, holding inhis hand a scroll, on which is inscribed, “Ridentibusarrident Vultus*** Archdeacon Nares defines a costard-monger, or coster-mon-ger, to be “a seller of apples, one who generally kept astall,”**** “Here are the rarities of the whole Fair,Pimperle-Pimp, and the wise Dancing Mare;Here's Vienna besieg'd, a rare thing,And here's Punchinello, shewn thrice to the King.Ladies mask'd to the Cloisters repair,But there will be no raffling, a pise on the May'r!”From Playford's Musical Companion, 1701.
—Punches, and Roast Pig. * But its Drama was in abeyance. ** The elite of Pye-Corner, Gilt-spur Street, and the Cloth-quarter, preferred Pinkethman's Medley and Mr. Barnes's Rope-dancers, to “The Old Creation of the World New Revived,” with the intrigues of Lucifer in the Garden of Eden,—
* “A Catch—Mr. Henry Purcell—Here's that will challenge all the Fair:Come buy my nuts and damsons, my Burgamy Pear. Here's theWhore of Babylon, the Devil and the Pope: The girl is justgoing on the rope.Here's Dives and Lazarus, and the World's Creation: Here'sthe Dutch Woman, the like's not in the nation. Here is thebooth where the tall Dutch Maid is,Here are the bears that dance like any ladies.Tota, tota, tot goes the little penny trumpet,'Here's your Jacob Hall, that can jump it, jump it.Sound trumpet: a silver spoon and fork;Come, here's your dainty Pig and Pork”** “The old Droll Players' Lamentation, being very pleasantand diverting. 1701.”“Oh! mourn with us all you that live by play,The Reformation took our gains away:We are as good as dead now money's gone,No Droll is suffer'd, not a single one!Jack Pudding now our grandeur doth exceed,And grinning granny is by fates decreedTo laugh at us, and to our place succeed.But after all, these times would make us rave,That won't let's play the Fool as well as Knave!”
—and Adam and Eve driven out of Paradise,”—“Judith and Holofernes,” * —“Dives and Pauper,”—the “Humours of Noah's Ark, or the Drolleries of the Deluge,”—“Jeptha's Rash Vow,”—and “The Pleasant Conceited History of Abraham and Isaac!” These Mysteries ** were only endured when tacked to “a Comick Dance of gigantic automatons the “merriments of Sir John Spendall and Punchinello; Pickle-Herring and Punch.” Of the multifarious and ludicrous literature of the “Rounds” little remains. The serious portion consisted, as we have shown, of such representations taken from Bible History, after the manner of the Chester and Coventry Monks, and the ancient Parish Clerks of Clerkenwell, as were most likely to beget an awful attention in the audience; and the comic, of detached scenes of low humour from Shakspere, and Beaumont and Fletcher, like “The Wits ***
* “To be sold in the Booth of Lee and Harper, and onlyprinted for, and by G. Lee, in Blue Maid Alley, Southwark.”** Spence, in his anecdotes, describes a Mystery he saw atTurin, “where a damned female soul, in a gown of flame-coloured satin, intreats, as a favor, to be handed over tothe fires of purgatory, for only as many years as there aredrops of water in the ocean!”*** “The Wits, or Sport upon Sport: being a curiouscollection of several Drolls and Farces, as they have beensundry times acted at Bartholomew and other Fairs, in hallsand taverns, on mountebanks' stages at Charing Cross,Lincoln's Inn Fields, and other places, by StrollingFlayers, Fools, Fiddlers, and Zanies, with loud laughter andapplause. Now newly collected by your old friend, FrancisKirkman, 1673.” The author says, in his preface to theSecond Part, “I have seen the Red Bull Playhouse, which wasa large one, so full, that as many went back for want ofroom as had entered; and as meanly as you may think of theseDrolls, they were acted by the best comedians then, and nowin being. I once saw a piece at a country inn, called 'KingPharaoh, with Moses, Aaron, and some others; to explain whichfigures was added this piece of poetry,Here Pharaoh, with his goggle eyes, does stare onThe High Priest Moses, with the Prophet Aaron.Why, what a rascalWas he that would not let the people go to eat the Pascal!I believe he who pictured King Pharaoh had never seen a kingin his life; for all the majesty he was represented with wasgoggle eyes, that his picture might be answerable to theverse.”
—or Sport upon Sport” and “The Stroller's Pacquet Open'd—except when a Smithfield bard, “bemus'd in beer,” ventured upon originality, and added “Robin Hood, * an Opera,” and “The Quaker's Opera,” ** to the classical press of Bartholomew Fair.
* “Robin Hood, an opera, as it is performed at Lee andHarper's Great Theatrical Booth in Bartholomew Fair, 1730.”** “The Quaker's Opera, as it is performed at Lee andHarper's Great Theatrical Booth in Bartholomew Fair, 1728.”This is the story of Jack Sheppard dramatised and set torough music! It may be gratifying to the curious to see howthe adventures of this house and prison-breaker were“improved” (!!) by a Methodist Preacher under the Piazza ofCovent Garden. “Now, my beloved, we have a remarkableinstance of man's care for his tabernacle of clay in thenotorious malefactor Jack Sheppard! How dexterously did he,with a nail, pick the padlock of his chain! how manfullyburst his fetters; climb up the chimney; wrench out an ironbar; break his way through a stone wall, till he reached theleads of the prison! and then fixing a blanket through thewall with a spike, he stole out of the chapel! Howintrepidly did he descend from the top of the Turner'shouse! and how cautiously pass down the stairs, and make hisescape at the street-door! Oh, that ye were all like JackSheppard! Let me exhort ye, then, to open the locks of yourhearts with the nail of repentance; to burst asunder thefetters of your beloved desires; to mount the chimney ofhope; take from thence the bar of good resolution; breakthrough the stone wall of despair; raise yourselves to theleads of divine meditation; fix the blanket of faith withthe spike of the conventicle; let yourselves down theTurner's house of resignation, and descend the stairs ofhumility; so shall you come to the door of deliverance, fromthe prison of iniquity, and escape the clutches of that oldexecutioner, the devil.”
Good company has occasionally visited the “Rounds.” Evelyn * went there, but it was to gape and grumble.
* 1648. 28 Aug: Saw ye celebrated follies of BartholomewFair, which follies were more harmless, in those days, thanthe solemn and sinister mummery of a Brownist's conventicle,a Presbyterian Synod, and a Quakers' meeting.
In the year 1670 (see “Some Account of Rachel Lady Russell,”) Lady Russell, with her sister, Lady Northumberland, and Lady Shafts-bury, returned from Bartholomew Fair loaded with fairings for herself and children! Sept. 1, 1730, the “Four Indian Kings” visited Pink-ethman and Giffard's booth, and saw Wat Tyler and Jack Straw. Sir Robert Walpole, * when Prime Minister, starred and gartered, graced the fair with his presence. Frederick Prince of Wales, in 1740, attended by a party of the Yeomen of the Guard with lighted flambeaux, contemplated its pantomimical wonders, with Manager Rich for his cicerone; as, in after times, did David Garrick and his lady, marshalled by the bill-sticker of Old Drury! On tendering his tester at the Droll Booth, the cashier, recognising the fine expressive features and far-beaming eye of Roscius, with a patronising look and bow, refused the proffered fee, politely remarking, “Sir, we never take money from one another.”
* A coloured print of Bartholomew Fair in 1721, copied froma painting on an old fan mount, represents Sir” RobertWalpole as one of the spectators.
Pinkethman's “Pantheon, or Temple of the Heathen Gods, consisting of five curious pictures, and above one hundred figures that move their heads, legs, and fingers, in character,” long continued the lion of Bartholomew and Southwark fairs. * On the 19th August, 1720, great preparations were made against the approaching festival. Stables were transmogrified into palaces for copper kings, lords, knights, and ladies! and cock-lofts and laystalls into enchanted castles and Elysium bowers! The ostlers beguiled the interval by exercising their pampered steeds, and levying contribution on such as happened to be enjoying the pure air of Hounslow Heath and Finchley Common! Mob quality in hackney coaches, and South-Sea squires in their own, resorted to Pinkethman's booth to divert themselves with his “comical phiz, and newly-imported French dancing dogs!” The mountebanks were all alive and merry, and a golden harvest was reaped in the Rounds.
* Sept. 13, 1717. Several constables visited Pinkethman'sbooth in Southwark Fair, and apprehended Pinkethman, withothers of his company, just as they had concluded a play, inthe presence of near 150 noblemen and gentlemen seated onthe stage. They were soon liberated, on making it appearthat they were the King's Servants. The Prince visited thebooth.
Other exhibitions has the saint had beside his own. Exhibitions, as a nuisance, * from thatcorpus sine pectore, the London common council! “Do thou amend thy face!” was the reply of Falstaff to Bardolph, when the owner of the “fiery trigon” inflicted a homily on that “sweet creature of bombast.'” How much more needful, sons of repletion! is reform to you, than the showman, who seldom sees any punch but his own; the Jack-Pudding, who grins wofully for a slice of his namesake; and the “strong man,” who gets little else between his teeth but his table! Why not be merry your own way, and let mountebanks be merry theirs? Are license and excess to be entirely on the side of “robes and furrd gowns?”
* In “A Pacquet from Wills, 1701,” an actress of “thePlayhouse,” writing to “a Stroller in the Country,” says,“My dear Harlequin, I hoped, according to custom, at thegrand revels of St. Bartholomew to have solaced ourselveswith roast pig and a bottle. But the master of that greatbee-hive, the city, to please the canting, zealous horn-heads, has buzzed about an order there shall be no fair! Thechief cause, say the reformers, is the profane drolls (Whittington to wit) that ridicule the city's majesty, byhiring a paunch-bellied porter at half-a-crown a day, torepresent an Alderman in a scarlet gown! when a lean-ribbedscoundrel in a blue jacket, for mimicking a fool, shall haveforty shillings!” In 1743, 1750, 1760, 1798, 1825, and 1840,further attempts were made to put down the fair. In 1760 oneBirch, (for whom St. Bartholomew had a rod in pickle! )bearing the grandiloquent title of Deputy City Marshal (!! )lost his life in a fray that broke out between thesuppressing authorities and the fair folk.
The amendment of Bardolph's face (nose!) per se, was not a crying case of necessity; a burning shame to be extinguished with a zeal hot as the “fire o' juniper.” It only became so in conjunction with the reformation of Falstaff's morals! *
* If every man attended to his own affairs, he would findlittle time to pry into those of others. An idle head is thedevil's garret. Your intermeddler is one who has eithernothing to do, or having it to do, leaves it undone. It isgood to reform others; 'tis better to begin with ourselves.He who censures most severely the faults of his neighbour isgenerally very merciful to his own. “One day judgethanother,” says old Stow, “and the last judgeth all.”We laugh at the hypocrite when caught in his own snare—whenguilty of the suppressio veri, he is openly detected in thesuggestio falsi, and made to pay the penalty of hisduplicity. An ancient beau, bounding with all the vigour andalacrity that age, gout, and rheumatism usually inspire,cuts not a more ridiculous figure!Hermes, or Mercury, was a thief, and the god of thieves;Venus, a gay lady; Bacchus, a wine-bibber; and Juno, ascold. And what apology offers sweet Jack Falstaff, kindJack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff,for his infirmities! He lets judgment go by default! “Dostthou hear, Hal? thou knowest, in the state of innocency,Adam fell; and what should poor Jack Falstaff do, in thesedays of villany?”This is truth as deep as the centre. Whoever shall cast apebble at old Jack after this, must have his conscienceMacadamised!
Be your grace * short, and your meals long. Abate not one slice of venison, one spoonful of turtle. Be the fat, white and green, all your own! ** But war not withPunch—
“Let the poor devileat; allow himthat!”
“Curtail not our holiday Septembrisers of their fair proportion of fun.”
“To those sentiments,” exclaimed Deputy Doublechin, “I most heartily respond!”
* The Rev. R. C. Dillon (Lord Mayor's chaplain in 1826)published in 1830 a “Sermon on the evil of fairs in general,and Bartholomew Fair in particular.” Who would have thoughtthat this pious functionary had been so great a foe to thefair?The following odd combinations occur in the title of asermon published in 1734. “The deformity of sin cured; asermon preached at St. Michael's Crooked Lane, before thePrince of Orange, (the Prince was not quite straight! ) bythe Rev. J. Crookshanks. Sold by Matthew Denton at theCrooked Billet, near Cripplegate.** A physician once observed that he could tell of whatcountry a man was by his complaint. If it laid in the head,he was a Scotchman; if in the heart, he was an Irishman; ifin the stomach, he was an Englishman.
And as the worshipful deputy's responses, six days out of the seven, werewetones, the punch and a glee went merrily round.
Punchinello's a jolly good fellow!
Making us merry, and making us mellow.
In the bowl, in the fair too, a cure for dull care too;
All ills that we find flesh or skin and bone heir to!
Verily he is the spirit of glee,
So in him drink to him with three times three!
Hip! hip! once, twice, thrice, and away!
Punchinello,mon ami! a votre santé.
And so, Mr. M'Sneeshing, you never heard of the ingeniousruseplayed off by Monsieur Scaramouch?” said the Lauréat, as he refreshed his nostrils with a parsimonious pinch from the mull of sandy-poled Geordie, conchologist and confectioner, from the land o' cakes. And while Deputy Doublechin was busy admiring a grotesque illumination in Uncle Timothy'sMerrie Mysteries, Mr. Bosky favoured the company with
Monsieur Scaramouch, sharp-set enough,
At a Paris dépôt for tobacco and snuff,
Accosted the customers every day
With “Pardonnez moi, du Tabac, s'il vous plâit!”
He look'd such a gentleman every inch,
The Parisians all condescended a pinch;
Which, taken from Bobadils, barbers, and beaux,
Went into hispocket—instead of hisnose!
Scaramouch sold, with a merry ha I ha!
Ev'ry pinch to his friend,le marchand de tabac:
Then buyer and seller the price of a franc
To thenosesof all their contributors drank!
From boxes supplies came abundant enough,
He breakfasted, dined, and drank tea upon snuff!
It found him in fuel, and lodging, and cloaths—
He pamper'd the palate by pinching the nose!
An ell he would take if you gave him an inch,
In the shape of a very exorbitant pinch—
The proverb, All's fish to the net that shall come,
Duly directed his finger and thumb.
One day a dragoonen botine, and three crosses,
With a pungentbonne bouchecame to treat his proboscis;
Our Scaramouch, sporting his lowestcongee,
Smil'd, “Pardonnez moi, du Tabac s'il vousplâit!”
“Volontiersand his box, which, containing a pound,
A reg'ment of noses might titillate round,
Mars offer'd to Scaramouch quick, with a bounce;
Whose pinch very soon made it minus an ounce!
“Coquin!” and a cane, that he kept for the nonce,
Of Scaramouch threaten'd the perriwigg'd sconce;
Who, fearing a crack, while 'twas flourishing quick,
Cut in a crack the dragoon and his stick!
“Had the vay-gabond served me the like o' that” droned Mr. M'Sneeshing, suddenly rapping down the lid of his mull, and looking suspiciously about him, to see if there was a Scaramouch among the party! “I'd ha' crack'd his croon!”
Mr. Bosky's reply all but tripped off his tongue.
'Twas caviare to the Scotchman, so he suppressed it, and proceeded with theMerrie Mysteries.
St. Bartholomew was not to be driven from his “Rounds” by the meddling citizens. He kept, on a succession of brilliant anniversaries from 1700 to 1760, his state at his fair. The Smithfield drama had revived under the judicious management of popular actors; * the art of legerdemain had reached perfection in the “surprising performances” of Mr. Fawkes; ** wrestling *** fencing,—