—and single-stick, fought their way thither from Stokes's * amphitheatre in Islington Road, and Figg's ** academy for full-grown gentlemen in Oxford Street, then “Marybone Fields!” Powel's puppet-show still gloried in its automaton wonders; Pinchbecks musical clock struck all beholders with admiration; and Tiddy Doll *** with his gingerbread cocked hat garnished with Dutch gold, the prime oddity of the fair, made the “Rounds” ring with his buffooneries.
Among the galaxy of Bartholomew Fair stars that illumined this flourishing period was The Right Comical Lord Chief Joker, James Spiller, the Mat o' the Mint of the Beggar's Opera, the airs of which he sang in a “truly sweet and harmonious tone.” His convivial powers were the delight of the merry butchers of Clare-Market, the landlord of whose house of call, a quondam gaoler, but a humane man, deposed the original sign of the “Bull and Butcher,” and substituted the head of Spiller. His vis comica, leering at a brimming bowl, is prefixed to his Life and Jests, printed in 1729. A droll story is told of his stealing the part of the Cobbler of Preston (written by Charles Johnson,) out of Pinkethman's pocket, after a hard bout over the bottle, and carrying it to Christopher Bullock, who instantly fell to work, and concocted a farce with the same title a fortnight before the rival author and theatre could produce theirs! The dissolute Duke of Wharton, one night, in a frolic, obliged each person in the company to disrobe himself of a garment at every health that was drank. Spiller parted with peruke, waistcoat, and coat, very philosophically; but when his shirt was to be relinquished, he confessed, with many blushes, that he had forgot to put it on! He was a careless, wild-witted companion, often a tenant of the Marshalsea; till his own “Head” afforded him in his latter days a safe garrison from the harpies of the law. He died Feb. 7, 1729, aged 37. A poetical butcher of Clare-Market * would not let him descend to the grave “without the meed of one melodious tear.”
Other luminaries shed a radiance on the “Rounds.” Bullock (who, in a merry epilogue, tripped up Pinkethman by the heels, and bestrode him in triumph, Pinkey returning the compliment by throwing him over his head). Mills (familiarly called “honest Billy Mills!” from his kind disposition).
Harper (a lusty fat man, with a countenance expressive of mirth and jollity, the rival of Quin in Falstaff, and the admirable Job-son to Kitty Clive's inimitable Nell). Hippisley (whose first appearance the audience always greeted with loud laughter and applause). Chapman (the Pistol and Touchstone of his day). Joe Miller * (whose name is become synonymous with good and bad jokes; a joke having ironically been christened a Joe Miller, to mark the wide contrast between joking and Joel).
Hallam * (whom Macklin accidentally killed in a quarrel about a stage wig).
Woodward, Yates, Shuter, **—
—and very early in life, little Quick. * Ned had a sincere regard for Mr. Whitfield, and often attended his ministry at Tottenham Court Chapel.
One Sunday morning he was seated in a pew opposite the pulpit, and while that pious, eloquent, but eccentric preacher, was earnestly exhorting sinners to return to the fold, he fixed his eyes full upon Shuter, adding to what he had previously said, “And thou, poor Ramble, (Ramble was one of Ned's popular parts,) who hast so long rambled, come you also! O! end your ramblings and return.” Shuter was panic-struck, and said to Mr. Whitfield after the sermon was over, “I thought I should have fainted! How could you use me so?”
Cow-Lane and Hosier-Lane “Ends” were great monster marts. At the first dwelt an Irish giant, Mr. Cornelius McGrath, who, if he “lives three years longer, will peep into garret windows from the pavement:” and the “Amazing” Corsican Fairy. “Hosier-Land End” contributed “a tall English youth, eight feet high;” two rattle-snakes, “one of which rattles so loud that you may hear it a quarter of a mile off;” and “a large piece of water made with white flint glass,” containing a coffee-house and a brandy-shop, running, at the word of command, hot and cold fountains of strong liquor and strong tea! The proprietor Mr. Charles Butcher's poetical invitation ran thus:—
“Come, and welcome, my friends, and taste ere you pass,
'Tis but sixpence to see it, and two-pence each glass.”
The “German Woman that danced over-against the Swan Tavern by Hosier Lane,” having “run away from her mistress,” diminished the novelties of that prolific quarter. But the White Hart, in Pye-Corner, had “A little fairy woman from Italy, two feet two inches high;” and Joe Miller, “over-against the Cross-Daggers,” enacted “A new droll called the Tempest, or the Distressed Lovers; with the Comical Humours of the Inchanted Scotchman; or Jockey and the three witches!”
Hark to yonder scarlet beefeater, who hath cracked his voice, not with “hallooing and singing of anthems,” but with attuning its dulcet notes to the deep-sounding gong! And that burly trumpeter, whose convex cheeks and distended pupils look as if, like Æolus, he had stopped his breath for a time, to be the better able to discharge a hurricane! Listen to their music, and you shall hear that Will Pinkethman hath good store of merriments for his laughing friends at “Hall and Oates's Booth next Pye-Corner,” where, Sept. 2, 1729, will be presented The Merchant's Daughter of Bristol; “a diverting” Opera, called The Country Wedding; and the Comical Humours of Roger.—The Great Turk by Mr. Giffard, and Roger by Mr. Pinkethman.
Ha! “lean Jack,” jolly-fac'd comedian, Harper, thou body of a porpoise, and heart of a tittlebat! that didst die of a round-house fever; * and Zee, ** rosy St. Anthony! thy rival trumpeter, with his rubicund physiognomy screened beneath the umbrage of a magnificent bowsprit, proclaim at the Hospital Gate “The Siege of Berthulia; with the Comical Humours, of Rustego and his man Terrible.”
What an odd-favoured mountebank! “a threadbare juggler, and a fortune-teller, a needy, hollow-ey'd, sharp-looking wretch,” with a nose crooked as the walls of Troy, and a chin like a shoeing horn; those two features having become more intimately acquainted, because his teeth had fallen out! Behold him jabbering, gesticulating, and with auricular grin, distributing this Bartholomew Fair bill.
“Sept. 3, 1729. At Bullock's Great Theatrical Booth will be acted a Droll, called Dorastus and Faunia, or the Royal Shepherdess; Flora, an opera; with Toilet's Rounds; the Fingalian Dance, and a Scottish Dance, by Mrs. Bullock.”
Thine, Hallam, is a tempting bill of fare. “The Comical Humours of Squire Softhead and his man Bullcalf, and the Whimsical Distresses of Mother Catterwall!” With a harmonious concert of “violins, hautboys, bassoons, kettle-drums, trumpets, and French horns!” Thine, too, Hippisley, immortal Scapin! transferring the arch fourberies of thy hero to Smithfield Rounds. At the George Inn, where, with Chapman, thou keepest thy court, we are presented with “Harlequin Scapin, or the Old One caught in a sack; and the tricks, cheats, and shifts of Scapin's two companions, Trim the Barber, and Bounce-about the Bully.” The part of Scapin by thy comical self.
At this moment a voice, to which the neigh of Bucephalus was but a whisper, announced that the unfortunate owner had lost a leg and an arm in his country's service, winding up the catalogue with some minor dilapidations, all of which are more or less peculiar to those patriots who during life find their reward in hard blows and poverty, and in death receive a polite invitation to join a water party down the pool of oblivion! The Lauréat paused.
Mr. M'Sneeshing. “Lost his leg in battle!—ha! ha! ha!—a gude joke! He means in a man-trap! I should be glad to know what business a pauper body like this has blathering abroad? Are there not almshouses, and workhouses, and hospitals, for beggars and cripples? Though I perfectly agree wi' Sandy M'Grab, Professor * of Humanity, that sic like receptacles, and the anti-Presbyterian abomination of alms-giving are only so many premiums for roguery and vay-gabondism. Let every one put his shoulder to the wheel, his nose to the grindstone, and make hay while the sun shines.”
Mr. Bosky. But are there not many on whom the sun of prosperity never shone?
Mr. M'Sneeshing. Their unthriftiness and lack of foresight alone are to blame!
Mr. Bosky. Is to want a shilling, to want every virtue? Men think highly of those who rapidly rise in the world; whereas nothing rises quicker than dust, straw, and feathers! Would you provide no asylum for adversity, sickness, and old age?
Mr. M'Sneeshing. Hard labour and sobriety (tossing off his heeltap of toddy) will ward off the two first, and old age and idleness (yawning and stretching himself in his chair) deserve to——
Mr. Bosky. Starve?
Mr. M'Sneeshing. To have just as much—and nae mair!—as will keep body and soul together! Would you not revile, rather than relieve, the lazy and the improvident?
Mr. Bosky. Not if they were hungry and poor! *
Mr. M'Sneeshing. Nor cast them a single word of reproach?
Mr. Bosky. I would see that they were fed first, and then, if I reproved, my reproof should be no pharisaical diatribes. The bitterest reproaches fall short of that pain which a wounded spirit suffers in reflecting on its own errors; a lash given to the soul will provoke more than the body's most cruel torture.
Mr. M'Sneeshing. Vera romantic, and in the true speerit of——
Mr. Bosky. Charity, I hope.
Mr. M'Sneeshing. Chay-ri-ty? (putting his hand into his coat-pocket.)
Mr. Bosky. Don't fumble; the word is not in M'Culloch!
Mr. M'Sneeshing. Peradventure, Mr Bosky, you would build a Union poor-house (sarcastically).
Mr. Bosky. I would not.
Mr. M'Sneeshing. An Hospital? (with a sardonic grin!)
Mr. Bosky. I would!
Mr. M'Sneeshing. Where?
Mr. Bosky. In the Human Heart! You may not know of such a place, Mr. M'Sneeshing. Your hospital would be where some countrymen of yours build castles, in Sky and Ayr!
And the Lauréat abruptly quitted the room, leaving Mr. M'Sneeshing in that embarrassing predicament, “Between the de'il and the deep sea!”
But his mission was soon apparent. “Three cheers for the kind young gentleman!” resounded from the holiday folks, and a broadside of blessings from the veteran tar! This obfuscated concholo-gist Geordie, and he was about to launch a Brutum fulmen, a speech de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis, as the magging mouthpiece of Professor
M'Grab; when, to the great joy of Deputy Doublechin, the miserable drone-pipe of this leatherbrained, leaden-hearted, blue-nosed, frost-bitten, starved nibbler of a Scotch kail-yard, was quickly drowned in the sonorous double-bass of our saltwater Belisarius.
My foes were my country's, my messmates the brave.
My home was the deck, and my path the green wave;
My musick, loud winds, when the tempest rose high—
I sail'd with bold Nelson, and heard his last sigh!
His spirit had fled—we gaz'd on the dead—
The sternest of hearts bow'd with sorrow, and bled.
As o'er the deep waters mov'd slowly his bier,
What victory, thought we, was ever so dear?
Far Egypt's hot sands have long since quench'd my
sight—
To these rolling orbs what is sunshine or night?
But the full blaze of glory that beam'd on thy bay,
Trafalgar I still pours on their darkness the day.
An ominous tap at the window—the “White Serjeant's!” invited Geordie to a tête-à-tête with a singed sheep's head, and the additional treat of a curtain-lecture, not on political but domestic economy, illustrated with sharp etchings by Mrs. M'Sneeshing's nails, of which his physiognomy had occasionally exhibited proof impressions! To his modern Athenian (!) broad brogue, raised in defiance of the applauding populace outside, responded the polite inquiry, “Does your mother know you're out?” * and other classical interrogatories. The return of Mr. Bosky was a signal for cheerfulness, mingled with deeper feelings; during which were not forgotten, “Old England's wooden walls?” and “Peace to the souls of the heroes!”
“Hail! all hail I the warriors grave,
Valour's venerable bed,—
Hail! the memory of the Brave!
Hail! the Spirits of the Dead!
And hail to the living,” exclaimed Lieutenant O'Larry, the Trim of the Cloth Quarter,—“To them give we a trophy, time enough for a tomb!” And having knocked out the ashes of his pipe, he tuned it, and (beating time with his wooden leg) woke our enthusiasm with
And was it not the proudest day in Britain's annals
bright?
And was he not a gallant chief who fought the gallant
fight?
Who broke the neck of tyranny, and left no more to do?—
That chief was Arthur Wellington! that fight was
Waterloo!
O, when on bleak Corunna s heights he rear'd his ban
ner high,
Britannia wept her gallant Moore; her scatter'd armies
fly—
To raise her glory to the stars, and kindle hearts of
flame,
The mighty victor gave the word, the master-spirit
came.
Poor Soult, like Pistol with his leek! he soon compell'd
to yield;
And then a glorious wreath he gain'd on Talaveras field.
See! quick as lightning, flash by flash! another deed
is done—
And Marmont has a battle lost, and Salamanca's won.
The shout was next “Vittoria!”—all Europe join'd the
strain.
Ne'er such a fight was fought before, and ne'er will be
again!
Quoth Arthur, “With 'th' Invincibles' another bout
I'll try;
And show you when f the Captain * comes a better by
and by!”
But lest his sword should rusty grow for want of daily
use,
He gave the twice-drubb'd Soult again a settler at
Toulouse.
His Marshals having beaten all, and laid upon the shelf,
He waits to see the Captain” come, and take a turn
himself.
Now Arthur is a gentleman, and always keeps his word;
And on the eighteenth day of June the cannons loud
were heard;
The flow'r of England's chivalry their conquror rallied
round;
A sturdy staff to cudgel well “the Captain” off the
ground!
“Come on, ye fighting vagabonds!” amidst a show'r
of balls,
A shout is heard; the voice obey'd—the noble Picton
falls!
On valour's crimson bed behold the bleeding Howard
lies—
Oh! the heart beats the muffled drum when such a
hero dies!
The cuirassiers they gallop forth in polish'd coats of
mail:
“Up, Guards, and at'em!” and the shot comes rattling
on like hail!
A furious charge both man and horse soon prostrates and
repels,
And all the cuirassiers are cracked like lobsters in their
shells!
Where hottest is the fearful fight, and fire and flame
illume
The darkest cloud, the dunnest smoke, there dances
Arthur s plume!
That living wall of British hearts, that hollow square,
in vain
You mow it down—see! Frenchmen, see! the phalanx
forms again.
The meteor-plume in majesty still floats along the
plain—
Brave, bonny Scots! ye fight the field of Bannockburn
again!
The Gallic lines send forth a cheer; its feeble echoes
die—
The British squadrons rend the air—and “Victory!”
is their cry.
'T was helter-skelter, devil take the hindmost, sauve
qui peut,
With “Captain” and “ Invincibles” that day at Wa
terloo!
O how the Beiges show'd their backs! but not a Briton
stirr'd—
His warriors kept the battle-field, and Arthur kept his
word.
“Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!”
When the cheering had subsided,
“Good morning (bowed Mr. Bosky) to your conjuring cap, Wizard of St. Bartlemy! Namesake of Guido, in tatterdemalion dialect, 'Old Guy!' who, had he possessed your necromantic art, would have transformed his dark lantern into a magic one, and ignited his powder without lucifer or match; yourself and art being a match for Lucifer! What says that mysterious scroll adorned with 'lively sculptures' of Mr. Punch's scaramouches, (formerly Mrs. Charke's * ) and illuminated with your picture in a preternatural (pretty natural?) wig, every curl of which was woven by the fairy fingers of Queen Mab!”
“Mr. Fawkes, at his booth over-against the King's Head, exhibits his incomparable dexterity of hand, and Pinchbeck's musical clock, that plays several fine tunes, imitates the notes of different birds, and shews ships sailing in the river. You will also be entertained with a surprising tumbler just arrived from Holland, and a Lilliputian posture-master, only five years old, who performs such wonderful turns of body, the like of which was never clone by a child of his age and bigness before.”—1730.
At the Hospital Gate, (“all the scenes and decorations entirely new,”) Joe Miller, * “honest Billy Mills” and Oates, invite us to see a new opera, called The Banished General, or the Distressed Lovers; the English Maggot, a comic dance; two harlequins; a trumpet and kettledrum concert and chorus; and the comical humours of Nicodemus Hobble-Wollop, Esq. and his Man Gudgeon! Squire Nicodemus by the facetious Joe. And at the booth of Fawkes, Pinchbeck and Terwin, “distinguished from the rest by bearing English colours,” will be performed Britons Strike Home;. ** As if to redeem the habitual dulness of Joe Miller, one solitary joke of his stands on respectable authority. Joe, sitting at the window of the Sun Tavern in Clare Street, while a fish-woman was crying, “Buy my soles! Buy my maids!” exclaimed, “Ah! you wicked old creature; you are not content to sell your own soul, but you must sell your maid's too!”
“Don Superbo Hispaniola Pistole by Mr. C—b—r, and Donna Americana by Mrs. Cl—ve, the favourite of the town!” Dare Conjuror Fawkes insinuate that Cibber, if he did not actually “wag a serpent-tail in Smithfield fair,” still put on the livery of St. Bartholomew, in the Brummagem Don Pistole? That Kitty Clive, the termagant of Twickenham! with whom the fastidious and finical Horace Walpole was happy “to touch a card,” bedizened in horrible old frippery, rioted it in the “Rounds?” If true, what a standing joke for David Garrick, in their “combats of the tongue!” If false, “surprising and incomparable” must have been thy “dexterity of hand,” base wizard! which shielded that bold front of thine from the cabalistic retribution of her nails!
Leverigo the Quack, and his Jack Pudding Pinkanello, have mounted their stage; and, hark! the Doctor (Leveridge, famous for his “O the Roast Beef of Old England!”) tunes his manly pipes, accompanied by that squeaking Vice! for the Mountebank's song. *
In another quarter, Jemmy Laroch * warbles his raree-show ditty; while Old Harry persuades the gaping juveniles—
—to take a peep at his gallant show. * Duncan Macdonald ** “of the Shire of Caithness, Gent.,” tells, how having taken part in the Rebellion of 1745, he fled to France, where, being a good dancer, he hoped to get a living by his heels.