Dunstable Larks.

The larks which are caught at Dunstable are unequalled for their size and richness of flavour. Their superiority is said to be owing in a great measure to the chalky soil. On their first arrival they are very lean and weak, but they recover in a short time, and are braced and fattened by picking considerable quantities of the finest particles of chalk with their food. They are usually taken in great quantities, with trammelling nets, on evenings and mornings from Michaelmas to February. When dressed and served up at some of the inns in the town, “in great perfection, by a peculiar and secret method in the process of cooking them,” they are admired as a luxury by travellers during the time they are in season; and by an ingenious contrivance in their package, they are sent ready dressed to all parts of England.

July 15.

Swithin is still retained on this day in our almanacs, and at some public offices is a holiday.

St. Swithin.

He was of noble parentage, and also called Swithun, or in the Saxon language Swithum. He received the tonsure in the church at Winchester, and became a monk in the old monastery there, of which, after being ordained priest, he was made provost or dean. He studied grammar, philosophy, and theology. For his learning and virtue, Egbert, king of England, appointed him his priest, in which character he subscribed a charter to the abbey of Croyland, in 833. Egbert also committed to him the education of his son Ethelwolf, who on succeeding to the throne procured Swithin to be chosen bishop of Winchester in 852.

Tithes were established in England through St. Swithin, who prevailed on Ethelwolf to enact a law, by which he gave the tenth of the land to the church, on condition that the king should have a prayer said for his soul every Wednesday in all the churches for ever. Ethelwolf solemnized the grant by laying the charter on the altar of St. Peter at Rome, in a pilgrimage he made to that city, and by procuring the pope to confirm it.

St. Swithin died on the 2d of July, 862, in the reign of king Ethelbert, and he was buried, according to his own order, in the churchyard. Alban Butler, from whom these particulars are related, affirms the translation of his relics into the church a hundred years afterwards, and refers to the monkish historians for the relation of “such a number of miraculous cures of all kinds wrought by them, as was never known in any other place.” His relics were afterwards removed into the cathedral of Winchester, on its being built under William the Conqueror. It was dedicated to the Holy Trinity, under the patronage of St. Peter, afterwards to St. Swithin, in 980, and was called St. Swithin’s until Henry VIII. ordered it to be called by the name of the Holy Trinity.

Among the notable miracles alleged to have been worked by St. Swithin is this, that after he had built the bridge at Winchester, a woman came over it with her lap full of eggs, which a rude fellow broke, but the woman showed the eggs to the saint, who was passing at the time, and he lifted up his hand and blessed the eggs, “and they were made hole and sounde.” To this may be added another story; that when his body was translated, or removed, two rings of iron, fastened on his grave-stone, came out as soon as they were touched, and left no mark of their place in the stone; but when the stone was taken up, and touched by the rings, they of themselves fastened to it again.[211]

St. Swithin’s Day.

“If it rains on St. Swithin’s day, there will be rain the next forty days afterwards.” The occasion of this old and well-known saying is obscure. In Mr. Douce’s interleaved copy of Brand’s “Popular Antiquities,” there is a printed statement “seemingly cut out of a newspaper” cited, in the last edition of Mr. Brand’s work, thus:—“In the year 865, St. Swithin, bishop of Winchester, to which rank he was raised by king Ethelwolfe, the dane, dying, was canonized by the then pope. He was singular for his desire to be buried in the open church-yard, and not in the chancel of the minster, as was usual with other bishops, which request was complied with; but the monks, on his being canonized, taking it into their heads that it was disgraceful for the saint to lie in the open church-yard, resolved to remove his body into the choir, which was to have been done with solemn procession on the 15th of July. It rained, however, so violently on that day, and for forty days succeeding, as had hardly ever been known, which made them set aside their design as heretical and blasphemous: and, instead, they erected a chapel over his grave, at which many miracles are said to have been wrought.”

Also in “Poor Robin’s Almanac” for 1697, the saying, together with one of the miracles before related, is noticed in these lines:—

The satirical Churchill also mentions the superstitious notions concerning rain on this day:—

The same legend is recorded by Mr. Brand, from a memorandum by Mr. Douce: “I have heard these lines upon St. Swithin’s day:—

Ben Jonson, in “Every man out of his humour,” has a touch at almanac-wisdom, and on St. Swithin’s power over the weather:—

“Enter Sordido, Macilente, Hine.

“Sord.—(looking at an almanac)—O rare! good, good, good, good, good! I thank my stars, I thank my stars for it.

“Maci.—(aside)—Said I not true, ’tis Sordido, the farmer,

A boar, and brother, to that swine was here.

“Sord. Excellent, excellent, excellent! as I could wish, as I could wish!—Ha, ha, ha! I will not sow my grounds this year. Let me see what harvest shall we have? June, July, August?

“Maci.—(aside)—What is’t, a prognostication raps him so?

“Sord.—(reading)—The xx, xxi, xxii days, Rain and Wind; O good, good! the xxiii and xxiv Rain and some Wind: the xxv, Rain, good still! xxvi, xxvii, xxviii, wind and some rain; would it had been rain and some wind; well, ’tis good (when it can be no better;) xxix inclining to rain: inclining to rain? that’s not so good now: xxx and xxxi wind and no rain: no rain? ’Slid stay; this is worse and worse: what says he of Saint Swithin’s? turn back, look, Saint Swithin’s: no rain?—O, here, Saint Swithin’s, the xv day; variable weather, for the most part rain, good; for the most part rain: why, it should rain forty days after, now, more or less, it was a rule held, afore I was able to hold a plough, and yet here are two days no rain; ha! it makes me muse.”

Gay, whilst he admonishes against falling into the vulgar superstition, reminds his readers of necessary precautions in a wet season, which make us smile, who forbear from hats to loop and unloop, and do not wear wigs:—

Dr. Forster, in his “Perennial Calendar,” cites from Mr. Howard’s work on the climate of London the following—

“Examination of the popular Adage of ‘Forty Days’ Rain after St. Swithin’ how far it may be founded in fact.”

The opinion of the people on subjects connected with natural history is commonly founded in some degree on fact or experience; though in this case vague and inconsistent conclusions are too frequently drawn from real premises. The notion commonly entertained on this subject, if put strictly to the test of experience at any one station in this part of the island, will be found fallacious. To do justice to popular observation, I may now state, that in a majority of our summers, a showery period, which, with some latitude as to time and local circumstances, may be admitted to constitute daily rain for forty days, does come on about the time indicated by this tradition: not that any long space before is often so dry as to mark distinctly its commencement.

The tradition, it seems, took origin from the following circumstances. Swithin or Swithum, bishop of Winchester, who died in 868, desired that he might be buried in the open churchyard, and not in the chancel of the minster, as was usual with other bishops, and his request was complied with; but the monks, on his being canonized, considering it disgraceful for the saint to lie in a public cemetery, resolved to remove his body into the choir, which was to have been done with solemn procession, on the 15th of July: it rained, however, so violently for forty days together at this season, that the design was abandoned. Now, without entering into the case of the bishop, who was probably a man of sense, and wished to set the example of a more wholesome, as well as a more humble, mode of resigning the perishable clay to the destructive elements, I may observe, that the fact of the hinderance of the ceremony by the cause related is sufficiently authenticated by tradition; and the tradition is so far valuable, as it proves that the summers in this southern part of our island were subject a thousand years ago to occasional heavy rains, in the same way as at present. Let us see how, in point of fact, the matter now stands.

In 1807, it rained with us on the day in question, and a dry time followed. In 1808, it again rained on this day, though but a few drops: there was much lightning in the west at night, yet it was nearly dry to the close of the lunar period, at the new moon, on the 22d of this month, the whole period having yielded only a quarter of an inch of rain; but the next moon was very wet, and there fell 5·10 inches of rain.

In 1818 and 1819, it was dry on the 15th, and a very dry time in each case followed. The remainder of the summers occurring betwixt 1807 and 1819, appear to come under the general proposition already advanced: but it must be observed, that in 1816, the wettest year of the series, the solstitial abundance of rain belongs to the lunar period, ending, with the moon’s approach to the third quarter, on the 16th of the seventh month; in which period there fell 5·13 inches, while the ensuing period, which falls wholly within the forty days, though it had rain on twenty-five out of thirty days, gave only 2·41 inches.

I have paid no regard to the change effected in the relative position of this so much noted day by the reformation of the calendar, because common observation is now directed to the day as we find it in the almanac; nor would this piece of accuracy, without greater certainty as to a definite commencement of this showery period in former times, have helped us to more conclusive reasoning on the subject.

Solstitial and Equinoctial Rains.—Our year, then, in respect of quantities of rain, exhibits a dry and a wet moiety. The latter again divides itself into two periods distinctly marked. The first period is that which connects itself with the popular opinion we have been discussing. It may be said on the whole, to set in with the decline of the diurnal mean temperature, the maximum of which, we may recollect, has been shown to follow the summer solstice at such an interval as to fall between the 12th and 25th of the month called July. Now the 15th of that month, or Swithin’s day in the old style, corresponds to the 26th in the new; so that common observation has long since settled the limits of the effect, without being sensible of its real causes. The operation of this cause being continued usually through great part of the eighth month, the rain of this month exceeds the mean by about as much as that of the ninth falls below it.

As regards St. Swithin and his day, it may be observed, that according to bishop Hall when Swithin died, he directed that “his body should not be laid within the church, but where the drops of rain might wet his grave; thinking that no vault was so good to cover his grave as that of heaven.” This is scarcely an exposition of the old saying, which, like other old sayings, still has its votaries. It is yet common on this day to say, “Ah! this is St. Swithin; I wonder whether it will rain?” An old lady who so far observed this festival, on one occasion when it was fair and sunshiny till the afternoon, predicted fair weather; but tea-time came, and—

This was quite enough. “Ah!” said she, “now we shall have rain every day for forty days;” nor would she be persuaded of the contrary. Forty days of our humid climate passed, and many, by their having been perfectly dry, falsified her prediction. “Nay, nay,” said she, “but there was wet in the night, depend upon it.” According to such persons St. Swithin cannot err.

It appears from the parish accounts of Kingston upon Thames, in 1508, that “any householder kepying a brode gate” was to pay to the parish priest’s “wages 3d.” with a halfpenny “to the paschall:” this was the great wax taper in the church; the halfpenny was towards its purchase and maintaining its light; also he was to give to St. Swithin a halfpenny. A holder of one tenement paid twopence to the priest’s wages, a halfpenny to the “paschall;” likewise St. Swithin a halfpenny.

Rain on St. Swithin’s day is noticed in some places by this old saying, “St. Swithin is christening the apples.”

FLORAL DIRECTORY.

Small Cape Marigold. Calendula pluvialis.
Dedicated to St. Swithin.

July 16.

French Hoaxing.

July, 1817.—A man of imposing figure, wearing a large sabre and immense mustachios, arrived at one of the principal inns of a provincial city, with a female of agreeable shape and enchanting mien. He alighted at the moment that dinner was serving up at the table d’hote. At his martial appearance all the guests rose with respect; they felt assured that it must be a lieutenant-general, or a major-general at least. A new governor was expected in the province about this time, and every body believed that it was he who had arrived incognito. The officer of gendarmerie gave him the place of honour, the comptroller of the customs and the receiver of taxes sat by the side of Madame, and exerted their wit and gallantry to the utmost. All the tit-bits, all the most exquisite wines, were placed before the fortunate couple. At length the party broke up, and every one ran to report through the city that Monsieur the governor had arrived. But, oh! what was their surprise, when the next day “his excellence,” clad in a scarlet coat, and his august companion dressed out in a gown glittering with tinsel, mounted a small open calash, and preceded by some musicians, went about the squares and public ways, selling Swiss tea and balm of Mecca. Imagine the fury of the guests! They complained to the mayor, and demanded that the audacious quack should be compelled to lay aside the characteristic mark of the brave. The prudent magistrate assembled the common council; and those respectable persons, after a long deliberation, considering that nothing in the charter forbad the citizens to let their beard grow on their upper lip, dismissed the complaint altogether. The same evening the supposed governor gave a serenade to the complainants, and the next day took his leave, and continued his journey amidst the acclamations of the populace; who, in small as well as in great cities, are very apt to become passionately fond of charlatans.[212]

FLORAL DIRECTORY.

Great Garden Convolvulus. Convolvulus purpureus.
Dedicated to St. Eustathius.

July 17.

Mackerel.

The mackerel season is one of great interest on the coast, where these beautiful fish are caught. The going out and coming in of the boats are really “sights.” The prices of mackerel vary according to the different degrees of success. In 1807, the first Brighton boat of mackerel, on the 14th of May, sold at Billingsgate, for forty guineas per hundred, seven shillings each, the highest price ever known at that market. The next boat that came in reduced their value to thirteen guineas per hundred. In 1808, these fish were caught so plentifully at Dover, that they sold sixty for a shilling. At Brighton, in June, the same year, the shoal of mackerel was so great, that one of the boats had the meshes of her nets so completely occupied by them, that it was impossible to drag them in. The fish and nets, therefore, in the end sank together; the fisherman thereby sustaining a loss of nearly sixty pounds, exclusive of what his cargo, could he have got it into the boat, would have produced. The success of the fishery in 1821, was beyond all precedent. The value of the catch of sixteen boats from Lowestoft, on the 30th of June, amounted to 5,252l. 15s. 1¹⁄₄d., being an average of 328l. 5s. 11¹⁄₄d. per each boat; and it is supposed that there was no less a sum than 14,000l. altogether realized by the owners and men concerned in the fishery of the Suffolk coast.[213]

FLORAL DIRECTORY.

Sweet Pea. Lathyrus odoratus.
Dedicated to St. Marcellina.

July 18.

FLORAL DIRECTORY.

Autumn Marigold. Chrysanthemum coronarium.
Dedicated to St. Bruno.

July 19.

CAPTAIN STARKEY.

To the Editor of the Every-Day Book.

Dear Sir,

I read your account of this unfortunate Being, and his forlorn piece of self-history, with that smile of half-interest which the Annals of Insignificance excite, till I came to where he says “I was bound apprentice to Mr. William Bird, an eminent writer and Teacher of languages and Mathematics,” &c.—when I started as one does on the recognition of an old acquaintance in a supposed stranger. This then was that Starkey of whom I have heard my Sister relate so many pleasant anecdotes; and whom, never having seen, I yet seem almost to remember. For nearly fifty years she had lost all sight of him—and behold the gentle Usher of her youth, grown into an aged Beggar, dubbed with an opprobrious title, to which he had no pretensions; an object, and a May game! To what base purposes may we not return! What may not have been the meek creature’s sufferings—what his wanderings—before he finally settled down in the comparative comfort of an old Hospitaller of the Almonry of Newcastle? And is poor Starkey dead?—

I was a scholar of that “eminent writer” that he speaks of; but Starkey had quitted the school about a year before I came to it. Still the odour of his merits had left a fragrancy upon the recollection of the elder pupils. The school-room stands where it did, looking into a discoloured dingy garden in the passage leading from Fetter Lane into Bartlett’s Buildings. It is still a School, though the main prop, alas! has fallen so ingloriously; and bears a Latin inscription over the entrance in the Lane, which was unknown in our humbler times. Heaven knows what “languages” were taught in it then; I am sure that neither my Sister nor myself brought any out of it, but a little of our native English. By “mathematics,” reader, must be understood “cyphering.” It was in fact a humble day-school, at which reading and writing were taught to us boys in the morning, and the same slender erudition was communicated to the girls, our sisters, &c. in the evening. Now Starkey presided, under Bird, over both establishments. In my time, Mr. Cook, now or lately a respectable Singer and Performer at Drury-lane Theatre, and Nephew to Mr. Bird, had succeeded to him. I well remember Bird. He was a squat, corpulent, middle-sized man, with something of the gentleman about him, and that peculiar mild tone—especially while he was inflicting punishment—which is so much more terrible to children, than the angriest looks and gestures. Whippings were not frequent; but when they took place, the correction was performed in a private room adjoining, whence we could only hear the plaints, but saw nothing. This heightened the decorum and the solemnity. But the ordinary public chastisement was the bastinado, a stroke or two on the palm with that almost obsolete weapon now—the ferule. A ferule was a sort of flat ruler, widened at the inflicting end into a shape resembling a pear,—but nothing like so sweet—with a delectable hole in the middle, to raise blisters, like a cupping-glass. I have an intense recollection of that disused instrument of torture—and the malignancy, in proportion to the apparent mildness, with which its strokes were applied. The idea of a rod is accompanied with something ludicrous; but by no process can I look back upon this blister-raiser with any thing but unmingled horror.—To make him look more formidable—if a pedagogue had need of these heightenings—Bird wore one of those flowered Indian gowns, formerly in use with schoolmasters; the strange figures upon which we used to interpret into hieroglyphics of pain and suffering. But boyish fears apart—Bird I believe was in the main a humane and judicious master.

O, how I remember our legs wedged in to those uncomfortable sloping desks, where we sat elbowing each other—and the injunctions to attain a free hand, unattainable in that position; the first copy I wrote after, with its moral lesson “Art improves Nature;” the still earlier pot-hooks and the hangers some traces of which I fear may yet be apparent in this manuscript; the truant looks side-long to the garden, which seemed a mockery of our imprisonment; the prize for best spelling, which had almost turned my head, and which to this day I cannot reflect upon without a vanity, which I ought to be ashamed of—our little leaden ink-stands, not separately subsisting, but sunk into the desks; the bright, punctually-washed morning fingers, darkening gradually with another and another ink-spot: what a world of little associated circumstances, pains and pleasures mingling their quotas of pleasure, arise at the reading of those few simple words—“Mr. William Bird, an eminent Writer and Teacher of languages and mathematics in Fetter Lane, Holborn!”

Poor Starkey, when young, had that peculiar stamp of old-fashionedness in his face, which makes it impossible for a beholder to predicate any particular age in the object. You can scarce make a guess between seventeen and seven and thirty. This antique cast always seems to promise ill-luck and penury. Yet it seems, he was not always the abject thing he came to. My Sister, who well remembers him, can hardly forgive Mr. Thomas Ranson for making an etching so unlike her idea of him, when he was a youthful teacher at Mr. Bird’s school. Old age and poverty—a life-long poverty she thinks, could at no time have so effaced the marks of native gentility, which were once so visible in a face, otherwise strikingly ugly, thin, and care-worn. From her recollections of him, she thinks that he would have wanted bread, before he would have begged or borrowed a halfpenny. If any of the girls (she says) who were my school-fellows should be reading, through their aged spectacles, tidings from the dead of their youthful friend Starkey, they will feel a pang, as I do, at ever having teased his gentle spirit. They were big girls, it seems, too old to attend his instructions with the silence necessary; and however old age, and a long state of beggary, seem to have reduced his writing faculties to a state of imbecility, in those days, his language occasionally rose to the bold and figurative, for when he was in despair to stop their chattering, his ordinary phrase was, “Ladies, if you will not hold your peace, not all the powers in heaven can make you.” Once he was missing for a day or two; he had run away. A little old unhappy-looking man brought him back—it was his father—and he did no business in the school that day, but sate moping in a corner, with his hands before his face; and the girls, his tormentors, in pity for his case, for the rest of that day forbore to annoy him. I had been there but a few months (adds she) when Starkey, who was the chief instructor of us girls, communicated to us as a profound secret, that the tragedy of “Cato” was shortly to be acted by the elder boys, and that we were to be invited to the representation. That Starkey lent a helping hand in fashioning the actors, she remembers; and but for his unfortunate person, he might have had some distinguished part in the scene to enact; as it was, he had the arduous task of prompter assigned to him, and his feeble voice was heard clear and distinct, repeating the text during the whole performance. She describes her recollection of the cast of characters even now with a relish. Martia, by the handsome Edgar Hickman, who afterwards went to Africa, and of whom she never afterwards heard tidings,—Lucia, by Master Walker, whose sister was her particular friend; Cato, by John Hunter, a masterly declaimer, but a plain boy, and shorter by the head than his two sons in the scene, &c. In conclusion, Starkey appears to have been one of those mild spirits, which, not originally deficient in understanding, are crushed by penury into dejection and feebleness. He might have proved a useful adjunct, if not an ornament to Society, if Fortune had taken him into a very little fostering, but wanting that, he became a Captain—a by-word—and lived, and died, a broken bulrush.

C. L.

Peerless Pool.

Coming from the city, on the left-hand side of the City-road, just beyond Old-street, and immediately at the back of St. Luke’s hospital, Peerless Pool

It is a pleasure-bath in the open air, a hundred and seventy feet long, and upwards of a hundred feet wide, nearly surrounded by trees, with an arcade divided off into boxes for privately dressing and undressing; and is therefore, both in magnitude and convenience, the greatest bathing-place in the metropolis. Here the lover of cleanliness, or of a “cool dip” in a hot day, may at all times, for a shilling, enjoy the refreshment he desires, without the offensive publicity, and without the risk of life, attendant on river-bathing; while there is “ample room and verge enough” for all the sports and delights which “swimmers only know.” It is no where so deep as five feet, and on one side only three; the experienced and the inexperienced are alike safe. There is likewise a capacious cold-bath in an adjacent building, for the use of those who prefer a temperature below that of the atmosphere.

Peerless Pool is distinguished for having been one of the ancient springs that supplied the metropolis with water, when our ancestors drew that essential element from public conduits; that is to say, before the “old” water-works at London-bridge “commenced to be,” or the “New River” had been brought to London by sir Hugh Myddelton. The streams of this “pool” at that time were conveyed, for the convenience of the inhabitants near Lothbury, through pipes terminating “close to the south-west corner of the church.”[214] Stow speaks of it as a “cleere water, called Perilous Pond, because,” says our chronicler, “divers youths, by swimming therein, have been drowned.”[215] “Upon Saterday the 19 of January, 1633, sixe pretty young lads, going to sport themselves upon the frozen Ducking-pond, neere to Clearkenwell, the ice too weake to support them, fell into the water, concluding their pastime with the lamentable losse of their lives: to the great griefe of many that saw them dying, many more that afterward saw them dead, with the in-expressible griefe of their parents.”[216] In consequence of such accidents, and the worthy inhabitants of Lothbury having obtained their water from other sources, Perilous Pond was entirely filled up, and rendered useless, till Mr. William Kemp, “an eminent jeweller and citizen of London,” “after ten years’ experience of the temperature” of this water, and “the happy success of getting clear of a violent pain of the head by bathing in it, to which he had for many years been subject, was generously led for public benefit” to open the spring in the year 1743, and “to form the completest swimming-bath in the whole world;” and “in reference to the improvements he had made on the ruins of that once Perilous Pond,” and by a very natural transition, he changed that disagreeable appellation of Perilous, “that is,” says Maitland, “dangerous, or hazardous, to the more agreeable name of Peerless Pool, that is, Matchless Bath, a name which carries its own reason with it.”

Maitland says, that Kemp “spared no expense nor contrivance to render it quite private and retired from public inspection, decent in its regulation, and as genteel in its furniture as such a place could be made.” He added a cold-bath, “generally allowed,” says Maitland, “to be the largest in England, being forty feet long, and twenty feet broad; this bath is supplied by a remarkably cold spring, with a convenient room for dressing.” The present cold-bath, faced with marble and paved with stone, was executed by sir William Staines, when he was a journeyman mason. He was afterwards lord mayor of London, and often boasted of this, while he smoked his pipe at the Jacob’s-well in Barbican, as amongst his “best work.”

Kemp’s improvements provided an entrance to it across a bowling-green on the south side, through a neat marble pavilion or saloon, thirty feet long, with a large gilt sconce over a marble table. Contiguous to this saloon were the dressing apartments, some of which were open, others were private with doors. There was also a green bower on each side of the bath, divided into other apartments for dressing. At the upper end was a circus-bench, capable of accommodating forty persons, under the cover of a wall twelve feet high, surmounted on one side by a lofty bank with shrubs, and encircled by a terrace-walk planted with lime-trees at the top. The descent to the bath was by four pair of marble stairs, as it still is, to a fine gravel-bottom, through which the springs gently bubbled and supplied, as they do at this time, the entire basin with the crystal fluid. Hither many a “lover and preserver” of health and long life, and many an admirer of calm retreat, resorted “ever and anon:”—