Tarts of gooseberry, raspberry, cranberry; Of all sorts and sizes; Ginger beer, That won't make you queer, Like the treble X ale of Taylor and Hanbury!" "Here, good Christians, are five Reasons why you shouldn't go to a fair, published by the London Lachrymose Society for the suppression of fun." "And here, good Christians, are five-and-fifty why you should! published by my Lord Chancellor Cocke Lorel, President of the High Court of Mummery, and Conscience-Keeper to his merry Majesty of Queerumania, for the promotion of jollity." These zealous rivals vociferated in each other's ears, sans intermission. The former gave away his five reasons for nothing-which was about their value: still Chancellor Cocke Lorel's fifty-five had the greater circulation, though at the noli me tangere price of a Penny Magazine. One of the better order of mendicants, whom time had touched with a gentle and reverent hand, and on whose smooth, pale brows, hung the blossoms of the grave, arrested our attention with the following quaint ditty, which pleased us, inasmuch that it seemed to smack of the olden time. "I love but only one, And thou art only she And say thou unto me "Cold comfort this, broiling and frying under a burning hot sun!" soliloquised a solitary ballad-singer. "But, what's the use of sighing?" (Singing.) "Gently, Simon Scrape, you can't afford to sing to yourself solus. -Good luck to me! A rush o' two!—A merry holiday to your honours!" And, having two strings to his bow, and one to his fiddle, he put a favourite old tune to the rack, commenced killing time by beating it, and enforced us to own the soft impeachment of THE BALLAD-SINGER'S APOLOGY FOR GREENWICH FAIR. We toil up the hill till we reach to the top; O how much more quick we descend than we climb! Gay Greenwich! thy happy young holiday train My Lord May'r of London, of high city lineage, His show makes us glad with, and why shouldn't Greenwich? And why shouldn't we crack our gingerbread nuts? Of fashion and fame, ye grandiloquent powers, To keep one bright spark of good humour alive, Be merry, my masters, for now is your time Come, who 'Il buy my ballads? they're reason and rhyme." Peckham and Blackheath fairs were celebrated places of resort in former times, and had their modicum of strange monsters. "Geo. 1. R. "To the curious in general, and particularly those that are lovers of living curiosities. To be seen during the time of Peckham Fair, a Grand collection of Living Wild Beasts and Birds, lately arrived from the remotest parts of the World. "1. A curious Bird called the Pellican that suckles her young with her heart's blood, from Egypt. "2. The Noble Vulter Cock, a beautiful bird, not one of the kind ever seen in England. He was brought from Archangell, being a very astonishing bird, and having the finest tallons of any bird that seeks his prey; the fore part of his head is covered with hair, the second part of his head resembles the wool of a Black; below that is a white ring, having a Ruff, that he cloaks his head with at night. He is esteemed a very great curiosity. "3. An Eagle of the Sun. This is the bird that takes the loftiest flight of any bird that flies. There is no bird but this that can fly to the face of the Sun with a naked eye. "4. A curious Beast bred from a Lioness, and like a foreign Wild Cat. "5. The most beautiful He-Panther, from Turkey. This Beast is allowed by the curious to be one of the greatest rarities ever seen in England, and on which may be seen thousands of spots, and not two of a likeness. "6 & 7. The two fierce and surprising Hyænas, Male and Female, from the River Gambia in Africa. These Creatures imitate the human voice, and so decoy the Negroes out of their huts and plantations to devour them. They have a mane like a horse, and two joints in their hinder leg more than any other creature. It is re markable that all other beasts are to be tamed, but Hyænas they are not. "8. A curious Ethiopian Toho Savage, having all the actions of the human species, and (when at his full growth) will be upwards of five feet high. "Also several other surprising Creatures of different sorts, too tedious to mention. To be seen from 9 in the morning till 9 at night, without loss of time, till they are sold. Also, all manner of curiosities of different sorts, are bought and sold at the above place by JOHN BENNETT." Mr. Mathews's Bartholemew Fair showman had surely seen John Bennett's bill! The grand focus of attraction was in the immediate vicinity of the "Kentish Drovers," and what a roaring trade did it drive when Flockton's Fantocini and Musical Clock, Mr. Conjuror Lane, Sir Jeffrey Dunstan, and the Mackabee Monsters, made Peckham fair a St. Bartholomew in little. This once merry hostelrie was a favourite suburban retreat of Dicky Suett. Cherub Dicky! (we never think of him without a smile and a tear,) who when (to use his own peculiar phrase) his "copper required cooling," mounted the steady, oldfashioned, three mile an hour Peckham stage, and journeyed hither to allay his thirst, and qualify his alcohol with a refreshing draught of Derbyshire ale. The landlord (who was quite a character) and he were old cronies; and, in the snug little parlour behind the bar, of which Dicky had the entrée, their hob-and-nobbings struck out sparks of humour that, had they exhaled before the lamps, would have set the theatre in a roar. Suett was a great frequenter of fairs. He stood treat to the conjurors, feasted the tragedy kings and queens, and many a mountebank did he make muzzy. Once in a frolic he changed clothes with a Jack Pudding, and played Barker and Mr. Merriman to a precocious giantess; when he threw her lord and master into such an ecstacy of mirth, that the fellow vowed hysterically that it was either the devil, or (for his fame had travelled before him) Dicky Suett. He was a piscator, and would make a huge parade of his rod, line, and green-painted tin-can, sallying forth on a fine morning with dire intentions against the gudgeons and perch: but Dicky was a merciful angler: he was the gudgeon, for 1 All sports that inflict pain on any living thing, without attaining some useful end, are wanton and cowardly. Wild boars, wolves, foxes, &c. may be hunted to extermination, for they are public robbers; but to hunt the noble deer, for the cruel pleasure of hunting him, is base. How beautifully has Shakspeare pleaded the cause of humanity in his picture of the "sobbing deer;" and Sheridan Knowles has some fine lines on this detestable sport. "And yet I pity the poor crowned deer, And hunted by the human, worldly hound,- With all our love of honest Izaak Walton, and admiration of his cheerful piety and beautiful philosophy, we feel a shuddering when the "sentimental old savage gives his minute instructions to the tyro in angling how most skilfully to transfix the writhing worm, (as though you "loved him!") and torture a poor fish. Piscator is a cowardly rogue to sit upon a fair bank, the sun shining above, and the pure stream rippling beneath, with his instruments of death, playing pang against pang, and life against life, for his contemplative recreation. What would he say to a hook through his own gullet? Would it mitigate his dying agonies to hear his dirge (even the milkmaid's song!) chanted in harmonious concert with a brother of the angle, who had played the like sinister trick on his companion in the waters? the too cunning fishes, spying his comical figure, stole his bait, and he hooked nothing but tin pots and old shoes. Here he sat in his accustomed chair and corner, dreaming of future quarterns, and dealing out odd sayings that would make the man in the moon hold his sides, and convulse the whole planet with laughter. His hypocrene was the cream of the valley; he dug his grave with his bottle, and gave up the ghost amidst a troop of spirits. Peace to his manes! Cold is the cheerful hearth, where he familiarly stirred the embers; and silent the walls that echoed to "Old Wigs!" chanted by Garrett's Mayor (one of Dicky's prime pets) when he danced hop-scotch on a table spread out with tumblers and tobacco pipes! Hushed is the voice of song. At this moment, as if to give our last assertion a flat negative, or what Touchstone calls "the lie direct," some stray Corydon from Petty France, the Apollo of a select singing party in the first floor front room, thus musically apostrophised his Blouzelinda of Bloomsbury. She's all that fancy painted her, she's rosy without rouge, Her gingham gown a modest brown turn'd up with bright gambouge; Her fortune's five-and-twenty pounds in Three per Cent Consols. At Beulah Spa, where love is law, was my fond heart beguiled; I pour'd my passion in her ear-she whisper'd, " Draw it mild!" Of all the girls that are so smart, there's none than Sally smarter; "GEO. 2, R. "This is to give notice to all gentlemen, ladies, and others, That there is to be seen at the end of the great booth on BlackHeath, the wonder of the age lately come from the West of England, a woman above 38 years of age alive, having two heads, one above the other, the upper face smooth; having no hands, fingers, nor toes; yet can dress and undress, knit, sew, read, sing," (Querya duet with her two mouths ?)" and do several sorts of work; very pleasant and merry in her behaviour. She has had the honour to be seen by Sir Hans Sloane, the King's physician, and several of the Royal Society, and gives entire satisfaction to all that ever see her. "She is to be seen from eight in the morning till nine at night, without loss of time. "N.B. Gentlemen and ladies may see her at their own houses, if they please. This great wonder never was shewn in England before this, the 13th day of March, 1741. "Vivat Rex." Our West of England lady beats little Matthew Buckinger by a head. Peckham and Blackheath Fairs are abolished; and those of Cam That the caricaturist has been out-caricatured by Nature no one will deny. Wilkes was so abominably ugly that he said it always took him half an hour to talk away his face; and Mirabeau, speaking of his own countenance, said, “Fancy a tiger marked with the small-pox! We have seen an Adonis contemplate one of Cruikshank's whimsical figures, of which his particular shanks were the bow-ideal, and rail at the artist for libelling Dame Nature! How marvellously ill-favoured were Lord Lovat, Magliabecchi, Scarron, and the wall-eyed, bottle-nosed Buckhorse the Bruiser! how deformed and frightful Sir Harry Dimsdale and Sir Jeffrey Dunstan! What would have been said of the painter of imaginary Siamese twins? Yet we have "The true Description of two Monsterous Children, borne in the parish of Swanburne in Buckinghamshyre, the 4th of Aprill, Anno Domini 1566; the two Children having both their belies fast joyned together, and imbracing one another with their armes : which Children were both alyve by the space of half an hower, and wer baptised, and named the one John, and the other Joan."A similar wonder was exhibited in Queen Anne's reign, viz. "Two monstrous girls born in the Kingdom of Hungary," which were to be seen " from 8 o'clock in the morning till 8 at night, up one pair of stairs, at Mr. William Suttcliffe, a Drugster's Shop, at the sign of the Golden Anchor, in the Strand, near Charing-Cross." The Siamese twins of our own time are fresh in every one's memory. Shakspere throws out a pleasant sarcasm at the characteristic curiosity of the English nation. Trinculo, upon first beholding Caliban, exclaims," A strange fish! were I in England now (as I once was), and had but this fish painted, not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of silver: there would this monster make a man: when they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian." 2 Peckham Fair, August 1787. — Of the four-footed race were bears, monkeys, dancing-dogs, a learned pig, &c. Mr. Flockton, in his theatrical booth opposite the Kentish Drovers, exhibited the Italian fantocini; the farce of the Conjurer; and his "inimitable musical-clock." Mr. Lane, "first performer to the King," played off his "snap-snap, rip-rap, crick-crack, and thunder-tricks, that the grown babies stared like worried cats. This extraordinary genius "will drive about forty twelve-penny nails into any gentleman's breech, place him in a loadstone chair, and draw them out without the least pain! He is, in short, the most wonderful of all wonderful creatures the world ever wondered at." Sir Jeffrey Dunstan sported his handsome figure within his booth; outside of which was displayed a staring likeness of the elegant original in his pink satin smalls. His dress, address, and oratory, fascinated the audience; in fact, "Jeffy was quite tonish!" In opposition to the "Monstrous Craws" at the Royal Grove, were shown in a barn "four wonderful human creatures, brought three thousand miles beyond China, from the Kickashaw Mackabee country, viz. "A man with a chin eleven inches long. "Another with as many wens and warts on his face as knots on an old hornback. "A third with two large teeth five inches long, strutting beyond his upper lip, as if his father had been a man-tiger! "And the fourth with a noble large fiery head, that looked like the red-hot urn on the top of the monument ! " "These most wonderful wild-born human beings (the Monstrous Craws), two females and a male, are of very small stature, being little less or more than four feet high; each with a monstrous craw under his throat. Their country, language, &c. are as yet unknown to mankind. It is supposed they started in some canoe from their native place (a remote quarter in South America,) and being wrecked, were picked up by a Spanish vessel. At that period they were each of a dark olive complexion, but which has astonishingly, by degrees, changed to the colour of that of Europeans. They are tractable and respectful towards strangers, and of lively and merry disposition among themselves; singing and dancing in the most extraordinary way, at the will and pleasure of the company." |