Chapter XIX: Part 19

More than two centuries ago, when Clerkenwell was a sort of court-quarter of the town, its most distinguished residents were William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, and his wife, Margaret Lucas, both of whom are remembered by their literary eccentricities. The Duke, who was a devoted royalist, after his defeat at Marston Moor, retired with his wife to the Continent; and with many privations, owing to pecuniary embarrassments, suffered an exile of eighteen years, chiefly in Antwerp, in a house which belonged to the widow of Rubens. Such was their extremity that they were both forced at one time to pawn their clothes to purchase a dinner. The Duke beguiled his time by writing an eccentric book on horsemanship. During his absence Cromwell's parliament levied upon his estate nearly three-quarters of a million of money. Upon the Restoration, he returned to England, and was created Duke of Newcastle; he then retired to his mansion in Clerkenwell; he died there in 1676, aged eighty-four.

The duchess was a pedantic and voluminous writer, her collected works filling ten printed folios, for she wrote prose and verse in all their varieties. "The whole story," writes Pepys, "of this lady is a romance and all she does is romantic. April 26th, 1667.--Met my Lady Newcastle, with her coach and footman all in velvet, herself, whom I never saw before, as I have heard her often described, for all the town talk is now-a-days of her extravagances, with her velvet cap, her hair about her ears, many black patches because of pimples about her mouth, naked-necked without anything about it, and a black _just-au-corps_. May 1st 1667.--She was in a black coach, adorned with silver instead of gold, and snow-white curtains, and everything black and white. Stayed at home reading the ridiculous history of my Lord Newcastle, wrote by his wife, which shows her to be a mad, conceited, ridiculous woman, and he an asse to suffer her to write what she writes to him and of him." On the 10th of April, 1667, Charles and his Queen came to Clerkenwell, on a visit to the duchess. On the 18th John Evelyn went to make court to the noble pair, who received him with great kindness. Another time he dined at Newcastle House, and was privileged to sit discoursing with her grace in her bedchamber after dinner. She thus describes to a friend her literary employments:--"You will find my works like infinite nature, that hath neither beginning nor end, and as confused as the chaos, wherein is neither method nor order, but all mixed together, without separation, like light and darkness." "But what gives one," says Walpole, "the best idea of her passion for scribbling, was her seldom revising the copies of her works, lest it should disturb her following conceptions. Her servant John was ordered to lie on a truckle-bed in a closet within her grace's bedchamber; and whenever, at any time, she gave the summons, by calling out 'John,' I conceive poor John was to get up, and commit to writing the offspring of his mistress' thoughts. Her grace's folios were usually enriched with gold, and had her coat-of-arms upon them. Hence, Pope, in the _Dunciad_, Book I:--

"Stamp'd with arms, Newcastle shines complete."

In her _Poems and Fancies_, 1653, the copy now in the British Museum, on the margin of one page is the following note in the Duchess' own handwriting:--"Reader, let me intreat you to consider only the fancyes in this my book of poems, and not the language of the numbers, nor rimes, nor fals printing, for if you doe, you will be my condeming judg, which will grive me much." Of this book she says:--

"When I did write this book I took great paines,
For I did walk, and thinke, and break my braines;
My thoughts run out of breath, then down would lye,
And panting with short wind like those that dye;
When time had given ease, and lent them strength,
Then up would get and run another length;
Sometimes I kept my thought with strict dyet,
And made them fast with ease, rest, and quiet,
That they might run with swifter speed,
And by this course new fancies they could breed;
But I doe feare they are no so good to please,
But now they're out my braine is more at ease."

At page 228 occurs this strange fancy:--

"Life scums the cream of beauty with Time's spoon,
And draws the claret wine of blushes soon."

Again, she tells us that--

"The brain is like an oven, hot and dry,
Which bakes all sorts of fancies, low and high;
The thoughts are wood, which motion sets on fire;
The tongue a peele, which draws forth the desire;
But thinking much, the brain too hot will grow,
And burns it up; if cold, the thoughts are dough."

To a volume of the Duchess' plays is prefixed a portrait of her Grace, and this couplet under it:--

"Her beauty's found beyond the skill
Of the best paynter to embrace."

There is a story current that the Duke being once, when in a peevish humour, complimented by a friend on the great wisdom of his wife, made answer, "Sir, a very wise woman is a very foolish thing."

Another eccentric inhabitant of Newcastle House was Elizabeth, Duchess of Albemarle, and afterwards of Montague. She was married in 1669 to Christopher Monck, second Duke of Albemarle, then a youth of sixteen, whom her inordinate pride drove to the bottle and other dissipation. After his death, in 1688, at Jamaica, the Duchess, whose vast estate so inflated her vanity as to produce mental aberration, resolved never again to give her hand to any but a sovereign prince. She had many suitors; but true to her resolution, she rejected them all, until Ralph Montague, third Lord and first Duke of that name, achieved the conquest by courting her as _Emperor of China_: and the anecdote has been dramatized by Colley Cibber, in his comedy of _The Double Gallant, or Sick Lady's Cure_. Lord Montague married the lady as "Emperor," but afterwards played the truant, and kept her in such strict confinement that her relations compelled him to produce her in open court, to prove that she was alive. Richard Lord Ross, one of her rejected suitors, addressed to Lord Montague these lines on his match:--

"Insulting rival, never boast
Thy conquest lately won:
No wonder that her heart was lost,--
Her senses first were gone.

"From one that's under Bedlam's laws
What glory can be had?
For love of thee was not the cause:
It proves that she was mad."

The Duchess survived her second husband nearly thirty years, and at last "died of mere old age," at Newcastle House, August 28th, 1738, aged ninety-six years. Until her decease, she is said to have been constantly served on the knee as a sovereign; besides keeping her word, that she would not stoop to marry anyone but the Emperor of China.

Sources of Laughter.

In a clever paper in the _Saturday Review_ (Oct. 7th, 1865), we find these amusing anecdotical instances of the sources means _movere jocum_:--

"A sustained, deliberate pride would have rather prevented than encouraged that fit of laughter which has preserved to posterity the name of a certain Marquis of Blandford. He, being noted for laughing upon small provocation, was once convulsed for half-an-hour together on seeing somebody fillip a crumb into a blind fiddler's face, the fits returning whenever the "ludicrous idea" recurred to him. An habitual sense of superiority would have prevented this sudden glory at sight of a beggar's helplessness under insult.

"There are personalities which lie so hid under a disguise that they are not readily known for such. The humorist and the cynic have each a knack of investing with human weaknesses things, animate and inanimate, in which plainer minds can see no analogy to human nature. We have known a man of quaint fancies laugh till the tears ran down at seeing a rat peep out of a hole. He caught a touch of humanity in the brute's perplexed air; he guessed at something behind the scenes impervious to our grosser vision. A bird, frumpish and disquieted on a rainy day, suggests to such a man some social image of discontent that makes capital fun for him. He can improve these lower creatures into caricatures of his friends, or of mankind at large. Mr. Formby owned himself unable to help "laughing out loud" in the presence of Egyptian antiquities, with the Memnon at their head; he laughed at an ancient civilization, at the men of the past personified by their works. Saturnine tempers can only laugh at imminent danger or positive calamity; mortal terror is the most ludicrous of all ideas to them. Mr. Trollope represents Lord de Courcy, who had not laughed for many a day, exploding at the notion of his neighbour earl having been all but tossed by a bull: and the joke would have been better still if the bull had had his will. This tendency is frequently to be seen with a defective sympathy, and we believe the things that make men laugh are an excellent clue at once to intellect and temper. Many a man does not betray the tiger that lurks within him till he laughs. There are times when the body craves for laughter as it does for food. This is the laughter which, on some occasion or other, has betrayed us all into a scandalous, unseasonable, remorseful gaiety. After long abstinence from cheerful thought, there are few occasions so sad and solemn as to render this inopportune revolt impossible, unless where grief absorbs the whole soul, and lowers the system to a uniformity of sadness. In fact, as no solemnity can be safe from incongruities, such occasions are not seldom the especial scene of these exposures--of explosions of a wild, perverse hilarity taking the culprit at unawares; and this even while he is aghast at his flagrant insensibility to the demand of the hour.

"This is the laughter often ascribed to Satanic influence. The nerves cannot forego the wonted stimulus, and are malignantly on the watch, as it were, to betray the higher faculties into this unseemly indulgence. Thus John and Charles Wesley, in the early days of their public career, set forth one particular day to sing hymns together in the fields; but, on uplifting the first stave, one of them was suddenly struck with a sense of something ludicrous in their errand, the other caught the infection, and both fell into convulsions of laughter, renewed on every attempt to carry out their first design, till they were fain to give up and own themselves for that time conquered by the Devil. There is a story of Dr. Johnson much to the same purpose. Naturally melancholy, he was yet a great laugher, and thus was an especial victim to the possession we speak of, for no one laughs in depression who has not learnt to laugh in mirth. He was dining with his friend Chambers in the Temple, and at first betrayed so much physical suffering and mental dejection that his companion could not help boring him with remedies. By degrees he rallied, and with the rally came the need of a general reaction. At this point Chambers happened to say that a common friend had been with him that morning making his will. Johnson--or rather his nervous system--seized upon this as the required subject. He raised a ludicrous picture of the "testator" going about boasting of the fact of his will-making to anybody that would listen, down to the innkeeper on the road. Roaring with laughter, he trusted that Chambers had had the conscience not to describe the testator as of sound mind, hoped there was a legacy to himself, and concluded with saying that he would have the will set to verse and a ballad made out of it. Mr. Chambers, not at all relishing this pleasantry, got rid of his guest as soon as he could. But not so did Johnson get rid of his merriment; he rolled in convulsions till he got out of Temple Gate, and then, supporting himself against a post, sent forth peals so loud as, in the silence of the night, to be heard from Temple Bar to Fleet Ditch. We hear of stomach coughs; this was a stomach, or ganglionic, laugh.

"The mistimed laughter of children has often some such source as this, though the sprite that possesses them has rarely the gnomelike essence. A healthy boy, after a certain length of constraint, is sometimes as little responsible for his laughter as the hypochondriac. Mrs. Beecher Stowe, in describing, and even defending, a Puritanical strictness of Sabbath observance, recalls the long family expositions and sermons which alternated in her youth with prolix Meeting services, at all of which the younger members of the household were required to assist in profound stillness of attention. On one of these occasions, on a hot summer afternoon, a heedless grasshopper of enormous dimensions leapt on the sleeve of one of the boys. The tempting diversion was not to be resisted; he slyly secured the animal, and imprisoned a hind leg between his firmly compressed lips. One by one, the youthful congregation became alive to the awkward contortions and futile struggles of the long-legged captive; they knew that to laugh was to be flogged, but after so many sermons the need was imperative, and they laughed, and were flogged accordingly. Different from all these types is the grand frank laugh that finds its place in history and biography, and belongs to master minds. Political and party feeling may raise, in stirring times, any amount of animosity, even in good-natured men; but once bring about a laugh between them, and an answering chord is struck, a tie is established not easily broken. Something of the old rancour is gone for ever. There is a story of Canning and Brougham, after hating and spiting one another through a session, finding themselves suddenly face to face in some remote district in Cumberland, with only a turn-pike gate between them. The situation roused their magnanimity; simultaneously they broke into laughter, and passed each on his separate way, better friends from that time forth.

"No honest laugher knows anything about his own laugh, which is fortunate, as it is apt to be the most grotesque part of a man, especially if he is anything of an original. Character, humour, oddity, all expatiate in it, and the features and voice have to accommodate themselves to the occasion as they can. There is Prince Hal's laugh, "till his face is like a wet cloak ill laid up;" there is the laugh we see in Dutch pictures, where every wrinkle of the old face seems to be in motion; there is the convulsive laugh, in which arms and legs join; there is the whinny, the ventral laugh, Dr. Johnson's laugh like a rhinoceros, Dominie Sampson's laugh lapsing without any immediate stage into dead gravity, and the ideal social laugh--the delighted and delighting chuckle which ushers in a joke, and the cordial triumphant laugh which sounds its praises. We say nothing of all the laughs--and how many there are!--which have no mirth in them; nor of the "ha ha!" of melodrama, and the ringing laugh of the novel, as being each unfamiliar to our waking ears. Whatever the laugh, if it be genuine and comes from decent people, it is as attractive as the Piper of Hamelin. It is impossible not to want to know what a hearty laugh is about. Some of the sparkle of life is near, and we long to share it. The gift of laughter is one of the compensating powers of the world. A nation that laughs is so far prosperous. It may not have material wealth, but it has the poetry of prosperity. When Lady Duff Gordon laments that she never hears a hearty laugh in Egypt, and when Mr. Palgrave, on the contrary, makes the Arabs proper a laughing people, we place Arabia, for this reason, higher among the countries than its old neighbour. And it is the same with homes. Wherever there is pleasant laughter, there inestimable memories are being stored up, and such free play given to nerve and brain, that whatever thought and power the family circle is capable of will have a fair chance of due expansion."

_CONVIVIAL ECCENTRICITIES._

Busby's Folly and Bull Feather Hall.

At Busby's Folly, a bowling-green and house of public entertainment, upon the site of the Belvidere Tavern, Pentonville, there met on the 2nd of May, 1644, a fraternity of Odd Fellows, members of the Society of Bull Feathers Hall, who claimed, among other things, the toll of all the gravel carried up Highgate Hill. A rare tract, entitled, _Bull Feather Hall, or the Antiquity of Horns amply shown_, 1664, relates the manner of going from Busby's Folly to Highgate:--"On Monday, being the 2nd of May, some part of the fraternity met at Busby's Folly, in Islington, where, after they had set all things in order, they thus marched out, _ordine quisque suo_:--First, a set of trumpets, then the controller, or captain of the pioneers, with thirty or forty following him with pickaxes and spades to level the hill, and baskets withal to carry gravel. After them another set of trumpeters, and also four that did wind the horn; after them, the standard, _alias_ an exceeding large pair of horns fixed on a pole, which three men carried, with pennants on each tip, the Master of the Ceremonies attending it, with other officers. Men followed the flag, with the arms of the society, with horned beasts drawn thereon, and this motto:--

'To have, and not to use the same,
Is not their glory, but their shame.'

"After this came the mace-bearer, then the herauld-at-arms, with the arms of the society. The coat I cannot rightly blazon, but I remember the supporters were on one side, a woman with a whip in her hand, besides that of her tongue, with a menacing look, and underneath the motto, _Ut volo, sic jubeo_; on the other side, a man in a woeful plight, and underneath him, _Patientia patimur_." In this order they marched, attended by multitudes of people. This club, as the tract informs us, used to meet in Chequer Yard, in Whitechapel, their president being arrayed in a crimson satin gown and a furred cap, surmounted by a pair of antlers; and on a cushion lay a cornuted sceptre and crown; the brethren drank out of horn cups, and were sworn on admission, upon a blank horn-book. They met twice a-week, "to solace themselves with harmless merriment and promote good fellowship among their neighbours."

Busby's Folly was afterwards called "Penny's Folly." Here Zucker, a high German, who had performed before their Majesties and the Royal Family, exhibited his Learned Little Horse from Cowland, who was to be seen looking out of the windows up two pair of stairs every evening before the performance began. Curious deceptions, "Comus's philosophical performances," and the musical glasses, were also exhibited here.

Old Islington Taverns.

Less than half a century ago, the Old Red Lion Tavern, in St. John Street Road, the existence of which dates as far back as 1415, stood almost alone: it is shown in the centre distance of Hogarth's picture of _Evening_. Several eminent persons frequented this house: among others, Thomson, the author of _The Seasons_, Dr. Johnson, and Oliver Goldsmith. In a room here Thomas Paine wrote his infamous book, _The Rights of Man_, which Burke and Bishop Watson demolished. The parlour is hung with choice impressions of Hogarth's plates. The house has been almost entirely rebuilt.

Opposite the Red Lion, and surrounded by pens for holding cattle on their way to Smithfield, was an old building, called "Goose Farm:" it was let in suites of rooms; here lived Cawse, the painter; and in another suite, the mother and sister of Charles and Thomas Dibdin: the mother, a short and squab figure, came on among villagers and mobs at Sadler's Wells Theatre; but, failing to get engaged, she died in Clerkenwell Poorhouse. Vincent de Cleve, nicknamed Polly de Cleve, for his prying qualities, who was treasurer of Sadler's Wells for many years, occupied the second-floor rooms above the Dibdins. "Goose Yard," on the west of the road, serves to determine the site of the old farmhouse.

The public-house facing the iron gates leading to Sadler's Wells Theatre, with the sign of "The Clown," in honour of Grimaldi, who frequented the house, was, in his day, known as the King of Prussia, prior to which its sign had been that of the Queen of Hungary. It is to this tavern, or rather to an old one, upon the same site, that Goldsmith alludes in his _Essay on the Versitility of Popular Favour_. "An alehouse-keeper," says he, "near Islington, who had long lived at the sign of the French King, upon the commencement of the late war with France, pulled down his own sign, and put up that of the Queen of Hungary. Under the influence of her red race and golden sceptre, he continued to sell ale till she was no longer the favourite of his customers; he changed her, therefore, some time ago for the King of Prussia, which may probably change in turn for the man that shall be set up for vulgar admiration." The oldest sign by which this house has been distinguished was that of the Turk's Head.

At the Golden Ball, near Sadler's Wells, were sold by auction, in 1732, "The valuable curiosities, living creatures, &c., collected by the ingenious Mons. Boyle, of Islington;" including "a most strange living creature bearing a near resemblance of the human shape; he can utter some few sentences and give pertinant answers to many questions. There is likewise an Oriental oystershell of a prodigious weight and size, it measures from one extreme part to the other above three feet two inches over. The other curiosity is called the Philosopher's Stone, and is about the size of a pullet's egg, the colour of it is blue, and more beautiful than that of the ultramarine, which together with being finely polished is a most delightful entertainment to the eye. This unparalleled curiosity was clandestinely stolen out of the late Great Mogul's closet; this irreparable loss had so great an effect upon him that in a few months after he pined himself to death: there is a peculiar virtue in this precious stone, that principally relates to the fair sex, and will effectually signify, in the variation of its colour, by touching it, whether any of them have lost their virginity."

Of the Rising Sun, in the Islington Road, in _Mist's Journal_, February 9th, 1726, we read that for the ensuing Shrove Tuesday "will be a fine hog, barbyqu'd--_i.e._ roasted whole, with spice, and basted with Madeira wine, at the house where the ox was roasted whole at Christmas last."

In the Islington Road, too, near to Sadler's Wells, was Stokes's Amphitheatre, a low place, though resorted to by the nobility and gentry. It was devoted to bull and bear-baiting, dog-fighting, boxing, and sword-fighting; and in these terrible encounters, with naked swords, not blunted, women engaged each other to "a trial of skill;" they fought _à la mode_, in close fighting jackets, short petticoats, Holland drawers, white thread stockings and pumps; the stakes were from 10_l._ to 20_l._ Then we read of a day's diversion--a mad bull, dressed up with fireworks, to be baited; cudgel-playing for a silver cup, wrestling for a pair of leather breeches, &c.; a noble, large, and savage, incomparable Russian bear, baited to death by dogs; a bull, illuminated with fireworks turned loose; eating one hundred farthing pies, and drinking half a gallon of October beer, in less than eight minutes, &c.[45]

[45] Selected and abridged from Pinks's _History of Clerkenwell_, 1865.

The Oyster and Parched-Pea Club.

The ancient town of "Proud Preston," in Lancashire, from the year 1771 to 1841, a period of seventy years, boasted its "Oyster and Parched-Pea Club." It was at first limited to a dozen of the leading inhabitants, all of the same political party, and who now and then drank a Jacobite toast with a bumper. Its President was styled the Speaker. Among its staff of officers was one named _Oystericus_, whose duty it was to order and look after the oysters, which then came "by fleet" from London. There were also a Secretary, an Auditor, a Deputy Auditor, and a Poet Laureate or Rhymesmith, as he was generally termed; also the Cellarius, who had to provide port of the first quality; the Chaplain; the Surgeon-General, the Master of the Rolls (to look to the provision of bread-and-butter); the _Swig_-Master, whose title expresses his duty; Clerk of the Peas; a Minstrel, a Master of the Jewels, a Physician-in-Ordinary, &c. Among the Rules and Articles of the Club, were, "That _a barrel of oysters_ be provided every Monday night during the winter season, at the equal expense of the members; to be opened exactly at half-past seven o'clock." "Every member on having a son born, shall pay a gallon--for a daughter half-a-gallon--of port, to his brethren of the club, within a month of the birth of such child, at any public-house he shall choose." Amongst the archives of the club is the following curious entry, which is _not_ in a lady's hand:--

"The ladies of the Toughey [? Toffy] Club were rather disappointed at not receiving, by the hands of the respectable messenger, dispatched by the still more respectable members of the Oyster Club, a few oysters. They are just sitting down, after the fatigues of the evening, and take the liberty of reminding the worthy members of the Oyster Club, that oysters were _not made for man alone_. The ladies have sent to the venerable president a small quantity of sweets [? pieces of Everton toffy] to be distributed, as he in his wisdom, shall think fit."

In 1795 the club was threatened with a difficulty, owing, as stated by "Mr. Oystericus," to the day of the wagon--laden with oysters--leaving London, having changed. Sometimes, owing to a long frost, or other accident, no oysters arrived, and then the club must have solaced itself with "parched peas" and "particular port." Amongst the regalia of the club was a silver snuff-box, in the lid of which was set a piece of oak, part of the quarter-deck of Nelson's ship _Victory_. The Rhymesmith's effusions were laughable, as:--

"A something monastic appears among oysters,
For gregarious they live, yet they sleep in their cloisters;
'Tis observed, too, that oysters, when placed in their barrel,
Will never presume with their stations to quarrel.
From this let us learn what an oyster can tell us,
And we all shall be better and happier fellows.
Acquiesce in your stations, wherever you've got 'em;
Be not proud at the top, nor repine at the bottom;
But happiest they in the middle who live,
And have something to lend, and to spend, and to give."

"The bard would fain exchange, alack!
For precious gold, his crown of laurel;
His sackbut for a butt of sack;
His vocal skill for oyster barrel!"

These lines are from an Ode in 1806:--

"Nelson has made the seas our own,
Then gulp your well-fed oysters down,
And give the French the _shell_."

A Manchester Punch-House.

About the middle of the last century, a man named John Shaw, who had served in the army as a dragoon, having lost his wife and four or five children, solaced himself by opening a public-house in the Old Shambles, Manchester, in conducting which he was supported by a sturdy woman-servant, "Molly." John Shaw, having been much abroad, had acquired a knack of brewing punch, then a favourite beverage; and from this attraction, his house soon began to be frequented by the principal merchants and manufacturers of the town, and to be known as "John Shaw's Punch-house;" sign it had none. As Dr. Aikin says in 1795 that Shaw had then kept the house more than fifty years, we have here an institution dating prior to the memorable '45. Having made a comfortable competence, John Shaw, who was a lover of early hours, and, probably from his military training, a martinet in discipline, instituted the singular rule of closing his house to customers at eight o'clock in the evening. As soon as the clock struck the hour, John walked into the one public room of the house, and in a loud voice and imperative tone, proclaimed "Eight o'clock, gentlemen; eight o'clock." After this no entreaties for more liquor, however urgent or suppliant, could prevail over the inexorable landlord. If the announcement of the hour did not at once produce the desired effect, John had two modes of summary ejectment. He would call to Molly to bring his horsewhip, and crack it in the ears and near the persons of his guests; and should this fail, Molly was ordered to bring her pail, with which she speedily flooded the floor, and drove the guests out wet-shod. Tradition says that the punch brewed by John Shaw was something very delicious. In mixing it, he used a long-shanked silver table-spoon, like a modern gravy-spoon, which, for convenience, he carried in a side pocket, like that in which a carpenter carries his two-foot rule. Punch was usually served in small bowls (that is, less than the "crown bowls" of later days) of two sizes and prices; a shilling bowl being termed "a P of punch"--"a Q of punch" denoting a sixpenny bowl. The origin of these slang names is unknown. Can it have any reference to the old saying--"Mind your P's and Q's?" If a gentleman came alone and found none to join him, he called for "a Q." If two or more joined, they called for "a P;" but seldom more was spent than about sixpence per head. Though eccentric and austere, John won the respect and esteem of his customers, by his strict integrity and steadfast adherence to his rules.

For his excellent regulation as to the hour of closing, he is said to have frequently received the thanks of the ladies of Manchester, whose male friends were thus induced to return home early and sober. At length this nightly meeting of friends and acquaintances at John Shaw's grew into an organised club of a convivial character, bearing his name. Its objects were not political; yet, John and his guests being all of the same political party, there was sufficient unanimity among them to preserve harmony and concord. John's roof sheltered none but stout, thorough-going Tories of the old school, genuine "Church and King" men; nay, even "rank Jacobites." If, perchance, from ignorance of the character of the house, any unhappy Whig, any unfortunate partisan of the house of Hanover, any known member of a dissenting conventicle, strayed into John Shaw's, he found himself in a worse condition than that of a solitary wasp in a beehive.

The war played the mischief with John's inimitable brew: limes became scarce; lemons were substituted; at length of these too, and of the old pine-apple rum of Jamaica, the supplies were so frequently cut off by French privateers, that a few years before John Shaw's death, the innovation of "grog" in place of punch struck a heavy blow at the old man's heart. Even autocrats must die, and at length, on the 26th January, 1796, John Shaw was gathered to his fathers, at the ripe old age of eighty-three, having ruled his house upwards of fifty-eight years; namely, from the year 1738. But though John Shaw ceased to rule, the club still lived and flourished. His successor in the house carried on the same "early-closing movement," with the aid of the same old servant Molly. At length the house was pulled down, and the club was very migratory for some years. It finally settled down in 1852, in the "Spread Eagle" Hotel, Corporation Street, where it still prospers and flourishes.

In 1834, John Shaw's absorbed into its venerable bosom another club of similar character, entitled "The Sociable Club." The society possesses among its relics oil-paintings of John Shaw and his maid Molly, and of several presidents of past years. A few years ago, a singular old china punchbowl, which had been the property of John Shaw himself, was restored to the club as its rightful property by the descendant of a trustee. It is a barrel-shaped vessel, suspended on a stillage, with a metal tap at one end, whence to draw the liquor, which it received through a large opening or bung-hole. Besides assembling every evening, winter and summer, between five and eight o'clock, a few of the members dine together every Saturday at 2 P.M.; and they have still an annual dinner, when old friends and members drink old wine, toast old toasts, tell old stories, or "fight their battles o'er again." Such is John Shaw's club--nearly a century and a quarter old.--_Abridged from the Book of Days._

"The Blue Key."

Some fifty years since, there was at Bolton a little club of manufacturers, all of them old men, who met regularly in the forenoon at the "Millstone Inn," to drink their single glass of ale and compare notes on the news of the day. They established this curious custom among themselves. There was no great number of clerks and assistants in those days, and when a manufacturer left his counting-room, or warehouse, he locked the door and carried off the key, generally a pretty large one. Now, this Millstone Club preferred in cold weather to have their ale _with the chill off_. To effect this, each member put the bow of his warehouse-key into the fire, and when sufficiently warm, plunged it into his glass of ale. A long continuance of this custom caused the handle of each key to acquire a dark blue colour, and this "blue key" became a kind of emblem or talisman of the club friends.--_French's Life of Samuel Crompton._

Brandy in Tea.

Miss Berry relates, among her earliest Brighton reminiscences, the following odd story of old Lady Clermont, who was a frequent guest at the Pavilion. "Her physician had recommended a moderate use of stimulants to supply that energy which was deficient in her system, and brandy had been suggested in a prescribed quantity, to be mixed with her tea. I remember well having my curiosity excited by this, to me, novel form of taking medicine, and holding on by the back of a chair to watch the _modus operandi_. Very much to my astonishment, the patient held a liqueur bottle over a cup of tea and began to pour out its contents, with a peculiar purblind look, upon the back of a teaspoon. Presently she seemed suddenly to become aware of what she was about, turned up the spoon the right way, and carefully measured and added the quantity to which she had been restricted. The tea so strongly "laced" she then drank with great apparent gusto. Of course it was no longer "the cup that cheers but not inebriates;" but what seemed inexplicable to my ingenuous mind was the unvarying recurrence of the same mistake of presenting the back of the spoon instead of the front. I was aware that it did not arise from defect of sight. Lady Clermont could see almost as distinctly as myself. Nevertheless, the cordial was permitted to accumulate in the tea till the old lady chose to adopt a better measurer, and then she most conscientiously took care not to exceed the number of teaspoonfuls the obliging doctor had prescribed. I was not then aware that this was a case in which the remedy was the reverse of worse than the disease. Lady Clermont liked brandy as a medicine, and made this bungle in measuring it by way of innocent device for securing a much larger dose than she had been ordered. The gravity with which she noticed her apparent mistake, without attempting to correct it, and her little exclamation of surprise, so invariably uttered, amused me so much that when she quitted the Pavilion, the best part of my day's entertainment seemed to have departed with her."

"The Wooden Spoon."

The ludicrous sobriquet of the Ministerial Wooden Spoon originated as follows:--Towards the close of each Session of Parliament, a list of the votes of those Members of the Government who are in the House of Commons is produced at the Fish Dinner then given; and he who is lowest on the list is probably regarded by his Cambridge friends, at least, as the _wooden spoon_. During the administration of Sir Robert Peel, on one of these anniversaries, when the ministerial party was starting for Greenwich, one of them, in passing through Hungerford Market, bought a child's penny mug and a wooden spoon. After dinner, when the list of votes was read out, the penny mug, on which was painted "James," or "For a good boy," was presented, with all due solemnity, to Sir James Graham, and the wooden spoon to Sir William Follet. This is thought to be the origin of the above strange custom.

A Tipsy Village.

Livingston, in a recent journey in Africa, fell in with the Manganja savages, as low as any he had ever met with, except Bushmen; yet they cultivate large tracts of land for grain, which they convert into _beer_! It is not very intoxicating, but when they consume large quantities, they do become a little elevated. When a family brews, a large number of friends and neighbours are invited to drink, and bring their hoes with them; and they let off the excitement by hoeing their friend's field. At other times they consume large quantities of beer, like regular topers, at home. Dr. Livingston _in one village found all the people tipsy together_: the men tried to induce the women to run away for shame, but the ladies, too, were "a little overcome," and laughed at the idea of their running. The village-doctor, however, arranged matters by bringing a large pot of the liquid, with the intention of reducing the travellers to the general level.

* * * * *

Odd things have been said of Gin. Burke, in one of his _spirituel_ flights, exclaimed, "Let the thunders of the pulpit descend upon drunkenness, I for one stand up for gin." This is a sort of paraphrase on Pope's couplet:

"This calls the church to deprecate our sin,
And hurls the thunder of our laws on gin."

What an Epicure Eats in his Life-Time.

In a life of sixty-five years' duration, with a moderate daily allowance of mutton, for instance, an epicure will have consumed a flock of 350 sheep; and altogether for dinner alone, adding to his mutton a reasonable allowance of potatoes and other vegetables, with a pint of wine daily for thirty years of this period, above thirty tons of solids and liquids must have passed through his stomach. Soyer, in his practical work, _The Modern Housewife_, says:--

Take seventy years of the life of an epicure, beyond which age of that class of _bon vivants_ arrive, and even above eighty, still in the full enjoyment of degustation, &c. (for example, Talleyrand, Cambacères, Lord Sefton, &c.); if the first of the said epicures, when entering on the tenth spring of his extraordinary career, had been placed on an eminence--say the top of Primrose Hill--and had had exhibited before his infantine eyes the enormous quantity of food his then insignificant person would destroy before he attained his seventy-first year--first, he would believe it must be a delusion: then, secondly, he would inquire where the money could come from to purchase so much luxurious extravagance?

Imagine on the top of the above-mentioned hill, a rushlight of a boy just entering his tenth year, surrounded with the _recherché_ provision and delicacies claimed by his rank and wealth, taking merely the consumption of his daily meals. By close calculating, he would be surrounded and gazed at by the following number of quadrupeds, birds, fishes, &c.:--By no less than 30 oxen, 200 sheep, 100 calves, 200 lambs, 50 pigs; in poultry, 1,200 fowls, 300 turkeys, 150 geese, 400 ducklings, 263 pigeons, 1,400 partridges, pheasants, and grouse; 600 woodcocks and snipes; 600 wild ducks, widgeon, and teal; 450 plovers, ruffes, and reeves; 800 quails, ortolans, and dotterels, and a few guillemots, and other foreign birds; also, 500 hares and rabbits, 40 deer, 120 guinea fowl, 10 peacocks, and 360 wild fowl. In the way of fish, 120 turbot, 140 salmon, 120 cod, 260 trout, 400 mackerel, 300 whitings, 800 soles and slips, and 400 flounders; 400 red mullet, 200 eels, 150 haddocks, 400 herrings, 5,000 smelts, and some 100,000 of those delicious silvery whitebait, besides a few hundred species of fresh-water fishes. In shell-fish, 20 turtles, 30,000 oysters, 1,500 lobsters or crabs, 300,000 prawns, shrimps, sardines, and anchovies. In the way of fruit, about 500lb. of grapes, 360lb. of pine-apples, 600 peaches, 1,400 apricots, 240 melons, and some 100,000 plums, greengages, apples, pears, and some millions of cherries, strawberries, raspberries, currants, mulberries, and an abundance of other small fruit, _viz._ walnuts, chestnuts, dry figs, and plums. In vegetables of all kinds, 5,475lb. weight; about 2,434-3/4lb. of butter, 684lb. of cheese, 21,000 eggs, 100 ditto of plovers. Of bread, 4-1/2 tons, half-a-ton of salt and pepper, near 2-1/8 tons of sugar; and if he had happened to be a bibacious boy, he could have formed a fortification or moat round the said hill with the liquids he would have to partake of to facilitate the digestion of the above-named provisions, which would amount to no less than 11,673-3/4 gallons which may be taken as below:--49 hogsheads of wine, 1,368-3/4 gallons of beer, 584 gallons of spirits, 342 ditto of liqueur, 2,394 ditto of coffee, cocoa, tea, &c., 304 gallons of milk, 2,736 gallons of water--all of which would actually protect him and his anticipated property from any young thief or fellow-schoolboy. This calculation has for its basis the medium scale of the regular meals of the day, which, in sixty years, amounts to no less than 33-3/4 tons weight of meat, farinaceous food, and vegetables, &c.; out of which the above are in detail the probable delicacies that would be selected by an epicure through life.

Epitaph on Dr. William Maginn.

Dr. Maginn, it is to be regretted, died at an early age, of consumption. The following epitaph, written for him by his friend, John G. Lockhart, conveys a tolerably correct idea of his habits:--

WALTON-ON-THAMES, AUGUST, 1842.

Here, early to bed, lies kind William Maginn,
Who, with genius, wit, learning, life's trophies to win,
Had neither great lord nor rich cit of his kin,
Nor discretion to set himself up as to tin;
So, his portion soon spent, like the poor heir of Lynn--
He turned author ere yet there was beard on his chin,
And, whoever was out, or whoever was in,
For your Tories his fine Irish brains he would spin;
Who received prose and rhyme with a promising grin--
"Go a-head, you queer fish, and more power to your fin,"
But to save from starvation stirred never a pin.
Light for long was his heart, though his breeches were thin,
Else his acting for certain was equal to Quin;
But at last he was beat, and sought help of the bin
(All the same to the doctor, from claret to gin),
Which led swiftly to jail, and consumption therein.
It was much, when the bones rattled loose in the skin,
He got leave to die here, out of Babylon's din.
Barring drink and the girls, I ne'er heard a sin:
Many worse, better few, than bright, broken Maginn.

It is not generally known that Dr. Maginn wrote for Knight and Lacey, the publishers, in Paternoster Row, a novel embodying the strange story of the Polstead murder, in 1828, under the title of the _Red Barn_. The work was published anonymously, in numbers, and by its sale the publishers cleared many hundreds of pounds. Dr. Maginn's learned and witty essays, in verse and prose, scattered over our monthly magazines during nearly a quarter of a century, merit collective republication.

Talking of odd epitaphs, that upon Beazeley, the architect and dramatist, was written, or rather spoken, by Theodore Hook, as follows:--

"Here lies Sam Beazeley,
Who lived hard and died easily."

Greenwich Dinners.

The Hon. Grantley Berkeley, in his _Life and Recollections_, relates some amusing anecdotes of these pleasant gatherings:--

"On two occasions," he says, "I remember that the late Lord Rokeby went to Greenwich behind a pair of posters, and that in coming back the postboy, excessively drunk, upset him on the road. He was much too good-natured to insist on the man's discharge, and, perhaps because he liked a glass of wine himself, he was inclined to forgive a lad overcome by porter; so the carriage was righted and no notice taken of the matter. It so happened that some time after, Lord Rokeby had again to go to Greenwich, and when his carriage and pair of posters came to the door, he saw in the saddle the same postboy who had brought him to grief.

"'Oh, you're there, are you?' he said, in that dear, good-natured way he had of speaking. 'Now mind, my good fellow, you had your jollification last time; it's my turn now, so I shall get drunk, and you must keep sober.'

"The postboy touched his hat in acquiescence with this reasonable proposition; he brought back my friend in safety, at all events, and, I dare say, in a very happy state of mind."

The writer also remembers a dinner at the Ship, where there were a good many ladies, and when D'Orsay was of the party, during which his attention was directed to a centre pane of glass in the bay window over the Thames, where some one had written in large letters with a diamond, D'Orsay's name in improper conjunction with a celebrated German _danseuse_ then fulfilling an engagement at the Opera. With characteristic readiness and _sang-froid_, he took an orange from a dish near him, and making some trifling remark on the excellence of the fruit, tossed it up once or twice, catching it in his hand again. Presently, as if by accident, he gave it a wider cant, and sent it through the window, knocking the offensive words out of sight into the Thames.

Lord Pembroke's Port Wine.

Lord Palmerston (who, when in office, was accustomed to employ his pleasantries as _paratonnerres_ for troublesome visitors), one day related the following anecdote to a deputation of gentlemen who waited upon him to urge the reduction of the Wine-duties. Referring to the question of adulterations, "I remember," said his lordship, "my grandfather, Lord Pembroke, when he placed wine before his guests, said--'There, gentlemen, is my champagne, my claret, &c. I am no great judge, and I give you this on the authority of my wine-merchant; but I can answer for my port, for I made it myself.' I still have his receipt, which I look on as a curiosity; but I confess I have never ventured to try it."

The following is Lord Pembroke's veritable receipt:--Eight gallons of genuine port wine, forty gallons of cider, brandy to fill the hogsheads. Elder-tops will give it the roughness, and cochineal whatever strength of colouring you please. The quantity made should not be less than a hogshead: it should be kept fully two years in wood, and as long in bottle before it is used.

A tremendous Bowl of Punch.

We find the following recorded upon the sober authority of the veteran _Gentleman's Magazine_:--

On the 25th of October, 1694, a bowl of punch was made at the Right Hon. Edward Russell's house, when he was Captain-General Commander-in-Chief of his Majesty's forces in the Mediterranean Sea. It was made in a fountain in a garden in the middle of four walks, all covered overhead with orange and lemon-trees; and in every walk was a table, the whole length of it covered with cold collations, &c. In the said fountain were the following ingredients, namely:--

4 hogsheads brandy.
25,000 lemons.
20 gallons lime-juice.
1,300 weight of fine white Lisbon sugar.
5lbs. grated nutmegs.
300 toasted biscuits.
One pipe of dry mountain Malaga.

Over the fountain was a large canopy to keep off the rain, and there was built on purpose a little boat, wherein was a boy belonging to the fleet, who rowed round the fountain and filled the cups for the company; and, in all probability, more than 6,000 men drank thereof.

_MISCELLANEA._

Long Sir Thomas Robinson.

There were two Sir Thomas Robinsons alive at the same time. The one above mentioned was called _Long_ as a distinguishing characteristic. Some one told Lord Chesterfield that _Long_ Sir Thomas Robinson was very ill. "I am sorry to hear it."--"He is dying by inches."--"Then it will be some time before he dies," was the answer.

One of Sir Thomas Robinson's freaks was to go to Paris in his hunting suit, wearing a postilion's cap, a tight green jacket, and buckskin breeches. In this strange dress he joined a large company at dinner; when a French abbé, unable to restrain his curiosity, burst out with, "Excuse me, sir, are you the famous Robinson Crusoe so remarkable in history?"

Lord Chesterfield's Will.

The will of the celebrated Lord Chesterfield contains this prelude:--"Satiated with the pompous follies of this life, of which I have had an uncommon share, I would have no posthumous ones displayed at my funeral, and therefore desire to be buried in the next burying-place to the place where I shall die, and limit the whole expense of my funeral to 100_l._" Shortly after comes the following clause:--"The several devises and bequests hereinbefore and hereinafter given by me to and in favour of my said godson, Philip Stanhope, shall be subject to the condition and restriction hereinafter mentioned--that is to say, that in case my said godson, Philip Stanhope, shall at any time hereafter keep or be concerned in the keeping of any race-horse or race-horses, or pack or packs of hounds, or reside one night at Newmarket, that infamous seminary of iniquity and ill-manners, during the course of the races there, or shall resort to the said races, or shall lose in any one day at any game or bet whatsoever the sum of 500_l._, then, and in any of the cases aforesaid, it is my express will that he, my said godson, shall forfeit and pay out of my estate the sum of 5,000_l._ to and for the use of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, for every such offence or misdemeanour as is above specified, to be recovered by action for debt in any of his Majesty's courts of record at Westminster." The will entails a similar penalty on the letting of Chesterfield House. The late Lord Chesterfield, who was son of the man on whom these liabilities were imposed, certainly let Chesterfield House; and had, we will venture to say, passed some nights at the "infamous seminary of iniquity and ill-manners." His ancestor vested the infliction of the penalty in the reverend hands of the Dean and Chapter, to mark, by a sort of Parthian dart, his sense of the grasping spirit he considered they had evinced in their dealings with him respecting the land on which his house was built, and to show what a rigid enaction of the penalty imposed he anticipated from such sharp practitioners.

An Odd Family.

In the reign of William III., there resided at Ipswich a family which, from the number of peculiarities belonging to it, was distinguished by the name of the "Odd Family." Every event remarkably good or bad happened to this family on an odd day of the month, and every member had something odd in his or her person, manner, or behaviour. The very letters in their Christian names always happened to be an odd number: the husband's name was Peter, and the wife's name Raboh: they had seven children, all boys, _viz._ Solomon, Roger, James, Matthew, Jonas, David, and Ezekiel: the husband had but one leg, his wife but one arm: Solomon was born blind of one eye, and Roger lost his sight by accident; James had his left ear bit off by a boy in a quarrel, and Matthew was born with only three fingers on his right hand; Jonas had a stump foot, and David was hump-backed. All these, except the latter, were remarkably short, while Ezekiel was six feet one inch high at the age of nineteen; the stump-footed Jonas and the hump-backed David got wives of fortune, but no girls in the borough would listen to the addresses of their brothers. The husband's hair was as black as jet, and the wife's remarkably white; yet every one of the children's hair was red. The husband was killed by accidently falling into a deep pit in the year 1701; and his wife refusing all kinds of sustenance, died five days after him, and they were buried in one grave. In the year 1703, Ezekiel enlisted as a grenadier; and although he was afterwards wounded in twenty-three places, he recovered. Roger, James, Matthew, Jonas, and David, it appears by the church registers, died in different places, and were buried on the same day, in the year 1713; and Solomon and Ezekiel were drowned together in crossing the Thames in the year 1723. Such a collection of odd circumstances never occurred before in one family.--_Clarke's Account of Ipswich._

An Eccentric Host.