The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon
and predictions; and has the prophecies of Robert Nixon and Mother
Shipton by heart. No man can make so much out of an eclipse, or even
an unusually dark day; and he shook the tail of the last comet over the
heads of his customers and disciples until they were nearly frightened
out of their wits. He has lately got hold of a popular legend or
prophecy, on which he has been unusually eloquent. There has been a
saying current among the ancient sibyls, who treasure up these things,
that when the grasshopper on the top of the Exchange shook hands with
the dragon on the top of Bow Church steeple, fearful events would take
place. This strange conjunction, it seems, has as strangely come to
pass. The same architect has been engaged lately on the repairs of the
cupola of the Exchange and the steeple of Bow Church; and, fearful to
relate, the dragon and the grasshopper actually lie, cheek by jole, in
the yard of his workshop.
“Others,” as Mr. Skryme is accustomed to say, “may go star-gazing, and
look for conjunctions in the heavens, but here is a conjunction on the
earth, near at home and under our own eyes, which surpasses all
the signs and calculations of astrologers.” Since these portentous
weathercocks have thus laid their heads together, wonderful events had
already occurred. The good old king, notwithstanding that he had lived
eighty-two years, had all at once given up the ghost; another king had
mounted the throne; a royal duke had died suddenly; another, in France,
had been murdered; there had been radical meetings in all parts of the
kingdom; the bloody scenes at Manchester; the great plot in Cato Street;
and, above all, the queen had returned to England! All these sinister
events are recounted by Mr. Skyrme with a mysterious look and a dismal
shake of the head; and being taken with his drugs, and associated in the
minds of his auditors with stuffed sea-monsters, bottled serpents, and
his own visage, which is a title-page of tribulation, they have spread
great gloom through the minds of the people of Little Britain. They
shake their heads whenever they go by Bow Church, and observe that they
never expected any good to come of taking down that steeple, which in
old times told nothing but glad tidings, as the history of Whittington
and his Cat bears witness.
The rival oracle of Little Britain is a substantial cheesemonger,
who lives in a fragment of one of the old family mansions, and is as
magnificently lodged as a round-bellied mite in the midst of one of his
own Cheshires. Indeed, he is a man of no little standing and importance,
and his renown extends through Huggin lane and Lad lane, and even unto
Aldermanbury. His opinion is very much taken in affairs of state, having
read the Sunday papers for the last half century, together with
the Gentleman’s Magazine, Rapin’s History of England, and the Naval
Chronicle. His head is stored with invaluable maxims which have borne
the test of time and use for centuries. It is his firm opinion that
“it is a moral impossible,” so long as England is true to herself, that
anything can shake her: and he has much to say on the subject of the
national debt, which, somehow or other, he proves to be a great national
bulwark and blessing. He passed the greater part of his life in the
purlieus of Little Britain until of late years, when, having become
rich and grown into the dignity of a Sunday cane, he begins to take his
pleasure and see the world. He has therefore made several excursions to
Hampstead, Highgate, and other neighboring towns, where he has passed
whole afternoons in looking back upon the metropolis through a telescope
and endeavoring to descry the steeple of St. Bartholomew’s. Not a
stage-coachman of Bull-and-Mouth Street but touches his hat as he
passes, and he is considered quite a patron at the coach-office of the
Goose and Gridiron, St. Paul’s Churchyard. His family have been very
urgent for him to make an expedition to Margate, but he has great doubts
of those new gimcracks, the steamboats, and indeed thinks himself too
advanced in life to undertake sea-voyages.
Little Britain has occasionally its factions and divisions, and party
spirit ran very high at one time, in consequence of two rival “Burial
Societies” being set up in the place. One held its meeting at the Swan
and Horse-Shoe, and was patronized by the cheesemonger; the other at the
Cock and Crown, under the auspices of the apothecary: it is needless to
say that the latter was the most flourishing. I have passed an evening
or two at each, and have acquired much valuable information as to
the best mode of being buried, the comparative merits of churchyards,
together with divers hints on the subject of patent iron coffins. I have
heard the question discussed in all its bearings as to the legality
of prohibiting the latter on account of their durability. The feuds
occasioned by these societies have happily died of late; but they were
for a long time prevailing themes of controversy, the people of Little
Britain being extremely solicitous of funeral honors and of lying
comfortably in their graves.
Besides these two funeral societies there is a third of quite a
different cast, which tends to throw the sunshine of good-humor over the
whole neighborhood. It meets once a week at a little old-fashioned
house kept by a jolly publican of the name of Wagstaff, and bearing for
insignia a resplendent half-moon, with a most seductive bunch of grapes.
The whole edifice is covered with inscriptions to catch the eye of the
thirsty wayfarer; such as “Truman, Hanbury, and Co’s Entire,” “Wine,
Rum, and Brandy Vaults,” “Old Tom, Rum, and Compounds,” etc. This indeed
has been a temple of Bacchus and Momus from time immemorial. It has
always been in the family of the Wagstaffs, so that its history is
tolerably preserved by the present landlord. It was much frequented by
the gallants and cavalieros of the reign of Elizabeth, and was looked
into now and then by the wits of Charles the Second’s day. But what
Wagstaff principally prides himself upon is that Henry the Eighth, in
one of his nocturnal rambles, broke the head of one of his ancestors
with his famous walking-staff. This, however, is considered as rather a
dubious and vain-glorious boast of the landlord.
The club which now holds its weekly sessions here goes by the name of
“the Roaring Lads of Little Britain.” They abound in old catches, glees,
and choice stories that are traditional in the place and not to be met
with in any other part of the metropolis. There is a madcap undertaker
who is inimitable at a merry song, but the life of the club, and
indeed the prime wit of Little Britain, is bully Wagstaff himself. His
ancestors were all wags before him, and he has inherited with the inn
a large stock of songs and jokes, which go with it from generation to
generation as heirlooms. He is a dapper little fellow, with bandy legs
and pot belly, a red face with a moist merry eye, and a little shock of
gray hair behind. At the opening of every club night he is called in to
sing his “Confession of Faith,” which is the famous old drinking trowl
from “Gammer Gurton’s Needle.” He sings it, to be sure, with many
variations, as he received it from his father’s lips; for it has been a
standing favorite at the Half-Moon and Bunch of Grapes ever since it was
written; nay, he affirms that his predecessors have often had the honor
of singing it before the nobility and gentry at Christmas mummeries,
when Little Britain was in all its glory.*
* As mine host of the Half-Moon’s Confession of Faith may
not be familiar to the majority of readers, and as it is a
specimen of the current songs of Little Britain, I subjoin
it in its original orthography. I would observe that the
whole club always join in the chorus with a fearful thumping
on the table and clattering of pewter pots.
I cannot eate but lytle meate,
My stomacke is not good,
But sure I thinke that I can drinke
With him that weares a hood.
Though I go bare, take ye no care,
I nothing am a colde,
I stuff my skyn so full within,
Of joly good ale and olde.
Chorus. Backe and syde go bare, go bare,
Both foote and hand go colde,
But, belly, God send thee good ale ynoughe,
Whether it be new or olde.
I have no rost, but a nut brawne toste
And a crab laid in the fyre;
A little breade shall do me steade,
Much breade I not desyre.
No frost nor snow, nor winde, I trowe,
Can hurte mee, if I wolde,
I am so wrapt and throwly lapt
Of joly good ale and olde.
Chorus. Backe and syde go bare, go bare, etc.
And Tyb my wife, that, as her lyfe,
Loveth well good ale to seeke,
Full oft drynkes shee, tyll ye may see,
The teares run downe her cheeke.
Then doth shee trowle to me the bowle,
Even as a mault-worme sholde,
And sayth, sweete harte, I took my parte
Of this jolly good ale and olde.
Chorus. Backe and syde go bare, go bare, etc.
Now let them drynke, tyll they nod and winke,
Even as goode fellowes sholde doe,
They shall not mysse to have the blisse,
Good ale doth bring men to;
And all poore soules that have scowred bowles,
Or have them lustily trolde,
God save the lyves of them and their wives,
Whether they be yonge or olde.
Chorus. Backe and syde go bare, go bare, etc.
It would do one’s heart good to hear, on a club night, the shouts of
merriment, the snatches of song, and now and then the choral bursts of
half a dozen discordant voices, which issue from this jovial mansion. At
such times the street is lined with listeners, who enjoy a delight equal
to that of gazing into a confectioner’s window or snuffing up the steams
of a cook-shop.
There are two annual events which produce great stir and sensation in
Little Britain: these are St. Bartholomew’s Fair and the Lord Mayor’s
Day. During the time of the Fair, which is held in the adjoining regions
of Smithfield, there is nothing going on but gossiping and gadding
about. The late quiet streets of Little Britain are overrun with an
irruption of strange figures and faces; every tavern is a scene of rout
and revel. The fiddle and the song are heard from the taproom morning,
noon, and night; and at each window may be seen some group of boon
companions, with half-shut eyes, hats on one side, pipe in mouth and
tankard in hand, fondling and prosing, and singing maudlin songs over
their liquor. Even the sober decorum of private families, which I must
say is rigidly kept up at other times among my neighbors, is no proof
against this saturnalia. There is no such thing as keeping maid-servants
within doors. Their brains are absolutely set madding with Punch and
the Puppet-Show, the Flying Horses, Signior Polito, the Fire-Eater, the
celebrated Mr. Paap, and the Irish Giant. The children too lavish all
their holiday money in toys and gilt gingerbread, and fill the house
with the Lilliputian din of drums, trumpets, and penny whistles.
But the Lord Mayor’s Day is the great anniversary. The Lord Mayor
is looked up to by the inhabitants of Little Britain as the greatest
potentate upon earth, his gilt coach with six horses as the summit of
human splendor, and his procession, with all the sheriffs and aldermen
in his train, as the grandest of earthly pageants. How they exult in
the idea that the king himself dare not enter the city without first
knocking at the gate of Temple Bar and asking permission of the Lord
Mayor; for if he did, heaven and earth! there is no knowing what might