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'll 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 Pelican 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. Cat. 4. A curious Beast bred from a Lioness, and like a foreign Wild 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 Hyenas, 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 Hyenas 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. Matthews's Bartholomew Fair showmen 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 Jef frey 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 cronics; and, in the snug little parlour behind the bar, of which Dicky had the entrée, their hob-and-nobbings struck cut 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 ecstasy 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 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, Pis 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. cator 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 turned 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; The Charlie quite, I've, honour bright, sent packing for a cheat; Last Greenwich Fair we wedded were; she's won, and we are one; 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 shown in England be fore 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 Cruik shank'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 Buck-horse 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 bellies 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. Shakspeare 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.' + 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 horn back. 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 fe. males 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.' berwell and Wandsworth† are fast going the way of all fairs. Bow, Edmonton, Highgate,§ West end (Hampstead,) and Brook Green (Hammersmith) Fairs, with their swings, roundabouts, spiced gingerbread, penny-trumpets, and half-penny rattles are passed away. The showmen and Merry Andrews of Moorfields are no more; the A petty session (how very petty!) was held at Union Hall on the 4th July, 1823, in order to put down Camberwell Fair, which is as old as Domesday Book. Shaks. peare has truly described these ill-conditioned, peddling, meddling Dogberry's. You wear out a good wholesome forenoon in hearing a cause between an orange wife and a fusset-seller; and then rejourn the controversy of three pence to a second day of audience. When you speak best to the purpose, it is not worth the wagging of your beards, and your beards deserve not so honourable a grave, as to stuff a botcher's cushion, or to be entombed in an ass's pack-saddle.' + Wandsworth Fair exhibited sixty years ago, Mount Vesuvius, or the burning mountain by moonlight, rope, and hornpipe-dancing; a forcst, with the humours of lion-catching; tumbling by the young Polander from Sadler's Wells; several diverting comic songs; a humourous dialogue between Mr. Swatchall and his wife; sparring matches; the Siege of Belgrade, &c, all for three-pence! On Whit-Monday, 1840, Messrs. Nelson and Lee sent down a theatrical caravan to Wandsworth Fair, and were moderately remunerated. But the Grand Victoria Booth' was the rallying point of attraction. Its refectory was worthy of the abiquitous Mr. Epps, of hamı, beef, tongue, polony, portable soup, and sheep's trotter memory! Cold beef and ham, hot ribs of lamb, mock-turtle soup that's portable, In the year 1820, the keeper of a menagerie at Edmonton Fair walked into the den of a lioness, and nursed her cubs. He then paid his respects to the husband and father, a magnificent Barbary Lion. After the usual complimentary greetings between them, the man somewhat roughly thrust open the monster's jaws, and put h's head into its mouth, giving at the same time a shout that made it tremble. This he did with impunity. But in less than two months afterwards, when repeating the same exhibition at a fair in the provinces, he cried, like the starling, I can't get out!—I can't get out!' demanding at the same time if the lion wagged its tail? The lion, thinking the joke had been played quite often enough, did wag its tail, and roared Heads! The keeper fell a victim to his temerity. 'July 2, 1744.-This is to give notice that Highgate Fair will be kept on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday next, in a pleasant shady walk in the middle of the town. On Wednesday a pig will be turned loose, and he that takes it up by the tail and throws it over his head, shall have it. To pay two-pence entrance, and no less than twelve to enter. 'On Thursday a match will be run by two men, a hundred yards in two sacks, for a large sum. And, to encourage the sport, the landlord at the Mitre will give a pair of gloves, to be run for by six men, the winner to have them. And on Friday a hat, value ten shillings, will be run for by men twelve times round the Green; to pay one shilling entrance; no less than four to start; as many as will may enter, and the second man to have all the money above four. No one to be entitled to the hat that never won that value.' The Hampstead Fair Rainble; or the World going quite Mad. To the tune of "Brother Soldier dost hear of the News." London: Printed for J. Bland, near Holbourn, 1708. A curious broadside. Moorfields, during holiday seasons, was an epitome of Bartlemy Fair. Its booths and scaffold had flags flying on the top. A stage near the Windmill Tavern, opposite Old Bethlem, was famous for its grinning-matches. Moorfields had one novel peculiarity, viz. that whilst the Merry Andrew was practising his buffooneries and legerdemain tricks in one quarter, the itinerant Methodist preacher was holding forth in another. Foote makes his ranting parson exclaim, VOL. VII. 'Near the mad mansions of Moorfields I'll bawl, 3 |