April 11.

St. Mary Islington Old Church
“Merry Islington.”

Islington Parish Dinner.

In March, an anonymous correspondent obligingly enclosed, and begged my acceptance of a ticket, for a parish dinner at Islington, on the 11th of April, 1738. It would have been rudeness to decline the civility, and as the editor was not prepared to join the guests at the great dinner, “not where they eat, but where they are eaten,” he appropriates the ticket to the use for which it was intended by the donor, T. H. of St. John-street.

It would do the reader’s heart good to see this ticket—“printed from a copper plate,” ten inches high, by seven inches wide—as large as a lord mayor’s ticket, and looking much better, because engraved by Toms, a fine firm artist of “the good old school,” which taught truth as an essential, and prohibited refinements, not existing in nature or sensible objects, as detraction of character.

It would do the reader’s heart good, I say, to see the dinner ticket I am now looking at. First, above the invitation—which is all that the lover of a dinner first sees—and therefore, because nothing precedes it, “above all,”—is a capital view of the old parish church, and the churchyard, wherein “lie the remains” of most of the company who attended the parish dinner—it being as certain that the remains of the rest of the company, occupy other tenements, of “the house appointed for all living,” as that they all lived, and ate and drank, and were merry.

This is not a melancholy, but a natural view. It may be said, there is “a time for all things,” but if there be any time, wherein we fear to entertain death, we are not fully prepared to receive him as we ought. It is true, that with “the cup of kindness” at our lips, we do not expect his friendly “shake,” before we finish the draught, yet the liquor will not be the worse for our remembering that his is a previous engagement; and, as we do not know the hour of appointment, we ought to be ready at all hours. The business of life is to die.

I am not a member of a parish club, but I have sometimes thought, if I could “do as others do,” and “go to club,” I should elect to belong to an old one, which preserved the minutes of its proceedings, and its muniments, from the commencement. My first, and perhaps last, serious motion, would be, “That each anniversary dinner ticket of the club, from the first ticket to the last issued, should be framed and glazed, and hung on the walls of the club room, in chronological order.” Such a series would be a never-failing source of interest and amusement. If the parish club of Islington exists, a collection of its tickets so disposed, might be regarded as annals of peculiar worth, especially if many of its predecessors in the annual office of “stewards for the dinner,” maintained the consequence of the club in the eyes of the parish, by respectability of execution and magnitude in the anniversary ticket, commensurate with that of the year 1738, with Toms’s view of the old parish church and churchyard. I regret that these cannot be here given in the same size as on the ticket; the best that can be effected, is a reduced fac-simile of the original, which is accomplished in the accompanying [engraving]. Let any one who knows the new church of Islington, compare it with the present view of the old church, and say which church he prefers. At this time, however, the present church may be more suitable to Islington, grown, or grown up to, as it is, until it is a part of London; but who would not wish it still a village, with the old edifice for its parish church. That Islington is now more opulent and more respectable, may be very true; but opulence monopolizes, and respectability is often a vain show in the stead of happiness, and a mere flaunt on the ruins of comfort. The remark is, of course, general, and not of Islington in particular, all of whose opulent or respectable residents, may really be so, for aught I know to the contrary. Be it known to them, however, on the authority of the old dinner ticket, that their predecessors, who succeeded the inhabitants from whose doings the village was called “merry Islington,” appear to have dined at a reasonable hour, enjoyed a cheerful glass, and lived in good fellowship.

Immediately beneath the view of the old church on the ticket, follows the stewards’ invitation to the dinner, here copied and subjoined verbatim.

St. Mary, Islington.
SIR,

You are desir’d to meet many others, Natives of this place, on Tuesday, y^e 11th Day of April, 1738, at Mrs. Eliz. Grimstead’s, y^e Angel & Crown, in y^e upper Street, about y^e Hour of One; Then, & there w^th. Full Dishes, Good Wine, & Good Humour, to improve & make lasting that Harmony, and Friendship which have so long reigned among us.

Walter Sebbon
John Booth
Bourchier Durell
James Sebbon
Stewards.

N.B.—The Dinner will be on the Table peremptorily at Two.

Pray Pay the Bearer Five Shillings.

“Merry Islington!”—We may almost fancy we see the “jolly companions, every one,” in their best wigs, ample coats, and embroidered waistcoats, at their dinner; that we hear the bells ringing out from the square tower of the old church, and the people and boys outside the door of the “Angel and Crown, in y^e Upper Street,” huzzaing and rejoicing, that their betters were dining “for the good of the parish”—for so they did: read the ticket again.

England is proverbially called “the ringing island,” which is not the worst thing to say of it; and our forefathers were great eaters and hard drinkers, and that is not the worst thing to say of them; but of our country we can also tell better things, and keep our bells to cheer our stories; and from our countrymen we can select names among the living and the dead that would dignify any spot of earth. Let us then be proud of our ancient virtue, and keep it alive, and add to it. If each will do what he can to take care that the world is not the worse for his existence, posterity will relate that their ancestors did well in it.