Wild beasts all alive, and pease porridge hot, sir;
Fine sausages fried, and the black on the wire;
The whole court of France, and nice pig at the fire;
The ups-and-downs, who’ll take a seat in the chair-o,
There are more ups and downs than at Bartleme Fair-o.’
G. A. Stevens. 18th Cent.
The humours of the piece are mainly technical. Our Bartholomew artist, having his own views of perspective, has carefully economised the number of his figures and left out at discretion bodies or legs in the treatment of which he was embarrassed. Thus the leg of a drinking-stall serves also for the wooden leg of a bibulous person standing by. A man with, apparently, but one arm, salutes, in a manner at once distant and peculiar, an apple-woman, who lifts up her basket by the apples that are in it. Our artist, finding that the fourth stall of his machine ‘Ups and Downs’ would complicate his picture, has left it out altogether, and with a view also to artistic effect, has denied legs to the gentleman who is tasting his ale with so much relish, while the hot sausages (for these curious figures of eight are intended for sausages) grow cold upon his plate.
Pie Corner, with its delicate pig and pork, is depicted, with Sir Robert Walpole, orders and all, issuing from the shop.
The fan is engraved in mezzotint, the various subjects forming a very excellent mosaic of pattern: it was re-engraved and published by J. F. Setchel in 1829, and was accompanied by a description of the fair, in which the date of 1721 was assigned to the original. This and other inaccuracies being first pointed out by Henry Morley, who showed that the Droll of the siege of Bethulia, containing the ancient history of Judith and Holofernes, with the comical humours of Rustego and his man Terrible, said to be performing in Lee and Harper’s Booth, was not presented at that famous establishment until 1732.[157]
A version of the well-known print, after Canaletto, of the Rotunda, garden, and buildings at Ranelagh is given on a fan in the Schreiber collection, engraved by N. Parr, 1751.