me!
Ladies and gentlemen, walk in, walk in!
* About the year 1775, there was a performer on the violin-
cello in the orchestra of Drury Lane Theatre, named
Cervetti, to whom the gods had given the appropriate
nickname of Nosey, from his enormous staysail, that helped
to carry him before the wind. “Nosey!” shouted from the
galleries, was the signal, or word of command for the
fiddlers to strike up. This man was originally an Italian
merchant of good repute; but failing in business, he came
over to England, and adopted music for a profession. He had
a notable knack of loud yawning, with which he sometimes
unluckily filled up Garrick's expressive pauses, to the
infinite annoyance of little Davy, and the laughter of the
audience. In the summer of 1777 he played at Vauxhall, at
the age of ninety-eight.
The Lauréat of Little Britain must have had just such
another Nose in his eye when he wrote the following.
That Roman Nose! that Roman Nose!
Has robb'd my bosom of repose;
For when in sleep my eyelids close,
It haunts me still, that Roman Nose!
Between two eyes as black as sloes
The bright and flaming ruby glows;
That Roman Nose! that Roman Nose!
And beats the blush of damask rose.
I walk the streets, the alleys, rows;
I look at all the Jems and Joes;
And old and young, and friends and foes,
But cannot find a Roman Nose!
Then blessed be the day I chose
That nasal beauty of my beau's;
And when at last to heaven I goes,
I hope to spy his Roman Nose!
The tea-kettle boiled over with rage, and demanded imperiously the immediate presence of the lean man.
“Who calls on Bigstick? As the Tumbletuzzy will brook no longer delay,
'I hold it fit that we shake hands and part.'
'To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,' you will find me at the Fair. I shall expect your promised visit.
'Adieu, adieu, adieu, remember me!'”
At this moment old blind Sally, who for more than half a century has played her way through Highgate, Holloway, and merry Islington, * tuned her hurdy-gurdy, and ground the lean man triumphantly into his tea-kettle.
* “Islington, March 2O, 1698. This day here were lamentable
doings. O! in what a sad fright and consternation were the
Lick-spickets of this plaee; upon the suddain and unexpected
appearance of the ferreters of Fuddling-schools all were put
into a hurry and confusion, the men were forced to throw
down their beloved pipes of sotweed, and rudely leave their
pots without a parting kiss; the women and children too,
alas! with tears and sighs, parted with their hot cakes and
custards, before they had half stuffed their stomachs. And
the streets were filled with the mourning mob. Amongst the
rest was a fat red-faced hostess, who, with a loud and
doleful voice, said, 4 Ah! my friends, if this business
holds, I shall certainly be undone. Ah! poor Islington, thou
hast been, time out of mind, the plaee of general rendezvous
for Sunday sots. Thou hast constantly supplied the citizens'
wives and children with cakes, pies, and custards, and art
the chief plaee near the city, for breeding calves and
nursing children. Thou, I say, that hast been a place so
famous, and in such esteem, now to have the richest of thy
inhabitants utterly ruined only for profaning the Sabbath-
day. Alas! the only day we have to get money in. Who will
advise me?'—'Advise you,' said one of her sottish
customers, 'you have kept an ale-house almost thirty years,
to my knowledge, and if you have not got enough by nicking,
frothing, double-scoreing, selling coarse cakes, empty pies,
and nasty custards, to keep you now you are old, e'en go to
your old master, the devil, and let him keep you!”—“The
English Lueian, or Weekly Discoveries of the Witty
Intrigues, Comical Passages, and Remarkable Transactions in
Town and Country, &c. &c.”
The above is a curious picture of an Islington ale-wife in
the olden time. The following account describes a “strange
monster” exhibited at Miles's Music-house at Islington a few
years after, with the comical interlude of the Stuffed
Alligator.
“Some time since there was brought to Miles's Music-house at
Islington, a strange sort of a monster, that does everything
like a monkey, but is not a monkey; mimics man, like a
jackanapes, but is not a jackanapes; jumps upon tables, and
into windows upon all-fours, like a cat, but is not a cat;
does all things like a beast, but is not a beast; does
nothing like a man, but is a man! He has given such
wonderful content to the Butchers of Clare Market, that the
house is every day as full as the Bear Gardens; and draws
the city wives and prentices out of London, much more than a
man hanged in chains. It happened lately upon a holiday,
when honest men walked abroad with their wives and
daughters, to the great consumption of hot buns and bottled
ale, that the fame of this mimick had drawn into the Music-
house as great a crowd of spectators as the notable
performances of Clinch of Barnet ever drew to the theatre.
The Frape being thus assembled in the lower room, and the
better sort being climbed into the gallery, a little
creature, who before walked erect, and bore the image of a
man, transformed himself into a monkey, and began to
entertain the company with such a parcel of pretty pug's
tricks, and mimical actions, that they were all as intent
upon the baboon's vagaries as if a mandrake had been
tumbling through a hoop, or a hobgoblin dancing an antick!
Whilst the eyes and ears of the assembly were thus deeply
engaged, the skin of a large alligator, stuff'd with hay,
hanging within the top of the house, and the rats having
burrowed through the ceiling, could come down at pleasure
and sport upon the back of the monster; one of the
revengeful vermin, to put a trick upon his fellows, who were
enticed by the smell of the hay to creep down the serpent's
throat, his jaws being extended, gnawed the cord in two, and
down comes the alligator with his belly full of rats, upon
the head of the monkey, and laid him sprawling; giving some
of the spectators a wipe with his tail; the rats running out
of his mouth in a wonderful hurry, like so many sailors from
between decks when a ship at midnight has struck upon a
rock!”—“A Pacquet from Will's, 1701.”