We have an irruption of other popular characters into the fair, all in high keeping with the time and place:—a costard-monger; a gilt gingerbread woman; a mountebank; a corn-cutter; a wrestler; a cut-purse (a babe of booty, or child of the horn-thumb!); a gamester; a ballad-singer; an “ostler, trade-fallen a roarer (a swash-buckler, in later times a mohock); puppet-show keepers and watchmen; Bartholomew Cokes, a natural born fool and squire; Waspe, his shrewder serving-man; Overdo, a bacchanalian justice; a gang of gypsies, and their hedge-priest, patriarch of the cut-purses, or Patrico to the A bram men and their prickers and prancers; and lastly, Mr. Lanthorn Leatherhead, a supposed caricature of Inigo Jones, with whom Ben Jonson was associated in some of his magnificent court masques. All these characters exhibit their humours, and present a living picture of what Bartholomew Fair was in 1614. We have the exact dress of the flaunting City Madam—a huge velvet custard, or three-cornered bonnet; for these pretenders to sanctity not only adorned their outward woman with the garments of vanity, but were the principal dealers in feathers (another fashionable part of female dress in the days of Elizabeth and James I.) in the Blackfriars. All the merchandise of Babylon (i. e. the fair!) is spread out to our view; Jews-trumps, rattles, mousetraps, penny ballads, * purses, pin-cases, Tobie's dogs, “comfortable bread,” (spiced gingerbread,) hobbyhorses, drums, lions, bears, Bartholomew whistling birds, (wooden toys,) dolls, ** and Orpheus and his fiddle in gin-work! We have its cant phrases, mendacious tricks, and practical jokes; and are invited into “a sweet delicate booth,” with boughs, to eat roast pig with the fire o' juniper and rosemary branches; and “it were great obstinacy, high and horrible obstinacy, to decline or resist the good titillation of the famelic sense,” and not enter the gates of the unclean for once, with the liquorish Rabbi.
* Gifford says, “In Jonson's time, scarcely any ballad was
printed without a woodcut illustrative of its subject. If it
was a ballad of 'pure love,' or of 'good life/ which
afforded no scope for the graphic talents of the Grub Street
Apelles, the portrait of 'good Queen Elizabeth,'
magnificently adorned, with the globe and sceptre, formed no
unwelcome substitute for her loving subjects.”
** The following was the costume of a Bartlemy Fair doll, or
baby:—
“Her petticoat of sattin,
Her gown of crimson tabby,
Laced up before, and spangled o'er,
Just like a Barthol'mew Baby”
The Comedian's Tales; or, Jests, Songs, and Pleasant
Adventures of several Famous Players. 1729.
The sound beating of Justice Overdo, Waspe's elevation of Cokes on pick-back, and the final confutation of Zeal-of-the-land Busy, complete the humours of, and give the last finish-ing-touches to this authentic and curious picture of ancient Bartholomew Fair.
Bravo, Ben Jonson! Not the surly, envious, malignant Ben, but the rare, chère Bartlemy Fair Ben! the prince of poets! the king of good fellows! the learned oracle of the Mermaid and the Devil; * the chosen companion of the gallant Raleigh; the poetical father of many worthy adopted sons; and, to sum up emphatically thy various excellencies, the friend, “fellow” and elegiast of Shakspere!
* In the Apollo Room in the Devil Tavern (on the site of
which stands the Banking-house of Messrs. Child,) Ben Jonson
occupied the President's chair, surrounded by the “Erudit i,
urbani, hilares, honesti” of that glorious age. Take his
picture as drawn by Shakerley Marmion, a contemporary
dramatist of some note, and (as Anthony Wood styles him) a
“goodly proper gentleman.”
“The boon Delphic god
Drinks sack, and keeps his Bacchanalia,
And has his incense, and his altars smoking,
And speaks in sparkling prophesies”
His Leges Conviviales were engraved in black marble over the
chimney; and over the door were inscribed the following
verses by the same master-hand.
“Welcome all who lead or follow
To the oracle of Apollo:
Here he speaks out of his pottle,
Or the tripos, his tower bottle;
All his answers are divine,
Truth itself doth flow in wine.
Hang up all the poor hop-drinkers,
Cries old Sim, the king of shinkers;
He the half of life abuses,
That sits watering with the Muses.
Those dull girls no good ean mean us;
Wine—it is the milk of Venus,
And the poet's horse accounted:
Ply it, and you all are mounted.
'Tis the true Phobian liquor,
Cheers the brains, makes wit the quieker;
Pays all debts, cures all diseases,
And at once three senses pleases.
Welcome all who lead or follow
To the oracle of Apollo!”
Such an association of intellectual minds, where worldly
distinctions are unknown, where rank lays down its state,
and genius forgets the inequalities of fortune, is the
highest degree of felicity that human nature can arrive at.
Yes, thou didst behold him face to face! Great and glorious privilege! Thou his detractor! What a beauteous garland hast thou thrown upon his tomb! O for the solemn spirit of thy majestic monody, (“Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother”) the imagination of thy green “Underwoods,” to sing of thee, as thou hast sung of him!
The death of James I. (for Jamie was much addicted to sports, and loved the Puritans, as the Puritans and Lucifer love holy water!) was “a heavy blow, and a great discouragement” to the nation's jollity: and the troubles and treasons of the succeeding unhappy reign indisposed men's hearts to merriment, and turned fair England into a howling wilderness. Bartholomew Fair in 1641 * exhibits a sorry shadow of its joyous predecessor—'Tis Fat Jack, mountain of mirth! dwindled into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon! Zeal-of-the-land Busy had become rampant; and Dame Ursula, if the old lady yet lived, was most probably a reformed sister, and purveyor of roast pig to the Rabbi at home!
* “Bartholomew Faire;
Or,
Variety of fancies, where you may find A faire of wares, and
all to please your mind.
With the severall enormityes and misdemeanours which are
there seene and acted. London: Printed for Richard Harper,
at the Bible and Harpe, in Smithfield. 1641.”
As a picture, it wants the vivid colouring of the former great painter. It seems to have been limned by a wet, or parcel puritan, a dead wall between pantile and puppet-show! Our first move is into Christ Church cloisters, “which are hung so full of pictures, that you would take that place, or rather mistake it, for St. Peter's in Rome. And now, being arrived through the long walke, to Saint Bartholomew's hospitall,” he draws a ludicrous picture of a “handsome wench” bartering her good name for “a moiety of bone-lace; a slight silver bodkin; a hoop-ring, or the like toye.” Proceeding into the heart of the fair, it becomes necessary that while one eye is watching the motion of the puppets, the other should look sharp to the pockets. “Here's a knave in a foole's coat, with a trumpet sounding, or on a drumme beating, invites you, and would faine persuade you to see his puppets; there is a rogue like a wild woodman, or in an antick-ship, like an incubus, desires your company to view his motion. On the other side, Hocus Pocus, with three yards of tape, or ribbon in's hand, shews his legerdemaine * to the admiration and astonishment of a company of cock-oloaches.
* “Legerdemain is an art whereby one may seem to work
wonderful, impossible, and incredible things, by agility,
nimbleness, and slight of hand.
“An adept must be one of an audacious spirit, w'ith a nimble
conveyance, and a vocabulary of cabalistic phrases to
astonish the beholder,—as Hey! Fortuna! Furia! Nunquam
credo I Saturnus, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, &c. &c.
“He must throw himself into such odd gestures as may divert
the eyes of the spectators from a too strict observation of
his manner of conveyance.”
Then follow certain rules for concealing balls and money in
the hand, and other secrets worth knowing to students in the
art and mystery of conjuration. From “The Merry Companion;
or, Delights for the Ingenious. By Richard Neve” (whose
jocular physiognomy, with the exhibition of one of his hocus
pocus tricks, graces the title). 1721.