“Sir,—Fifty years since to Chelsea great,
From Rodnam on the Irish main,
I stroll’d with maggots in my pate,
Where much improved they still remain.
Through various employs I’ve past,
Toothdrawer, trimmer, and at last,
I’m now a gimcrack whim-collector.
Monsters of all sorts here are seen,
Strange things in nature as they grew so;
Some relicks of the Sheba queen,
And fragments of the famed Bob Cruso;
Knicknacks to dangle round the wall,
Some in glass cases, some on shelf;
But what’s the rarest sight of all,
Your humble servant shows himself.
On this my chiefest hope depends.
Now if you will the cause espouse,
[96] In journals pray direct your friends
To my Museum-Coffeehouse;
And in requital for the timely favour
I’ll gratis bleed, draw teeth, and be your shaver.
Nay, that your pate may with my noddle tally,
And you shine bright as I do—marry shall ye.
Freely consult my revelation Molly;
Nor shall one jealous thought create a huff,
For she has taught me manners long enough.

“Chelsea Knackatory.

Don Saltero.”

At the end of his catalogue a list of the donors is added, most of whom, doubtless, also frequented his house. Amongst them the following names appear:—the Duke of Buccleuch, the Earl of Sutherland, Sir John Balchen, Sir Rob. Cotton, Bart., Sir John Cope, Bart., Sir Thomas de Veil, Sir Francis Drake, Lady Humphrey, Sir Thomas Littleton, Sir John Molesworth, the Hon. Capt. William Montague, Sir Yelverton Peyton, George Selwyn, the Hon. Mr Verney, Sir Francis Windham, &c., besides numbers of naval and military officers.

The Mother Redcap is a sign that occurs in various places, as in Upper Holloway, in the High Street, Camden Town, in Blackburn, Lancashire, in Edmund’s Lowland, Lincolnshire, &c.: whilst there is a Father Redcap at Camberwell Green, but he is merely a creature of the publican’s fancy. From the way in which Brathwaite mentions this sign in his “Whimsies of a new Cast of Characters,” 1631, it would seem to have been not uncommon at that time. “He [the painter] bestows his pencile on an aged piece of decayed canvas, in a sooty alehouse where Mother Redcap must be set out in her colours.” Who the original Mother Redcap was, is believed to be unknown, but not unlikely it is an impersonification of Skelton’s famous “Ellinor Rumming,” the alewife.

The Mother Redcap at Holloway is named by Drunken Barnaby in his travels. Formerly the following verses accompanied this sign:—

“Old Mother Redcap, according to her tale,
Lived twenty and a hundred years by drinking this good ale;
It was her meat, it was her drink, and medicine besides,
And if she still had drank this ale, she never would have died.”

At one time the Mother Redcap, in Kentish Town, was kept by an old crone, from her amiable temper surnamed Mother Damnable.[117] This was probably the same person we find elsewhere alluded to under the name of Mother Huff, as in Baker’s “Comedy of Hampstead Heath,” 1706, a. ii. s. 1. “Arabella.—Well, this Hampstead’s a charming place, to dance all night at the Wells, and be treated at Mother Huff’s.”

PLATE VI.
THREE SQUIRRELS.
(Fleet Street, circa 1668.)		HAND AND STAR.
(1550.)
CHESHIRE CHEESE.
(Modern sign, Aldermanbury, City.)
KING’S PORTER AND DWARF.
(Newgate Street, circa 1668.)		ROYAL OAK.
(Roxburghe Ballads, 1660.)