In 1708, the first menagerie seems to have appeared at Bartholomew Fair, where it stood near the hospital gate, and attracted considerable attention. Sir Hans Sloane cannot be supposed to have missed such an opportunity of studying animals little known, as he is said to have constantly visited the fair for that purpose, and to have retained the services of a draughtsman for their representation.
The first menagerie in this country was undoubtedly that, which for several centuries, was maintained in the Tower of London, and the beginning of which may be traced to the presentation of three leopards to Henry III. by the Emperor of Germany, in allusion to the heraldic device of the former. Several royal orders are extant which show the progress made in the formation of the menagerie and furnish many interesting particulars concerning the animals. Two of these documents, addressed by Henry III. to the sheriffs of London, have reference to a white bear. The first, dated 1253, directs that fourpence a day should be allowed for the animal’s subsistence; and the second, made in the following year, commands that, “for the keeper of our white bear, lately sent us from Norway, and which is in our Tower of London, ye cause to be had one muzzle and one iron chain, to hold that bear without the water, and one long and strong cord to hold the same bear when fishing in the river of Thames.”
Other mandates, relating to an elephant, were issued in the same reign, in one of which it is directed, “that ye cause, without delay, to be built at our Tower of London, one house of forty feet long, and twenty feet deep, for our elephant; providing that it be so made and so strong that, when need be it may be fit and necessary for other uses.” We learn from Matthew Paris that this animal was presented to Henry by the King of France. It was ten years old, and ten feet in height. It lived till the forty-first year of Henry’s reign, in which year it is recorded that, for the maintenance of the elephant and its keeper, from Michaelmas to St. Valentine’s Day, immediately before it died, the charge was nearly seventeen pounds—a considerable sum for those days.
Many additions were made to the Tower menagerie in the reign of Edward III.; and notably a lion and lioness, a leopard, and two wild cats. The office of keeper of the lions was created by Henry VI., with an allowance of sixpence a day for the keeper, and a like sum “for the maintenance of every lion or leopard now being in his custody, or that shall be in his custody hereafter.” This office was continued until comparatively recent times, when it was abolished with the menagerie, a step which put an end likewise to the time-honoured hoax, said to have been practised upon country cousins, of going to the water side, below London Bridge, to see the lions washed.
The building appropriated to the keeping and exhibition of the animals was a wide semi-circular edifice, in which were constructed, at distances of a few feet apart, a number of arched “dens,” divided into two or more compartments, and secured by strong iron bars. Opposite these cages was a gallery of corresponding form, with a low stone parapet, and approached from the back by a flight of steps. This was appropriated exclusively to the accommodation of the royal family, who witnessed from it the feeding of the beasts and the combats described by Mr. Ainsworth in the romance which made the older portions of the Tower familiar ground to so many readers.
The menagerie which appeared in Smithfield in 1708, and the ownership of which I have been unable to discover, was a very small concern; but with the showman’s knowledge of the popular love of the marvellous, was announced as “a Collection of Strange and Wonderful Creatures,” which included “the Noble Casheware, brought from the Island of Java in the East Indies, one of the strangest creatures in the Universe, being half a Bird, and half a Beast, reaches 16 Hands High from the Ground, his Head is like a Bird, and so is his Feet, he hath no hinder Claw, Wings, Tongue, nor Tail; his Body is like to the Body of a Deer; instead of Feathers, his fore-part is covered with Hair like an Ox, his hinder-part with a double Feather in one Quill; he Eats Iron, Steel, or Stones; he hath 2 Spears grows by his side.”
There is now no difficulty in recognising this strange bird as the cassowary, the representative in the Indian islands of the ostrich. There was also a leopard from Lebanon, an eagle from Russia, a “posoun” (opossum ?) from Hispaniola, and, besides a “Great Mare of the Tartarian Breed,” which “had the Honour to be show’d before Queen Anne, Prince George, and most of the Nobility,” “a little black hairy Monster, bred in the Desarts of Arabia, a natural Ruff of Hair about his Face, walks upright, takes a Glass of Ale in his Hand and drinks it off; and doth several other things to admiration.” This animal was probably a specimen of the maned colobus, a native of the forests of Sierra Leone, and called by Pennant the full-bottomed monkey, in allusion to the full-bottom periwig of his day.
A pamphlet was published in 1710, with the title, The Wonders of England, purporting to contain “Doggett and Penkethman’s dialogue with Old Nick, on the suppression of Bartholomew Fair,” and accounts of many strange and wonderful things; but it was a mere “catch-penny,” as such productions of the Monmouth Street press were called, not containing a line about the suppression of the fair, and the title, as Hone observes, “like the showmen’s painted cloths in the fair, pictures monsters not visible within.”
The lesser sights of a fair in the first quarter of the eighteenth century are graphically delineated by Gay, in his character of the ballad singer, in “The Shepherd’s Week,” bringing before the mind’s eye the stalls, the lotteries, the mountebanks, the tumblers, the rope-dancers, the raree-shows, the puppets, and “all the fun of the fair.”
“How pedlers’ stalls with glittering toys are laid,
The various fairings of the country maid.
Long silken laces hang upon the twine,
And rows of pins and amber bracelets shine;
How the tight lass knives, combs, and scissors spies,
And looks on thimbles with desiring eyes.
Of lotteries next with tuneful note he told,
Where silver spoons are won, and rings of gold.
The lads and lasses trudge the street along,
And all the fair is crowded in his song.
The mountebank now treads the stage, and sells
His pills, his balsams, and his ague-spells;
Now o’er and o’er the nimble tumbler springs,
And on the rope the venturous maiden swings;
Jack Pudding, in his party-coloured jacket,
Tosses the glove, and jokes at every packet.
Of raree-shows he sung, and Punch’s feats,
Of pockets picked in crowds, and various cheats.”