The almanac day for Bartholomew fair, is on the third of the month, which this year fell on a Sunday, and it being prescribed that the fair shall be proclaimed “on or before the third,” proclamation was accordingly made, and the fair commenced on Saturday the second of September, 1826. Its appearance on that and subsequent days, proves that it is going out like the lottery, by force of public opinion; for the people no longer buy lottery tickets even in “the last lottery,” nor pay as they used to do at “Bartlemy fair.” There were this year only three shows at sixpence, and one at twopence; all the rest were “only a penny.”
The sixpenny shows were, Clarke, with riders and tumblers; Richardson, with his tragi-comical company, enacting “Paul Pry;” and wicked Wombwell, with his fellow brutes.
In the twopenny show were four lively little crocodiles about twelve inches long, hatched from the eggs at Peckham, by steam; two larger crocodiles; four cages of fierce rattle snakes; and a dwarf lady.
In the penny shows were a glass-blower, sitting at work in a glass wig, with rows of curls all over, making pretty little teacups at threepence each, and miniature tobacco pipes for a penny; he was assisted by a wretched looking female, who was a sword-swallower at the last figure, and figured in this by placing her feet on hot iron, and licking a poker nearly red hot with her tongue. In “Brown’s grand company from Paris,” there were juggling, tight-rope dancing, a learned horse, and playing on the salt-box with a rolling-pin, to a tune which is said to be peculiar to the pastime. The other penny shows were nearly as last year, and silver-haired ladies and dwarfs, more plentiful and less in demand than learned pigs, who, on that account, drew “good houses.”
In this year’s fair there was not one “up-and-down,” or “round-about.”
The west side of Giltspur-street was an attractive mart to certain “men of letters;” for the ground was covered with “relics of literature.” In the language of my informant, for I did not visit the fair myself, there was a “path of genius” from St. Sepulchre’s church to Cock-lane. He mentions that a person, apparently an agent of a religious society, was anxiously busy in the fair distributing a bill entitled—“Are you prepared to die?”
Roman Remains at Pentonville,
and
The White Conduit.
I am not learned in the history or the science of phrenology, but, unless I am mistaken, surely in the days of “craniology,” the organ of “inhabitiveness” was called the organ of “travelling.” Within the last minute I have felt my head in search of the development. I imagine it must be very palpable to the scientific, for I not only incline to wander but to locate. However that may be, I cannot find it myself—for want, I suppose, of a topographical view of the cranium, and I have not a copy of Mr. Cruikshank’s “Illustrations of Phrenology” to refer to.
At home, I always sit in the same place if I can make my way to it without disturbing the children; all of whom, by the by, (I speak of the younger ones,) are great sticklers for rights of sitting, and urge their claims on each other with a persistence which takes all my authority to abate. I have a habit, too, at a friend’s house of always preferring the seat I dropped into on my first visit; and the same elsewhere. The first time I went to the Chapter Coffee-house, some five-and-twenty years ago, I accidentally found myself alone with old Dr. Buchan, in the same box; it was by the fireplace on the left from Paternoster-row door: poor Robert Heron presently afterwards entered, and then a troop of the doctor’s familiars dropped in, one by one; and I sat in the corner, a stranger to all of them, and therefore a silent auditor of their pleasant disputations. At my next appearance I forbore from occupying the same seat, because it would have been an obtrusion on the literary community; but I got into the adjoining box, and that always, for the period of my then frequenting the house, was my coveted box. After an absence of twenty years, I returned to the “Chapter,” and involuntarily stepped to the old spot; it was pre-occupied; and in the doctor’s box were other faces, and talkers of other things. I strode away to a distant part of the room to an inviting vacancy, which, from that accident, and my propensity, became my desirable sitting place at every future visit. My strolls abroad are of the same character. I prefer walking where I walked when novelty was charming; where I can have the pleasure of recollecting that I formerly felt pleasure—of rising to the enjoyment of a spirit hovering over the remains it had animated.