Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850
TextNOTES ON THE SECOND EDITION OF MR. CUNNINGHAM'S HANDBOOK OF LONDON
21. New Tunbridge Wells, at Islington.—This fashionable morning lounge of the nobility and gentry during the early part of the eighteenth century, is omitted by Mr. Cunningham. There is a capital view of it in Bickham's Musical Entertainer, 1737:
"These once beautiful tea-gardens (we remember them as such) were formerly in high repute. In 1733 their Royal Highnesses the Princesses Amelia and Caroline frequented them in the summer time for the purpose of drinking the waters. They have furnished a subject for pamphlets, poems, plays, songs, and medical treatises, by Ned Ward, George Colman the older, Bickham, Dr. Hugh Smith, &c. Nothing now remains of them but the original chalybeate spring, which is still preserved in an obscure nook, amidst a poverty-stricken and squalid rookery of misery and vice."—George Daniel's Merrie England in the Olden Time, vol. i. p. 31.
22. London Spa (from which Spa Fields derives its name) dates as far back as 1206. In the eighteenth century, it was a celebrated place of amusement. There is a curious view of "London Spaw" in a rare pamphlet entitled May-Day, or, The Original of Garlands. Printed for J. Roberts, 1720, 8vo.
23. Spring Gardens.—Cox's Museum is described in the printed catalogue of 1774, as being in "Spring Gardens." In the same year a small volume was published containing A Collection of various Extracts in Prose and Verse relative to Cox's Museum.
24. The Pantheon in Spa Fields.—This place of amusement was opened in 1770 for the sale of tea, coffee, wine, punch, &c. It had an organ, and a spacious promenade and galleries. In 1780 it was converted into a lay-chapel by the Countess of Huntingdon, and is now known as Northampton or Spa Fields Chapel. Mr. Cunningham speaks of the burying-ground (originally the garden), but singularly enough omits to notice the chapel.
25. Baldwin's Gardens, running between Leather Lane and Gray's Inn Lane, were, according to a stone which till lately was to have been seen against a corner house, bearing the arms of Queen Elizabeth, named after Richard Baldwin, one of the royal gardeners, who began building here in 1589.
26. Rathbone Place.—In an old print (now before me) dated 1722, this street is called "Rawbone Place." The Percy coffee-house is still in existence.
27. Surrey Institution, Blackfriars Road.—This building was originally erected, and for some years appropriated to the Leverian Museum. This magnificent museum of natural history was founded by Sir Ashton Lever, who died in 1788. It was afterwards disposed of by way of lottery, and won by Mr. James Parkinson, who transferred it from Leicester Place to the Surrey side of Blackfriars bridge.
28. Schomberg House, Pall Mall, (now, I believe, about to be pulled down), was once the residence of that celebrated "quack" Dr. Graham. Here, in 1783, he erected his Temple of Health. He afterwards removed to Panton Street, Haymarket, where he first exhibited his Earth Bath. I do not find any mention of Graham in Mr. Cunningham's book.
EDWARD F. RIMBAULT.
FOLK LORE
Laying a Ghost.—Frequent mention is made of the laying of ghosts, and in many localities the tradition of such an event is extant. At Cumnor, Lady Dudley (Amy Robsart's) ghost is said to have been laid by nine Oxford parsons, and the tradition is still preserved by the villagers; but nowhere have I been able to ascertain what was the ceremony on such an occasion.
Is anything known on the subject?
A.D.B.
Abingdon, Nov. 1850.
A Test of Witchcraft.—Among the many tests applied for the discovery of witchcraft was the following. It is, I believe, a singular instance, and but little known to the public. It was resorted to as recently as 1759, and may be found in the Gentleman's Magazine of that year.
"One Susannah Hannokes, an elderly woman of Wingrove, near Ayleshbury, was accused by a neighbour for bewitching her spinning-wheel, so that she could not make it go round, and offered to make oath of it before a majistrate; on which the husband, to justify his wife, insisted upon her being tried by the Church Bible, and that the accuser should be present: accordingly she was conducted to the parish church, where she was stript of all her cloathes to her shift and undercoat, and weighed against the Bible; when, to the no small mortification of her accuser, she outweighed it, and was honorably acquitted of the charge."
A.D.N.
Abingdon, Nov. 1850.
MINOR NOTES
Quin's incoherent Story.—The comic story of Sir Gammer Vans (Vol. ii., p. 280.) reminds me of an anecdote related of Quin, who is said to have betted Foote a wager that he would speak some nonsense which Foote could not repeat off-hand after him. Quin then produced the following string of incoherences:—
"So she went into the garden to pick a cabbage leaf, to make an apple-pie of; and a she-bear, coming up the street, put her head into the shop, and said 'Do you sell any soap?' So she died, and he very imprudently married the barber; and the powder fell out of the counsellor's wig, and poor Mrs. Mackay's puddings were quite entirely spoilt; and there were present the Garnelies, and the Goblilies, and the Picninnies, and the Great Pangendrum himself, with the little round button at top, and they played at the ancient game of 'Catch who catch can,' till the gunpowder ran out of the heels of their boots."
L.
Touchstone's Dial.—Mr. Knight, in a note on As You Like It, gives us the description of a dial presented to him by a friend who had picked it "out of a deal of old iron," and which he supposes to be such a one as the "fool i' the forest" drew from his poke, and looked on with lacklustre eye. It is very probable that this species of chronometer is still in common use in the sister kingdom; for my brother mentions to me that, when at school in Ireland some fifteen or sixteen years since, he had seen one of those "ring-dials" in the possession of one of his schoolfellows: and Mr. Carleton, in his amusing Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry, thus describes them:—
"The ring-dial was the hedge-schoolmaster's next best substitute for a watch. As it is possible that a great number of our readers may never have heard of—much less seen one, we shall in a word or two describe it—nothing indeed could be more simple. It was a bright brass ring, about three quarters of an inch broad, and two inches and a half in diameter. There was a small hole in it, which, when held opposite the sun, admitted the light against the inside of the ring behind. On this were marked the hours and the quarters, and the time was known by observing the hour or the quarter on which the slender ray, that came in from the hole in front, fell."
J.M.B.
America and Tartary.—
"Un jésuite rencontra en Tartarie une femme huronne qu'il avoit connue au Canada: il conclut de cette étrange aventure, que le continent de l'Amérique se rapproche au nord-ouest du continent de l'Asie, et il devina ainsi l'existence du détroit qui, longtemps après, a fait la gloire de Bering et de Cook."—Chateaubriand, Génie du Christianisme, Partie 4., Livre 4., Chap. 1.
Yet, with all deference to the edifying letters of this missionary jesuit, it is difficult to make such distant ends meet. It almost requires a copula like that of the fool, who, to reconcile his lord's assertion that he had with a single bullet shot a deer in the ear and the hind foot, explained that the deer was scratching his ear at the time with his foot.
Subjoined is one more proof of the communication which once existed between America and the Old World:
Colomb disoit même avoir vu les restes des fourneaux de Salomon dans les mines de Cibao."—Chateaubriand, Génie, Notes, &c.
MANLEIUS.
Deck of Cards.—
"The king was slily finger'd from the deck."
Henry VI., pt. iii. Act v. Sc. 1.
It is well known, and properly noted, that a pack of cards was formerly called a deck; but it should be added that the term is still commonly used in Ireland, and from being made use of in the famed song of "De Night before Larry was stretched,"
"De deck being called for dey play'd,
Till Larry found one of dem cheated,"
it seems likely to be preserved. I may add, that many words and many forms of expression which have gone out of vogue in England, or have become provincial, are still in daily use in Ireland.
J.M.B.
Time when Herodotus wrote.—The following passage appears to me to afford strong evidence, not only that Herodotus did not complete his history till an advanced age, but that he did not begin it. For in lib. i. 5. he writes: "τα δε επ' εμου ην μεγαλα, προτερον ην σμικρα," "those cities, which in my time were great, were of old small." This is certainly such an expression as none but a man advanced in years could have used. It is perhaps worth observing, that this passage occurring in the Introduction does not diminish its weight, as the events recorded in it, leading naturally into the history, could not well have been written afterwards. As I have never seen this passage noticed with this view. I shall be glad to see whether the argument which I have deduced from it appears a reasonable one to your classical readers.
A.W.H.
"Dat veniam corvis," &c.—There were two headmasters of the school of Merchant Taylors, of the respective names of Du Guard and Stevens: the former having printed Salmasius' Defensio Regia, was ejected by Lord President Bradshaw; and the latter held the vacant post in the interim, from February to September, 1650. He wrote during his tenure of office in the School Probation Book."—
"Res DEUS nostras celeri citatas
Turbine versat."
"Dat veniam corvis, vexat censura columbas,
Pejus merenti melior, et pejor bono."
On his restoration Du Gard pleasantly retorted,—
"Du Gardum sequitur Stephanus, Stephanumque vicissim,
Du Gardus: sortes versat utrinque DEUS."
M.W.