Part 5
This was picked up quite recently by a keen collector of rags and bones and other relics whose glory has departed. It was snapped out of his day’s doings by a flourishing dealer in anything that blew into his yard, and it was only by my going over the top of about 10,000 rabbit skins, the age of which could be more accurately guessed by their odour than by their sealskin-like appearance, that I caught sight of it. Then ensued a discussion as to the part this pewter had played in the past. The R and B collector called it a “Funniosity,” the skin specialist diagnosed it as a “Cream jug,” while a third gentleman (who dare not take on any other job than spirit testing while he is drawing out-of-work pay) said without hesitation, but not very distinctly, “Odamifino,” with a pronounced emphasis on the second syllable. When I suggested it might be a barber’s shaving-pot I was immediately ruled out of that court, as “Barbers never used anything made of pewter.”
Now if any collector can inform me when “Odamifinos” were in vogue, and why they came into existence, I shall be obliged, and in the meantime I will consider the cleaning, for is not cleanliness akin to collectingness? At present it has hardly an appearance suitable to my cabinet of rarities, while its high-sounding designation suggests that as its proper environment, and yet I have in mind the quip of that inveterate humorist Froude, “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever,” muttered at the Annual Meeting of the Peace Congress, when Carlyle chipped in with a chuckle, “Rough hew them as we will,” to be capped by that infernal joker Dante with the remark, “You cannot paint the lily whiter.” At this point Mr. Chairman Darwin brought back the members to their customary somnolence with the admonition: “Come, gentlemen, please, don’t ape the silly goat. The next subject for consideration is ‘Shaving--should each customer have fresh water?’”
CLEANING
This was a great source of trouble to me and to those associated with my home life, and it was not until I had strained their patience almost to the separation point that I was informed: “You really must make some arrangement for getting the pewter cleaned elsewhere, as the maids have given warning they cannot put up with the master messing up the kitchen any longer. Half the saucepans are ruined, as of course they could not be used after having that filthy stuff in them.”
I started boiling corroded pieces and letting them soak in washing soda all night, but found this made no impression on those which had been most neglected, while some came bright after a good scouring with hot water and Brookes’s soap, being later polished with methylated spirit and plate powder. I may here advise the reader that the latter treatment is all I now find necessary to furbish up my stock and keep it presentable.
I will not dwell further on my early difficulties, but relate how they were overcome. At the time I was almost overwhelmed with putrid plates, dishes, and other things I had received Mr. Redman came to my rescue with the following recipe:
“2 oz. rock lime, 2 oz. caustic soda, 6 oz. common salt, 8 oz. common soda, dissolve in 3 quarts of water in a saucepan on the fire. When dissolved pour into a bowl, and when cold add eight quarts of cold water. Steep as long as necessary as much pewter as the liquid will cover, and the bath can be used until the liquor has lost its nature.”
I had a mixture made in a bath and let the things lie in this until the corrosion was easily wiped off, and I entrusted this job to a man who had been used to cleaning machinery and whose practical knowledge and serviceable hands made him far more competent than his employer. I never had the surface of the pewter injured in any way with the strong solution, and so long as the rubbing with the coarse flannel and Brookes’s soap was done the way of the grain--that is, circular or round and round--no scratching was apparent. When I say I have dealt with no fewer than 1,450 pieces the reader may gather that the trouble and expense has not been trifling.
I hope this information in regard to cleaning may be of value to many amateurs, to whom I wish good luck.
In case some curious minds may wonder how I account for the difference between the total given and the 500 pieces I stated I now have I do not mind disclosing that I sent a lot of it to a friend at New York who was anxious to exhibit his old family plate, and I learnt when he was last over that as the brightness I had been at such pains to secure militated, in his opinion, against the appearance of antiquity he had abstained from further cleaning, and that the pewter was now looking quite old.
I believe I must have earned that friend’s undying gratitude, for did I not provide him with his great-great-grandfather’s clock, and further spared him and shipped out an early dated Broadwood grand piano, which I had previously converted into a dressing-table, and which he has since discovered is the identical instrument that his great-great-grandmother used for the five-finger exercise?
THE TINSMITH
I have mentioned that on some occasions I found it necessary to send pewter to the manufacturers, but I have scores of pieces which only required slight repairs--soldering, straightening and reshaping--such as an accomplished tinsmith could manage. Fortunately I found the man of the hour, day, month, and year, and not far off, and I cannot say how much time I spent in his workshop. He was always very busy, and if I sent him anything to do I never knew when I should see it again, so I had to resort to taking it myself and waiting until it was finished, otherwise it would be half done and then laid aside while he went out to pick a lock, or put down while he mended a kettle or something that was most urgently required. Really the way he handled my pewter was terribly fascinating, making pieces so hot at times and putting them so close to his fire that I positively trembled for fear they would be ruined altogether, but he never made a mistake.
His favourite expression was, “You understand me,” so the reader will appreciate that these three words kept coming into his conversation in the most unexpected places. “It was a good job--you understand me--that church was burnt out. I got all the organ pipes; I’m using some of them in this solder--you understand me--about 18 cwt. of them altogether.”
I took him a big jug to have the handle soldered not long ago. I saw him start it and said I would call on my way back from the bank. I did so and found the job only partly done. By way of explanation he said:
“Mr. A. has been in about a freeze--you understand me.”
“No, I’m afraid I don’t. What is a freeze?”
“A refrigerator for milk.”
“Oh, will you be much longer?”
In the course of my many entertaining interviews I learnt that he first went into a shop when he was aged 8, in the year 1847. Tinsmiths then used to fix all gaspipes, and I have found out since that Westminster Bridge was first illuminated with gas in 1813. But to go back to my confrère. He did not stop in the shop long, as he was sent to school for about twelve months. The school was in a cellar, with forms round, on which there was always a birch-rod handy, and as the schoolmaster had been a soldier he knew how to use it, and my friend added: “You understand me--there were no inspectors in those days.”
It was on the floor of this workshop that I literally “picked up” the James Dixon quart tankard which I described under _Marks_. It lay amongst other scrap pewter in a dark corner, ready for going into the melting-pot, when I kicked against it and so prolonged its life. It is now 96.
I am afraid my tinsmith is no respecter of old age, for he is at the time I write this only eighty, and when I congratulated him upon his steady hand and wonderful eyesight he smiled and said: “My mother was ninety-one, and she didn’t know what spectacles meant.”
More power to his elbow.
CONCLUSION
I have little more to say on the subject of old pewter generally, as the Tavern Measures are given an article on their own. Of course, I have left the photographs to do most of the talking, and I hope they have risen equal to the occasion. Next to the fascination of collecting comes the pleasure of exhibiting to an appreciative audience, and this brings to mind a delightful evening when a young witty Canadian went through my show, and at the conclusion, in the naïvest manner possible, said: “I have asked you a great many questions, sir, but as I am undecided in my mind I thought before I left I had better enquire, ‘does the pewter go with your daughter?’”
THE PEWTER POT
Half a century ago Winchester Cathedral in the winter was decidedly cold, and on occasions some of those small choir boys, who found little warmth and comfort from their white linen surplices, now and then collapsed during the services. Candles may have answered the purpose of providing all the illumination required, but they were hardly a flaming success for heating purposes. In the records of the deliberation of the Dean and Chapter at that time there would be a resolution to pay Mr. Edward Sheppard, of the Bishop’s Palace, a certain sum to provide each of the youthful songsters entrusted to his care with a pot of porter each day with their dinners. Which denotes there was no Pussyfoot in that Chapter. Mr. Sheppard, whose name I use with all respect, was most particular as to his pupils’ cleanliness, and every morning held a hand and neck inspection in the long hall by the entrance door. To illustrate that he had a mind for the internal as well as the external frames which filed past him he once a week, being provided with a bowl of brimstone and treacle, administered a tablespoonful to each boy. If Mr. Sheppard had given the same scrutiny to the big can in which the porter was drawn from the barrel there would have been no heel taps in our pewter pots, but as the can was rarely washed out, and the porter left from one day was frothed up when being filled the next, the result, so far as benefit to the boys was concerned, must have been flat, stale, and unprofitable.
No writer refers oftener to the pewter pot than does Charles Dickens, and he might have said of me, as he did of Master Micawber, “He was brought up to the Church.”
In the book of the chronicles of Pickwick the reader can easily find the text suitable for my discourse. That great and good man with his host of friends used the pewter pot with such effect that it would be a national scandal to allow it to be relegated to the lumber shop. Old Pickwick and old pewter are synonymous, and so let us keep his memory alive by preserving the main medium of his hospitable and generous nature. Time is changing everything so ruthlessly that unless some of us have a care the passing of the pewter pot will become an absolute fact. To guard against such a calamity, and to preserve models of a commodity which played so important a part in the episodes that made life in England all the brighter for its presence in past centuries, I have gathered together a representative array of old pewter pots, many bearing quaint inscriptions, which, if they could speak for themselves, would enable me to treat you to a chapter replete with true stories of adventure, love, crime, deeds of chivalry, and scenes of woe which no imagination could evolve.
What of the “70th Regiment” cup? What stirring episodes has that been through?--among others, probably the Afghan War of 1840. I do know that the “Shipwrights’ Arms’, Limehouse Hole,” pint took part in, and survived, the Indian Mutiny bivouacs and battlefields, as it was given by the then landlord to a soldier just before leaving home. I specially prize this; it has written on the front before the address the name, “D. Saul,” alongside which is the toper’s big initial, “K,” and the number of his peg or hook on which it hung, “55,” on the bottom. This number would be seen when looked up at from the floor.
If Pickwick has us in hand, we shun the battle and resort to the bottle, so let us look in at the “Windmill, Dartford,” and see what manner of men were there. Surely not smugglers on the banks of the Thames? Of about the same period, what was the “Wellington, Shepherd’s Bush,” like? Rather a swagger inn, probably, judging by the beaded pattern of the mug, which was supplied or made by “W. R. Loftus, 146, Oxford Street,” who has been, and will be, a long time dead. At the “Feathers” at Chiswick, and “Hope,” Islington, they must have had quite high-class callers, or why the lip on the tankards unless it were to pour the contents into beakers? The customers at all inns were so diversified in character that I see no reason why the same measure should not have done for the post-boy on his frequent calls, for the parish priest on duty bent, or later by the highwayman in a hurry, if they held it in the left hand and turned the lip of the pot skywards.
From London to the “Blackburn Arms,” Hale, situated on the Mersey, an old-time village, and home of the Ireland Blackburne family, was a long journey by road in those days, and the pewter pot would be in great request. I warrant this particular one was handed back many a time with a determination to “Have another, and dom the expense.”
When I came across the pint inscribed “Post Office Hotel, Church Street, Soho,” I wrote to a Fleet Street friend asking him to find out a likely date for it, and after making enquiries he reported he could find neither the hotel nor Church Street, and that the oldest man he had seen in Soho (a sexton, I think) could tell him nothing about either. The same friend was here one night, and I left him looking at these pewter pots. I heard a Fleet Street exclamation of surprise, and when I enquired the reason he held up the “Baker’s Arms’, Waltham Abbey,” pint, saying, “Why, I was born close to the Baker’s Arms.”
The “Post Office Hotel” brings the post-boy of old to my mind, and I turn to the oldest book I possess, given to me by my father, in which he wrote my name in 1861. “The Sporting Scrap Book,” by Henry Alken, containing fifty plates, designed and engraved by himself, published by Thomas McLean, 26, Haymarket, 1824. I have always treasured this book, and the coloured prints are as good to-day as ever. I was wondering how often the pewter pot appeared in Alken’s drawings, and I find twice. The first is entitled “The Post-Boy,” who with a pair of harnessed horses has just called for drinks for himself and his horses, and no sooner has he got his than he has the pot to his lips. The shape is similar to the “Post Office Hotel” pint, but probably the “Post-Boy” needed a quart, for the pewter pot is as tall as his pot hat. In the second picture Alken shows a pewter pot with almost as much “frill” on the top as there is round the cap of the woman who holds it, and this one is also the same shape, which confirms my impression that the “Post Office Hotel” pint pot is about 100 years old.
I now turn my attention from the handy pints to the capacious quart pots, just the things to wash down a breakfast with; pause and conjecture what “lovely” thirsts they must have had! It was quite the custom to put the landlord’s monogram on the front, and the name of the tavern on the bottom of the mugs; there again is a theme for reflection. As a reason, I think we may assume there were kleptomaniacs, souvenir hunters, and sneak thieves in the far gone times, just as there are to-day, and by marking in this way it would limit the loss to the latter class, who would sell the things for old metal. These big mugs would well set off a table on which were pewter plates anything from nine to twenty inches in diameter. Although I have studied all the books written on old pewter, I have failed to find that it was always a case of “One man, one quart,” and am forced to the conclusion that there may have been odd occasions when more than one shared.
To get back to the pots illustrated, does any living man know where the “Baptist Head,” High Holborn, stood? It is perhaps typical of the country that the largest and heaviest quart comes from Ireland, and from the battered condition it was in when I got it, I surmised it had often been used to add weight to an argument.
My eye now wanders to the fine old loving cup made by John Edwards about 1750. This has a glass bottom to prove to all users how clear were its contents, and I wonder to what extent it has been used at family gatherings for weddings, christenings, and buryings, and the very important part it has played in making them all enjoyable. Glance at that copious lidded jug, and mulled ale at once suggests itself; can you not hear the horn that gives warning of the stage coach, the bustle at the “Queen’s Hotel” (called after Mary, Elizabeth, or Anne, probably), or imagine the anxiety of the passengers to test the brew, and how quickly the jug would be emptied on a cold journey, while on warmer days the flat-bottomed jug, full to the brim with foaming beer, would be equally welcome? Some of the pots are fitted with a strainer at the lip, and this would be most useful in the period of poor lighting and typical practical joking by keeping hops, flies, wasps, cockroaches, or perhaps an odd mouse, out of the mouth of the customer using the mug. It would also be requisite to use the funnel when filling passengers’ flasks, most travellers were no doubt provided with the latter of no mean size. The funnel shown is dated 1698, while a particular flask I illustrate is a fine specimen; probably its original owner was a man of grit, for roughly engraved on one end is “PRO DAOS ET REGE,” a fitting toast when the custom was “The Passing of the Pewter Pot.”
You will, I hope, be interested in a study of the variety of shapes and handles on the photographs, but you need to handle these old things to realise their fascination; even if they bear no inscription or maker’s mark, some of the early Excise marks, “G.R.” or “W.R.” with various town crests, are worth looking at. Could you examine the bottoms you would find red cut glass, plain glass (Waterford possibly), wood and pewter, double and single pewter bottoms, some with holes in their bottoms through age and ill usage, while one has no bottom at all, so you can’t knock the bottoms out of that. One of the quart measures bears the initials and touch mark of George Bagshaw, who was enrolled on the list of the Freemen of the Pewterers Company in 1826; it is boldly stamped with a crown, and the words “Imperial Standard” with a small stamp “Crown W.R.” with “W.W.” under. I am not sure what “W.W.” stands for, but believe it will be the initials of the Excise Inspector, and that this measure would be the Imperial standard whereby the quart measures in a certain locality were tested. The list of inscriptions given should not fail to entertain; some are quaint and there may be one or two that a reader will recall, but I imagine that most of the addresses have ceased to exist.
This remark does not apply to the Old Whyte Harte Hotel at Wisbeach (now spelt Wisbech), for that is the present day Izaac Walton Association House. My set of measures was made by Grimes, of London, for J. Hill, the landlord in 1880.
INSCRIPTIONS.
Quart T. B., Crown. Lidded Jug W. T. S., Queen’s Hotel. Quart, Lipped G. Bamden. Wenlock Brewery Tap. Pint ” Sportsman. Beaker H. Mattock, Malt Shovel, Dartford. Pint E. H. Bakers’ Arms, Waltham Abbey. ” W. Bullin, Bears Paw Inn. Quart A. Johnston, Baptist Head, High Holborn. Pint G. C. Collier, Catherine Wheel, near Brentford. ” D. Saul, Shipwrights Arms, Limehouse Hole. Lipped Pint Hope, Islington. Pint Canteen, 70th Regt. ” J. E. B., The Feathers, Chiswick. Quart, Lipped G. Thompson, Tipperary. ” J. C. D., Montague Arms, Peckham. Pint C. M.--C. Mannerson, Windmill, Dartford. ” Lipped J. T. R., Duke’s Head, Leman St., Southwark. Pint Post Office Hotel, Church St., Soho. ” Blackburn Arms. ” G. M. Wellington, Shepherds Bush. ” G. A. Y., King’s Arms, Woolwich. ” John Machin, Bimm. Tavern. ” A. B., Black Lion, Kingston. ” W. E., Flying Scud, Sutton St., Comml. Rd. ” Nichols, Court Sampson, Thomas St. ” Robt. Moor, Cockermouth in Cumberland. ” T. Forman, 35, Brompton Rd. Quart, Lipped Courtenay Arms, Starcross. Pint Barclay Perkins & Co. J. Nolan. Quart J. Hill, White Hart Hotel Wisbeach.
The collection continues to increase, and I have recently acquired a quart, mark “S.C.” inscribed “Longden White, Ewell, 1820.” Another, which belonged to W. James, Welney, marked four lions--a lipped quart by Geradin & Watson, stamped “G.R.” 1826, and lastly a quart pot-bellied measure by W. Nettleford, early 19th century, being the only measure of this shape which I have seen fitted with a lip. I must now end this potty discourse, and on pondering for a fitting quotation wherewith to conclude, I can think of none more suitable than one which I trow good King Hal is not likely to have used when ruminating on his bunch of wives--“Let ’em all come.”
THE MYSTERY PIECE (_See_ Plate XXVII, facing p. 75).
I have given this title to the photograph I recently had taken for various reasons which I will now particularise. Most books contain a mystery of some kind and the creation in many instances must cause the author much anxious thought, but in my case the mystery is real up to the time of writing; possibly soon after this appears in print the mystery will be explained by some kind correspondent who possesses a similar piece. In the first place, I know not its proper name, so must call it for the time being “the piece.” Where I obtained it will remain a mystery to the reader, but how I happened to become its possessor I will readily relate, and in doing so I confirm my previous statement that you never know your luck when collecting.