Part 127
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FLORAL DIRECTORY.
Tree Stramony. _Datura arborea._ Dedicated to _St. Gregory_.
~November 18.~
_The Dedication of the Churches of Sts. Peter_, and _Paul_, at Rome. _Sts. Alphæus_, and _Zachæus_; also _Romanus_, and _Barulas_. _St. Odo_, Abbot of Cluni, A. D. 942. _St. Hilda_, or _Hild_, Abbess, _A. D._ 680.
The “_Mirror of the Months_,” a pleasing volume published in the autumn of 1825, and devoted to the service of the year, points to the appearance of nature at this time:--“The last storm of autumn, or the first of winter, (call it which you will) has strewed the bosom of the all-receiving earth with the few leaves that were still clinging, though dead, to the already sapless branches; and now all stand bare once more, spreading out their innumerable ramifications against the cold grey sky, as if sketched there for a study by the pencil of your only successful drawing-mistress--nature.
“Of all the numerous changes that are perpetually taking place in the general appearance of rural scenery during the year, there is none so striking as this which is attendant on the falling of the leaves; and there is none in which the unpleasing effects so greatly predominate over the pleasing ones. To say truth, a grove denuded of its late gorgeous attire, and instead of bowing majestically before the winds, standing erect and motionless while they are blowing through it, is ‘a sorry sight,’ and one upon which we will not dwell. But even this sad consequence of the coming on of winter (sad in most of its mere visible effects,) is not entirely without redeeming accompaniments; for in most cases it lays open to our view objects that we are glad to see again, if it be but in virtue of their association with past years; and in many cases it opens vistas into sweet distances that we had almost forgotten, and brings into view objects that we may have been sighing for the sight of all the summer long. Suppose, for example, that the summer view from the windows of a favourite sleeping-room is bounded by a screen of shrubs, shelving upwards from the turf, and terminating in a little copse of limes, beeches, and sycamores; the prettiest boundary that can greet the morning glance when the shutters are opened, and the sun slants gaily in at them, as if glad to be again admitted. How pleasant is it, when (as now) the winds of winter have stripped the branches that thus bound our view in, to spy beyond them, as if through network, the sky-pointing spire of the distant village church, rising from behind the old yew-tree that darkens its portal; and the trim parsonage beside it, its ivy-grown windows glittering perhaps in the early sun! Oh, none but those who _will_ see the good that is in every thing, know how very few evils there are without some of it attendant on them, and yet how much of good there is unmixed with any evil.
“But though the least pleasant sight connected with the coming on of winter in this month is to see the leaves that have so gladdened the groves all the summer long, falling every where around us, withered and dead,--that sight is accompanied by another which is too often overlooked. Though most of the leaves fall in winter, and the stems and branches which they beautified stand bare, many of them remain all the year round, and look brighter and fresher now than they did in spring, in virtue of the contrasts that are every where about them. Indeed the cultivation of evergreens has become so general with us of late years, that the home enclosures about our country dwellings, from the proudest down to even the poorest, are seldom to be seen without a plentiful supply, which we now, in this month, first begin to observe, and acknowledge the value of. It must be a poor plot of garden-ground indeed that does not now boast its clumps of winter-blowing laurestinus; its trim holly bushes, bright with their scarlet berries; or its tall spruce firs, shooting up their pyramid of feathery branches beside the low ivy-grown porch. Of this last-named profuse ornamentor of whatever is permitted to afford it support, (the ivy) we now too every where perceive the beautifully picturesque effects: though there is one effect of it also perceived about this time, which I cannot persuade myself to be reconciled to: I mean where the trunk of a tall tree is bound about with ivy almost to its top, which during the summer has scarcely been distinguished as a separate growth, but which now, when the other leaves are fallen, and the outspread branches stand bare, offers to the eye, not a contrast, but a contradiction. But let us not dwell on any thing in disfavour of ivy, which is one of the prime boasts of the village scenery of our island, and which even at this season of the year offers pictures to the eye that cannot be paralleled elsewhere. Perhaps as a single object of sight, there is nothing which gives so much innocent pleasure to so many persons as an English village church, when the ivy has held undisputed possession of it for many years, and has hung its fantastic banners all around it. There is a charm about an object of this kind, which it is as difficult to resist as to explain.”
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FLORAL DIRECTORY.
Curly Passion-flower. _Passiflora serrata._ Dedicated to _the Churches of Sts. Peter and Paul_.
~November 19.~
_St. Elizabeth, of Hungary_, A. D. 1231. _St. Pontian_, Pope, A. D. 230. _St. Barlaam._
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FLORAL DIRECTORY.
Apple-fruited Passion-flower. _Passiflora maliformis._ Dedicated to _St. Elizabeth_.
~November 20.~
_St. Edmund_, King and Martyr, A. D. 870. _St. Humbert_, Bp. of the East Angles, A. D. 855. _St. Felix_, of Valois, A. D. 1212. _St. Bernward_, Bp., A. D. 1021. _St. Masentia_, 7th Cent.
~St. Edmund,~ _King and Martyr._
This English king and saint is in the church of England calendar and almanacs. St. Edmund was king of East Anglia, which took its name from a people called the Angles, who landed on the eastern coast of Britain, under twelve chiefs, the survivor of whom, Uffa, assumed the title of king of the East Angles. This kingdom contained Norfolk and Suffolk, with part of Cambridgeshire. The chief towns were Norwich, Thetford, Ely, and Cambridge. In 867, the Danes landed in East Anglia, and after ravaging different parts of the island, and continuing some time in Northumberland, returned into East Anglia, committing, in their route, the most horrid barbarities. Edmund the king opposed them; but his army was defeated at Thetford, and the king being taken prisoner, fell a miserable victim to their barbarity, for they tied him to a tree, as a butt, or mark, and then shot him to death with arrows. The place where Edmund was interred had the name of St. Edmund’s Bury, but is now generally called Bury. Canute the Great built a stately church over his grave, and greatly enlarged the town.
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FLORAL DIRECTORY.
Red Stapelia. _Stapelia rufa._ Dedicated to _St. Edmund, King_.
~November 21.~
_The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary._ _St. Columban_, Abbot, A. D. 615. _St. Gelasius_, Pope, A. D. 496.
_Ghost of an Arm Chair._
A lady assured the editor of the “Perennial Calendar,” of the truth of the following story. She had ordered an armed chair which stood in her room to be sent to a sick friend, and thought it had been sent conformably to her orders. Waking, however, in the night, and looking by the light of the night-lamp at the furniture in her room, she cast her eyes on the place where the said chair used to stand, and saw it, as she thought, in its place. She at first expressed herself to her husband as being vexed that the chair had not been sent; but, as he protested that it was actually gone, she got out of bed to convince herself, and distinctly saw the chair, even on a nearer approach to it. What now became very remarkable was, that the spotted chair-cover which was over it, assumed an unusual clearness, and the pattern assumed the appearance of being studded with bright stars. She got close to it, and putting her hand out to touch it, found her fingers go through the spectrum unresisted. Astonished, she now viewed it as an illusion, and presently saw it vanish, by becoming fainter till it disappeared. Dr. Forster considers this apparition as affording a clue to one mode by which spectra are introduced, namely, by local association. The lady had anticipated seeing the chair in its place, from its always being associated with the rest of the furniture; and this anticipation of an image of perception was the basis of a corresponding image of spectral illusion.
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FLORAL DIRECTORY.
Largeflowered Wood Sorrel. _Oxalis grandiflora._ Dedicated to _the Presentation of the V. Mary_.
Divine Cecilia came, Inventress of the vocal frame; The sweet enthusiast, from her sacred store, Enlarg’d the former narrow bounds, And added length to solemn sounds, With nature’s mother-wit, and arts unknown before. Let old Timotheus yield the prize, Or both divide the crown; He rais’d a mortal to the skies, She drew an angel down.
_Dryden._
~November 22.~
_St. Cecily_, A. D. 230. _St. Theodorus_, A. D. 821. _Sts. Philemon_, and _Appia_.
_St. Cecilia._
This saint is in the church of England Calendar, and in the almanacs. Her having existed has been doubted, but she is a saint of the Romish church, and Butler gives her life, wherein he calls her “the patroness of church music.” He says, that she was married to a nobleman named Valerian, whom, with her brother Tibertius, she converted, and with them she was martyred. Various legends, and many pictures and prints, represent her as engaged in music, or listening to it from celestial performers. Hence the ode for St. Cecilia’s day by Dryden, who was a catholic, concludes by saying,
“She drew an angel down.”
Formerly, concerts on her festival-day were fashionable, and Pope honoured her in numbers, though “the numbers came” not to him, as to Dryden. The preceding engraving is from a design by M. de Vos, engraved by J. Sadler. Her husband is represented, allured by the harmony, entering a room, wherein she sits. According to catholic story, he found a young man playing on the organ, Cecilia described him to Valerian as an angel, and from that time she received “angels’ visits.”
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FLORAL DIRECTORY.
Trumpet-flowered Wood Sorrel. _Oxalis ubiflora._ Dedicated to _St. Cecilia_.
~November 23.~
_St. Clement_, Pope, A. D. 100. _St. Amphilochius_, Bp. of Iconium, A. D. 394. _St. Tron_, A. D. 693. _St. Daniel_, Bp. A. D. 545.
~St. Clement.~
This saint is in the church of England calendar and the almanacs.
Clement was a follower and coadjutor of the apostle Paul, who, writing to the _Philippians_, (iv. 3.) requires them to be mindful of the flock and their teachers, and distinguishes Clement by name--“help those women which laboured with me in the gospel, and with Clement also, and with other my fellow-labourers.” The Romish writers contend for the direct papal succession from the apostles, and call Clement a pope; but in the uninterrupted succession they claim for the pontiffs of their hierarchy, they fail in establishing as indisputable whether he was the first, second, or third pope; the name itself was not devised until centuries afterwards. Some of them say he was martyred, others contend that he died a natural death. The advocates for his martyrdom assign him an anchor as a symbol of distinction, because they allege that he was thrown into the sea with an anchor about his neck. It is further alleged that two of his disciples desirous of recovering his remains, assembled a multitude and prayed for the discovery, and, as usual, there was a miracle. “Immediately the sea retired for the space of three miles, or a league, in such sort that they could go into it for all that space as upon the dry land; and they found in it a chapel, or little church, made by the hands of angels; and within the church a chest of stone, in which was the body of St. Clement, and by it the anchor with which he had been cast into the sea. This miracle did not happen only that year in which the holy pope died, but it happened also every year, and the sea retired itself three miles, as was said, leaving the way dry for seven days, namely, the day of his martyrdom, and the other six following days.”[389] Though “travellers see strange sights,” no modern tourist has related this annual miracle, which is still performed by the sea in the neighbourhood of Rome, on the days aforesaid, as duly and truly as the annual liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius at Naples--“_or_, if not, why not?”
Protestants, in London, are reminded of St. Clement’s apocryphal death by his anchor being the weathercock that “turns and turns,” to every wind, on the steeple of the parish church of St. Clement Danes in the Strand. It denotes the efflux of time as a minute-hand upon the clock; it denotes the limits of the parish as a mark upon the boundary stones; it graces the beadles’ staves; and on the breasts of the charity children is, in the eyes of the parishioners, “a badge of honour.”
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It appears from a state proclamation, dated July 22, 1540, that children were accustomed to be decked, and go about on St. Clement’s day in procession. From an ancient custom of going about on the night of this festival to beg drink to make merry with, a pot was formerly marked against the 23d of November upon the old clog-almanacs.[390]
St. Clement is the patron of _blacksmiths_. His quality in this respect is not noticed by Brand, or other observers of our ancient customs, nor do they mention any observances by that trade in commemoration of his festival. But the following communications will show the estimation wherein he is held among the “cunning workmen in iron.”
_To the Editor of the Every-Day Book._
_Chancery-lane, Nov. 19, 1825._
Sir,
As secretary of the “Benevolent Institution of Smiths,” I take the liberty of jogging your memory. I hope you will not forget our _St. Clement_, (Nov. 23,) in your interesting _Every-Day Book_. When I was a child, an old man went about in the trade, reciting the following ode on smithery, which, I believe, is very old. If you think it worthy a place in your work, it will much oblige me and our trade; for it is now quite forgot, with many good customs of hospitality of the olden days which are no more. I hope you will cull your flowers of antiquity, and collect all you can for our trade; there is a story of St. Dunstan, the smith, with his tongs, pinching the devil by the nose, &c.
_An Ode on Smithery, 1610._
“By reading of old authors we do find The smiths have been a trade time out of mind; And it’s believed they may be bold to say, There’s not the like to them now at this day. For was it not for smiths what could we do, We soon should loose our lives and money too; The miser would be stript of all his store, And lose the golden god he doth adore: No tradesman could be safe, or take his rest But thieves and rogues would nightly him molest; It’s by our cunning art, and ancient skill, That we are saved from those who would work ill. The smith at night, and soon as he doth rise, Doth always cleanse and wash his face and eyes; Kindles his fire, and the bellows blows, Tucks up his shirt sleeves, and to work he goes: Then makes the hammer and the anvil ring, And thus he lives as merry as a king. A working smith all other trades excels, In useful labour wheresoe’er he dwells; Toss up your caps ye sons of Vulcan then, For there are none of all the sons of men, That can with the brave working smiths compare, Their work is hard, and jolly lads they are. What though a smith looks sometimes very black, And sometimes gets but one shirt to his back And that is out at elbows, and so thin That you through twenty holes may see his skin; Yet when he’s drest and clean, you all will say, That smiths are men not made of common clay. They serve the living, and they serve the dead, They serve the mitre, and the crowned head; They all are men of honour and renown, Honest, and just, and loyal to the crown. The many worthy deeds that they have done, Have spread their fame beyond the rising sun So if we have offended rich or poor, We will be good boys, and do so no more.”
I hope you will polish up for insertion. I will call for the old copy at your office: I should have sent it sooner, but could not find it, and the trouble it has cost me has made it valuable.
I remain, &c.
J. JOHNSON.
_7, Hill-street,_
_Southwark._
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The editor has given the “ode” without Mr. Johnson’s alterations and additions, because its original state is better suited to convey a notion of his predecessors’ manners; for the same reason, his suggestion to “polish up” has been declined. The homeliness of those who preceded him is not discreditable to him, or any of the brethren of his trade. They are daily increasing in respectability, and ought to be a thriving branch. Compared with those who lived before them, they have extraordinary means of becoming acquainted with the _principles_ of their varied manufacture, by becoming members of the _Mechanics’ Institution_. Many blacksmiths have already joined that society. A diligent and good hand who knows more than his fellows, will be the best workman, and get the most money; and frugality abroad, and economy at home, will secure his independence. Attendance at the _Mechanics’ Institution_ will teach these things: and St. Clement cannot be better honoured than by observing them.
ST. CLEMENT, _at Woolwich_.
R. R. obligingly communicates with his name, the following account of an annual ceremony on the evening of St. Clement’s day, by the blacksmiths’ apprentices of the dockyard there.
(_For the Every-Day Book._)
One of the senior apprentices being chosen to serve as _old Clem_, (so called by them,) is attired in a great coat, having his head covered with an oakham wig, face masked, and a long white beard flowing therefrom; thus attired, he seats himself in a _large wooden chair_, chiefly covered with a sort of stuff called buntin, with a crown and anchor, made of wood, on the top, and around it, four transparencies, representing “the blacksmiths’ arms,” “anchor smiths at work,” “Britannia with her anchor,” and “Mount Etna.” He has before him a wooden anvil, and in his hands a pair of tongs and wooden hammer which, in general, he makes good use of whilst reciting his speech. A mate, also masked, attends him with a wooden sledge-hammer; he is also surrounded by a number of other attendants, some of whom carry torches, banners, flags, &c.; others battle-axes, tomahawkes, and other accoutrements of war. This procession, headed by a drum and fife, and six men with old Clem mounted on their shoulders, proceed round the town, stopping and refreshing at nearly every public house, (which, by the by, are pretty numerous,) not forgetting to call on the blacksmiths and officers of the dockyard: there the money-box is pretty freely handed, after old Clem and his mate have recited their speeches, which commence by the mate calling for order, with
“Gentlemen all, attention give, And wish St. Clem, long, long to live.”
Old Clem then recites the following speech:--
“I am the real St. Clement, the first founder of brass, iron, and steel, from the ore. I have been to Mount Etna, where the god Vulcan first built his forge, and forged the armour and thunderbolts for the god Jupiter. I have been through the deserts of Arabia; through Asia, Africa, and America; through the city of Pongrove; through the town of Tipmingo; and all the northern parts of Scotland. I arrived in London on the twenty-third of November, and came down to his majesty’s dockyard, at Woolwich, to see how all the gentlemen Vulcans came on there. I found them all hard at work, and wish to leave them well on the twenty-fourth.”
The mate then subjoins:--
“Come all you Vulcans stout and strong, Unto St. Clem we do belong, I know this house is well prepared With plenty of money and good strong beer, And we must drink before we part, All for to cheer each merry heart. Come all you Vulcans, strong and stout, Unto St. Clem I pray turn out; For now St. Clem’s going round the town, His coach and six goes merrily round. Huzza,--a,--a.”
After having gone round the town and collected a pretty decent sum, they retire to some public house, where they enjoy as good a supper as the money collected will allow.
R. R.
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FLORAL DIRECTORY.
Convex Wood Sorrel. _Oxalis convexula._ Dedicated to _St. Clement_.
[389] Ribadeneira.
[390] Plot’s Staffordshire.
~November 24.~
_St. John of the Cross_, A. D. 1591. _St. Chrysogonus._ _Sts. Flora_ and _Mary_, A. D. 851. _St. Cianan_, or _Kenan_, Bp. of Duleek, in Ireland, A. D. 489.
_London in November._
In the already cited “_Mirror of the Months_,” there is a feeling account of certain days in the metropolis, at this season, which every one who has sojourned in “that overgrown place” will immediately recognize to be “quite correct.”
“Now the atmosphere of London begins to thicken over head, and assume its _natural_ appearance, preparatory to its becoming, about Christmas time, that ‘palpable obscure,’ which is one of its proudest boasts; and which, among its other merits, may reckon that of engendering those far-famed fogs, of which every body has heard, but to which no one has ever done justice. A London fog, in November, is a thing for which I have a sort of natural affection--to say nothing of an acquired one--the result of a hackney-coach adventure, in which the fair part of the fare threw herself into my arms for protection, amidst the pleasing horrors of an overthrow.
“As an affair of mere breath, there is something tangible in a London fog. In the evanescent air of Italy, a man might as well not breathe at all, for any thing he knows of the matter. But in a well-mixed metropolitan fog, there is something substantial and satisfying. You can feel what you breathe, and see it too. It is like breathing water,--as we may suppose the fishes to do. And then the taste of it, when dashed with a due seasoning of seacoal smoke, is far from insipid. It is also meat and drink at the same time: something between egg-flip and _omelétte soufflée_, but much more digestible than either. Not that I would recommend it medicinally, especially to persons of queasy stomachs, delicate nerves, and afflicted with bile. But for persons of a good robust habit of body, and not dainty withal, (which such, by the by, never are,) there is nothing better in its way. And it wraps you all round like a cloak, too--a patent water-proof one, which no rain ever penetrated. No--I maintain that a real London fog is a thing not to be sneezed at--if you help it. _Mem._ As many spurious imitations of the above are abroad,--such as Scotch mists, and the like,--which are no less deleterious than disagreeable,--please to ask for the ‘true London particular,’--as manufactured by Thames, Coalgas, Smoke, Steam, & Co. No others are genuine.”
_Water-proof Boots and Shoes._