Part 82

As regards St. Swithin and his day, it may be observed, that according to bishop Hall when Swithin died, he directed that “his body should not be laid within the church, but where the drops of rain might wet his grave; thinking that no vault was so good to cover his grave as that of heaven.” This is scarcely an exposition of the old saying, which, like other old sayings, still has its votaries. It is yet common on this day to say, “Ah! this is St. Swithin; I wonder whether it will rain?” An old lady who so far observed this festival, on one occasion when it was fair and sunshiny till the afternoon, predicted fair weather; but tea-time came, and--

“there follow’d some droppings of rain.”

This was quite enough. “Ah!” said she, “now we shall have rain every day for forty days;” nor would she be persuaded of the contrary. Forty days of our humid climate passed, and many, by their having been perfectly dry, falsified her prediction. “Nay, nay,” said she, “but there was wet in the night, depend upon it.” According to such persons St. Swithin cannot err.

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It appears from the parish accounts of Kingston upon Thames, in 1508, that “any householder kepying a brode gate” was to pay to the parish priest’s “wages 3d.” with a halfpenny “to the paschall:” this was the great wax taper in the church; the halfpenny was towards its purchase and maintaining its light; also he was to give to _St. Swithin_ a halfpenny. A holder of one tenement paid twopence to the priest’s wages, a halfpenny to the “paschall;” likewise St. Swithin a halfpenny.

Rain on St. Swithin’s day is noticed in some places by this old saying, “St. Swithin is christening the apples.”

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FLORAL DIRECTORY.

Small Cape Marigold. _Calendula pluvialis._ Dedicated to _St. Swithin_.

[211] Golden Legend.

~July 16.~

_St. Eustathius_, Patriarch of Antioch, A. D. 338. _St. Elier_ or _Helier_.

_French Hoaxing._

_July_, 1817.--A man of imposing figure, wearing a large sabre and immense mustachios, arrived at one of the principal inns of a provincial city, with a female of agreeable shape and enchanting mien. He alighted at the moment that dinner was serving up at the _table d’hote_. At his martial appearance all the guests rose with respect; they felt assured that it must be a lieutenant-general, or a major-general at least. A new governor was expected in the province about this time, and every body believed that it was he who had arrived _incognito_. The officer of gendarmerie gave him the place of honour, the comptroller of the customs and the receiver of taxes sat by the side of Madame, and exerted their wit and gallantry to the utmost. All the tit-bits, all the most exquisite wines, were placed before the fortunate couple. At length the party broke up, and every one ran to report through the city that Monsieur the governor had arrived. But, oh! what was their surprise, when the next day “his excellence,” clad in a scarlet coat, and his august companion dressed out in a gown glittering with tinsel, mounted a small open calash, and preceded by some musicians, went about the squares and public ways, selling Swiss tea and balm of Mecca. Imagine the fury of the guests! They complained to the mayor, and demanded that the audacious quack should be compelled to lay aside the characteristic mark of the brave. The prudent magistrate assembled the common council; and those respectable persons, after a long deliberation, considering that nothing in the charter forbad the citizens to let their beard grow on their upper lip, dismissed the complaint altogether. The same evening the supposed governor gave a serenade to the complainants, and the next day took his leave, and continued his journey amidst the acclamations of the populace; who, in small as well as in great cities, are very apt to become passionately fond of charlatans.[212]

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FLORAL DIRECTORY.

Great Garden Convolvulus. _Convolvulus purpureus._ Dedicated to _St. Eustathius_.

[212] Journal des Debats.

~July 17.~

_St. Alexius_, 5th Cent. _St. Speratus_ and his Companions. _St. Marcellina_, A. D. 397. _St. Ennodius_, Bp. A. D. 521. _St. Leo_ IV., Pope, A. D. 855. _St. Turninus_, 8th Cent.

_Mackerel._

The mackerel season is one of great interest on the coast, where these beautiful fish are caught. The going out and coming in of the boats are really “sights.” The prices of mackerel vary according to the different degrees of success. In 1807, the first Brighton boat of mackerel, on the 14th of May, sold at Billingsgate, for forty guineas per hundred, seven shillings each, the highest price ever known at that market. The next boat that came in reduced their value to thirteen guineas per hundred. In 1808, these fish were caught so plentifully at Dover, that they sold sixty for a shilling. At Brighton, in June, the same year, the shoal of mackerel was so great, that one of the boats had the meshes of her nets so completely occupied by them, that it was impossible to drag them in. The fish and nets, therefore, in the end sank together; the fisherman thereby sustaining a loss of nearly sixty pounds, exclusive of what his cargo, could he have got it into the boat, would have produced. The success of the fishery in 1821, was beyond all precedent. The value of the catch of sixteen boats from Lowestoft, on the 30th of June, amounted to 5,252_l._ 15_s._ 1¼_d._, being an average of 328_l._ 5_s._ 11¼_d._ per each boat; and it is supposed that there was no less a sum than 14,000_l._ altogether realized by the owners and men concerned in the fishery of the Suffolk coast.[213]

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FLORAL DIRECTORY.

Sweet Pea. _Lathyrus odoratus._ Dedicated to _St. Marcellina_.

[213] Daniel’s Rural Sports.

~July 18.~

_Sts. Symphorosa_ and her seven Sons, Martyrs, A. D. 120. _St. Philastrius_, Bp. A. D. 384. _St. Arnoul_, Bp. A. D. 640. _St. Arnoul_, A. D. 534. _St. Frederic_, Bp. A. D. 838. _St. Odulph._ _St. Bruno_, Bp. of Segni, A. D. 1125.

_Summer Morning._

The cocks have now the morn foretold, The sun again begins to peep, The shepherd, whistling to his fold, Unpens and frees the captive sheep. O’er pathless plains at early hours The sleepy rustic sloomy goes; The dews, brushed off from grass and flowers, Bemoistening sop his hardened shoes;

While every leaf that forms a shade, And every floweret’s silken top, And every shivering bent and blade, Stoops, bowing with a diamond drop. But soon shall fly those diamond drops, The red round sun advances higher, And, stretching o’er the mountain tops, Is gilding sweet the village-spire.

’Tis sweet to meet the morning breeze, Or list the gurgling of the brook; Or, stretched beneath the shade of trees, Peruse and pause on Nature’s book, When Nature every sweet prepares To entertain our wished delay,-- The images which morning wears, The wakening charms of early day!

Now let me tread the meadow paths While glittering dew the ground illumes, As, sprinkled o’er the withering swaths, Their moisture shrinks in sweet perfumes; And hear the beetle sound his horn; And hear the skylark whistling nigh, Sprung from his bed of tufted corn, A hailing minstrel in the sky.

_Clare._

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FLORAL DIRECTORY.

Autumn Marigold. _Chrysanthemum coronarium._ Dedicated to _St. Bruno._

~July 19.~

_St. Vincent_, of Paul, A. D. 1660. _St. Arsenius_, A. D. 449. _St. Symmachus_, Pope, A. D. 514. _St. Macrina_ V., A. D. 379.

In July, 1797, as Mr. Wright, of Saint Faith’s, in Norwich, was walking in his garden, a flight of bees alighted on his head, and entirely covered his hair, till they made an appearance like a judge’s wig. Mr. W. stood upwards of two hours in this situation, while the customary means were used for hiving them, which was completely done without his receiving any injury. Mr. Wright had expressed a strong wish, for some days before, that a flight of bees might come on his premises.

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FLORAL DIRECTORY.

Golden Hawkweed. _Hieracium Aurantiacum._ Dedicated to _St. Vincent_ of Paul.

~July 20.~

_St. Joseph Barsabas_, the Disciple. _St. Margaret_, of Antioch. _Sts. Justa_ and _Rufina_, A. D. 304. _St. Ceslas_, A. D. 1242. _St. Aurelius_, Abp., A. D. 423. _St. Ulmar_, or _Wulmar_, A. D. 710. _St. Jerom Æmiliani_, A. D. 1537.

_Midnight and the Moon._

Now sleep is busy with the world, The moon and midnight come; and curl’d Are the light shadows round the hills; The many-tongued and babbling rills Play on the drowsy ear of night, Gushing at times into the light From out their beds, and hastening all To join the trembling waterfall.

Fair planet! when I watch on high, Star-heralded along the sky, That face of light and holiness, I turn, and all my brethren bless: And it must be--(the hour is gone When the fair world thou smilest upon, Lay chained in darkness,) thou wert sent Ministering in the firmament, To be--calm, beautiful, above-- The eye of universal love.

’Twere good to die in such an hour, And rest beneath the almighty power, (Beside yon ruin still and rude) Of beauty and of solitude.

_Literary Pocket Book._

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FLORAL DIRECTORY.

Virginian Dragon’s Head. _Dracocephalus Virginianum._ Dedicated to _St. Margaret_.

~July 21.~

_St. Praxedes._ _St. Zodicus_, Bp., A. D. 204. _St. Barhadbesciabas_, A. D. 354. _St. Victor_, of Marseilles. _St. Arbogastus_, Bp. A. D. 678.

_Flowers._

A sensitive plant in a garden grew And the young winds fed it with silver dew, And it opened its fanlike leaves to the light, And closed them beneath the kisses of night.

And the spring arose on the garden fair, Like the spirit of love felt every where; And each flower and shrub on earth’s dark breast, Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.

But none ever trembled and panted with bliss, In the garden, the field, or the wilderness, Like a doe in the noontide with love’s sweet want, As the companionless sensitive plant.

The snowdrop, and then the violet, Arose from the ground with warm rain wet, And their breath was mixed with fresh odour, sent, From the turf, like the voice and the instrument.

Then the pied windflowers, and the tulip tall, And narcissi, the fairest among them all, Who gaze on their eyes in the stream’s recess, Till they die of their own dear loveliness.

And the naiadlike lily of the vale, Whom youth makes so fair, and passion so pale, That the light of its tremulous bells is seen, Through their pavilions of tender green.

And the hyacinth purple, white, and blue, Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew Of music so delicate, soft, and intense, It was felt like an odour within the sense.

And the rose, like a nymph to the bath addrest, Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast, Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air The soul of her beauty and love lay bare.

And the wandlike lily, which lifted up, As a Moenad, its moonlight-coloured cup, Till the fiery star, which is its eye, Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky.

And the jessamine faint, and sweet tuberose, The sweetest flower, for scent, that blows; And all rare blossoms from every clime, Grew in that garden in perfect prime.

_Shelley._

* * * * *

CAPTAIN STARKEY.

_To the Editor of the Every-Day Book._

Dear Sir,

I read your account of this unfortunate Being, and his forlorn piece of self-history, with that smile of half-interest which the Annals of Insignificance excite, till I came to where he says “I was bound apprentice to Mr. William Bird, an eminent writer and Teacher of languages and Mathematics,” &c.--when I started as one does on the recognition of an old acquaintance in a supposed stranger. This then was that Starkey of whom I have heard my Sister relate so many pleasant anecdotes; and whom, never having seen, I yet seem almost to remember. For nearly fifty years she had lost all sight of him--and behold the gentle Usher of her youth, grown into an aged Beggar, dubbed with an opprobrious title, to which he had no pretensions; an object, and a May game! To what base purposes may we not return! What may not have been the meek creature’s sufferings--what his wanderings--before he finally settled down in the comparative comfort of an old Hospitaller of the Almonry of Newcastle? And is poor Starkey dead?--

I was a scholar of that “eminent writer” that he speaks of; but Starkey had quitted the school about a year before I came to it. Still the odour of his merits had left a fragrancy upon the recollection of the elder pupils. The school-room stands where it did, looking into a discoloured dingy garden in the passage leading from Fetter Lane into Bartlett’s Buildings. It is still a School, though the main prop, alas! has fallen so ingloriously; and bears a Latin inscription over the entrance in the Lane, which was unknown in our humbler times. Heaven knows what “languages” were taught in it then; I am sure that neither my Sister nor myself brought any out of it, but a little of our native English. By “mathematics,” reader, must be understood “cyphering.” It was in fact a humble day-school, at which reading and writing were taught to us boys in the morning, and the same slender erudition was communicated to the girls, our sisters, &c. in the evening. Now Starkey presided, under Bird, over both establishments. In my time, Mr. Cook, now or lately a respectable Singer and Performer at Drury-lane Theatre, and Nephew to Mr. Bird, had succeeded to him. I well remember Bird. He was a squat, corpulent, middle-sized man, with something of the gentleman about him, and that peculiar mild tone--especially while he was inflicting punishment--which is so much more terrible to children, than the angriest looks and gestures. Whippings were not frequent; but when they took place, the correction was performed in a private room adjoining, whence we could only hear the plaints, but saw nothing. This heightened the decorum and the solemnity. But the ordinary public chastisement was the bastinado, a stroke or two on the palm with that almost obsolete weapon now--the ferule. A ferule was a sort of flat ruler, widened at the inflicting end into a shape resembling a pear,--but nothing like so sweet--with a delectable hole in the middle, to raise blisters, like a cupping-glass. I have an intense recollection of that disused instrument of torture--and the malignancy, in proportion to the apparent mildness, with which its strokes were applied. The idea of a rod is accompanied with something ludicrous; but by no process can I look back upon this blister-raiser with any thing but unmingled horror.--To make him look more formidable--if a pedagogue had need of these heightenings--Bird wore one of those flowered Indian gowns, formerly in use with schoolmasters; the strange figures upon which we used to interpret into hieroglyphics of pain and suffering. But boyish fears apart--Bird I believe was in the main a humane and judicious master.

O, how I remember our legs wedged in to those uncomfortable sloping desks, where we sat elbowing each other--and the injunctions to attain a free hand, unattainable in that position; the first copy I wrote after, with its moral lesson “Art improves Nature;” the still earlier pot-hooks and the hangers some traces of which I fear may yet be apparent in this manuscript; the truant looks side-long to the garden, which seemed a mockery of our imprisonment; the prize for best spelling, which had almost turned my head, and which to this day I cannot reflect upon without a vanity, which I ought to be ashamed of--our little leaden ink-stands, not separately subsisting, but sunk into the desks; the bright, punctually-washed morning fingers, darkening gradually with another and another ink-spot: what a world of little associated circumstances, pains and pleasures mingling their quotas of pleasure, arise at the reading of those few simple words--“Mr. William Bird, an eminent Writer and Teacher of languages and mathematics in Fetter Lane, Holborn!”

Poor Starkey, when young, had that peculiar stamp of old-fashionedness in his face, which makes it impossible for a beholder to predicate any particular age in the object. You can scarce make a guess between seventeen and seven and thirty. This antique cast always seems to promise ill-luck and penury. Yet it seems, he was not always the abject thing he came to. My Sister, who well remembers him, can hardly forgive Mr. Thomas Ranson for making an etching so unlike her idea of him, when he was a youthful teacher at Mr. Bird’s school. Old age and poverty--a life-long poverty she thinks, could at no time have so effaced the marks of native gentility, which were once so visible in a face, otherwise strikingly ugly, thin, and care-worn. From her recollections of him, she thinks that he would have wanted bread, before he would have begged or borrowed a halfpenny. If any of the girls (she says) who were my school-fellows should be reading, through their aged spectacles, tidings from the dead of their youthful friend Starkey, they will feel a pang, as I do, at ever having teased his gentle spirit. They were big girls, it seems, too old to attend his instructions with the silence necessary; and however old age, and a long state of beggary, seem to have reduced his writing faculties to a state of imbecility, in those days, his language occasionally rose to the bold and figurative, for when he was in despair to stop their chattering, his ordinary phrase was, “Ladies, if you will not hold your peace, not all the powers in heaven can make you.” Once he was missing for a day or two; he had run away. A little old unhappy-looking man brought him back--it was his father--and he did no business in the school that day, but sate moping in a corner, with his hands before his face; and the girls, his tormentors, in pity for his case, for the rest of that day forbore to annoy him. I had been there but a few months (adds she) when Starkey, who was the chief instructor of us girls, communicated to us as a profound secret, that the tragedy of “Cato” was shortly to be acted by the elder boys, and that we were to be invited to the representation. That Starkey lent a helping hand in fashioning the actors, she remembers; and but for his unfortunate person, he might have had some distinguished part in the scene to enact; as it was, he had the arduous task of prompter assigned to him, and his feeble voice was heard clear and distinct, repeating the text during the whole performance. She describes her recollection of the cast of characters even now with a relish. Martia, by the handsome Edgar Hickman, who afterwards went to Africa, and of whom she never afterwards heard tidings,--Lucia, by Master Walker, whose sister was her particular friend; Cato, by John Hunter, a masterly declaimer, but a plain boy, and shorter by the head than his two sons in the scene, &c. In conclusion, Starkey appears to have been one of those mild spirits, which, not originally deficient in understanding, are crushed by penury into dejection and feebleness. He might have proved a useful adjunct, if not an ornament to Society, if Fortune had taken him into a very little fostering, but wanting that, he became a Captain--a by-word--and lived, and died, a broken bulrush.

C. L.

The sprightly youth Speeds to the well-known Pool. Awhile he stands Gazing th’ inverted landscape, half afraid To meditate the blue profound below; Then plunges headlong down the circling flood. His ebon tresses, and his rosy cheek, Instant emerge; and thro’ th’ obedient wave, At each short breathing by his lip repell’d, With arms and legs according well, he makes, As humour leads, an easy winding path; While, from his polish’d sides, a dewy light Effuses on the pleas’d spectators round.

_Thomson._

Coming from the city, on the left-hand side of the City-road, just beyond Old-street, and immediately at the back of St. Luke’s hospital, Peerless Pool

flows unseen, And wastes its waters in the silver Thames.

It is a pleasure-bath in the open air, a hundred and seventy feet long, and upwards of a hundred feet wide, nearly surrounded by trees, with an arcade divided off into boxes for privately dressing and undressing; and is therefore, both in magnitude and convenience, the greatest bathing-place in the metropolis. Here the lover of cleanliness, or of a “cool dip” in a hot day, may at all times, for a shilling, enjoy the refreshment he desires, without the offensive publicity, and without the risk of life, attendant on river-bathing; while there is “ample room and verge enough” for all the sports and delights which “_swimmers_ only know.” It is no where so deep as five feet, and on one side only three; the experienced and the inexperienced are alike safe. There is likewise a capacious cold-bath in an adjacent building, for the use of those who prefer a temperature below that of the atmosphere.

* * * * *

Peerless Pool is distinguished for having been one of the ancient springs that supplied the metropolis with water, when our ancestors drew that essential element from public conduits; that is to say, before the “old” water-works at London-bridge “commenced to be,” or the “New River” had been brought to London by sir Hugh Myddelton. The streams of this “pool” at that time were conveyed, for the convenience of the inhabitants near Lothbury, through pipes terminating “close to the south-west corner of the church.”[214] Stow speaks of it as a “cleere water, called _Perilous Pond_, because,” says our chronicler, “divers youths, by swimming therein, have been drowned.”[215] “Upon Saterday the 19 of January, 1633, sixe pretty young lads, going to sport themselves upon the frozen Ducking-pond, neere to Clearkenwell, the ice too weake to support them, fell into the water, concluding their pastime with the lamentable losse of their lives: to the great griefe of many that saw them dying, many more that afterward saw them dead, with the in-expressible griefe of their parents.”[216] In consequence of such accidents, and the worthy inhabitants of Lothbury having obtained their water from other sources, Perilous Pond was entirely filled up, and rendered useless, till Mr. William Kemp, “an eminent jeweller and citizen of London,” “after ten years’ experience of the temperature” of this water, and “the happy success of getting clear of a violent pain of the head by bathing in it, to which he had for many years been subject, was generously led for public benefit” to open the spring in the year 1743, and “to form the completest swimming-bath in the whole world;” and “in reference to the improvements he had made on the ruins of that once _Perilous Pond_,” and by a very natural transition, he changed that disagreeable appellation of _Perilous_, “that is,” says Maitland, “_dangerous_, or _hazardous_, to the more agreeable name of _Peerless Pool_, that is, _Matchless Bath_, a name which carries its own reason with it.”