PREFACE. SINCE I am here occupying virgin soil in a part of the wila district beyond the bounds of cultivated history, I may be pardoned perhaps if my ground is not at once staked out in the best manner, and my fields are not so trim as those combed by the ploughs and harrows of successive generations. This is not only the first history of Bartholomew Fair, but the first serious history of any Fair; even the general subject of Fairs, as far as I can learn, has never been thought worthy of a book. Yet what a distinct chapter in social history should be contained in the story, rightly told, of any Great National Fair! When I first resolved upon the writing of these Memoirs, I knew simply that Bartholomew Fair was an unwritten portion of the story of the people. Bound once to the life of the nation by the three ties of Religion, Trade, and Pleasure, first came a time when the tie of Religion was unloosened from it; then it was a place of Trade and Pleasure. A few more generations having lived and worked, Trade was no longer bound to it. The nation still grew, and at last broke from it even as a Pleasure Fair. It lived for seven centuries or more, and of its death we are the witnesses. Surely, methought, there is a story here; the Memoirs of a Fair do not mean only a bundle of hand-bills or a catalogue of monsters. And thus the volume was planned which is now offered to the reader, with a lively sense of its shortcomings. Conscious of what such a book might have been, and ought to be, I feel how much of crudity there is in this, and only know too well how dimly the soul of it glimmers through its substance. There has been no lack of matter to make substance. In the Library of the Corporation of London at Guildhall is a valu able collection of cuttings, handbills, and references to authorities, made by a gentleman who had designed the publication of a book upon Bartholomew Fair. There is in the British Museum another collection, made with a like purpose, less valuable, but containing much that is not found in the collection at Guildhall. In the Guildhall Library there are also handbills bought by the City, rare tracts, and various MS. notes, from which illustration of the story of the Fair was to be drawn. To the Committee of St. Bartholomew's Hospital I am indebted for permission to examine the old records in their keeping. Let me add that the fault is mine if I have not made use enough of the great courtesy with which this formal permission was carried out in practice, and of the ready kindness with which help was offered me by Mr. White, the Treasurer, Mr. Wix, the Secretary, and the Rev. Mr. Mitchell, Chaplain of the Hospital. Here also let me acknowledge the good humour with which the Rev. Mr. Abbiss, rector of St. Bartholomew's the Great, permitted the irruption of a stranger into his vestry, and sent away not empty of the information that he sought. Private friends do not need public thanks, but even here I must not pass without acknowledgment the help I have had from my friend Mr. James Gairdner, of the Record Office, who has not only saved me all trouble of search among the Public Records, but who, by his exact knowledge of old sources of history, has now and then given the book valuable help. Moreover, it would be a capital omission if I did not specially thank Mr. Henry Hicks, of Highbury Crescent, for access to some of the papers of the late Mr. Richard Hicks, Deputy of Castle Baynard Ward. Mr. Richard Hicks bound his name in the memory of fellow citizens with the later history of Smithfield, and was the member of the Corporation engaged most prominently in the final suppression of Bartholomew Fair. He took notes at the time, and many of them are preserved. There is enough extant evidence of his research to have impressed me greatly with a sense of the conscientious work that may be done even by a member of the City Parliament, when he devotes his public energies in all sincerity to any question. The jottings upon Mr. Hicks's papers bring together, from all sorts of books and Corporation records, a great number of details about Smithfield, about the history of tolls, and about the relation of the City to the Fair. As to the suppression of the Fair, they contain extracts from the books of the City Lands' Committee, now and then also notes written by himself at the time in the committee-room. It needs not many words to tell of how much use those papers have been to me. Thus, while I may expect allowance to be made for the rough way in which I have staked out my little claim upon virgin soil, yet is the soil so rich that I fear I must go unpardoned if it shall prove to have yielded to my tillage but a scanty harvest. Though I have raised and garnered all the knowledge I could get about the Fair, there certainly was more attainable: there are pamphlets and collections, doubtless, that I have not seen; collectors whom I have not sought. I feel convinced also that I must have overlooked, through ignorance, facts known to many of my readers. Therefore I shall be most thankful for all further information that may come to me from any source. For as much as this volume can tell of Bartholomew Fair I have especially wished to entitle it to credit as, at any rate, an honest record. For aid in this respect it is my duty to thank Mr. H. Sydney Barton, the excellent draughtsman employed by Messrs. Dalziel the wood-engravers, in taking sketches ana facsimiles for the pictures, varying between copies of the rudest of old woodcuts and the imitation of fine etching upon metal, with which it is illustrated. Mr. Barton has exactly met my wish for minute faithfulness in the copying of everything represented. Even when, as in the case of the design for a Bartholomew Fan, or Rowlandson's scenes of the Fair, comprehensive pictures have been broken up into the several groups which they contain, no artist's liberty whatever has been taken with any one of the fragments so detached. Accurate work is very hard to find. Most of the illustrations in this book are now for the first time drawn (usually on a reduced scale) from the illuminations, loose engravings, or handbills, in which they first appeared; about half a dozen of them, however, have been reproduced before in other works, and not even in one instance has the copy truly represented the original. In this book, with the exception mentioned in a note upon page 7, nothing of which the original is extant has been represented from a copy. A second exception, mentioned by anticipation in that note, was set aside after the sheet had gone to press, by the discovery of an original map older and more fitted to the text than that of which a copy was to have been used. Outside oration is the Fashion of the Fair; therefore I hope, that I have not said too much from the platform of my little show. Secretly I fear that, like all other shows, it will be found more tempting in promise than sufficient in performance. But it is not the part of a wise showman to say that. He has his own appointed peroration. Let him, therefore, discreetly remember that he must ask Gentlemen, Ladies, and Children, to walk in. To maids and boys I sing. The place about our standing is well swept, and there is no dirt of the Fair here to offend them.-NEVER BEFORE EXHIBITED. BARTHOLOMEW THE ROYAL SMITHFIELD GIANT. SEVEN HUNDRED YEARS of age. HIS MOTHER'S AT ROME AND HIS FATHER'S AT BRADFORD. TO BE SEEN A-LIVE. Vivat Regina !—-" Shall there be good Vapour ?" demands an acquaintance of Ben Jonson's, Captain Knockem Jordan. The little o of the Fair is vapour now, and it was vapour from the first Sith all that in the world is great and gay, As much alive as ever, then. The show is open.-BAR- 4, UPPER PARK ROAD, HAVERSTOCK HILL, H. M. |