London: The Biography полностью

It continued, curiously enough, during the Puritan Commonwealth, no doubt with the primary motive of venting the steam of the more unruly citizens, but flourished after the Restoration of 1660 when liberty and licence came back into fashion. One versifier of the period notes masquerades dramatising “The Woman of Babylon, The Devil and The Pope,” as well as shows of dancing bears and acrobats. Some acts came year after year: there was the “Tall Dutchwoman” who made annual appearances for at least seventeen years, together with the “Horse and no Horse, whose tail stands where his head should do.” And there were always rope-walkers, among them the famous Scaramouch “dancing on the rope, with a wheelbarrow before him with two children and a dog in it, and with a duck on his head,” and the notable rope-dancer Jacob Hall “that can jump it, jump it.” Perhaps the most celebrated of all the acts, however, was that of Joseph Clark, “the English Posture Master” or “Posture Clark” as he was known. It seems that he could “put out of joynt almost any Bone or Vertebra of his Body, and to replace it again”; he could so contort himself that he became unrecognisable even to his closest friends.

And so the fair went on, as all fairs do. There was even a Ferris wheel, known then as a “Whirligig” (later an “Up and Down”) where, according to Ned Ward in The London Spy (1709), “Children lock’d up in Flying Coaches who insensibly climb’d upwards … being once Elevated to a certain height come down again according to the Circular Motion of the Sphere they move in.”

The general noise and clamour, together with the inevitable crowd of pickpockets, finally proved too much for the city authorities. In 1708 the fortnight of the fair was reduced to three days at the end of August. But if it became less riotous, it was no less festive. Contemporary accounts dwell upon the drollery of “merry Andrews,” otherwise known as Jack Puddings or Pickled Herrings; they wore a costume with donkey’s ears, and accompanied other performers with their fiddles. One of the more famous fools was a seller of gingerbread nuts in Covent Garden; since he was paid one guinea a day for his work at Bartholomew Fair, “he was at pains never to cheapen himself by laughing, or by noticing a joke, during the other 362 days of the year.”

Alongside the merry Andrews leapt the mountebanks who sold miracle cures and patent medicines to those credulous enough to purchase them. In an illustration by Marcellus Laroon one such is dressed as a harlequin from commedia dell’arte with a monkey tied to a rope beside him. His voice, too, might be heard among the general noise and tumult-“a rare cordial to strengthen and cheer the Heart under any Misfortune … a most rare dentifrice … good to fortifie the stomach against all Infections, Unwholesome damps, malignant effluvias.” And so the fair rolled on. It is perhaps appropriate, amid the noise and excitement, that in 1688 John Bunyan collapsed and died at the corner of Snow Hill and Cock Lane.

If there was one central character, however, it was that of Punch, the uncrowned monarch of “puppet-plays, hobby-horses, tabors, crowds, and bagpipes.” He had emerged upon the little stage by the end of the seventeenth century, announced by a jester and accompanied by fiddle, trumpet or drum. He is not a uniquely London phenomenon, but he became a permanent entertainer at the fairs and streets of the city; with his violence, his vulgarity and his sexual innuendo he was a recognisable urban character. “Often turning towards a tightly packed bend of girls, he sits himself down near to them: My beautiful ones, he says, winking roguishly, here’s a girl friend come to join you!” With his great belly, big nose and long stick he is the very essence of a gross sexual joke which, unfortunately, in later centuries became smaller, squeakier, and somehow transformed into entertainment for children. There is a watercolour by Rowlandson, dated 1785, which shows a puppet-play with Punch in action. George III and Queen Charlotte are driving to Deptford, but the attention of the citizens is drawn more towards the wooden booth where Punch is beating the bare buttocks of his wife. He was often conceived as a “hen-pecked” husband but, here, the worm has turned. Rowlandson’s work is of course partly conceived as a satire against the royal family, but it is filled with a greater and all-encompassing urban energy.