Chelsea in the olden & present times / by George Bryan.

  • Bryan, George.
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Chelsea in the olden & present times / by George Bryan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    right line, not from John Tradescant, as he himself asserts, but from that memorable companion of the Knight of Mancha; and I hereby certify, to all the worthy citizens who travel to see his rarities, that his double-barrelled pistols, targets, coats of mails, his sclopeta, and sword of Toledo, were left to his ancestor, by the said ancestor to all his progeny down to Don Saltero. Though I go thus far in favour of Don Saltero’s merit, I cannot 2dlow a liberty he takes of imposing several names (without my licence) on the collections he has made, to the abuse of the good people of England, one of which is particularly calculated to deceive religious persons, to the great scandal of the well- disposed, and may introduce heterodox opinions : he shows you a straw hat, which I know to be made by Madge Peskad, within three miles of Bedford, and tells you it is Pontius Pilate’s -vrife’s chambermaid’s sister’s hat. To my knowledge of this very hat, it may be added, that the covering of straw was never used among the Jews, since it was demanded of them to make bricks without it. “ Therefore this is really nothing, but, under the specious pretence of learning and antiquity, to impose upon the world. There are other things which I cannot tolerate among his rarities, as the china figure of a lady in the glass case, the Italian engine for the imprisonment of those who go abroad with it; both of which I hereby order to be taken down, or else he may expect to have his letters-patent for making punch superseded, be debarred wearing his muff next winter, or ever coming to London without his wife. “ It may be thought, perhaps, I have dwelt too long upon the affairs of this operator; but I desire the reader to remember that it is my way to consider men as they stand in merit, and not according to their fortune or fi^re ; and if he is in a coffee- house at the reading hereof, let him look round, and he will find there may be more characters drawn in this account than that of Don Saltero; for half the politicians about him, he may observe, are, by their place in nature, of the class of tooth- drawers.” The curiosities of this collection were deposited in glass-cases, and consisted of a great variety of petrifactions, corals, chrystals, ores, shells, animals preserved in spirits, stuffed animals from various parts of the world, idols, curious Chinese manuscripts, missals, birds, snakes, butterflies, medals, models, fire-arms, fishes, portraits, prints, &c.