The book of days : a miscellany of popular antiquities in connection with the calendar, including anecdote, biography, & history, curiosities of literature and oddities of human life and character / edited by R. Chambers.

Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The book of days : a miscellany of popular antiquities in connection with the calendar, including anecdote, biography, & history, curiosities of literature and oddities of human life and character / edited by R. Chambers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    lie won £1500.] The ladies also played very deep. Evelyn came away when the Duke of Ormond had won about £1000, and left them still at passage, cards, &c., at other tables. The JEiev. Henry Teonge, chaplain of one of Charles’s ships-of-war, describes Twelfth-Night on board: ‘Wee had a great kake made, in which was put a beane for the king, a pease for the queen, a cloave for the knave, &c. The kake was cut into several pieces in the great cabin, and all put into a napkin, out of which every one took his piece as out of a lottery; then each piece is broaken to see what was in it, which caused much laughter, and more to see us tumble one over the other in the cabin, by reason of the ruff weather.’ The celebrated Lord Peterborough, then a youth, was one of the party on board this ship, as Lord Mordaunt. The Lord Mayor and Aldermen and the guilds of London used to go to St Paul’s on Twelfth- Day, to hear a sermon, which is mentioned as an old custom in the early part of Elizabeth’s reign. A century ago, the king, preceded by heralds, pursuivants, and the Knights of the Garter, Thistle, and Bath, in the collars of their respective orders, went to the Boyal Chapel at St James’3, and offered gold, myrrh, ana frankincense, in imitation of the Eastern Magi offering to our Saviour. Since the illness of George III., the procession, and even the personal appearance of the monarch, have been discontinued. Two gen- tlemen from the Lord Chamberlain’s office now appear instead, attended by a box ornamented at top with a spangled star, from which they take the gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and place them on an alms-clish held forth by the officiat- ing priest. In the last century, Twelfth-Night Cards re- presented ministers, maids of honour, and other attendants of a court, and the characters were to be supported throughout the night. John Britton, in his Autobiography, tells us he * sug- gested and wrote a series of Twelfth-Night haracters, to be printed on cards, placed in a bag, and drawn out at parties on the memor- able and merry evening of that ancient festival. They were sold in small packets to pastrycooks, and led the way to a custom which annually grew to an extensive trade. For the second year, my pen-and-ink characters were accompanied by prints of the different personages by Cruikshank (father of the inimitable George), all of a comic or ludicrous kind.’ Such characters are still printed. The celebration of Twelfth-Day with the costly and elegant Twelfth-cake has much declined within the last half-century. Formerly, in Lon- don, the confectioners’ shops on this day were entirely filled with Twelfth-cakes, ranging in price from several guineas to a few shillings ; the shops were tastefully illuminated, and decorated with artistic models, transparencies, &c. We remember to have seen a huge Twelfth-cake in the form of a fortress, with sentinels and flags ; the cake being so large as to fill two ovens in baking. One of the most celebrated and attractive displays was that of Birch, the confectioner, No. 15, Cornhill, probably the oldest shop of its class in the metropolis. This business was established in the reign of King George I., by a Mr Horton, who was succeeded by Mr Lucas Birch, who, in his turn, was succeeded by his son, Mr Samuel Birch, born in 1757 ; he was many years a member of the Common Council, and was elected alderman of the ward of Candlewick. He was also colonel of the City Militia, and served as Lord Mayor in 1815, the year of the battle of Waterloo. In his mayoralty, he laid the first stone of the London Institution; and when Chan- trey’s marble statue of George III. was inaugu- rated in the Council Chamber, Guildhall, the in- scription wa3 written by Lord Mayor Birch. He possessed considerable literary taste, and wrote poems and musical dramas, of which the Adopted Child remained a stock piece to our time. The alderman used annually to send, as a present, a Twelfth-cake to the Mansion House. The upper NO. 15, CORNHILL. portion of the house in Cornhill has been rebuilt, but the ground-floor remains intact, a curious spe- cimen of the decorated shop-front of the last cen- tury, and here are preserved two door-plates, inscribed, ‘ Birch, Successor to Mr Horton,’ which are 140 years old. Alderman Birch died in 1840, having been succeeded in the business in Cornhill in 1836 by the present proprietors, King and Brymer. Dr Kitchiner extols the soups of Birch, and his skill has long been famed in civic banquets. We have a Twelfth-Night celebration recorded in theatrical history. Baddeley, the comedian (who had been cook to Foote), left, by will, money to provide cake and wine for the performers, in the green-room at Drury-laneTheatre, on Twelfth- Night; but the bequest is not now observed in this manner.