Born: Henry III of England, 1207,
Winchester; Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke,
politician and philosophical writer, 1678, Battersea;
Paul I, emperor of Russia, 1754.
Died: Michael II, the Stammerer, Greek
emperor, 829; Pierre Corneille, great tragic
dramatist, 1684, Paris.
Feast Day: The Festival of the Rosary. St.
Plat, apostle of Tournay, martyr, about 286. St.
Remigius, confessor, archbishop of Rheims, 533. St.
Wasnulf or Wasnon, confessor, patron of Cond�, about
651. St. Bavo, anchoret, patron of Ghent, 7th century.
St. Fidharleus of Ireland, abbot, 762.
FESTIVAL OF THE
ROSARY
The rosary, as is well known, is, in the Roman
Catholic Church, a series of prayers, consisting of
fifteen Pater Nosters and a hundred and fifty
Ave Marias, which, for the convenience of worshipers, are
counted on a string of beads. Each rosary, or string
of beads, consists of fifteen decades, each of which
decades contains one Pater Noster, marked by a large
bead, and ten Ave Marias, marked by ten smaller beads.
The festival of the rosary was instituted to implore
the divine mercy in favour of the church and all the
faithful, and return thanks for the benefits conferred
on them, more especially for the victory of Lepanto,
in 1571, over the Turks. This success, believed to be
obtained through the intercession of the Virgin, who
is so specially invoked in the devotion of the rosary,
was ordered by Pius V to be annually commemorated
under the title of St. Mary de Victoria. This epithet
was, however, changed by his successor, Gregory XIII,
into the title of the Festival of the Rosary. The
victory of Prince Eugene over the Turks at Belgrade,
in 1716, was ordered by Clement XII to be included in
the benefits which this office specially commemorates.
THE MUSICAL
SMALL-COALMAN
On 1st October 1714, was buried in Clerkenwell
churchyard, Thomas Britton, a dealer in coal, whose
life presents one of the most curious social anomalies
that have ever been recorded. Whilst gaining his
livelihood by the active exercise of a humble craft,
occupying a habitation and wearing a garb
corresponding in plainness to his trade, this singular
man contrived by his various talents, and more
especially his musical tastes, to assemble around him
the most aristocratic company in London, and to be
admitted into their society on equal terms, at a time
when the principle of exclusion was far more rigidly
maintained than it is now, between the upper and lower
ranks of the community.
The house occupied by our small-coalman was
situated in Aylesbury Street, Clerkenwell, and formed
the corner-house of a passage leading by the Old
Jerusalem Tavern into St. John's Square. On the
ground-floor were the coal-stores, and above them a
long narrow room, very low in the ceiling, and
approached by a break-neck stair from the outside. In
this modest saloon, Britton held his musical reunions,
which were attended by the great and fashionable, and
at which, among other eminent performers, the
celebrated Handel did not disdain to exhibit his
unequaled skill for the entertainment of the company.
The origin of these gatherings is ascribed to Sir
Roger L'Estrange, a
famous musical dilettante, who,
along with other gentlemen, had been taken with the
conversation and manners of Britton, so greatly beyond
what might have been expected from his station in
life. Nor were his guests confined to the male sex.
Elegant ladies, from the most fashionable quarters of
London, thronged to his humble mansion, and, in the
pleasure which they experienced in listening to his
concert, forgot the toils which they had undergone in
ascending to the hall of performance. It has been said
that Britton charged his guests with an annual
subscription of ten shillings for the music, and a
penny for each cup of coffee drunk. But this was
certainly not the case at first, when the
entertainment was entirely gratuitous, and no
refreshments of any kind were given, though possibly
some change may have been introduced at a later
period.
In the Augustan age of Queen Anne, the passion for
collecting old books and manuscripts began to develop
itself among the nobility. Among the most noted
bibliophilists of the aristocracy were the Duke of
Devonshire, and the Earls of Oxford, Pembroke,
Sunderland, and Winchelsea. A favorite Saturday
pastime of these noblemen was to make their rounds
through the various nooks of the city in which
booksellers congregated, and then reassemble at noon
at the shop of Christopher Bateman, a
bookseller in
Paternoster Row. About this time, Thomas Britton would
make his appearance, having finished his round, and,
depositing his sack of small-coal on the ledge of Mr.
Bateman's window, would go in and join the
distinguished company. Here his skill in old books and
manuscripts was no less conspicuous than the
correctness of his musical taste, and rendered him a
most useful acquisition.
As has happened with many greater men, Britton did
not escape the shafts of slander and malice, and it
was variously asserted that his musical assemblies
were merely pretexts for seditious meetings or magical
incantations, and that he himself was an atheist or a
Jesuit in disguise. There seems, however, to have been
really nothing objectionable either in his principles
or mode of life, his character being that of a simple
and inoffensive, though learned and intelligent man.
His death was brought about in a singular manner. A
blacksmith, named Honeyman, who possessed the faculty
of ventriloquism, and had almost frightened, by the
exercise of it, the notorious Dr.
Sacheverell into
fits, was induced, as a practical joke, to play off
his art upon Thomas Britton. Being introduced to the
latter, he announced, as if by a supernatural
messenger, speaking from a distance, the death of
Britton, intimating, moreover, that his only chance of
escape was to fall clown immediately upon his knees,
and repeat the Lord's Prayer. The poor man, terrified
out of his senses, did as he was told, and verified
the prediction but too soon, as he took to his bed,
and died in a few days.
Two pictures of Britton were painted by his friend
Woolaston. One of these, which was deposited in the
British Museum, represents him in his blue frock, with
the small coal-measure in his hand, as he appeared
when he went through the town crying his wares. He has
also been fortunate enough to secure transmission to
posterity in the following lines by Prior:
'Though doomed to small-coal, yet to arts allied,
Rich without wealth, and famous without pride,
Music's best patron, judge of books and men, Beloved
and honored by Apollo's train. In Greece or Rome
sure never did appear So bright a genius in so dark
a sphere!
More of the man had probably been saved had
Kneller painted, and had
Vertue graved.'
RUMINATING MEN
'I remember,' says Mrs. Piozzi,
in her Tour in
Italy, 'Dr Johnson once said that nobody had ever seen
a very strange thing, and challenged the company to
produce a strange thing; but I had not then seen
Avvocato B-, la Wyerhere, at Milan, and a man
respected in his profession, who actually chews the
cud like an ox. He is apparently much like another
tall stout man, but has many extraordinary properties,
being eminent for strength, and possessing a set of
ribs and sternum very surprising, and worthy the
attention of anatomists.
His body, upon the slightest touch, even through
all his clothes, throws out electric sparks; he can
reject his meals from his stomach at pleasure; and did
absolutely, in the course of two hours, go through, to
oblige me, the whole operation of eating, masticating,
swallowing, and returning by the mouth a large piece
of bread and a peach. With all this conviction,
nothing more was wanting; but I obtained, besides, the
confirmation of common friends, who were willing
likewise to bear testimony of this strange accidental
variety. What I hear of his character is, that he is a
low-spirited nervous man; and I suppose his ruminating
moments are spent in lamenting the peculiarities of
his frame.'
This human chewer of the cud was not such a
singular being as Mrs. Piozzi imagined. Fabricius ab
Aquapendente records two similar cases coming under
his own observation. One was a monk, who rejoiced in
another bovine characteristic, his forehead being
adorned with a pair of horns. The other ruminant was
not so ornamented himself; but was the son of a
one-horned parent; he was a Paduan nobleman, and
Fabricius had the satisfaction of dissecting him, and
proving the falseness of Bartholin's theory, that
human ruminants possessed double stomachs. Lynceus
tells us of Anthony Recchi, who was obliged to retire
from the dinner-table to ruminate undisturbed, and who
declared that the second process of mastication 'was
sweeter than honey, and accompanied with a delightful
relish.' His son inherited the same faculty, but with
him it was under better control, he being able to
defer its exercise till a convenient opportunity. Sennert knew a man similarly
qualified, and accounted
for it by attributing it to the fact of his having
been fed on milk warm from the cow, in consequence of
the death of his mother at his birth. Pyer believed
that two of his country-men acquired the habit from
learning to imitate the calves and sheep with which
their vocation associated them. Blumenbach says he
knew two men who ruminated their vegetable food, and
found great enjoyment in the feat, while one of them
had the power of doing so or not as he felt inclined.
In the Philosophical Transactions for 1691, there
is an account by 'the experienced and learned
Frederick Slare, M.D.' of a ruminating man living
at
Bristol, described as a person of mean parents but of
tolerable sense and reason, who had followed the
practice from his earliest years, and always found a
temporary deprivation of the faculty the sure
precursor of illness. He used to commence ruminating
about a quarter of an hour after a meal, and the
process usually occupied him for an hour and a half,
and was attended with greater gratification than the
first mastication!, after which food always lay heavy
in the lower part of the throat.
Under the date of
October 1, 1767, we find the following in the Annual
Register:
'We have the following extraordinary account
from Winbourne, in Dorsetshire. A few days ago died
here Roger Gill, shoemaker, and one of our
singing-men, aged about sixty-seven, remarkable for
chewing his meat or cud twice over, as an ox, sheep,
or cow. He seldom made any breakfast in his latter
days; he generally dined about twelve or one o'clock,
eat pretty heartily and quickly, without much chewing
or mastication. He never drank with his dinner, but
afterwards about a pint of such malt liquor as he
could get; but no sort of spirituous liquor in any
shape, except a little punch, but never cared for
that. He usually began his second chewing about a
quarter or half an hour, sometimes later, after
dinner; when every morsel came up successively,
sweeter and sweeter to the taste. Some-times a morsel
would prove offensive and crude, in which case he spat
it out. The chewing continued usually about an hour or
more, and some-times would leave him a little while,
in which case he would be sick at stomach, troubled
with the heartburn, and foul breath. Smoking tobacco
would sometimes stop his chewing, but was never
attended with any ill consequences. But on the 10th of
June last, the faculty entirely left him, and the poor
man remained in great tortures till the time of his
death.'
Similar cases have been recorded by Messrs Tarbes,
Percy, Lawrent, Cullerier, Riche, and Copland. The
latter published a full account of a case of
rumination in The London Medical and Physical Journal
(1819-20), and observes in his Medical Dictionary,
published in 1858, 'since the publication of that
case, two others, one of them in a medical man, have
been treated by me, and I have reason to believe that instances of partial
or occasional rumination are not so rare in the human
subject as is generally supposed.'
