A chapbook.
File 74 800 G233 no. 11
Acquired April 2021
A commonplace book containing lists of toasts, dances, songs and quotations assembled by Christopher Finn. A section entitled “Elegant extracts” appears to be an extract from “The unfashionable wife. A novel” (published in London, 1772), perhaps to be used for recitation. The section “Matter for letters” contains suggests for well-turned phrases for the beginning, middle, and ‘subscription’. The last page contains instructions to the person who might find this volume, promising a reward; he provides not only his own address but those of two friends, one in Birmingham and one London and a note to his friends assuring them than he will re-imburse them the price of postage and the reward to the finder, clear evidence of how important this volume was to the author.
LWL Mss Vol. 261
Acquired May 2020
File 53 N333 803+
Acquired February 2021
74 826 W353
Acquired March 2020
Date based on inclusion of ‘Wottington’, perhaps a variant spelling of Samuel Worthington, Mayor of Nottingham in 1800/1.
An apparently satirical Nottinghamshire slip song, perhaps produced during an enclosure dispute (‘Have BURGESS’s the Time forgot, When Worshipper’s of Mammon; Combined to seize that happy Spot, We hold as RIGHT of Common?’), which groups the names of several local worthies (such as Mayors Hawksley and Hunt) ‘as An Auctioneer’s old Books, Waste Paper, Rotten Leather’.
File 763 800 SL631
Acquired September 2020
For voice and harp or harpsichord
74 799 J76
Acquired October 2020
“Heading to a broadside engraved in two columns. A stalwart Highland soldier, with plumed bonnet, stands outside an open doorway (left) crowded with cringing Italians. He lunges furiously towards them with clenched fist, saying: “Filthy brutes! i ‘ts for new boots, That a’ you Rogues are swearing at her”. The most prominent of the witnesses (cf. British Museum Satires No. 13762) are Majocchi (see British Museum Satires No. 13827) and Demont, see British Museum Satires No. 13856. Over the doorway: ‘Rogues Retreat’; at the corner of the building: ‘Cotton Garden’ [see British Museum Satires No. 13824]. Behind (right) is the Thames. The Highlander’s words are from the second verse of the song: ‘Air Tibby Fowler o’ the Glen’. The third of five verses: ‘Fie upon the filthy louns! There’s o’er mony swearing at her; Fifteen came frae German towns; There’s eight and fifty swearing at her; Swearing at her, mumbling at her, Tumbling at her, canna hit her; Tawdry louns! its for new gowns, The hizzies a’ are swearing at her.’.”–British Museum online catalogue.
820.09.00.01+
Acquired May 2019
A collection of nine ballads with no music.
File 74 800 G233 no. 1 – no. 9
Acquired March 2019
“A broadside satirising Robert Walpole with an etching in two parts. In the left-hand scene Frederick, Prince of Wales, stands with the Duke of Argyll and other gentlemen, pointing to the left where George II embraces Britannia. In the foreground, the grotesque figure of Walpole, wearing a coronet, kneels holding in five hands, bags of French and Spanish gold and another lettered, “I am Lord Corruption”. Behind him stands his daughter, Lady Mary, toying with a coronet. On the ground beside Walpole, the French cock perches on the back of the exhausted Imperial Eagle, but the British lion watching the conflict growls, “Now I’m rousing”. In the background, the white horse of Hanover kicks a man off a high rock; the man cries, “I’m lost”; a ship lies at anchor off Cartagena observed from another high rock to right by Admiral Vernon whose impetus towards the city is restrained by General Wentworth; below these two men sits Admiral Haddock chained to a rock (a reference to the limitation of his resources in dealing with the combined Spanish and French Mediterranean fleets). In the right-hand scene Walpole raises his hands in horror at the appearance in a cloud of smoke of the ghost of Eustace Budgell who holds out a paper described in the verses to left as a “black Account …Full twenty Winters of Misdeeds”; on the table at which Walpole is sitting is a large candlestick and letters addressed “A son Eminence” (Cardinal Fleury) and “à don [Sebastian] de la Quadra” and a book on “The Art of Bribery”. Budgell’s ghost raises his hand above his head to point at a scene of a beheading in the background above which flies Time while Justice sits on a column beside the scaffold and a crowd cheers below; over a doorway to right is a portrait of a Cardinal, presumably intended for Wolsey who is mentioned in the verses on the right. Engraved title and dedication to the Prince of Wales on a cloth above the scene supported by two putti; verses in two columns on either side condemning Walpole for his maladministration and celebrating the new prominence of the Prince of Wales and his followers; lines of music in two columns below the etching.”–British Museum online catalogue.
742.00.00.10++ Impression 2
Acquired January 2019
Broadside celebrating Fairlop Fair, held annually held on the first Friday in July. The broadside gives a short account of the origins of the fair, reproduces two songs sung by a Mr. Hemingway and a Mr. Lidard during the fair, and shows the festivities in an impressive woodcut which was printed from a woodblock fashioned from the celebrated Fairlop Oak. The Fairlop Oak was an impressive oak in the Hainault Forest near a lake at Fairlop Waters. In 1725 Daniel Day (d. 1767), a ship-builder, took some friends for a picnic there, repeating this for a number of summers until it gradually developed into a larger event, attended by ship-, boat- and barge-builders and their associated trades, though it was always held without a charter. By the early 19th century it was a well attended fair, known for its sometimes riotous behaviour. Day always made a point of arriving at the fair in a boat on wheels and this tradition continued. These impressive modes of transport, festooned with lights and sails, full of people in garish costumes making music and breaking into song were one of the features of the fair, and a well-known spectacle in the East End of London when they set off. By 1813 the Fairlop Oak had lost a great deal of its crown. The broadside here records its girth as being 36 feet. The tree was blown down in a gale in 1820, and its timber was used for a variety of celebratory furniture but also for the block from which the present woodcut was carved.
File 74 824 P374
Acquired April 2017