Читать книгу A Book for a Rainy Day; or, Recollections of the Events of the Years 1766-1833 - John Thomas Smith - Страница 24

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One of the numerous subjects which I drew this year for Mr. Crowle,[154] was the old brick gateway entrance to St. Giles’s churchyard, then standing opposite to Mr. Remnent’s timber-yard, in which drawing I introduced the figure of old Simon, a very remarkable beggar, who, together with his dog, generally took their station against one of the gate-piers. This man, who wore several hats, at the same time suffered his beard to grow, which was of a dirty yellow-white. Upon his fingers were numerous brass rings. He had several waistcoats, and as many coats, increasing in size, so that he was enabled by the extent of the uppermost garment to cover the greater part of the bundles, containing rags of various colours; and distinct parcels with which he was girded about, consisting of books, canisters containing bread, cheese, and other articles of food; matches, a tinder-box, and meat for his dog; cuttings of curious events from old newspapers; scraps from Fox’s Book of Martyrs, and three or four dog’s-eared and greasy thumbed numbers of the Gentleman’s Magazine.

From these and such like productions he gained a great part of the information with which he sometimes entertained those persons who stopped to look at him.

When I knew him—for he was one of my pensioners—he and his dog lodged under a staircase in an old shattered building called “Rats’ Castle,” in Dyot Street, mentioned in Nollekens and his Times as that artist’s rendezvous to discover models for his Venuses. Dyot Street has disappeared, and George Street is built on its site.[155] His walks extended to the entrances only of the adjacent streets, whither he either went to make a purchase at the baker’s or the cook’s shops. Rowlandson drew and etched him several times; in one instance Simon had a female placed before him, which the artist called “Simon and Iphigenia.” There is a large whole-length print of him, published by John Seago, with the following inscription:—

Simon Edy, born at Woodford, near Thrapston, Northamptonshire, in 1709: died May 18, 1783.[156]

Respecting his last dog, for he had possessed several, which wicked boys had beguiled from him, or the skinners of those animals had snatched up, the following anecdote is interesting:—A Smithfield drover, whose dog’s left eye had been much injured by a bullock, solicited Simon to take him under his care till he got well. The mendicant cheerfully consented, and forthwith, with a piece of string, confined him to his arm; and when, by being more quiet, he had regained his health sufficiently to resume his services to his master, old Simon, with the most affectionate reluctance, gave him up, and was obliged to content himself with the pleasure of patting his sides on a market-day, when he followed his master’s drove to the slaughter-house in Union Street. These tender and stolen caresses from the hand which had bathed his wound, Rover would regularly stop to receive at St. Giles’s porch, and then hastily run to get up with the bullocks. Poor Simon, after missing the dog as well as his master for some weeks, was one morning most agreeably surprised to see the faithful animal crouch behind his feet, and with an uplifted and sorrowful eye, for he had entirely lost the blemished one, implore his protection by licking his beard, as a successor to his departed and lamented keeper. Rover followed Simon, according to Dr. Gardner’s idea, to “his last and best bedroom”;[157] or, according to Funeral Weever,[158] his “bed of ease.” Shortly before Simon’s death, I related to Mrs. Nollekens several instances of Rover’s attachment. “I think, Sir,” observed that lady, “you once told me that he had been a shepherd’s dog from Harrow-on-the-Hill. I don’t like a shepherd’s dog: it has no tail,[159] and its coat is as rough as the bristles of a cocoanut. No, Sir, my little French dog is my pet.” However, fortunately for poor Simon, the Hon. Daines Barrington[160] was present when Dr. Johnson’s Pekuah[161] made this silly remark, for he never after passed the kind-hearted mendicant without giving him sixpence. There was an elegy printed for poor Simon, with a woodcut portrait of him.

BENJAMIN WEST, P.R.A.

“Sir, I was once a Quaker, and have never left their principles.”

Ugly and deficient in sight and tail as Rover certainly was, it is also as equally unquestionable that Simon never had occasion to carry him to Fox Court, St. James’s Street, for the recovery of his health, under the direction of Dr. Norman,[162] the canine physician, so strenuously recommended upon all occasions by George Keate, the poet,[163] and far-famed connoisseur. No, poor Rover was kept in health by being allowed to range the streets from six till nine, the hours in which the nightly stealers of the canine race, and the dexterous of all dentists, were on their way to Austin’s, at Islington,[164] to dispose of their cruel depredations upon many a true friend to the indigent blind, “to whom the blackbird sings as sweetly as to the fairest lady in the land.”