Part 24

7. Helmet Will fight for the birthright of conscience, love, life, property, and national independence.

13. Patent Teapot To draw out the flavour of the tea best--Union and Goodwill.

17. Wash-basin of Reform White-washed face and collyed heart.

20. Bee-hive The toils of industry are sweet; a wise people live at peace.

The shapes of the hats and the devices on them were intended to symbolize some important fact or sentiment.

He had twelve suits of clothes, each with a peculiar name, differing from the others, and, like his hats, intended to be emblematical. One dress, which he called "Odd Fellows," was of white cotton or linen. It hung loosely over the body, except being bound round the waist with a white girdle buckled in the front. Over his left breast was a heart-shaped badge, bearing the words, "Liberty of Conscience," which he called his "Order of the Star." The hat which he wore with the dress was nearly white, and of common shape, but had on it four fanciful devices, bound with black ribbon, and inscribed, severally, with these words: "Bless, feed--good allowance--well clothed--all workingmen."

Another dress, which he called "Foresters," was a kind of frock-coat, made of soft brown leather, slightly embroidered with braid. This coat was closed down the front with white buttons, and bound round the waist with a white girdle, fastened with a white buckle. The hat, slightly resembling a turban, was divided into black and white stripes, running round it.

Another dress, which he named "Military," had some resemblance to the military costume at the beginning of the present century; the hat was between the old-fashioned cocked-hat and that worn by military commanders; but, instead of the military plume, it had two upright peaks on the crown, not unlike the tips of a horse's ears. This hat, which he asserted cost five pounds, he never wore but on important occasions.

A mania for symbolization pervaded all his thoughts and doings. His garden was a complete collection of emblems. The trees--the walks--the squares--the beds--the flowers--the seats and arbours--were all symbolically arranged. In the passage leading into the garden were "the three seats of Self-Inquiry," each inscribed with one of these questions: "Am I vile?" "Am I a Hypocrite?" "Am I a Christian?" Among the emblems and mottoes which were marked by different coloured pebbles or flowers were these:--"The vessels of the Tabernacle;" "The Christian's Armour--olive-branch, baptismal-font, breastplate of righteousness, shield of faith," &c. "Mount Pisgah;" a circle enclosing the motto, "Eternal Love has wed my Soul;" "A Beehive;" "A Church;" "Sacred Urn;" "Universal Grave;" "Bed of Diamonds;" "A Heart, enclosing the Rose of Sharon." All the Implements used in Gardening: "The two Hearts' Bowers;" "The Lovers' Prayer;" "Conjugal Bliss;" "The Hermit's Coat-of-Arms;" "Gossips' Court," with motto, "Don't tell anybody!" "The Kitchen-walk" contains representations of culinary utensils, with mottoes. "Feast Square" contains, "Venison Pasty;" "Round of Beef," &c. "The Odd Fellows' Square," with "The Hen-pecked Husband put on Water-gruel." "The Oratory," with various mottoes; "The Orchestry," mottoes, "God save our Noble Queen;" "Britons never shall be Slaves," &c. "The Sand-glass of Time;" "The Assembly-room;" "The Wedding-Walk;" "The Holy Mount;" "Noah's Ark;" "Rainbow;" "Jacob's Ladder," &c. "The Bank of Faith;" "The Saloon;" "The Enchanted Ground;" "The Exit"--all with their respective emblems and mottoes. Besides these fantastical devices, there are, or were, in his garden, representations of the Inquisition and Purgatory; effigies of the Apostles; and mounds covered with flowers, to represent the graves of the Reformers. In the midst of the religious emblems stood a large tub, with a queer desk before it, to represent a pulpit. His garden was visited by persons residing in the neighbourhood, when he would clamber into his tub, and harangue the people against all kinds of real or fancied religious and political oppressions. He declaimed vociferously against the Pope as Antichrist and the enemy of humanity; and when he fled from Rome in the guise of a servant, our old hermit decked his head with laurels, and, thus equipped, went to the Independent Chapel, declaring that "the reign of the man of sin was over." He also raised a mock-gallows in his garden, and suspended on it an effigy of the Pope, whimsically dressed, with many books sticking out of his pockets, which, he said, contained the doctrines of Popery. However, these preachings proved very unprofitable; the hermit grew poor, and gladly accepted any assistance which did not require him to relinquish his eccentric mode of living. In his own words, his heart was in his garden. We abridge this account from a contribution to the Book of Days.

It is curious to find many instances of what are termed "Ornamental Hermits," set up by persons of fortune seeking to find men as eccentric as themselves, to represent, as it were, the eremitical life in hermitages provided for them upon their estates.

Archibald Hamilton, afterwards Duke of Hamilton (as his daughter, Lady Dunmore, told Mr. Rogers, the poet), advertised for "a hermit," as an ornament to his pleasure-grounds; and it was stipulated that the said hermit should have his beard shaved but once a year, and that only partially.

Gilbert White, in his poem, The Invitation to Selborne, has these lines:--

Or where the Hermit hangs the straw-clad cell, Emerging gently from the leafy dell: By fancy plann'd, &c.

In a note, this hermitage is said to have been a grotesque building, contrived by a young gentleman who used occasionally to appear in the character of a hermit.

Some fancy of this kind at Lulworth Castle, in Dorsetshire, exaggerated or highly coloured by O'Keefe, was supposed to afford him the title and incident of his extravagant but laughable comedy of The London Hermit; or, Rambles in Dorsetshire, first played in 1793.

In Blackwood's Magazine for April, 1830, it is stated by Christopher North, in the Noctes Ambrosianæ, that the then editor of another magazine had been "for fourteen years hermit to Lord Hill's father, and sat in a cave in that worthy baronet's grounds with an hour-glass in his hand, and a beard belonging to an old goat, from sunrise to sunset, with orders to accept no half-crowns from visitors, but to behave like Giordano Bruno." In 1810, a correspondent of Notes and Queries, visiting the grounds at Hawkstone, the seat of the Hills, was shown the hermitage there, with a stuffed figure dressed like the hermits of pictures, seen by a dim light; and the visitors were told that it had been inhabited in the daytime by a poor man, to whom the eccentric but truly benevolent Sir Richard Hill gave a maintenance on that easy condition; but that the popular voice against such slavery had induced the worthy baronet to withdraw the reality and substitute the figure.

A person advertised to be engaged as a hermit, in the Courier, January 11th, 1810: "A young man, who wishes to retire from the world and live as a hermit, in some convenient spot in England, is willing to engage with any nobleman or gentleman who may be desirous of having one. Any letter directed to S. Lawrence (post paid), to be left at Mr. Otton's, No. 6, Coleman's Lane, Plymouth, mentioning what gratuity will be given, and all other particulars, will be duly attended."

In 1840, there died in the neighbourhood of Farnham, in Surrey, a recluse or hermit, who had been originally a wealthy brewer, but becoming bankrupt, wandered about the country, and having spent at an inn what little money he had, took up his abode in the cavern popularly known as "Mother Ludlam's Hole," in Moor Park. The "poor man" did not long avail himself of this ready-made excavation, but chose his resting place just above, in the sandstone rock, upon a spot where a fox had been run to ground and dug out not long since. The hermit occasionally walked out, but was little noticed, although, from the bareness of the trees, his retreat was seen from a distance. He soon excavated for himself twenty-five feet in the sandstone, and about five feet in height, with a shaft to the summit of the hill, for the admission of light and air. Here, in unbroken solitude, with fewer luxuries than Parnell's hermit--

His food the fruits, his drink the crystal well--

our Surrey hermit subsisted almost entirely upon ferns, which abound in this neighbourhood. On January 11th, 1840, he was seen by two labourers, who described him as not having "two pounds of flesh on all his bones." He was carried to the nearest cottage, placed in a warm bath, next wrapped in blankets, and conveyed to the poor-house of Farnham, where he soon died; his last words being, "Do take me to the cave again."

A few miles from Stevenage, and not more than thirty from the metropolis, there was living, not many years since, in strange seclusion, a man of high intellectual powers, in the prime of manhood, and possessing ample means, yet wasting his days in eremitic misery. A Correspondent of the Wolverhampton Chronicle was invited to see this extraordinary character, and here is the result of his visit:--

"I had pictured to my mind a venerable old man, with a beard as white as snow, a massive girdle, and a profusion of books and hour-glass, in a cell of picturesque beauty and neatness. Alas, how soon was I to experience that imagination is one thing and reality another! I shall not venture in future to speculate upon objects so unearthly. At the termination of the road a mansion of no ordinary size met my view, but better and happier times had reigned within; without, all was desolation and ruin; time, that destroyer of all things, had done its work here; every inlet was barricaded by the rude axe and hammer; its portals no mortal had passed for eleven long years; the interior, which was one rich in design and comfort, is now mouldering to decay; no cheering voice is heard within its walls, only the noise of rats and vermin. In tracing my steps to the scene of the hermit's cell, which is situated at the back of the building, and looking through the wooden bars of a window devoid of glass, I perceived a dismal, black, and dirty cellar, with an earth floor; not one vestige of furniture, except a wooden bench and a few bottles, with the remnants of a fire.

"With difficulty, by the faint rays of light admitted into this loathsome den, I could trace a human form, clothed only in a horse rug, leaving his arms, legs, and feet perfectly bare; his hair was prodigiously long, and his beard tangled and matted. On my addressing him he came forward with readiness. I found him a gentleman by education and birth, and most courteous in his manner; he anxiously inquired after several aristocratic families in Staffordshire and adjoining counties. It is evident he had at one period mixed in the first circles, but the secret of his desolate retirement is, and probably ever will remain, a mystery to his neighbours and tenantry, by whom he is supplied with food (chiefly bread and milk). Already eleven weary winters has he passed in this dreary abode, his only bed being two sheepskins, and his sole companions the rats, which may be seen passing to and fro with all the ease of perfect safety. During the whole of his seclusion he has strictly abstained from ablution, consequently his countenance is perfectly black. How much it is to be regretted that a man so gifted as this hermit is known to be should spend his days in dirt and seclusion."

To another class belonged one Roger Crab, a gentleman of fortune, long resident at Bethnal Green, and one of the eccentric characters of the seventeenth century. All that is known of him is gathered from a pamphlet, now very rare, written principally by himself, and entitled, The English Hermit, or Wonder of the Age: by this it appears that he had served seven years in the Parliamentary army, and had his skull cloven in their service, for which he was so ill requited that he was sentenced to death by the Lord Protector, and afterwards suffered two years' imprisonment. When he obtained his release, he opened a shop at Chesham, as a dealer in hats. He had not long been settled there before he imbibed a notion that it was a sin against his body and soul to eat any sort of fish, flesh, or living creature, or to drink wine, ale, or beer. Thinking himself at the same time obliged to follow literally the injunction given to the young man in the Gospel, he quitted business, and disposing of his property, gave it among the poor, reserving to himself only a small cottage at Ickenham, in Middlesex, where he resided; he had a rood of land for a garden, on the produce of which he subsisted at the expense of three farthings a week, his food being bran, herbs, roots, dock-leaves, mallows, and grass; his drink water.

How such an extraordinary change of diet agreed with his constitution, the following passage from his pamphlet will show:--"Instead of strong drinks and wines I give the old man a drop of water; and instead of roast mutton and rabbits, and other dainty dishes, I give him broth thickened with bran, and pudding made with bran, and turnip-leaves chopped together, and grass; at which the old man (meaning my body) being moved, would know what he had done that I used him so hardly; then I showed him his transgression: so the warre began; the law of the old man in my fleshy members rebelled against the law of my mind, and had a shrewed skirmish; but the mind being well enlightened, held it so that the old man grew sick and weak with the flux, like to fall to the dust; but the wonderful love of God, well-pleased with the battle, raised him up again, and filled him with the voice of love, peace, and content of mind, and is now become more humble; for he will eat dock-leaves, mallows, or grasse."

Little is known of Crab's subsequent history, or whether he continued his diet of herbs; but a passage in his epitaph seems to intimate that he never resumed the use of animal food. It is not one of the least extraordinary parts of his history, that he should so long have subsisted on a diet which, by his own account, had reduced him almost to a skeleton in 1655--being twenty-five years previous to his death--in 1680: he is buried in Stepney churchyard.

The Recluses of Llangollen.

Many years ago, there lived together, in romantic seclusion, in the Vale of Llangollen, in Denbighshire, two ladies, remarkable not only for the singularity of their habits and dispositions, but as the daughters of ancient and most distinguished families in the Irish peerage.