Brother Lightfoote's Journal The Recollections of an Eighteenth-Century Gentleman of the Craft April 23rd 1795 St. George’s Day; the Anniversary of Shakespeare’s Birth. Weather: Cold

St. George, I am informed, was probably a Greek. Shakespeare, who was undoubtedly an Englishman, was also, by general consent, the greatest poet and dramatist as ever lived. This is the received opinion of every scholar and critic as has lived since Shakespeare died, having been passed down from one generation of blatherskites to the next, unchanged, unchallenged and unrevised. Lightfoote, however, is unimpressed.
    I first advanced the opinion that most of Shakespeare’s plays are about as pleasurable as a dose of the pox when I was a schoolboy. My headmaster, who was a cleric, duly flogged me till his arm grew tired. Amazingly, his pious exertions failed to make me think more highly of Shakespeare, or him, come to that. The plain truth is that Lightfoote has never liked being told what he should or shouldn’t like, especially by those that think they know better, who are generally no better than boobies.

Literary scholars as a species
Discern the scent of sandalwood in faeces;
What academics praise as puissant wit
Lightfoote perceives piss-poor; they’re full of... it.

That’s better - better than anything Shakespeare ever wrote - and I feel better for it. I awoke this morning, however, feeling as though my head was full of lead, my guts lined with goose grease and my bowels bloated with sufficient wind to strain the rigging of a frigate. Missus Lightfoote informed me that I had been brought home, at 4 o’clock this morning, drunk as a fiddler’s bitch. I informed Missus Lightfoote that placing Captain Jack Phelan, late of the Lancers, in the chair of the Stonic Lodge is an act of installation requiring liberal lubrication.
    Mrs. Lightfoote went to prepare a light breakfast for me whilst I went to perform the usual offices. I found myself, to quote Our Friend, to be “full of sound and fury” - and divers corrosive fluids - and pondered the possibility of Pat Peterson having padded his pigeon pie with something flightless and four-legged and feral, again.
    My appetite had quite deserted me and I could manage but half a capon, a few slices of York ham, some cold sirloin, three quails and a wedge or two of game pie, followed by a morsel of cheddar cheese and a quart of ale. I then retired to my chamber to collect my thoughts and pen this.
    I sacrificed most of yesterday afternoon to an abortive quest, viz. Trying to get an honest answer out of a lawyer. A man called Lowther, who is something lower than a man, a creature base beyond bastardy, a bate-breeding, beef-witted bellyslave, born in a bawdy-house, threatens to sue me for slander! The loathsome, lying, litigious, lickspittle louse. Sanders, my evasive legal advisor, suggests that I apologise to the pimping pustule. I’d sooner say sorry to a turd for treading on it. Blast them both!
    Following a full two hours of fruitless fulmination, Lightfoote, with heavy tread, finally made his way to the Yorick Tavern in Oakley’s Yard. It’s a jolly hostelry, even though its name always reminds of the Stratford scribbler, and the sight of my beaming brethren summoned me instantly from a ‘state of darkness’ to light and levity once more. On with the motley!
    Having fortified ourselves with a few small quarts of ale we retired to the upper room and were close tyled by five and twenty to six. The Installing Master was Geo. Bates, the Hackney hatter, who’s as mad as His Majesty but has served us well during his year having initiated two apprentices and raised a craftsman to the sublime degree of Master Mason. His ritual’s faultless but some find his mode of dress a little odd - which reminds me.

NOTE: Stefanos F. (another Greek), of Berwick Street, tailor to the gentry, has sent round a note saying that if I don’t pay for the coat he made me last winter he won’t be making me a suit this summer. I owe him four shillings and eightpence, apparently. Why is everything so insanely expensive nowadays? I doubt if my father spent four and eight on clothes in his entire life. I’m told that, in Italy, you can get a suit made for ninepence. Everything in this country’s overpriced. I’d go and live abroad if it wasn’t full of foreigners. Mrs. Lightfoote informs me, without a hint of irony, that she needs - needs! - a new outfit for the Fothergills’ ball. I don’t think Fothergill’s bought himself a new outfit since we lost America and I’m damned sure he hasn’t bought one for his wife since she lost her teeth. I’ve seen crabs better dressed; I’ve seen crabs better looking! I digress.

W.Bro Bates was wearing a purple coat, pink breeches, one brown boot and a black sandal but he opened the lodge in due form and according to antient custom, so who minds what he looks like? I was absent for the actual installation, having not yet passed through the chair myself, but I can record that the address to the brethren, given by old Tom Coggles, was the best rendition I’ve ever heard, despite the fact that Tom’s as deaf as a dead dog and can’t read. He was part-perfect and he spoke up clear as a bell. I confess that, though I’ve heard those words a dozen times before, they move me still (which is a damn’ sight more than I can say for Shakespeare’s). How does he do it?
    Young Toby Field (Entered ’prentice & Steward) sat beside me at supper - had to keep reminding him that, being a Steward, he had no right to be sitting down at all - and was telling me of a hare-brained idea he’s got to publish some sort of pamphlet. “The Mason’s Gazette” he wants to call it and it’s to be full of articles “of interest to Craftsmen and those interested in the Craft”. I’d never heard anything so lamentably ludicrous in my life and I told him so. I also told him that should his father, who’s not only a past master but a schoolmaster, find out, he’ll get the lamming of a lifetime and Brother Lightfoote will be happy to hold him down for it. I trust that’s the last we’ll hear of “The Mason’s Gazette”. Where do the young get these ideas from? Just because a fellow’s ‘interested’ in something don’t give him the right to be told about it, does it? I’m ‘interested’ in what Polly Porter (the landlord’s daughter) might look like wearing nought but a broad smile but I don’t think her father’d take kindly to the suggestion that he publish a set of engravings to satisfy my curiosity.
    At that precise moment the maid in question leaned over to put down a plate and I turned away from Field to be confronted by a feast: the sweetest little apple dumplings a man ever laid eyes on; it made my mouth water just to look at ‘em. W. Bro. King, a prince among men, got up, a little shakily, and sang The Master’s Song and we drank his health, and everybody else’s, a number of times after which I recall little though Missus Lightfoote says that I attempted to force my attentions on her in a manner unbecoming a gent. I would put this down to my wife’s invention were it not for the fact that she adds that I kept demanding a taste of her dumplings.

NOTE: Offer to buy Mrs. L. an outfit for the Fothergills’ ball - five bob max.

Thought for the day: Half the world doesn’t know how the other three quarters lives - and a good thing too.