British Press – Friday 31 January 1823
BIRTH-DAY OF THOMAS PAINE.
A number of vulgar persons, admirers of the writings of Thomas Paine, met on Wednesday, in the Brewer-street Assembly-rooms, to celebrate that individual’s birth-day.
The bait was a dinner; tickets 4s., “clearing the table;” thus the bill implying, in ordinary colloquy, that all beer, or brandy and water (wine of course is out of the question), is to be matter of separate arrangement; and we were contented to take, at once, the hazard of a head-ach to see what manner of trash the self-constituted philosophers would exhibit.
The apartment of meeting, which in its time has served the purposes of a dancing-school, a race-ground for velocipedes, and, if we recollect right, a public spouting-room, the apartment was decorated with a Bust of Thomas Paine, bought at Carlisle’s sale for the sum of £7 10s.; and the tickets and placards were stuck about, with the inscriptions—”Truth”—”Reason”—”Free Discussion”—and “The Rights of Man.”
At five o’clock, nearly 300 persons being assembled, Citizen Clio Rickman was called to the chair; dinner was soon after put upon the tables. It was a hasty, ill-dressed, ill-served, coarse, clumsy repast, most impudently charged at four shillings, and scarcely fit to eat at any charge.
The struggle being over, and the cries of “Porter for the Chair!”—”Boiled beef for Mr. Gale Jones!”—”Sneaker of brandy for Mr. Simpkin!”—”Drop of gravy for Mr. Goosetree,” &c. being a little abated, the cloths (there were cloths on the tables) were removed, and the business of the evening was proposed to be entered upon. Here, however, a difficulty in Paine occurred. The talking people were for the most part absent. Carlisle could not attend on account of his being in prison—Cobbett got a surfeit the other day at Hereford and Reading, and does not mean, we hear, to go to public dinners any more. Gale Jones sat on the Chairman’s right hand, and really looked like respectable among the folks who surrounded him; but the majority of the company consisted of persons as incapable of communicating the doctrines of Paine, as they would be of digesting the ill-cooked provender by which their intended inculcation had on the present occasion been preceded.
Citizen RICKMAN, apologising for illness, addressed the meeting very shortly. He spoke of the immense benefits which Paine had conferred upon mankind, declared that his very name comprehended all that was sublime and beautiful, confessed that his (Rickman’s) praises could no more throw splendour upon such an illustrious character than farthing rushlights could illuminate a chandelier, and concluded by asserting, in equally poetic and emphatic commendation, that—
“Reason and truth had long lay hid in night,
Until Tom Paine appeared—and then all was right.”
Mr. Bowie and a Mr. Robinson squabbled about points of faith; but
Mr. GALE JONES said something at which the people laughed.
Toasts in the mean time were given galore; but the chairman seemed troubled by bad management, saying that he could get nothing to drink them in.
A Mr. CRANGER then proposed appointing a select committee to wait upon Mr. Cobbett, and inquire when he meant to bury Paine’s bones;—it was right that the admirers of so general a writer should have notice of the event, that they might attend at his funeral.
Mr. GALE JONES objected to a deputation being sent to Cobbett, and thought that Paine’s bones were a secondary consideration—that his works were in the best and in the hands of every man.
It was whispered, indeed, that Cobbett has sold the bones to some anatomist at a high price, owing to the present scarcity of subjects.
The motion was eventually negatived without producing much amusement. Songs were then called for, and more toasts given; some gentlemen wished for pipes, but the woman at the bar had none to furnish them—a veto which excited considerable irritation. The juniors were beginning to be vociferous, and the conversation, when we left the room, about nine o’clock; but we understood that, after that hour, a great many pots of porter were tapped off, and that the assembly eventually separated without mischief.