Note 87 — A BOOK FOR A RAINY DAY
Reading edition
It is difficult to form an idea of this instrument. It was beaten with a rolling-pin, and appears to have been used as a drum in such a way (according to the manner in which it was struck) as to produce something like notes. This is indicated in Bonnell Thornton’s burlesque, Ode to St. Cecilia’s Day, in which occur the well-known lines which amused Dr. Johnson:—
“In strains more exalted the salt-box shall join, And clattering and battering and clapping combine; With a rap and a tap while the hollow side sounds. Up and down leaps the flap, and with rattling rebounds.”
The character of the neighbourhood round the “Farthing Pie House” (Portland Road Station) in Smith’s boyhood, may be judged by Smith’s statement in his Vagabondiana, that “when the sites of Portland Place, Devonshire Street, etc., were fields, the famous Tommy Lowe, then a singer at Mary-le-bone Gardens, raised a subscription, to enable an unfortunate man to run a small chariot, drawn by four muzzled mastiffs, from a pond near Portland Chapel, called Cockney Ladle, which supplied Mary-le-bone Bason with water, to the ‘Farthing Pie House’ … in order to accommodate children with a ride for a halfpenny.”