Signs and wonders

"I have heard that on a day
Mine host's signboard flew away
Nobody knew whither till
An astrologer's old quill
To a sheepskin gave the story --
Said he saw you in your glory
Underneath a new-old Sign
Sipping beverage divine,
And pledging with contented smack
The Mermaid in the Zodiac!

Lines on the Mermaid Tavern   John Keats

Henry Mill's patent

"The invention of the typewriter, or rather an attempt to invent one, belongs to the last year of Queen Anne's reign.  On January 7th, 1714, she granted a patent to one Henry Mill, later engineer to the New River Water Company  -- the company which Anne's great-grandfather had helped found  -- for  'An Artificial Machine or Method for Impressing or Transcribing Letters Single or Progressively one after another, as in Writing, whereby all Writing whatever may be Engrossed in Paper or Parchment  so Neat and Exact as not to be distinguished from print.' "

The Jacobeans at Home  Elizabeth Burton

'Wette wrytyng'

" Among the rich, a standish was provided for the scrivener -- it was not considered in the least dignified for a great man to write his own letters.  The standish contained compartments for pens, inkhorns and for powdered gum sandrac -- or sand. Paper was used but parchment was necessary for official and family documents and its oily surface was prepared by rubbing in gum sandarac.  Errors were erased with a penknife, the rough places sprinkled with pounce (probably pumice) and smoothed down with a dog's tooth or an agate.  And, in passing, it is interesting to note that blotting-paper was known, and had been known for years.  Horman, writing in 1519 says  'Blottyng paper serveth to drye wette wrytyng lest there be made blottis or burris'.  "

The Elizabethans at Home  Elizabeth Burton

Lost in the Indian Ocean

November 1782  The aftermath of the hurricane on the Raynha de Portugal:

"I joined in searching amongst the heap of rubbish in the great cabin for anything worth preserving. ...After ransacking in a mass of dirt, so blended together it was difficult to separate for a long time, I got hold of a small tin case, much bruised but unbroken.  This I took to Mr Barretto as he lay in his hammock, who joyfully exclaimed it was the ship's papers.  He requested I would carefully open it and, should they be wet, get them dried, as they were of the utmost importance to him.  I directly set about it, but alas! they were totally useless, the ink being entirely effaced although written upon parchment, most of them separating into pieces in attempting to unfold them.  The only one that was at all legible, and that only partially, was Mr Barretto's Portuguese naturalisation.

Having lent my aid for the service of my friends, I next thought of my own concerns, and accordingly went to look after my escritoire,.... Upon opening it and examining the contents, everything in the way of paper was completely destroyed except three letters that I had received after all the others, and put into a leather pocket-book....What I lamented above everything else, though of no intrinsic value, was the loss of the large book in which I had copied the journals of every voyage I had made, and the remarkable circumstances that had occurred.  This was utterly destroyed, as well as my admission as an attorney of the Court of the King's bench and solicitor of the Court of Chancery which were in it."

Memoirs of a Georgian Rake   William Hickey,  edited by Roger Hudson for The Folio Society