Names, Reader, I repeat, are serious things: and much ingenuity has
been exerted in inventing appropriate ones not only for man and beast,
but for inanimate things. Godfathers and Godmothers, Navigators,
Shipbuilders, Florists, Botanists, Chemists, Jockies, Feeders, Stage
Coach-Proprietors, Quacks, Perfumers, Novelists and Dramatists have
all displayed their taste in the selection of Names.
More whimsically consorted names will seldom be found than among the
Lodges of the Manchester Unity of the Independent Order of Odd
Fellows—You find there Apollo and St. Peter; the Rose of Sharon, and
the Rose of Cheetham; Earl Fitz-william, Farmer's Glory, and Poor
Man's Protection; Philanthropic and Lord Byron, Lord John Russell and
Good Intent; Queen Caroline (Bergami's Queen not George the Seconds)
and Queen Adelaide.
Reader be pleased to walk into the Garden with me. You see that
bush,—what would you call the fruit which it bears?—The
Gooseberry.—But its more particular name?—Its botanical name is
_ribes_—or _grossularia_, which you will Mr. Author.—Still Reader we
are in generals. For you and I, and our wives and children, and all
plain eaters of gooseberry-pie and gooseberry-fool, the simple name
gooseberry might suffice. Not so for the scientific in gooseberries,
the gooseberryologists. They could distinguish whether it were the
King or the Duke of York; the Yellow Seedling or the Prince of Orange;
Lord Hood or Sir Sidney Smith; Atlas or Hercules; the Green Goose or
the Green Bob or the Green Chisel; the Colossus or the Duke of
Bedford; Apollo or Tickle Toby; the Royal Oak or the Royal Sovereign;
the Hero or the Jolly Smoaker; the Game Keeper or the Sceptre; the
Golden Gourd or the Golden Lion, or the Gold-finder; Worthington's
Conqueror or Somach's Victory; Robinson's Stump or Davenport's Lady;
Blakeley's Chisel or Read's Satisfaction; Bell's Farmer or the
Creeping Ceres; the White Muslin, the White Rose, the White Bear, the
White Noble or the White Smith; the Huntsman, the Gunner, the
Thrasher, the Viper, the Independent, the Glory of Eccles, or the
Glory of England; Smith's Grim-Mask, Blomerly's John Bull, Hamlet's
Beauty of England, Goodier's Nelson's Victory, Parkinson's Scarlet
Virgin, Milling's Crown Bob, Kitt's Bank of England, Yeat's Wild-Man
of the Wood, Davenport's Jolly Hatter, or Leigh's Fiddler.—For all
these are Gooseberries: and yet this is none of them; it is the Old
Ironmonger.
Lancashire is the County in which the Gooseberry has been most
cultivated; there is a Gooseberry book annually printed at Manchester;
and the Manchester Newspapers recording the death of a person and
saying that he bore a severe illness with Christian fortitude and
resignation, add that he was much esteemed among the Class of
Gooseberry Growers.—A harmless class they must needs be deemed, but
even in growing Gooseberries emulation may be carried too far.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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