I'll inform you, my friend, how it come. You yourself will acknowledge the reason is clear, As soon as I tell you that my pretty dear Has been all her life--deaf and dumb! It is often said that when Queen Victoria had been married a year and a day--ergo in 1841--the then Lord of the Manor privately offered a Flitch to Her Majesty, but that the compliment was declined. Mr. Wade, however, does not remember to have heard anything of the matter, and the story may have had its origin in the publication of the burlesque of Stothard's picture. In the year 1851, just a century after the Shakeshafts had had their Gammon, the Bacon was refused by the Lord of the Manor to a humbler personage, a yeoman farmer of the name of Hurrell and his wife, living at Felsted, a village lying in sight of Little Dunmow. Thereupon, in order that the local custom should not be extinguished, it was arranged to give Mr. and Mrs. Hurrell their Bacon at a "rural fête" at Easton Park. The thing was done with an imitation of the old ceremony and with much enthusiasm, band-playing and eating and drinking, in the presence of three thousand people, "rich and poor, gentle and simple." CHAPTER IX Enter the Novelist The novel, _The Flitch of Bacon: or, the Custom of Dunmow, A Tale of English Home_, was published by Harrison Ainsworth in 1854. It was dedicated to Tauchnitz of the famous Leipzig editions. Much of the action takes place in a mythical Dunmow Flitch Inn, which is described as having once been the home of "Sir Walter Fitzwalter." The story turns largely on the desire of the four-times married landlord of this hostelry to gain the Bacon. The house Ainsworth is thought to have had in mind is Rose Farm, a building overlooking the Church. "Monkbury Place," the Lord of the Manor's house, is imaginary, and Sir Gilbert de Montfichet--Mountfichet is a local name, however--has no place in history. The novel is hard reading, but its publication had the effect of attracting a good deal of notice to that "Custom of Dunmow" described as "of late years discontinued." The inhabitants of Great Dunmow--in the face of "injudicious but fruitless opposition"--at length proceeded to form a Committee, and Mr. Ainsworth subscribed five guineas and the cost of two Flitches of Bacon to a fund for a revival of the ceremony. When the notices were issued quite a number of applications were received. A Kentish veterinary surgeon and his wife were among the selected couples, but the wife died before the ceremony took place. Eventually the opportunity of presenting themselves at the "trial" was given to the Chevalier and Madame de Chatelain of London, known as translators from the French and German, and to Mr. James Barlow, a Chipping Ongar builder, and his wife.