mery[190] relate an amusing anecdote of
Sir Richard Phillips, the eccentric London bookseller and author. He
visited Sheffield in October 1828. "He had lived too long amidst the
bustle and business of the great world, and was too little conscious of
any feeling at all like diffidence, to allow him to hesitate about
calling upon any person, whether of rank, genius, or eccentricity, when
the success of his project was likely to be thereby promoted. The time
selected by the free and easy knight for his unannounced visitation of
Montgomery was _Sunday at dinner time_. He was at once asked to sit down
and partake of the chickens and bacon which had just been placed on the
table, but here was a dilemma; Sir Richard, although neither a Brahmin
nor a Jew, avowed himself a staunch Pythagorean--he could eat no flesh!
Luckily there was a plentiful supply of carrots and turnips, and--jelly.
But was the latter made from calves' feet? Montgomery assured his guest
that it was _not_; but, added he, with a conscientious regard for his
visitor's scruples, from _ivory dust_. We believe the poet fancied the
hypothesis of an animal origin of this viand could not be very obscure;
it was, however, swallowed; the clever bibliopole perhaps believing,
with some of the Sheffield ivory-cutters, that elephants, instead of
being hunted and killed for their tusks, _shed them_ when fully grown,
as bucks do their antlers!"

J. T. SMITH AND THE ELEPHANT.

That gossiping man, J. T. Smith, once Keeper of the Prints in the
British Museum, and author of "Nollekens and his Times," relates, that
when he and a friend were returning late from a club, and were
approaching Temple Bar, "about one o'clock, a most unaccountable
appearance claimed our attention,--it was no less than an elephant,
whose keepers were coaxing it to pass through the gateway. He had been
accompanied with several persons from the Tower wharf with tall poles,
but was principally guided by two men with ropes, each walking on either
side of the street, to keep him as much as possible in the middle, on
his way to the menagerie, Exeter Change, to which destination, after
passing St Clement's Church, he steadily trudged on, with strict
obedience to the command of his keepers.[191]

"I had the honour afterwards of partaking of a pot of Barclay's entire
with this same elephant, which high mark of his condescension was
bestowed when I accompanied my friend, the late Sir James Wintel Lake,
Bart.