The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany | Page 2

of Graffiti_ (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977); and Marina N. Haan and Richard B. Hammerstrom, _Graffiti in the Ivy League_ (New York: Warner Books, 1981).]
Glass being fragile and diamonds being relatively rare, it is not surprising that few examples of graffiti produced by the method employed by Moll and her lover are known to us today. Interestingly enough, we do, however, have available to us a variety of Renaissance and eighteenth-century written materials suggesting that the practice of using a diamond to write ephemeral statements on window glass was far less rare in those periods than we might expect. Holinshed, for example, tells us that in 1558 when Elizabeth was released from imprisonment at Woodstock, she taunted her enemies by writing
these verses with hir diamond in a glasse window verie legiblie as here followeth:
Much suspected by me,?Nothing prooued can be:?Quoth Elizabeth prisoner.[3]
[Footnote 3: _Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland_ (London, 1808), IV, 133.]
And in John Donne's "A Valediction: of my Name in the Window," we find two lovers in a situation reminiscent of that of the scene I previously quoted from _Moll Flanders_. Using a diamond, the poet, before beginning an extended journey, scratches his name on a window pane in the house of his mistress. Here is the first stanza of the poem:
My name engrav'd herein,?Doth contribute my firmnesse to this glasse,
Which, ever since that charme, hath beene?As hard, as that which grav'd it, was;?Thine eyes will give it price enough, to mock
The diamonds of either rock.[4]
While he is absent, the characters he has cut in the glass will, the poet hopes, magically defend his mistress against the seductive entreaties of his rivals.
[Footnote 4: John Donne, _The Elegies and the Songs and Sonnets_, ed. Helen Gardner (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1966), p. 64.]
In 1711 in a satiric letter to _The Spectator_, John Hughes poked fun at a number of aspiring poets who had recently attempted to create works of art by utilizing what Hughes called "Contractions or Expedients for Wit." One Virtuoso (a mathematician) had, for example, "thrown the Art of Poetry into a short Problem, and contrived Tables by which any one without knowing a Word of Grammar or Sense, may to his great Comfort, be able to compose or rather erect _Latin_ Verses." Equally ridiculous to Hughes, and more relevant to the concerns of this introduction, was the practice of another poet of his acquaintance: "I have known a Gentleman of another Turn of Humour, who, despising the Name of an Author, never printed his Works, but contracted his Talent, and by the help of a very fine Diamond which he wore on his little Finger, was a considerable Poet upon Glass. He had a very good Epigrammatick Wit; and there was not a Parlour or Tavern Window where he visited or dined ... which did not receive some Sketches or Memorials of it. It was his Misfortune at last to lose his Genius and his Ring to a Sharper at Play; and he has not attempted to make a Verse since."[5]
[Footnote 5: _The Spectator_, No. 220, November 12, 1711.]
But "Epigrammatick Wits" of this sort were not universally despised in the eighteenth century. In 1727 in a "critical dissertation prefix'd" to _A Collection of Epigrams_, the anonymous editor of the work argued that the epigram itself "is a species of Poetry, perhaps, as old as any other whatsoever: it has receiv'd the approbation of almost all ages and nations...." In the book proper, he found room for a number of epigrams which he evidently copied from London window panes. Here is an example:
CLX.
_To a Lady, on seeing some Verses in Praise of her, on a Pane of Glass._
Let others, brittle beauties of a year,?See their frail names, and lovers vows writ here;?Who sings thy solid worth and spotless fame,?On purest adamant should cut thy name:?Then would thy fame be from oblivion sav'd;?On thy own heart my vows must be engrav'd.
One of the epigrams in this collection suggests that, unlike Moll's lover and Hughes's poet, some affluent authors had even acquired instruments specifically designed to facilitate the practice of writing poetry on glass:
_Written on a Glass by a Gentleman, who borrow'd the Earl of _CHESTERFIELD_'s Diamond Pencil._
Accept a miracle, instead of _wit_;?See two dull lines by _Stanhope's_ pencil writ.[6]
[Footnote 6: No. CCCLXXXII, in _A Collection of Epigrams. To Which Is Prefix'd, a Critical Dissertation on This Species of Poetry_ (London, 1727).]
As the title of this epigram also suggests, window panes were not the only surfaces considered appropriate for such writing. A favorite alternate surface was that of the toasting glass. The practice of toasting the beauty of young ladies had originated at the town of Bath during the reign of Charles II. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, the members of some social clubs had developed complex