The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany. Part 1

In Short

Published in 1731 by the pseudonym Hurlothrumbo, this collection gathers impromptu rhymes and scribbles left on drinking glasses, inn windows, and privy walls across Britain. Transcribed from public places ranging from the Crown at Basingstoke to the Temple Bog-House, the text presents an unvarnished cross-section of eighteenth-century popular culture. Authors of all social ranks record short toasts, cynical romantic advice, crude scatological observations, and playful rebuses. The collection has endured as a rare, authentic record of historic graffiti, capturing how ordinary travelers, lovers, and drinkers expressed themselves in moments of recreation, frustration, or intoxication.

The Story

The volume opens with an introductory framework provided by Hurlothrumbo, who presents the gathered verse as a selfless effort to rescue British wit from accidental destruction. Innkeeper renovations, broken glassware, and election riots constantly threaten to erase these diamond-engraved and charcoal-scrawled compositions. By printing them, the publisher ensures that the fleeting thoughts of noblemen, students, and common travelers are preserved for posterity rather than lost to oblivion or put to crude physical use in the water closets.

What follows is an erratic, wide-ranging tour through the public spaces of Georgian England. In tavern parlors and roadside inns, writers use diamond rings and pencils to leave inscriptions for future travelers. At Maidenhead, an anonymous author offers a satirical verse account of Father Girard's scandals with Catherine Cadiere, complete with a ribald retort scribbled underneath by a subsequent reader. Elsewhere, lovers write toasts to women like Nancy, Sukey Percivall, and Sally Stukely, praising their beauty or complaining of their icy temperaments and broken promises.

As the collection moves from tavern windows to the walls of bog-houses in London, Hampstead, and Richmond, the tone shifts from courtly romance to unabashed vulgarity and physical comedy. In these private spaces, writers reflect on the physiological realities of digestion, the heavy cost of drinking bad claret, and the democratic nature of bodily functions. A patron at Pancras-Wells marvels that the atmosphere of a privy seems to inspire verse, while another visitor offers practical posture advice for sitting at ease.

Interspersed throughout the geographical sampling are wordgames, numerical puzzles, and satirical epigrams. Ribald narratives recount cuckolded dyers taking revenge by dipping friars into blue dye-vats, while ruined investors from the South Sea Bubble of 1721 carve laments about losing their estates while watching others prosper. In Oxford and Cambridge, college men leave dog-Latin rhymes, classical puns, and warnings about the perils of venereal disease. The collection concludes abruptly at the Pancras privy with a final couplet on the connection between foul smells and poetic inspiration, closing with an invitation for readers to send further transcriptions for upcoming installments.

How It Unfolds

The publisher frames the project Hurlothrumbo dedicates the collection to its original authors, arguing that preserving graffiti from broken windows and washed walls saves genuine British wit for future generations.

Lovers leave marks on glass Travelers at Maidenhead, Acton, and Spinham-Land use diamond rings to carve romantic toasts, playful name puzzles, and bitter complaints about cold mistresses into windowpanes.

Scholars and cynics mock the world In Fleet Street coffee-houses and Oxford inns, educated patrons scratch cynical advice about marriage, bad poetry, and the vanity of human wishes alongside word games and numerical riddles.

Scandal and revenge take verse Rhymes from country taverns detail humorous local gossip, including a cheated dyer who colors a rival monk blue and a lord caught dallying with his wife's maid.

The bog-house brings equality Inscriptions from privies at Richmond, Hampstead, and the Temple abandon romantic pretense entirely to focus on physical discomfort, coarse humor, and the shared indignities of human digestion.

The People

• Hurlothrumbo, the eccentric editor and compiler, who claims to collect graffiti purely out of respect for public wit, seeking no financial reward other than ensuring the original authors receive recognition before their work is wiped away.
• The Anonymous Window-Writers, a nameless collection of travelers, students, and lovers who carry diamond-pointed pencils through taverns and inns, eager to leave behind toasts to their sweethearts, bitter rants about infidelity, or warnings about bad liquor.
• The Bog-House Poets, patrons of public privies across London and its surroundings who scratch uninhibited scatological advice, vulgar observations, and cynical reflections on life directly onto the wood and plaster walls of water closets.
• Kitty, Sukey, and Sally, the recurring subjects of toasts and complaints across multiple inns, portrayed variously as irresistible beauties, icy prudes, or deceitful lovers by the men who carve their names on glass.

In Its Own Voice

"Consider only, Gentlemen and Ladies, how many Accidents might rob us of these sparkling Pieces, if the industrious Care of the Collector had not taken this Way of preserving them..."

The editor explains the urgent necessity of gathering fragile glass inscriptions before careless servants or angry mobs destroy them forever.

"No Hero looks so fierce to Fight, / As does the Man who strains to sh-te."

A brief couplet found on a privy wall at the Temple captures the book's signature blending of heroic poetic conventions with crude physical observation.

"As I walk'd by myself, / I said to myself. / And myself said again to me: / Look to thyself..."

A reflective tavern inscription recorded at the Cranes in Edgeworth demonstrates the repetitive, solitary musings left behind by lonely travelers on the road.

What It's Really About

Beneath its surface of vulgarity and trivial rhymes, the collection functions as a broad social equalizer. By placing high-flown romantic sentiment directly alongside crude jokes from public privies, the text argues that elevated status and refined language are superficial constructs. Whether written by a nobleman using an expensive diamond pencil or a weary traveler scrawling with charcoal, every entry reveals the same basic human preoccupations with sex, digestion, money, and heartbreak. The book exposes the hidden, uncensored thoughts of an era, demonstrating that when individuals are left alone in a tavern room or a privy stall, social polish falls away to reveal universal impulses, anxieties, and humor.

Why Read It Today

This volume offers an uncommonly direct window into the everyday language and humor of eighteenth-century England, entirely free from the polite censorship of formal literature. Readers interested in historical pop culture, linguistic quirks, and social history will appreciate its unfiltered authenticity. Reading it feels like stumbling upon a forgotten time capsule of casual banter, street comedy, and unscripted human emotion.

The book is not without its hurdles. Modern readers must navigate eighteenth-century typography, frequent dashes hiding vulgarities or names, dialect spellings, and specialized period slang. Furthermore, the content reflects the unvarnished, often crass attitudes of its era, featuring explicit scatological references, crude sexual humor, and casual cynicism toward women. Yet for those willing to look past its rough edges, the collection provides a lively, entertaining, and uniquely immediate sense of how real people joked, loved, and complained when they thought no authority was watching.