Gilpin

( John ), a linen-draper and train-band captain, living in London. His wife said to him, “Though we have been married twenty years, we have taken no holiday;” and at her advice the well-to-do linen-draper agreed to make a family party, and dine at the Bell, at Edmonton. Mrs. Gilpin, her sister, and four children went in the chaise, and Gilpin promised to follow on horseback. As madam had left the wine behind, Gilpin girded it in two stone bottles to his belt, and started on his way. The horse, being fresh, began to trot, and then to gallop; and John, being a bad rider, grasped the mane with both his hands. On went the horse, off flew John Gilpin’s cloak, together with his hat and wig. The dogs barked, the children screamed, the turnpike men (thinking he was riding for a wager) flung open their gates. He flew through Edmonton, and never stopped till he reached Ware, when his friend the calender gave him welcome, and asked him to dismount. Gilpin, however, declined, saying his wife would be expecting him. So the calender furnished him with another hat and wig, and Gilpin harked back again, when similar disasters occurred, till the horse stopped at his house in London.—W. Cowper, John Gilpin (1786). ⁂ John Gilpin was a Mr. Beyer, of Paternoster Row, who died in 1791, and it was Lady Austin who told the anecdote to the poet. The marriage adventure of Commodore Trunnion in Peregrine Pickle is a similar adventure.