Part 53

The patterers or oratorical street-sellers include among their class many itinerant traders, other than the wandering “paper-workers”--as those vending the several varieties of street-literature are generally denominated. The Cheap Jacks, or oratorical hucksters of hardware at fairs and other places, are among the most celebrated and humorous of this class. The commercial arts and jests of some of these people, display considerable cleverness. Many of their jokes, it is true, are traditional--and as purely a matter of parrotry as the witticisms of the “funny gentlemen” on the stage, but their ready adaptation of accidental circumstances to the purposes of their business, betrays a modicum of wit far beyond that which falls to the share of ordinary “low comedians.” The street-vendors of cough drops--infallible cures for the toothache and other ailments--also belong to the pattering class. These are, as was before stated, the remains of the obsolete mountebanks of England and the _saltinbanque_ of France--a class of _al fresco_ orators who derived their names from the _bench_--the street pulpit, rostrum, or platform--that they ascended, in order the better to deliver their harangues. The street jugglers, actors, and showmen, as well as the street-sellers of grease-removing compositions, corn-salve, razor-paste, plating-balls, waterproof blacking, rat poisons, sovereigns sold for wagers, and a multiplicity of similar street-trickeries--such as oratorical begging--are other ingenious and wordy members of the same chattering, jabbering, or “pattering” fraternity. These will all be spoken of under the head of the different things they respectively sell or do. For the present we have only to deal with that portion of the “pattering” body who are engaged in the street sale of literature--or the “paper-workers” as they call themselves. The latter include the “running patterers,” or “death-hunters;” being men (no women) engaged in vending last dying speeches and confessions--in hawking “se-cond edi-tions” of newspapers--or else in “working,” that is to say, in getting rid of what are technically termed “cocks;” which, in polite language, means accounts of fabulous duels between ladies of fashion--of apocryphal elopements, or fictitious love-letters of sporting noblemen and certain young milliners not a hundred miles from the spot--“cooked” assassinations and sudden deaths of eminent individuals--pretended jealous affrays between Her Majesty and the Prince Consort (but these papers are now never worked)--or awful tragedies, including mendacious murders, impossible robberies, and delusive suicides.

The sellers of these choice articles, however, belong more particularly to that order or species of the pattering genus known as “running patterers,” or “flying stationers,” from the fact of their being continually on the move while describing the attractions of the “papers” they have to sell. Contradistinguished from them, however, are the “standing patterers,” or those for whose less startling announcements a crowd is necessary, in order that the audience may have time to swallow the many marvels worked by their wares. The standing patterers require, therefore, what they term a “pitch,” that is to say a fixed locality, where they can hold forth to a gaping multitude for, at least, some few minutes continuously. They are mainly such street-sellers as deal in nostrums and the different kinds of street “wonders.” Occasionally, however, the running patterer (who is especially literary) transmigrates into a standing one, betaking himself to “board work,” as it is termed in street technology, and stopping at the corners of thoroughfares with a large pictorial placard raised upon a pole, and glowing with a highly-coloured exaggeration of the interesting terrors of the pamphlet he has for sale. This is either “The Life of Calcraft, the Hangman,” “The Diabolical Practices of Dr. ---- on his Patients when in a state of Mesmerism,” or “The Secret Doings at the White House, Soho,” and other similar attractively-repulsive details. Akin to this “board work” is the practice of what is called “strawing,” or selling straws in the street, and giving away with them something that is either really or fictionally forbidden to be sold,--as indecent papers, political songs, and the like. This practice, however, is now seldom resorted to, while the sale of “secret papers” is rarely carried on in public. It is true, there are three or four patterers who live chiefly by professing to dispose of “sealed packets” of obscene drawings and cards for gentlemen; but this is generally a trick adopted to extort money from old debauchees, young libertines, and people of degraded or diseased tastes; for the packets, on being opened, seldom contain anything but an odd number of some defunct periodical. There is, however, a large traffic in such secret papers carried on in what is called “the public-house trade,” that is to say, by itinerant “paper-workers” (mostly women), who never make their appearance in the streets, but obtain a livelihood by “busking,” as it is technically termed, or, in other words, by offering their goods for sale only at the bars and in the tap-rooms and parlours of taverns. The excessive indulgence of one appetite is often accompanied by the disease of a second; the drunkard, of course, is supereminently a sensualist, and is therefore easily taken by anything that tends to stimulate his exhausted desires: so sure is it that one form of bestiality is a necessary concomitant of another. There is another species of patterer, who, though usually included among the standing patterers, belongs rather to an intermediate class, viz., those who neither stand nor “_run_,” as they descant upon what they sell; but those walk at so slow a rate that, though never stationary, they can hardly be said to move. These are the reciters of dialogues, litanies, and the various street “squibs” upon passing events; they also include the public propounders of conundrums, and the “hundred and fifty popular song” enumerators--such as are represented in the engraving here given. Closely connected with them are the “chaunters,” or those who do not cry, but (if one may so far stretch the English language) _sing_ the contents of the “papers” they vend.

These traffickers constitute the principal street-sellers of literature, or “paper-workers,” of the “pattering” class. In addition to them there are many others vending “papers” in the public thoroughfares, who are mere traders resorting to no other acts for the disposal of their goods than a simple cry or exposition of them; and many of these are but poor, humble, struggling, and inoffensive dealers. They do not puff or represent what they have to sell as what it is not--(allowing them a fair commercial latitude). They are not of the “enterprising” class of street tradesmen. Among these are the street-sellers of stationery--such as note-paper, envelopes, pens, ink, pencils, sealing-wax, and wafers. Belonging to the same class, too, are the street-vendors of almanacs, pocket-books, memorandum and account-books. Then there are the sellers of odd numbers of periodicals and broadsheets, and those who vend either playing cards, conversation cards, stenographic cards, and (at Epsom, Ascot, &c.) racing cards. Besides these, again, there are the vendors of illustrated cards, such as those embellished with engravings of the Crystal Palace, Views of the Houses of Parliament, as well as the gelatine poetry cards--all of whom, with the exception of the racing-card sellers (who belong generally to the pattering tribe), partake of the usual characteristics of the street-selling class.

After these may be enumerated the vendors of old engravings out of inverted umbrellas, and the hawkers of coloured pictures in frames. Then there are the old book-stalls and barrows, and “the pinners-up,” as they are termed, or sellers of old songs pinned against the wall, as well as the vendors of manuscript music. Moreover, appertaining to the same class, there are the vendors of playbills and “books of the performance” outside the theatre; and lastly, the pretended sellers of tracts--such as the Lascars and others, who use this kind of street traffic as a cloak for the more profitable trade of begging. The street-sellers of images, although strictly comprised within those who vend fine art productions in the public thoroughfares will be treated of under the head of THE STREET ITALIANS, to which class they mostly belong.

OF THE FORMER AND PRESENT STREET-PATTERERS.

Of the street-patterers the running (or flying) trader announces the contents of the paper he is offering for sale, as he proceeds on his mission. It is usually the detail of some “barbarious and horrible murder,” or of some extraordinary occurrence--such as the attack on Marshal Haynau--which has roused public attention; or the paper announced as descriptive of a murder, or of some exciting event, may in reality be some odd number of a defunct periodical. “It’s astonishing,” said one patterer to me, “how few people ever complain of having been took in. It hurts their feelings to lose a halfpenny, but it hurts their pride too much, when they’re had, to grumble in public about it.” On this head, then, I need give no further general explanation.

In times of excitement the running patterer (or “stationer,” as he was and is sometimes called) has reaped the best harvest. When the Popish plot agitated England in the reign of Charles II. the “Narratives” of the design of a handful of men to assassinate a whole nation, were eagerly purchased in the streets and taverns. And this has been the case during the progress of any absorbing event subsequently. I was told by a very old gentleman, who had heard it from his grandfather, that in some of the quiet towns of the north of England, in Durham and Yorkshire, there was the greatest eagerness to purchase from the street-sellers any paper relative to the progress of the forces under Charles Edward Stuart, in 1745. This was especially the case when it became known that the “rebels” had gained possession of Carlisle, and it was uncertain what might be their route southward. About the period of the “affair of the ’45,” and in the autumn following the decisive battle of Culloden (in April, 1746), the “Northern Lights” were more than usually brilliant, or more than usually remarked, and a meteor or two had been seen. The street-sellers were then to be found in fairs and markets, vending wonderful accounts of these wonderful phenomena.

I have already alluded to the character of the old mountebank, and to his “pompous orations,” having “as little regard to truth as to propriety.” There certainly is little pompousness in the announcements of the patterers, though in their general disregard of truth they resemble those of the mountebank. The mountebank, however, addressed his audience from a stage, and made his address attractive by mixing up with it music, dancing, and tumbling; sometimes, also, equestrianism on the green of a village; and by having always the services of a merry-andrew, or clown. The nostrums of these quacks were all as unequalled for cheapness as for infallibility, and their impudence and coolness ensured success. Their practices are as well exposed in some of the _Spectators_ of 1711-12 as the puppet-playing of Powel was good-humouredly ridiculed. One especial instance is cited, where a mountebank, announcing himself a native of Hammersmith, where he was holding forth, offered to make a present of 5_s._ to every brother native of Hammersmith among his audience. The mountebank then drew from a long bag a handful of little packets, each of which, he informed the spectators, was constantly sold for 5_s._ 6_d._, but that out of love to his native hamlet he would bate the odd 5_s._ to every inhabitant of the place. The whole assembly immediately closed with his generous offer.

There is a scene in Moncrieff’s popular farce of “_Rochester_,” where the hero personates a mountebank, which may be here cited as affording a good idea of the “pompous orations” indulged in by the street orators in days of yore:

“Silence there, and hear me, for my words are more precious than gold; I am the renowned and far-famed Doctor Paracelsus Bombastes Esculapus Galen dam Humbug von Quack, member of all the colleges under the Moon: M.D., L.M.D., F.R.S., L.L.D., _A.S.S._--and all the rest of the letters in the alphabet: I am the seventh son of a seventh son--kill or cure is my motto--and I always do it; I cured the great Emperor of Nova Scotia, of a polypus, after he had been given over by all the faculty--he lay to all appearance dead; the first pill he took, he opened his eyes; the second, he raised his head; and the third, he jumped up and danced a hornpipe. I don’t want to sound my own praise--blow the trumpet, Balaam (_Balaam blows trumpet_); but I tapped the great Cham of Tartary at a sitting, of a terrible dropsy, so that I didn’t leave a drop in him! I cure the palsy, the dropsy, the lunacy, and all the sighs, without costing anybody a sigh; vertigo, pertigo, lumbago, and all the other go’s are sure to go, whenever I come.”

In his unscrupulousness and boldness in street announcements, and sometimes in his humour and satire, we find the patterer of the present day to be the mountebank of old descended from his platform into the streets--but without his music, his clown, or his dress.

There was formerly, also, another class, differing little from the habits of that variety of patterers of the present day who “busk” it, or “work the public-houses.”

“The jestours,” says Mr. Strutt, in his “Sports and Pastimes of the People of England,” “or, as the word is often written in the old English dialect, ‘gesters,’ were the relaters of the gestes, that is, the actions of famous persons, whether fabulous or real; and these stories were of two kinds, the one to excite pity, and the other to move laughter, as we learn from Chaucer:

‘And jestours that tellen tales, Both of wepying and of game.’

The tales of ‘game,’ as the poet expresses himself were short jocular stories calculated to promote merriment, in which the reciters paid little respect to the claims of propriety or even of common decency. The tales of ‘game,’ however, were much more popular than those of weeping, and probably for the very reason that ought to have operated the most powerfully for their suppression. The gestours, whose powers were chiefly employed in the hours of conviviality, finding by experience that lessons of instruction were much less seasonable at such times, than idle tales productive of mirth and laughter, accommodated their narrations to the general taste of the times, regardless of the mischiefs they occasioned by vitiating the morals of their hearers. Hence it is that the author of the ‘Vision of Pierce the Ploughman’ calls them contemptibly ‘japers and juglers, and janglers of gests.’ He describes them as haunters of taverns and common ale-houses, amusing the lower classes of the people with ‘myrth of minstrelsy and losels’ tales,’ (loose vulgar tales,) and calls them tale-tellers and ‘tutelers in ydell,’ (tutors of idleness,) occasioning their auditory, ‘for love of tales, in tavernes to drink,’ where they learned from them to jangle and to jape, instead of attending to their more serious duties.

“The japers, I apprehend, were the same as the bourdours, or rybauders, an inferior class of minstrels, and properly called jesters in the modern acceptation of the word; whose wit, like that of the merry-andrews of the present day (1800) consisted in low obscenity accompanied with ludicrous gesticulation. They sometimes, however, found admission into the houses of the opulent. Knighton, indeed, mentions one of these japers who was a favourite in the English court, and could obtain any grant from the king ‘a burdando,’ that is, by jesting. They are well described by the poet:

‘As japers and janglers, Judas’ chyldren, Fayneth them fantasies, and fooles them maketh.’

“It was a very common and a very favourite amusement, so late as the 16th century, to hear the recital of verses and moral speeches, learned for that purpose by a set of men who obtained their livelihood thereby, and who, without ceremony, intruded themselves, not only into taverns and other places of public resort, but also into the houses of the nobility.”

The resemblance of the modern patterer to the classes above mentioned will be seen when I describe the public-house actor and reciter of the present day, as well as the standing patterer, who does not differ so much from the running patterer in the quality of his announcements, as in his requiring more time to make an impression, and being indeed a sort of lecturer needing an audience; also of the present reciters “of verses and moral speeches.” But of these curious classes I shall proceed to treat separately.

OF THE HABITS, OPINIONS, MORALS, AND RELIGION OF PATTERERS GENERALLY.

In order that I might omit nothing which will give the student of that curious phase of London life in London streets--the condition of the patterers--a clear understanding of the subject, I procured the following account from an educated gentleman (who has been before alluded to in this work), and as he had been driven to live among the class he describes, and to support himself by street-selling, his remarks have of course all the weight due to personal experience, as well as to close observation:--

“If there is any truth in phrenology,” writes the gentleman in question, “the patterers--to a man--are very large in the organ of ‘self-esteem,’ from which suggestion an enquiry arises, viz., whether they possess that of which they may justly pique themselves. To arrive at truth about the patterers is very difficult, and indeed the persons with whom they live are often quite in the dark about the history, or in some cases the pursuits of their lodgers.

“I think that the patterers may be divided into three classes. First,--those who were well born and brought up. Secondly,--those whose parents have been dissipated and gave them little education. Thirdly,--those who--whatever their early history--will not be or do anything but what is of an itinerant character. I shall take a glance at the _first_ of these classes, presupposing that they were cradled in the lap of indulgence, and trained to science and virtue.

“If these people take to the streets, they become, with here and there an exception, the most reprobate and the least reclaimable. I was once the inmate of a lodging-house, in which there were at one time five University-men, three surgeons, and several sorts of broken-down clerks, or of other professional men. Their general habits were demoralised to the last degree--their oaths more horrid, extravagant, and far-fetched than anything I ever heard: they were stupid in logic, but very original in obscenity. Most of them scoffed at the Bible, or perverted its passages to extenuate fraud, to justify violence, or construct for themselves excuses for incontinence and imposition. It will appear strange that these educated persons, when they turn out upon the street, generally sell articles which have no connection with literature, and very little with art. The two brothers, who sell that wonder-working paste which removes grease from the outside of your collar by driving it further in, were both scholars of Christ’s Hospital. They were second Grecians, and might have gone to college; but several visits to suburban fairs, and their accompanying scenes of debauch, gave them a _penchant_ for a vagabond life, and they will probably never relinquish it. The very tall man--there are several others--who sells razors and paste on a red pagoda-looking stall, was apprenticed to a surgeon in Colchester, with a premium of 300 guineas; and the little dark-visaged man, who sells children’s money-boxes and traps to catch vermin, is the son of a late upholsterer in Bath, who was also a magistrate of that city. The poor man alluded to was a law-student, and kept two terms in Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Many similar cases might be mentioned--cases founded on real observation and experience. Some light may be thrown upon this subject by pointing out the _modus operandi_ by which a friend of mine got initiated into the ‘art and mystery of patterism.’ ‘I had lived,’ he said, ‘more than a year among the tradesmen and tramps, who herd promiscuously together in low lodging-houses. One afternoon I was taking tea at the same table with a brace of patterers. They eyed me with suspicion; but, determined to know their proceedings, I launched out the only cant word I had then learned. They spoke of going to Chatham. Of course, I knew the place, and asked them, “Where do you stall to in the huey?” which, fairly translated, means, “Where do you lodge in the town?” Convinced that I was “fly,” one of them said, “We drop the main toper (go off the main road) and slink into the crib (house) in the back drum (street).” After some altercation with the “mot” of the “ken” (mistress of the lodging-house) about the cleanliness of a knife or fork, my new acquaintance began to arrange “ground,” &c., for the night’s work. I got into their confidence by degrees; and I give below a vocabulary of their talk to each other:’

Word. Meaning. _Crabshells_ Shoes. _Kite_ Paper. _Nests_ Varieties. _Sticky_ Wax. _Toff_ Gentleman. _Burerk_ Lady. _Camister_ Minister. _Crocus_ Doctor. _Bluff_ An excuse. _Balmy_ Insane. _Mill Tag_ A shirt. _Smeesh_ A shift. _Hay-bag_ A woman. _Doxy_ A wife. _Flam_ A lie. _Teviss_ A shilling. _Bull_ A crown. _Flag_ An apron.

“The cant or slang of the patterer is not the cant of the costermonger, but a system of their own. As in the case of the costers, it is so interlarded with their general remarks, while their ordinary language is so smothered and subdued, that unless when they are professionally engaged and talking of their wares, they might almost pass for foreigners.

“There can be no doubt,” continues my informant, “that the _second_ class of street-patterers, to whom nature, or parents, or circumstances have been unpropitious, are the most moral, and have a greater sense of right and wrong, with a quicksightedness about humane and generous things, to which the ‘aristocratic’ patterer is a stranger. Of the dealers in useful or harmless wares--although, of course, they use allowable exaggeration as to the goodness of the article--many are devout communicants at church, or members of dissenting bodies; while others are as careless about religion, and are still to be found once or twice a week in the lecture-rooms of the Mechanics’ Institute nearest to their residence. Orchard-street, Westminster, is a great locality for this sort of patterers. Three well-known characters,--Bristol George, Corporal Casey, and Jemmy the Rake, with a very respectable and highly-informed man called ‘Grocer,’ from his having been apprenticed to that business,--have maintained a character for great integrity among the neighbours for many years.

“I come now to the _third_ class of patterers,--those who, whatever their early pursuits and pleasures, have manifested a predilection for vagrancy, and neither can nor will settle to any ordinary calling. There is now on the streets a man scarcely thirty years old, conspicuous by the misfortune of a sabre-wound on the cheek. He is a native of the Isle of Man. His father was a captain in the Buffs, and himself a commissioned officer at seventeen. He left the army, designing to marry and open a boarding-school. The young lady to whom he was betrothed died, and _that_ event _might_ affect his mind; at any rate, he has had 38 situations in a dozen years, and will not keep one a week. He has a mortal antipathy to good clothes, and will not keep them one hour. He sells anything--chiefly needle-cases. He ‘patters’ very little in a _main drag_ (public street); but in the little private streets he preaches an outline of his life, and makes no secret of his wandering propensity. His aged mother, who still lives, pays his lodgings in Old Pye-street.