Part 59
“From all Cardinals whether wise or foolish. Oh! Queen Spare us.
“_Spare us, Oh Queen._
“From the pleasure of the Rack, and the friendship of the kind hearted officers of the Inquisition. Oh! Johnny hear us.
“_Oh! Russell hear us._
“From the comforts of being frisled like a devil’d kindney. Oh! Nosey save us.
“_Hear us Oh Arthur._
“From such saucy Prelates, as Pope Pi-ass. Oh! Cumming’s save us.
“_Save us good Cumming._
“And let us have no more Burnings in smithfield, no more warm drinks in the shape of boiled oil, or, molten lead, and send the whole host of Pusyites along with the Pope, Cardinals to the top of mount Vesuvius there to dine off of hot lava, so that we may live in peace & shout long live our Queen, and No Popery!”
For some pitches the foregoing was sufficient, for a street auditory “hates too long a patter;” but where a favourable opportunity offered, easily tested by the pecuniary beginnings, the “Lesson of the Day” was given in addition, and was inserted after the second “Answer” in the foregoing parody, so preceding the “Let us say:”
“_The Lesson of the Day._
“You seem an intelligent lad, so I think you are quite capable of Reading with me the Lessons for this day’s service.
“Now the Lesson for the day is taken from all parts of the Book of Martyr’s, beginning at just where you like.
“It was about the year 1835, that a certain renagade of the name of Pussy--I beg his pardon, I mean Pusey, like a snake who stung his master commenced crawling step by step, from the master; he was bound to serve to worship a puppet, arrayed in a spangle and tincel of a romish showman.
“And the pestelance that he shed around spread rapidly through the minds of many unworthy members of our established Church; even up to the present year, 1850, inasmuch that St Barnabus, of Pimlico, unable to see the truth by the aid of his occulars, mounted four pounds of long sixes in the mid-day, that he might see through the fog of his own folly, by which he was surrounded.
“And Pope Pi-ass the nineth taking advantage of the hubub, did create unto himself a Cardinal in the person of one Wiseman of Westminster.
“And Cardinal broadbrim claimed four counties in England as his dioces, and his master the Pope claimed as many more as his sees, but the people of England could not see that, so they declared aloud they would see them blowed first.
“So when Jack Russell heard of his most impudent intentions, he sent him a Letter saying it was the intention of the people of England never again to submit to their infamous mumerys for the burnings in Smithfield was still fresh in their memory.
“And behold great meetings were held in different parts of England where the Pope was burnt in effigy, like unto a Yarmouth Bloater, as a token of respect for him and his followers.
“And the citizens of London were stanch to a man, and assembled together in the Guildhall of our mighty City and shouted with stentarian lungs, long live the Queen and down with the Pope, the sound of which might have been heard even unto the vatican of Rome.
“And when his holyness the Pope heard that his power was set at naught, his nose became blue even as a bilberry with rage and declared Russell and Cummings or any who joined in the No Popery cry, should ever name the felisity of kissing his pious great toe.
“_Thus Endeth the Lesson._”
In the course of my inquiries touching this subject I had more than once occasion to observe that an acute patterer had always a reason, or an excuse for anything. One quick-witted Irishman, whom I knew to be a Roman Catholic, was “working” a “patter against the Pope,” (not the one I have given), and on my speaking to him on the subject, and saying that I supposed he did it for a living, he replied: “That’s it then, sir. You’re right, sir, yes. I work it just as a Catholic lawyer would plead against a Catholic paper for a libel on Protestants--though in his heart he knew the paper was right--and a Protestant lawyer would defend the libel hammer and tongs. Bless you, sir, you’ll not find much more honour that way among us (laughing) than among them lawyers; not much.” The readiness with which the sharpest of those men plead the doings not only of tradesmen, but of the learned and sacred professions, to justify themselves, is remarkable.
Sometimes a dialogue is of a satirical nature. One man told me that the “Conversation between Achilles and the Wellington Statue,” of which I give the concluding moiety, was “among the best,” (he meant for profit), “but no great thing.” My informant was Achilles--or, as he pronounced it, Atchilees--and his mate was the statue, or “man on the horse.” The two lines, in the couplet form, which precede every two paragraphs of dialogue, seem as if they represent the speakers wrongfully. The answer should be attributed, in each case, to Achilles.
“The hoarse voice it came from the statue of Achilles And ’twas answer’d thus by the man on the horse.
“Little man of little mind havn’t I now got iron blinds, and bomb-proof rails when danger assails, a cunning devised job, to keep out an unruly mob, with high and ambitious views and remarkable queer shoes; I say, Old Nakedness, I say, come and see my frontage over the way, but I believe you can’t get out after ten!
“No, you’re as near where you are as at Quatre Bras, I hear a great deal what the public think and feel, plain as the nose on your face, we’re deemed a national disgrace; they grumble at your high-ness, and at my want of shyness, and say many unpleasant things of Ligny and Marchienne!
“The hoarse voice it came from the statue of Achilles And ’twas answer’d thus by the man on the horse.
“Ah! its a few days since the Nive, where Soult found me all alive, and the grand toralloo I made at Bordeaux; wasn’t I in a nice mess, when Boney left Elba and left no address, besides 150 other jobs with the chill off I could bring to view.
“But then people will say, poor unfortunate Ney, and that you were dancing at a ball, and not near Hogumont at all, and that the job of St. Helena might have been done rather cleaner, and it was a shameful go to send Sir Hudson Lowe, and that you took particular care of No. 1, at Waterloo.
“The hoarse voice it came from the statue of Achilles And ’twas answer’d thus by the man on the horse.
“Why flog ’em and ’od ’rot em, who said ‘Up Guards and at ’em!’ and you know that nice treat I received in Downing Street, when hooted by a thousand or near, defended by an old grenadier, so no whopping I got, good luck to his old tin pot, oh! there’s a deal of brass in me I’ll allow.
“Its prophecied you’ll break down, they’re crying it about town, and many jokes are past, that you’re brought to the scaffold at last, and they say I look black, because I’ve no shirt to my back, and its getting broad daylight, I vow!
“The hoarse voice it came from the statue of Achilles But ’twas answer’d thus by the man on the horse.
“H. V. HOOKER.”
Of parodies other than the sort of compound of the Litany and other portions of the Church Service, which I have given, there are none in the streets--neither are there political duets. Such productions as parodies on popular songs, “Cab! cab! cab!” or “Trip! trip! trip!” are now almost always derived, for street-service, from the concert-rooms. But they relate more immediately to ballads, or street song; and not to patter.
OF “COCKS,” ETC.
These “literary forgeries,” if so they may be called, have already been alluded to under the head of the “Death and Fire Hunters,” but it is necessary to give a short account of a few of the best and longest known of those stereotyped; no new cocks, except for an occasion, have been printed for some years.
One of the stereotyped cocks is, the “Married Man Caught in a Trap.” One man had known it sold “for years and years,” and it served, he said, when there was any police report in the papers about sweethearts in coal-cellars, &c. The illustration embraces two compartments. In one a severe-looking female is assaulting a man, whose hat has been knocked off by the contents of a water-jug, which a very stout woman is pouring on his head from a window. In the other compartment, as if from an adjoining room, two women look on encouragingly. The subject matter, however, is in no accordance with the title or the embellishment. It is a love-letter from John S--n to his most “adorable Mary.” He expresses the ardour of his passion, and then twits his adored with something beyond a flirtation with Robert E--, a “decoyer of female innocence.” Placably overlooking this, however, John S--n continues:--
“My dearest angel consent to my request, and keep me no longer in suspense--nothing, on my part, shall ever be wanting to make you happy and comfortable. My apprenticeship will expire in four months from hence, when I intend to open a shop in the small ware line, and your abilities in dress-making and self-adjusting stay-maker, and the assistance of a few female mechanics, we shall be able to realize an independency.”
“Many a turn in seductions talked about in the papers and not talked about nowhere,” said one man, “has that slum served for, besides other things, such as love-letters, and confessions of a certain lady in this neighbourhood.”
Another old cock is headed, “Extraordinary and Funny Doings in this Neighbourhood.” The illustration is a young lady, in an evening dress, sitting with an open letter in her hand, on a sort of garden-seat, in what appears to be a churchyard. After a smart song, enforcing the ever-neglected advice that people should “look at home and mind their own business,” are two letters, the first from R. G.; the answer from S. H. M. The gentleman’s epistle commences:--
“Madam,
“The love and tenderness I have hitherto expressed for you is false, and I now feel that my indifference towards you increases every day, and the more I see you the more you appear ridiculous in my eyes and contemptible-- I feel inclined & in every respect disposed & determined to hate you. Believe me, I never had any inclination to offer you my hand.”
The lady responds in a similar strain, and the twain appear very angry, until a foot-note offers an explanation: “By reading every other line of the above letters the true meaning will be found.”
Of this class of cocks I need cite no other specimens, but pass on to one of another species--the “Cruel and Inhuman Murder Committed on the Body of Capt. Lawson.” The illustration is a lady, wearing a coronet, stabbing a gentleman, in full dress, through the top button of his waistcoat. The narrative commences:--
“WITH surprise we have learned that this neighbourhood for a length of time was amazingly alarmed this day by a crowd of people carrying the body of Mr. James Lawless, to a doctor while streams of blood besmeared the way in such a manner that the cries of Murder re-echoed the sound of numerous voices. It appears that the cause of alarm, originated through a court-ship attended with a solemn promise of marriage between him and miss Lucy Guard, a handsome young Lady of refined feelings with the intercourse of a superior enlightened mind she lived with her aunt who spared neither pain nor cost to improve the talents of miss G. those seven years past, since the death of her mother in Ludgate Hill, London, and bore a most excellent character until she got entangled by the delumps alcurement of Mr. L.”
The writer then deplores Miss Guard’s fall from virtue, and her desertion by her betrayer, “on account of her fortune being small.” Capt. Lawson, or Mr. James Lawless, next woos a wealthy City maiden, and the banns are published. What follows seems to me to be a rather intricate detail:--
“We find that the intended bride learned that Miss Guard, held certain promissory letters of his, and that she was determined to enter an
## action against him for a breach of promise, which moved clouded
Eclipse over the extacy of the variable miss Lawless who knew that Miss G had Letters of his sufficient to substantiate her claims in a court.”
Lawson visits Miss Guard to wheedle her out of his letters, but “she drew a large carving-knife and stabbed him under the left breast.” At the latest account the man was left without hope of recovery, while “the valiant victress” was “ordered to submit to judicial decorum in the nineteenth year of her age.” The murders and other atrocities for which this “cock” has been sponsor, are--I was informed emphatically--a thundering lot!
[Illustration: ILLUSTRATIONS OF STREET-ART--No. II.
Murder of Captain Lawson.
(A “COCK.”)]
I conclude with another cock, which may be called a narrative “on a subject,” as we have “ballads on a subject” (afterwards to be described), but with this difference, that the narrative is fictitious, and the ballad must be founded on a real event, however embellished. The highest newspaper style, I was told, was aimed at. Part of the production reads as if it had done service during the Revolution of February, 1848.
“Express from Paris. Supposed Death of LOUIS NAPOLEON. We stop the press to announce, That Luis Napoleon has been assasinated, by some it is said he is shot dead, by others that he is only wounded in the right arm.
“We have most important intelligence from Paris. That capital is in a state of insurrection. The vivacious people, who have herefore defeated the goverment by paving-stones, have again taken up those missiles. On Tuesday the Ministers forbade the reform banquet, and the prefect of police published a proclamation warning the people to respect the laws, which he declared were violated, and he meant to enforce them. But the people dispised the proclamation and rejected his authority. They assembled in great multitudes round the Chambers of Deputies, and forced their way over the walls. They were attacked by the troops and dispersed, but, re-assembled in various quarters. They showed their hatred of M. Guizot by demolishing his windows and attempting to force an entrance into his hotel, but were again repulced by the troops. All the military in Paris, and all the National Guard, have been summoned to arms, and every preparation made on the part of the government to put down the people.
“The latter have raised barricades in various places, and have unpaved the streets, overturned omnibusses, and made preparations for a vigorous assault, or a protracted resistance.
* * * * *
“Five o’Closk--At this moment the Rue St. Honore is blockaded by a detachment dragoons, who fill the market-place near the Rue des Petits Champs, and are charging the people sword in hand, carriages full of deople are being taken to the hospitals.
“In fact the maddest excitement reigns throughout the capital.
* * * * *
“Half past Six.--During the above we have instituted enquiries at the Foreign office, they have not received any inteligence of the above report, if it has come, it must have been by pigeon express. We have not given the above in our columns with a view of its authenticity, any further information as soon as obtained shall be immediately announced to the public.”
OF “STRAWING.”
I have already alluded to “strawing,” which can hardly be described as quackery. It is rather a piece of mountebankery. Many a quack--confining the term to its most common signification, that of a “quack doctor”--has faith in the excellence of his own nostrums, and so proffers that which he believes to be curative: the strawer, however, sells what he _knows_ is not what he represents it.
The strawer offers to _sell_ any passer by in the streets a straw and to _give_ the purchaser a paper which he _dares not_ sell. Accordingly as he judges of the character of his audience, so he intimates that the paper is political, libellous, irreligious, or indecent.
I am told that as far back as twenty-five or twenty-six years, straws were sold, but only in the country, with leaves from the _Republican_, a periodical published by Carlile, then of Fleet-street, which had been prosecuted by the government; but it seems that the trade died away, and was little or hardly known again until the time of the trial of Queen Caroline, and then but sparingly. The straw sale reached its highest commercial pitch at the era of the Reform Bill. The most successful trader in the article is remembered among the patterers as “Jack Straw,” who was oft enough represented to me as the original strawer. If I inquired further, the answer was: “He was the first in my time.” This Jack Straw was, I am told, a fine-looking man, a natural son of Henry Hunt, the blacking manufacturer. He was described to me as an inveterate drunkard and a very reckless fellow. One old hand was certain that this man was Hunt’s son, as he himself had “worked” with him, and was sometimes sent by him when he was “in trouble,” or in any strait, to 32, Broadwall, Blackfriars, for assistance, which was usually rendered. (This was the place where Hunt’s “Matchless Blacking” and “Roasted Corn” were vended.) Jack Straw’s principal “pitch” was at Hyde Park Corner, “where,” said the man whom I have mentioned as working with him, “he used to come it very strong against Old Nosey, the Hyde Park bully as he called him. To my knowledge he’s made 10_s._, and he’s made 15_s._ on a night. O, it didn’t matter to him what he sold with his straws, religion or anything. There was no three-pennies (threepenny newspapers) then, and he had had a gentleman’s education, and knew what to say, and so the straws went off like smoke.” The articles which this man “durst not sell” were done up in paper, so that no one could very well peruse them on the spot, as a sort of stealth was implied. On my asking Jack Straw’s co-worker if he had ever drank with him, “Drank with him!” he answered, “Yes, many a time. I’ve gone out and pattered, or chaunted, or anything, to get money to buy him two glasses of brandy--and good brandy was very dear then--before he could start, for he was all of a tremble until he had his medicine. If I couldn’t get brandy, it was the best rum, ’cause he had all the tastes of a gentleman. Ah! he’s been dead some years, sir, but where he died I don’t know. I only heard of his death. He was a nice kindly fellow.”
The _ruse_ in respect of strawing is not remarkable for its originality. It was an old smuggler’s trick to _sell_ a sack and _give_ the keg of contraband spirit placed within it and padded out with straw so as to resemble a sack of corn. The hawkers, prior to 1826, when Mr. Huskisson introduced changes into the Silk Laws, _gave_ “real Ingy handkerchiefs” (sham) to a customer, and _sold_ him a knot of tape for about 4_s._ The price of a true Bandana, then prohibited, and sold openly in the draper’s shops, was about 8_s._ The East India Company imported about a million of Bandanas yearly; they were sold by auction for exportation to Hamburgh, &c., at about 4_s._ each, and were nearly all smuggled back again to England, and disposed of as I have stated.
It is not possible to give anything like statistics as to the money realised by strawing. A well-informed man calculated that when the trade was at its best, or from 1832 to 1836, there might be generally fifty working it in the country and twenty in London; they did not confine themselves, however, to strawing, but resorted to it only on favourable opportunities. Now there are none in London--their numbers diminished gradually--and very rarely any in the country.
OF THE SHAM INDECENT STREET-TRADE.
This is one of those callings which are at once repulsive and ludicrous; repulsive, when it is considered under what pretences the papers are sold, and ludicrous, when the disappointment of the gulled purchaser is contemplated.
I have mentioned that one of the allurements held out by the strawer was that his paper--the words used by Jack Straw--could “not be admitted into families.” Those following the “sham indecent trade” for a time followed his example, and professed to sell straws and give away papers; but the London police became very observant of the sale of straws--more especially under the pretences alluded to--and it has, for the last ten years, been rarely pursued in the streets.
The plan now adopted is to sell the sealed packet itself, which the “patter” of the street-seller leads his auditors to believe to be some improper or scandalous publication. The packet is some coloured paper, in which is placed a portion of an old newspaper, a Christmas carol, a religious tract, or a slop-tailor’s puff (given away in the streets for the behoof of another class of gulls). The enclosed paper is, however, never indecent.
From a man who had, not long ago, been in this trade, I had the following account. He was very anxious that nothing should be said which would lead to a knowledge that he was my informant. After having expressed his sorrow that he had ever been driven to this trade from distress, he proceeded to justify himself. He argued--and he was not an ignorant man--that there was neither common sense nor common justice in interfering with a man like him, who, “to earn a crust, pretended to sell what _shop-keepers_, that must pay church and all sorts of rates, sold without being molested.” The word “shopkeepers” was uttered with a bitter emphasis. There are, or were, he continued, shops--for he seemed to know them all--and some of them had been carried on for years, in which shameless publications were not only sold, but exposed in the windows; and why should he be considered a greater offender than a shopkeeper, and be knocked about by the police? There are, or lately were, he said, such shops in the Strand, Fleet-street, a court off Ludgate-hill, Holborn, Drury-lane, Wych-street, the courts near Drury-lane Theatre, Haymarket, High-street, Bloomsbury, St. Martin’s-court, May’s buildings, and elsewhere, to say nothing of Holywell-street! Yet _he_ must be interfered with!
[I may here remark, that I met with no street-sellers who did not disbelieve, or affect to disbelieve, that they were really meddled with by the police for obstructing the thoroughfare. They either hint, or plainly state, that they are removed solely to please the shop-keepers. Such was the reiterated opinion, real or pretended, of my present informant.]