Part 76

For the last six or eight years, I am told, the artist in question has prepared all the boards in demand. Previously, the standing patterers prepared their own boards, when they fancied themselves capable of such a “reach of art,” or had them done by some unemployed painter, whom they might fall in with at a lodging-house, or elsewhere. This is rarely done now, I am told; not perhaps more than six times in a twelvemonth, and when done it is most frequently practised of “cock-boards;” for, as was said to me, “if a man thinks he’s getting up a fakement likely to take, and wants a board to help him on with it, he’ll try and keep it to hisself, and come out with it quite fresh.”

The charge of the popular street-artist for the painting of a board is 3_s._ or 3_s._ 6_d._, according to the simplicity or elaborateness of the details; the board itself is provided by the artist’s employer. The demand for this peculiar branch of street art is very irregular, depending entirely upon whether anything be “up” or not; that is, whether there has or has not been perpetrated any act of atrocity, which has riveted, as it is called, the public attention. And so great is the uncertainty felt by the street-folk, whether “the most beautiful murder will take or not,” that it is rarely the patterer will order, or the artist will speculate, in anticipation of a demand, upon preparing the painting of any event, until satisfied that it has become “popular.” A deed of more than usual daring, deceit, or mystery, may be at once hailed by those connected with murder-patter, as “one that will do,” and some speculation may be ventured upon; as it was, I am informed, in the cases of Tawell, Rush, and the Mannings; but these are merely exceptional. Thus, if the artist have a dozen boards ordered “for this ten days, he may have two, or one, or none for the next ten;” so uncertain, it appears, is all that depends, without intrinsic merit, on mere popular applause.

I am unable to give--owing to the want of account-books, &c., which I have so often had to refer to as characteristic of street-people--a precise account of the average number of boards thus prepared in a year. Perhaps it may be as close to the fact as possible to conclude that the artist in question, who, unlike the majority of the street-poets, is not a street-seller, but works, as a professional man, _for_ but not _in_ the streets, realises on his boards a profit of 7_s._ 6_d._ weekly. The pictorial productions for street-shows will be more appropriately described in the account of street-performers and showmen.

This artist, as I have shown concerning some of the street-professors of the sister art of poesy, has the quality of knowing how to adapt his works exactly to the taste of his patrons the sellers, and of their patrons, the buyers in the streets.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF ENGRAVINGS, ETC., IN UMBRELLAS, ETC.

The sale of “prints,” “pictures,” and “engravings”--I heard them designated by each term--in umbrellas in the streets, has been known, as far as I could learn from the street-folk for some fifteen years, and has been general from ten to twelve years. In this traffic the umbrella is inverted and the “stock” is disposed within its expanse. Sometimes narrow tapes are attached from rib to rib of the umbrella, and within these tapes are placed the pictures, one resting upon another. Sometimes a few pins are used to attach the larger prints to the cotton of the umbrella, the smaller ones being “fitted in at the side” of the bigger. “Pins is best, sir, in my opinion,” said a little old man, who used to have a “print umbrella” in the New Cut; “for the public has a more unbrokener display. I used werry fine pins, though they’s dearer, for people as has a penny to spare likes to see things nice, and big pins makes big holes in the pictures.”

This trade is most pursued on still summer evenings, and the use of an inverted umbrella seems so far appropriate that it can only be so used, in the street, in _dry_ weather. “I used to keep a sharp look-out, sir,” said the same informant, “for wind or rain, and many’s the time them devils o’ boys--God forgive me, they’s on’y poor children--but they _is_ devils--has come up to me and has said--one in particler, standin’ afore the rest: ‘It’ll thunder in five minutes, old bloke, so hup with yer humbereller, and go ’ome; hup with it jist as it is; it’ll show stunnin; and sell as yer goes.’ O, they’re a shocking torment, sir; nobody can feel it like people in the streets,--shocking.”

The engravings thus sold are of all descriptions. Some have evidently been the frontispieces of sixpenny or lower-priced works. These works sometimes fall into hands of the “waste collectors,” and any “illustrations” are extracted from the letter-press and are disposed of by the collectors, by the gross or dozen, to those warehousemen who supply the small shopkeepers and the street-sellers. Sometimes, I was informed, a number of engravings, which had for a while appeared as “frontispieces” were issued for sale separately. Many of these were and are found in the “street umbrellas;” more especially the portraits of popular actors and actresses. “Mr. J. P. Kemble, as Hamlet”--“Mr. Fawcett, as Captain Copp”--“Mr. Young, as Iago”--“Mr. Liston, as Paul Pry”--“Mrs. Siddons, as Lady Macbeth”--“Miss O’Neil, as Belvidera,” &c., &c. In the course of an inquiry into the subject nearly a year and a half ago, I learned from one “umbrella man” that, six or seven years previously, he used to sell more portraits of “Mr. Edmund Kean, as Richard III.,” than of anything else. Engravings, too, which had first been admired in the “Annuals”--when half-a-guinea was the price of the “Literary Souvenir,” the “Forget-me-not,” “Friendship’s Offering,” the “Bijou,” &c., &c.--are frequently found in these umbrellas; and amongst them are not unfrequently seen portraits of the aristocratic beauties of the day, from “waste” “Flowers of Loveliness” and old “Court Magazines,” which “go off very fair.” The majority of these street-sold “engravings” are “coloured,” in which state the street-sellers prefer them, thinking them much more saleable, though the information I received hardly bears out their opinion.

The following statement, from a middle-aged woman, further shows the nature of the trade, and the class of customers:

“I’ve sat with an umbrella,” she said, “these seven or eight years, I suppose it is. My husband’s a penny lot-seller, with just a middling pitch” [the vendor of a number of articles, sold at a penny “a lot”] “and in the summer I do a little in engravings, when I’m not minding my husband’s ‘lots,’ for he has sometimes a day, and oftener a night, with portering and packing for a tradesman, that’s known him long. Well, sir, I think I sell most ‘coloured.’ ‘Master Toms’ wasn’t bad last summer. ‘Master Toms’ was pictures of cats, sir--you must have seen them--and I had them different colours. If a child looks on with its father, very likely, it’ll want ‘pussy,’ and if the child cries for it, it’s almost a sure sale, and more, I think, indeed I’m sure, with men than with women. Women knows the value of money better than men, for men never understand what housekeeping is. I have no children, thank God, or they might be pinched, poor things. ‘Miss Kitties’ was the same sale. Toms is hes, and Kitties is she cats. I’ve sometimes sold to poor women who was tiresome; they must have just what would fit over their mantel-pieces, that was papered with pictures.” [My readers may remember that some of the descriptions I have given, long previous to the present inquiry, of the rooms of the poor, fully bear out this statement.] “I seldom venture on anything above 1_d._, I mean to sell at 1_d._ I’ve had Toms and Kitties at 2_d._ though. ‘Fashions’ isn’t worth umbrella room; the poorest needlewoman won’t be satisfied with them from an umbrella. ‘Queens’ and ‘Alberts’ and ‘Wales’s’ and the other children isn’t near so good as they was. There’s so many ‘fine portraits of Her Majesty,’ or the others, given away with the first number of this or of that, that people’s overstocked. If a working-man can buy a newspaper or a number, why of course he may as well have a picture with it. They gave away glasses of gin at the opening of that baker’s shop there, and it’s the same doctrine” [The word she used]. “I never offer penny theatres, or comic exhibitions, or anything big; they spoils the look of the umbrella, and makes better things look mean. I sell only to working people, I think; seldom to boys, and seldomer to girls; seldom to servant-maids and hardly ever to women of the town. I _have_ taken 6_d._ from one of them though. I think boys buy pictures for picture books. I never had what I suppose was old pictures. To a few old people, I’ve known, ‘Children’ sell fairly, when they’re made plump, and red cheeked, and curly haired. They sees a resemblance of their grandchildren, perhaps, and buys. Young married people does so too, but not so oft, I think. I don’t remember that ever I have made more than 1_s._ 10_d._ on an evening. I don’t sell, or very seldom indeed, at other times, and only in summer, and when its fine. If I clear 5_s._ I counts that a good week. It’s a great help to the lot-selling. I seldom clear so much. Oftener 4_s._”

The principal sale of these “pictures,” in the streets, is from umbrellas. Occasionally, a street-stationer, or even a miscellaneous lot-seller, when he has met with a cheap lot, especially of portraits of ladies, will display a collection of prints, pyramidally arranged on his stall,--but these are exceptions. Sometimes, too, an “umbrella print-seller” will have a few “pictures in frames,” on a sort of stand alongside the umbrella.

The pictures for the umbrellas are bought at the warehouse, or the swag-shops, of which I have before spoken. At these establishments “prints” are commonly supplied from 3_d._ to 5_s._ the dozen. The street-sellers buy at 5_d._ and 6_d._ the dozen, to sell at a 1_d._ a piece; and at 3_d._ to sell at 1/2_d._ _None_ of the pictures thus sold are prepared expressly for the streets.

In so desultory and--as one intelligent street-seller with whom I conversed on the subject described it--so _weathery_ a trade, it is difficult to arrive at exact statistics. From the best data at my command, it may be computed, that for twelve weeks of the year, there are thirty umbrella print-sellers (all exceptional traders therein included) each clearing 6_s._ weekly, and taking 12_s._ Thus it appears that 216_l._ is yearly expended in the streets in this purchase. Many of the sellers are old or infirm; one who was among the most prosperous before the changes in the streets of Lambeth, was dwarfish, and was delighted to be thought “a character.”

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF PICTURES IN FRAMES.

From about 1810, or somewhat earlier, down to 1830, or somewhat later, the street-sale of pictures in frames was almost entirely in the hands of the Jews. The subjects were then nearly all scriptural: “The Offering up of Isaac;” “Jacob’s Dream;” “The Crossing of the Red Sea;” “The Death of Sisera;” and “The Killing of Goliath from the Sling of the youthful David.” But the Jew traders did not at all account it necessary to confine the subjects of their pictures to the records of the Old--their best trade was in the illustrations of the New Testament. Perhaps the “Stoning of St. Stephen” was their most saleable “picture in a frame.” There were also “The Nativity;” “The Slaying of the Children, by order of Herod” (with the quotation of St. Matthew, chap. ii. verse 17, “Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet”); “The Sermon on the Mount;” “The Beheading of John the Baptist;” “The Entry of Christ into Jerusalem;” “The Raising of Lazarus;” “The Betrayal on the part of Judas;” “The Crucifixion;” and “The Conversion of St. Paul.” There were others, but these were the principal subjects. All these pictures were coloured, and very deeply coloured. St. Stephen was stoned in the lightest of sky-blue short mantles. The pictures were sold in the streets of London, mostly in the way of hawking; but ten times as extensively, I am told, in the country, as in town. Indeed, at the present time, many a secluded village ale-house has its parlour walls decorated with these scriptural illustrations, which seem to have superseded

“The pictures placed for ornament and use; The twelve good rules; the royal game of goose,”

mentioned by Goldsmith as characteristic of a village inn. These “Jew pictures” are now yielding to others.

Most of these articles were varnished, and 2_s._ or 2_s._ 6_d._ each was frequently the price asked, 1_s._ 6_d._ being taken “if no better could be done,” and sometimes 1_s._ A smaller amount per single picture was always taken, if a set were purchased. These productions were prepared principally for street-sale and for hawkers. The frames were narrower and meaner-looking than in the present street-pictures of the kind; they were stained like the present frames, in imitation of maple, but far less skilfully. Sometimes they were a black japan; sometimes a sorry imitation of mahogany.

In the excitement of the Reform Bill era, the street-pictures in frames most in demand were Earl Grey, Earl Spencer’s (or Lord Althorp), Lord Brougham’s, and Lord John Russell’s. O’Connell’s also “sold well,” as did William IV. “Queen Adelaide,” I was told, “went off middling, not much more than half as good as William.” Towards the close of King William’s life, the portraits of the Princess Victoria of Kent were of good sale in the streets, and her Royal Highness was certainly represented as a young lady of undue plumpness, and had hardly justice done to her portraiture. The Duchess of Kent, also, I was informed, “sold fairish in the streets.” In a little time, the picture in a frame of the Princess Victoria of Kent, with merely an alteration in the title, became available as Queen Victoria I., of Great Britain and Ireland. Since that period, there have been the princes and princesses, her Majesty’s offspring, who present a strong family resemblance.

The street pictures, so to speak, are not unfrequently of a religious character. Pictures of the Virgin and Child, of the Saviour seated at the Last Supper, of the Crucifixion, or of the different saints, generally coloured. The principal purchasers of these “religious pictures” are the poorer Irish. I remember seeing, in the course of an inquiry among street-performers last summer, the entire wall of a poor street-dancer’s one room, except merely the space occupied by the fireplace, covered with small coloured pictures in frames, the whole of which, the proprietor told me, with some pride, he had picked up in the streets, according as he could spare a few pence. Among them were a crucifix (of bone), and a few medallions, of a religious character, in plaster or wax. This man was of Italian extraction; but I have seen the same thing in the rooms of the Roman Catholic Irish, though never to the same extent.

The general subjects now most in demand for street-sale are, “Lola Montes,” “Louis Philippe and his Queen,” “The Sailor’s Return,” “The Soldier’s Return,” and the “Parting” of the same individuals, Smugglers, in different situations, Poachers also; “Turpin’s Ride to York,” the divers feats attributed to Jack Sheppard (but less popular than “Turpin’s Ride,”) “Courtship,” “Marriage” (the one a couple caressing, and the other bickering), “Father Mathew” (in very black large boots), “Napoleon Bonaparte crossing the Alps,” and his “Farewell to his Troops at Fontainebleau,” “Scenes of Piracy.” None of these subjects are modern; “Lola Montes” (a bold-faced woman, in a riding-habit), being the newest. “Why,” said one man familiar with the trade, “there hasn’t been no Louis Napoleon in a frame-picture for the streets, nor Cobdens, nor Feargus O’Connors, nor Sir John Franklins; what is wanted for us is something exciting.”

The prices of frame-pictures (as I sometimes heard them called) made expressly for street-sale, vary from 1_d._ to 1_s._ a pair. The 1_d._ a pair are about six inches by four, very rude, and on thin paper, and with frames made of lath-wood (stained), but put together very compactly. The cheaper sorts are of prints bought at the swag-shops, or of waste-dealers, sometimes roughly coloured, and sometimes plain. The greatest sale is of those charged from 2_d._ to 4_d._ the pair.

Some of the higher-priced pictures are painted purposely for the streets, but are always copies of some popular engraving, and their sale is not a twentieth of the others. These frame-pictures were, and are, generally got up by a family, the girls taking the management of the paper-work, the boys of the wood. The parents have, many of them, been paper-stainers. This division of labour is one reason of the exceeding cheapness of this street branch of the fine arts. These working artists--or whatever they are to be called--also prepare and frame for street-sale the plates given away in the first instance with a number of a newspaper or a periodical, and afterwards “to be had for next to nothing.” The prevalence of such engravings has tended greatly to diminish the sale of the pictures prepared expressly for the streets.

Ten years ago this trade was ten times greater than it is now. The principal sale still is, and always was, at the street-markets on Saturday evenings. They are sold piled on a small stall, or carried under the arm. To sell 10_s._ worth on a Saturday night is an extraordinary sale, and 2_s._ 6_d._ is a bad one, and the frame-picturer must have “middling patter to set them off at all. ‘Twopence a pair!’ he’ll say; ‘only twopence a pair! Who’d be without an ornament to his dwelling?’”

There are now about fifty persons engaged in this sale on a Saturday night, of whom the majority are the artists or preparers of the pictures. On a Monday evening there are about twenty sellers; and not half that number on other evenings--but some “take a round in the suburbs.”

If these people take 10_s._ weekly for frame-pictures the year through, 1,040_l._ is yearly expended in this way. I estimate the average number at twenty daily. Their profits are about cent. per cent.; boys and working people buy the most. The trade is often promoted by a raffle at a public-house. Many mechanics, I was told, now frame their own pictures.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF MANUSCRIPT AND OTHER MUSIC.

This trade used to be more extensively carried on in the streets than it is at present. The reasons I heard assigned for the decadence were the greater cheapness of musical productions generally, and the present fondness for lithographic embellishments to every polka, waltz, quadrille, ballad, &c., &c. “People now hates, I do believe, a _bare_ music-sheet,” one street-seller remarked.

The street manuscript-music trade was, certainly, and principally, piratical. An air became popular perhaps on a sudden, as it was pointed out to me, in the case, of “Jump, Jim Crow.” At a musical publisher’s, such an affair in the first bloom of its popularity, would have been charged from 2_s._ to 3_s._ 6_d._, twenty-five years ago, and the street-seller at that time, often also a book-stall keeper, would employ, or buy of those who offered them for sale, and who copied them for the purpose, a manuscript of the demanded music, which he could sell cheap in comparison.

A man who, until the charges of which I have before spoken, kept a second-hand book-stall, in a sort of arched passage in the New Cut, Lambeth, sold manuscript-music, and was often “sadly bothered,” he said, at one time by the musical propensities of a man who looked like a journeyman tailor. This man, whenever he had laid out a trifle at the book-stall, looked over the music, and often pulled a small flute from his pocket, and began to play a few bars from one of the manuscripts, and this he continued doing, to the displeasure of the stall-keeper, until a crowd began to assemble, thinking, perhaps, that the flute-player was a street-musician; he was then obliged to desist. Of the kind of music he sold, or of its mode of production, this street-bookseller knew nothing. He purchased it of a man who carried it to his stall, and as he found it sell tolerably well, he gave himself no further trouble concerning it. The supplier of the manuscript pencilled on each sheet the price it was to be offered at, allowing the stall-keeper from 50 to 150 per cent. profit, if the price marked was obtained. “I haven’t seen anything of him, sir,” said the street-bookseller, “for a long while. I dare say he was some poor musicianer, or singer, or a reduced gentleman, perhaps, for he always came after dusk, or else on bad dark days.”

Although but partially connected with street-art, I may mention as a sample of the music sometimes offered in street-sale, that a book-stall keeper, three weeks ago showed me a pile of music which he had purchased from a “waste collector,” about eight months before, at 2-1/2_d._ the pound. Among this was some MS. music, which I specify below, and which the book-stall keeper was confident, on very insufficient grounds, I think, had been done for street-sale.

The music had, as regards three-fourths of it, evidently been bound, and had been torn from the boards of the book, as only the paper portion is purchased for “waste.” Some, however, were loose sheets, which had evidently never been subjected to the process of stitching. I now cite some of the titles of this street-sale: “Le Petit Tambour. Sujet d’un Grand Rondeau pour le Piano Forte. Composé par L. Zerbini,” (MS.) “Di Tanti Palpiti. The Celebrated Cavatina, by Rossini, &c.” “Twenty Short Lessons, or Preludes in the most Convenient Keys for the Harp. Composed and Respectfully Dedicated to Lady Ann Collins. By John Baptist Meyer. Price 5_s._” “An Cota Caol (given in the ancient Irish character.) The Slender Coat,” (MS.) “Cailin beog chruite na mbo (also in Irish). The Pretty Girl Milking the Cow,” (MS.)

There are now no persons regularly employed in preparing MS. music for the streets. But occasionally a person skilled in music writing will, when he or she, I was told, had nothing better in hand, do a little for the street sale, disposing of the MSS. to any street-stationer or bookseller. If four persons are this way employed, receiving 4_s._ a week each, the year through--which I am assured is the extent--we find upwards of 40_l._ thus earned, and about twice that sum taken by the street retailers.

OF THE CAPITAL AND INCOME OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF STATIONERY, LITERATURE, AND THE FINE ARTS.

I now proceed to give a summary of the capital, and income of the above classes. I will first however, endeavour to give a summary of the number of individuals belonging to the class.