be better but for the police. I don’t mean the college bull-dogs.
They don’t interfere with us, only with women. The last time I was
at Cambridge, sir, I hung the Mannings. It was the day, or two days,
I’m not sure which, after their trial. We pattered at night, too late
for the collegians to come out. We ‘worked’ about where we knew they
lodged--I had a mate with me--and some of the windows of their rooms,
in the colleges themselves, looks into the street. We pattered about
later news of Mr. and Mrs. Manning. Up went the windows, and cords was
let down to tie the papers to. But we always had the money first. We
weren’t a-going to trust such out-and-out going young coves as them.
One young gent. said: ‘I’m a sucking parson; won’t you trust _me_?’
‘No,’ says I, ‘we’ll not trust Father Peter.’ So he threw down 6_d._
and let down his cord, and he says, ‘Send six up.’ We saw it was
Victoria’s head all right, so we sends up three. ‘Where’s the others?’
says he. ‘O,’ says I, ‘they’re 1_d._ a piece, and 1_d._ a piece extra
for hanging Mr. and Mrs. Manning, as we have, to a cord; so it’s all
right.’ Some laughed, and some said, ‘D--n you, wait till I see you
in the town.’ But they hadn’t that pleasure. Yorkshire Betty’s is the
head quarters at Cambridge,--or in Barnwell, of course, there’s no
such places in Cambridge. It’s known as ‘W-- and Muck Fort.’ It’s the
real college touch--the seat of learning, if you’re seeing life. The
college lads used to look in there oftener than they do now. They’re
getting shyer. Men won’t put up with black eyes for nothing. Old
Yorkshire Betty’s a motherly body, but she’s no ways particular in her
management. Higgledy-piggledy; men and women; altogether.” Thirty beds.
_Newmarket._--“The Woolpack. A lively place; middling other ways.
There’s generally money to be had at Newmarket. I don’t stay there
so long as some, for I don’t care about racing; and the poorest snob
there’s a sporting character.” Six beds.
_Bury St. Edmund’s._--“Old Jack Something’s. He was a publican for
forty years. But he broke, and I’ve heard him say that if he hadn’t
been a player on the fiddle, he should have destroyed his-self. But his
fiddle diverted him in his troubles. He has a real Cremona, and can’t
he play it? He’s played at dances at the Duke of Norfolk’s. I’ve heard
him give the tune he played on his wedding night, years and years back,
before I was born. He’s a noble-looking fellow; the fac-simile of Louis
Philippe. It’s a clean and comfortable, hard and honest place.” Twelve
beds.
_Mildenhall._--“A private house; I forget the landlord’s name. The
magistrates is queer there, and so very little work can be done in my
way. I’ve been there when I was the only lodger.” Seven beds.
_Ely._--“The Tom and Jerry. Very queer. No back kitchen or convenience.
A regular rough place. Often quarrelling there all night long. Any
caper allowed among men and women. The landlord’s easy frightened.”
Five beds.
_St. Ives._--“Plume of Feathers. Passable.” Eleven beds.
_St. Neot’s._--“Bell and Dicky, and very dicky too. Queer doings in the
dos (sleeping) and everything. It’s an out-of-the-way place, or the
town’s people might see to it, but they won’t take any notice unless
some traveller complains, and they won’t complain. They’re a body of
men, sir, that don’t like to run gaping to a beak. The landlord seems
to care for nothing but money. He takes in all that offer. Three in a
bed often; men, women, and children mixed together. It’s anything but a
tidy place.” Thirteen beds.
_Bedford._--The Cock. “Life in London, sir; I can’t describe it better.
Life in Keate-street, Whitechapel.” Fifteen beds.
_Irchester._--“I don’t mind the name. A most particular place. You must
go to bed by nine, or be locked out. It’s hard and honest; clean and
rough.” Six beds.
_Wellingborough._--“A private house. Smith or Jones, I know, or some
common name. Ducker, the soldier that was shot in the Park by Annette
Meyers, lived there. I worked him there myself, and everybody bought. I
did the gun-trick, sir, (had great success.) It’s an inferior lodging
place. They’re in no ways particular, not they, who they admit or how
they dos. At a fair-time, the goings on is anything but fair.” Ten
beds.
_Northampton._--“Mrs. Bull’s. Comfortable and decent. She takes in
the _Dispatch_, to oblige her travellers. It’s a nice, quiet, Sunday
house.” Twelve beds.
_Market Harborough._--“There’s a good lady there gives away tracts and
half-a-crown. A private house is the traveller’s house, and some new
name. Middling accommodation.” Nine beds.
_Lutterworth._--“A private house, and I’ll go there no more. Very
queer. Not the least comfort or decency. They’re above their business,
I think, and take in too many, and care nothing what the travellers do.
Higgledy-piggledy together.” Ten beds.
_Leicester._--“The Rookery. Rosemary-lane over again, sir, especially
at Black Jack’s. He shakes up the beds with a pitchfork, and brings in
straw if there’s more than can possibly be crammed into the beds. He’s
a fighting man, and if you say a word, he wants to fight you.” Twelve
beds.
_Hinckley._--“The Tea-board. Comfortable.” Eight beds.
_Nuneaton._--“The same style as Hinckley. A private house.” Eight beds.
_Coventry._--“Deserves to be sent further. Bill Cooper’s. A dilapidated
place, and no sleep, for there’s armies of bugs,--great black fellows.
I call it the Sikh war there, and they’re called Sikhs there, or Sicks
there, is the vermin; but I’m sick of all such places. They’re not
particular there,--certainly not.” Twenty beds.
_Birmingham._--“Mrs. Leach’s. Comfortable and decent, and a good
creature. I know there’s plenty of houses in Birmingham bad
enough,--London reduced, sir; but I can’t tell you about them from my
own observation, ’cause I always go to Mrs. Leach’s.” Thirty beds.
* * * * *
Here, then, in the route most frequented by the pedestrian
“travellers,” we find, taking merely the accommodation of one house
in each place (and in some of the smaller towns there is but one),
a supply of beds which may nightly accommodate, on an average, 489
inmates, reckoning at the rate of 12 sleepers to every 8 beds. At
busy times, double the number will be admitted. And to these places
resort the beggar, the robber, and the pickpocket; the street-patterer
and the street-trader; the musician, the ballad-singer, and the
street-performer; the diseased, the blind, the lame, and the
half-idiot; the outcast girl and the hardened prostitute; young and
old, and of all complexions and all countries.
Nor does the enumeration end here. To these places must often resort
the wearied mechanic, travelling in search of employment, and even the
broken-down gentleman, or scholar, whose means do not exceed 4_d._
A curious history might be written of the frequenters of low
lodging-houses. Dr. Johnson relates, that when Dean Swift was a young
man, he paid a yearly visit from Sir William Temple’s seat, Moor
Park, to his mother at Leicester. “He travelled on foot, unless some
violence of weather drove him into a waggon; and at night he would
go to a penny lodging, where he purchased clean sheets for sixpence.
This practice Lord Orrery imputes to his (Swift’s) innate love of
grossness and vulgarity; some may ascribe it to his desire of surveying
human life through all its varieties.” Perhaps it might not be very
difficult to trace, in Swift’s works, the influence upon his mind of
his lodging-house experience.
The same author shows that his friend, Richard Savage, in the
bitterness of his poverty, was also a lodger in these squalid dens: “He
passed the night sometimes in mean houses, which are set open at night
to any casual wanderer; sometimes in cellars, among the riot and filth
of the meanest and most profligate of the rabble.” A Richard Savage of
to-day might, under similar circumstances, have the same thing said of
him, except that “cellars” might now be described as “ground-floors.”
The great, and sometimes the only, luxury of the frequenters of
these country lodging-houses is tobacco. A man or women who cannot
smoke, I was told, or was not “hardened” to tobacco smoke, in a low
lodging-house was half-killed with coughing. Sometimes a couple of men,
may be seen through the thick vapour of the tobacco-smoke, peering
eagerly over soiled cards, as they play at all-fours. Sometimes there
is an utter dulness and drowsiness in the common sitting-room, and
hardly a word exchanged for many minutes. I was told by one man of
experience in these domiciles, that he had not very unfrequently heard
two men who were conversing together in a low tone, and probably
agreeing upon some nefarious course, stop suddenly, when there was
a pause in the general conversation, and look uneasily about them,
as if apprehensive and jealous that they had been listened to. A
“stranger” in the lodging-house is regarded with a minute and often a
rude scrutiny, and often enough would not be admitted, were not the
lodging-house keeper the party concerned, and he of course admits “all
what pays.”
One patterer told me of two “inscriptions,” as he called them, which he
had noticed in country lodgings he had lately visited; the first was:--
“He who smokes, thinks like a philosopher, and feels like a
philanthropist.”--_Bulwer’s Night and Morning._
The second was an intimation from the proprietor of the house, which,
in spite of its halting explanation, is easily understood:--
“No sickness allowed, unles by order of the Mare.”
OF THE STREET STATIONERS, AND THE STREET CARD-SELLERS.
I have before mentioned that the street-stationers--the sellers of
writing-paper, envelopes, pens, and of the other articles which
constitute the stationery in the most general demand--were not to be
confounded with the pattering “paper-workers.” They are, indeed, a
different class altogether. The majority of them have been mechanics,
or in the employ of tradesmen whose callings were not mechanical (as
regards handicraft labour), but what is best described perhaps as
commercial; or as selling but not producing; as in the instances of the
large body of “warehousemen” in the different departments of trade. One
street-stationer thought that of his entire body, not more than six had
been gentlemen’s servants. He himself knew four who had been in such
employment, and one only as a boy--but there might be six.
The card-sellers are, in the instances I shall show, more akin to the
class of patterers, and I shall, therefore, give them first. The more
especially as I can so preserve the consecutiveness of the accounts, in
the present number, by presenting the reader with a sketch of the life
of an informant, in whose revelations I find that many have taken a
strong interest.
OF THE SELLER OF THE PENNY SHORT-HAND CARDS.
All ladies and gentlemen who “take their walks abroad,” must have
seen, and of course heard, a little man in humble attire engaged in
selling at one penny each a small card, containing a few sentences of
letter-press, and fifteen stenographic characters, with an example,
by which, it is asserted, anybody and everybody may “learn to write
short-hand in a few hours.” With the merits of the production,
self-considered, this is not the place to meddle; suffice it that it is
one of the many ways of getting a crust common to the great metropolis,
and perhaps the most innocent of all the street performances. A kind
of a street lecture is given by the vendor, in which the article is
sufficiently puffed off. Of course this lecture is, so to speak,
stereotyped, embracing the same ideas in nearly the same words over and
over and over again. The exhibitor, however, pleads that the constant
exchange and interchange of passengers, and his desire to give each
and all a fair amount of information, makes the repetition admissible,
and even necessary. It is here given as a specimen of the style of the
educated “patterer.”
_The Lecture._
“Here is an opportunity which has seldom if ever been offered to
the public before, whereby any person of common intellect may learn
to write short-hand in a few hours, without any aid from a teacher.
The system is entirely my own. It contains no vowels, no arbitrary
characters, no double consonants, and no terminations; it may therefore
properly be called ‘stenography,’ an expression which conveys its own
meaning; it is derived from two Greek words; _stenos_, short, and
_grapho_, I write, or _graphi_, the verb _to_ write, and embraces
all that is necessary in fifteen characters. I know that a prejudice
obtains to a great extent against anything and everything said or done
in the street, but I have nothing to do with either the majority or
minority of street pretenders. I am an educated man, and not a mere
pretender, and if the justice or genuineness of a man’s pretensions
would always lead him to success I had not been here to-day. But
against the tide of human disappointment, the worthy and the
undeserving are so equally compelled to struggle, and so equally liable
to be overturned by competition, that till you can prove that wealth is
the gauge of character, it may be difficult to determine the ability or
morality of a man from his position. I was lately reading an account
of the closing life of that leviathan in literature, Dr. Johnson,
and an anecdote occurred, which I relate, conceiving that it applies
to one of the points at issue--I mean the ridicule with which my
little publication has sometimes been treated by passers-by, who have
found it easier to speculate on the texture of my coat, than on the
character of my language. The Doctor had a niece who had embraced the
peculiarities of Quakerism; after he had scolded her some time, and in
rather unmeasured terms, her mother interfered and said, ‘Doctor, don’t
scold the girl--you’ll meet her in heaven, I hope.’--‘I hope not,’ said
the Doctor, ‘for I hate to meet _fools_ anywhere.’ I apply the same
observation to persons who bandy about the expressions ‘gift of the
gab,’ ‘catch-penny,’ &c., &c., which in my case it is somewhat easier
to circulate than to support. At any rate they ought to be addressed to
_me_ and not to the atmosphere. The man who meets a foe to the face,
gives him an equal chance of defence, and the sword openly suspended
from the belt is a less dangerous, because a less cowardly weapon than
the one which, like that of Harmodius, is concealed under the wreaths
of a myrtle.
“If you imagine that professional disappointment is confined to people
out of doors, you are very much mistaken. Look into some of the
middle-class streets around where we are standing: you will find here
and there, painted or engraved on a door, the words ‘Mr. So-and-so,
surgeon.’ The man I am pre-supposing shall be qualified,--qualified
in the technical sense of the expression, a Member of the College of
Surgeons, a Licentiate of Apothecaries’ Hall, and a Graduate of some
University. He may possess the talent of Galen or Hippocrates; or, to
come to more recent date, of Sir Astley Cooper himself, but he never
becomes popular, and dies unrewarded because unknown: before he dies,
he may crawl out of his concealed starvation into such a thoroughfare
as this, and see Professor Morrison, or Professor Holloway, or the
Proprietor of Parr’s Life Pills, or some other quack, ride by in their
carriage; wealth being brought them by the same waves that have wafted
misfortune to himself; though that wealth has been procured by one
undeviating system of Hypocrisy and Humbug, of Jesuitism and Pantomime,
such as affords no parallel since the disgusting period of Oliverian
ascendancy. Believe me, my friends, a man may form his plans for
success with profound sagacity, and guard with caution against every
approach to extravagance, but neither the boldness of enterprise nor
the dexterity of stratagem will always secure the distinction they
deserve. Else that policeman would have been an inspector!
“I have sometimes been told, that if I possessed the facilities I
professedly exhibit, I might turn them to greater personal advantage:
in coarse, unfettered, Saxon English, ‘That’s a LIE;’ for on the
authority of a distinguished writer, there are 2,000 educated men in
London and its suburbs, who rise every morning totally ignorant where
to find a breakfast. Now I am not _quite_ so bad as that, so that
it appears I am an exception to the rule, and not the rule open to
exception. However, it is beyond all controversy, that the best way to
keep the fleas from biting you in bed is to ‘get out of bed;’ and by
a parity of reasoning, the best way for you to sympathize with me for
being on the street is to take me off, as an evidence of your sympathy.
I remember that, some twenty years ago, a poor man of foreign name,
but a native of this metropolis, made his appearance in Edinburgh, and
advertised that he would lecture on mnemonics, or the art of memory. As
he was poor, he had recourse to an humble lecture-room, situated up a
dirty court. Its eligibility may be determined by the fact that sweeps’
concerts were held in it, at 1/2_d._ per head, and the handbill mostly
ended with the memorable words: ‘N.B.--No gentleman admitted without
shoes and stockings.’ At the close of his first lecture (the admission
to which was 2_d._), he was addressed by a scientific man, who gave him
5_s._--(it will relieve the monotony of the present address if some
of you follow his example)--and advised him to print and issue some
cards about his design, which he did. I saw one of them--the ink on it
scarcely dry--as he had got it back at the house of a physician, and
on it was inscribed: ‘Old birds are not caught with chaff. From Dr.
M----, an old bird.’ The suspicious doctor, however, was advised to
hear the poor man’s twopenny lecture, and was able, at the end of it,
to display a great feat of memory himself. What was the result? The
poor man no longer lectured for 2_d._ But it is tedious to follow him
through a series of years. He was gradually patronised throughout the
kingdom, and a few months ago he was lecturing in the Hanover-square
Rooms, with the Earl of Harrowby in the chair. Was he not as clever a
man when he lectured in the sweeps’ concert-room? Yes; but he had not
been brought _under the shadow of a great name_. Sometimes that ‘great
name’ comes too late. You are familiar with the case of Chatterton. He
had existed, rather than lived, three days on a penny loaf; then he
committed suicide, and was charitably buried by strangers. Fifty years
or more had elapsed, when people found out how clever he had been, and
collected money for the erection of that monument which now stands to
his memory by St. Mary Redcliff Church, in Bristol. Now, if you have
any idea of doing that for me, please to collect some of it while I am
_alive_!”
On occasions when the audience is not very liberal, the lecturer treats
them to the following hint:
“When in my golden days--or at the least they were silver ones compared
to these--I was in the habit of lecturing on scientific subjects, I
always gave the introductory lecture _free_. I suppose this is an
‘introductory lecture,’ for it yields very little money at present.
I have often thought, that if everybody a little richer than myself
was half as conscientious, I should either make a rapid fortune, or
have nobody to listen to me at all; for I never sanction long with
my company anything I don’t believe. Now, if what I say is untrue or
grossly improbable, it does not deserve the sanction of an audience; if
otherwise, it must be meritorious, and deserve more efficient sanction.
As to any insults I receive, Christianity has taught me to forgive, and
philosophy to despise them.”
These very curious, and perhaps unique, specimens of street elocution
are of course interrupted by the occasional sale of a card, and
perhaps some conversation with the purchaser. The stenographic
card-seller states that he has sometimes been advised to use more
commonplace language. His reply is germane to the matter. He says
that a street audience, like some other audiences, is best pleased
with what they least understand, and that the way to appear sublime
is to be incomprehensible. He can occasionally be a little sarcastic.
A gentleman informed me that he passed him at Bagnigge-wells on one
occasion, when he was interrupted by a “gent.” fearfully disfigured
by the small-pox, who exclaimed: “It’s a complete humbug.” “No, sir,”
retorted Mr. Shorthand, “but if any of the ladies present were to
call you handsome, _that_ would be a humbug.” On another occasion a
man (half-drunk) had been annoying him some time, and getting tired
of the joke, said: “Well--I see you are a learned man, you must
pity my ignorance.” “No,” was the reply, “but I pity your father.”
“Pity my father!--why?” was the response. “Because Solomon says,
‘He that begetteth a fool shall have sorrow of him.’” This little
_jeu-d’ésprit_, I was told, brought forth loud acclamations from the
crowd, and a crown-piece from a lady who had been some minutes a
listener. These statements are among the most curious revelations of
the history of the streets.
The short-hand card-seller, as has partly appeared in a report I gave
of a meeting of street-folk, makes no secret of having been fined for
obstructing a thoroughfare,--having been bound down to keep the peace,
and several times imprisoned as a defaulter. He tells me that he once
“got a month” in one of the metropolitan jails. It was the custom of
the chaplain of the prison in which he was confined, to question the
prisoners every Wednesday, from box to box (as they were arranged
before him) on some portion of Holy Writ, and they were expected, if
able, to answer. On one occasion, the subject being the Excellence of
Prayer, the chaplain, remarked that, “even among the heathen, every
author, without exception, had commended prayer to a real or supposed
Deity.” The card-seller, I am told, cried out “Question!” “Who is
that?” said the chaplain. The turnkey pointed out the questioner.
“Yes,” said the card-seller, “you know what Seneca says:--‘Quid opus
votis? Fac teipsum felicem, vel bonum.’ ‘What need of prayer? Make
thou thyself happy and virtuous.’ Does _that_ recommend prayer?” The
prisoners laughed, and to prevent a mutiny, the classical querist was
locked up, and the chaplain closed the proceedings. It is but justice,
however, to the worthy minister to state, his querist came out of
durance vile better clothed than he went in.
The stenographic trade, of which the informant in question is the sole
pursuer, was commenced eleven years ago. At that time 300 cards were
sold in a day; but the average is now 24, and about 50 on a Saturday
night. The card-seller tells me that he is more frequently than ever
interrupted by the police, and his health being delicate, wet days
are “nuisances” to him. He makes an annual visit to the country, he
tells me, to see his children, who have been provided for by some kind
friends. About two years ago he was returning to London and passed
through Oxford. He was “hard up,” he says, having left his coat for his
previous night’s lodging. He attended prayers (without a coat) at St.
Mary’s church, and when he came out, seated himself on the pavement
beside the church, and wrote with chalk inside an oval border.
“Δε λίμῳ απολλυμαί.”--Lucam xv. 17.
“I perish with hunger.”
He was not long unnoticed, he tells me, by the scholars; some of whom
“rigged him out,” and he left Oxford with 6_l._ 10_s._ in his pocket.
* * * * *
“Let us indulge the hope,” writes one who knows this man well, “that
whatever indiscretions may have brought a scholar, whom few behold
without pity, or converse with without respect for his acquirements, to
be a street-seller, nevertheless his last days will be his best days,
and that, as his talents are beyond dispute and his habits strictly
temperate, he may yet arise out of his degradation.”
Of this gentleman’s history I give an account derived from the only
authentic source. It is, indeed, given in the words of the writer from
whom it was received.--