the first thing we consider is the dedication; and according to the
quality and humour of the patron, we are apt to make a judgment of
the following subject. If to a statesman we believe it grave and
politic; if to a gownman, law or divinity; if to the young and gay,
love and gallantry. By this rule, I believe the gentle reader, who
finds your lordship’s name prefixed before this, will make as many
various opinions of it, as they do characters of your lordship, whose
youthful sallies have been the business of so much discourse; and
which, according to the relator’s sense or good nature, is either
aggravated or excused; though the woman’s quarrel to your lordship has
some more reasonable foundation, than that of your own sex; for your
lordship being formed with all the beauties and graces of mankind, all
the charms of wit, youth, and sweetness of disposition (derived to
you from an illustrious race of heroes) adapting you to the noblest
love and softness, they cannot but complain on that mistaken conduct
of yours, that so lavishly deals out those agreeable attractions,
squandering away that youth and time on many, which might be more
advantageously dedicated to some one of the fair; and by a liberty
(which they call not being discreet enough) rob them of all the hopes
of conquest over that heart which they believe can fix no where; they
cannot caress you into tameness; or if you sometimes appear so, they
are still upon their guard with you; for like a young lion you are
ever apt to leap into your natural wildness; the greatness of your
soul disdaining to be confined to lazy repose; though the delicacy of
your person and constitution so absolutely require it; your lordship
not being made for diversions so rough and fatiguing, as those your
active mind would impose upon it.”
The last sentence is very long, so that a shorter extract may serve as
a specimen of the staple of this book-making:
“To Philander,--False and perjured as you are, I languish for a
sight of you, and conjure you to give it me as soon as this comes to
your hands. Imagine not that I have prepared those instruments of
revenge that are so justly due to your perfidy; but rather, that I
have yet too tender sentiments for you, in spite of the outrage you
have done my heart; and that for all the ruin you have made, I still
adore you; and though I know you are now another’s slave, yet I beg
you would vouchsafe to behold the spoils you have made, and allow me
this recompense for all, to say--Here was the beauty I once esteemed,
though now she is no more Philander’s Sylvia.”
Having thus described what may be considered the divisional parts of
this stall trade, I proceed to the more general character of the class
of books sold.
OF THE CHARACTER OF BOOKS OF THE STREET-SALE.
There has been a change, and in some respects a considerable change, in
the character or class of books sold at the street-stalls, within the
last 40 or 50 years, as I have ascertained from the most experienced
men in the trade. Now sermons, or rather the works of the old divines,
are rarely seen at these stalls, or if seen, are rarely purchased.
Black-letter editions are very unfrequent at street book-stalls, and
it is twenty times more difficult, I am assured, for street-sellers to
pick up anything really rare and curious, than it was in the early part
of the century.
One reason assigned for this change by an intelligent street-seller
was, that black-letter or any ancient works, were almost all purchased
by the second-hand booksellers, who have shops and issue catalogues,
as they had a prompt sale for them whenever they could pick them up
at book-auctions or elsewhere. “Ay, indeed,” said another book-stall
keeper, “anything scarce or curious, when it’s an old book, is kept out
of the streets; if it’s not particular decent, sir,” (with a grin),
“why it’s reckoned all the more curious,--that’s the word, sir, I
know,--‘curious.’ I can tell how many beans make five as well as you or
anybody. Why, now, there’s a second-hand bookseller not a hundred miles
from Holborn--and a pleasant, nice man he is, and does a respectable
business--and he puts to the end of his catalogue--they all have
catalogues that’s in a good way--two pages that he calls ‘Facetiæ.’
They’re titles and prices of queer old books in all languages--indecent
books, indeed. He sends his catalogues to a many clergymen and learned
people; and to any that he thinks wouldn’t much admire seeing his
‘Facetiæ,’ he pulls the last leaf out, and sends his catalogue, looking
finished without it. Those last two pages aren’t at all the worst part
of his trade among buyers that’s worth money.”
In one respect a characteristic of this trade is unaltered; I allude
to the prevalence of “odd volumes” at the cheaper stalls,--not the odd
volumes of a novel, but more frequently of one of the essayists--the
“Spectator” especially. One stall-keeper told me, that if he purchased
an old edition of the “Spectator,” in eight vols., he could more
readily sell it in single volumes, at 4_d._ each, than sell the eight
vols. altogether for 2_s._, or even 1_s._ 4_d._, though this was but
2_d._ a volume.
“There’s nothing in my trade,” said one street-bookseller with whom I
conversed on the subject, “that sells better, or indeed so well, as
English classics. I can’t offer to draw fine distinctions, and I’m just
speaking of my own plain way of trade; but _I_ call English classics
such works as the ‘Spectator,’ ‘Tatler,’ ‘Guardian,’ ‘Adventurer,’
‘Rambler,’ ‘Rasselas,’ ‘The Vicar of Wakefield,’ ‘Peregrine Pickle,’
‘Tom Jones,’ ‘Goldsmith’s Histories of Greece, Rome, and England’
(they all sell quick), ‘Enfield’s Speaker,’ ‘mixed plays,’ the
‘Sentimental Journey,’ no, sir, ‘Tristram Shandy,’ rather hangs on
hand, the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ (but it must be sold _very_ low),
‘Robinson Crusoe,’ ‘Philip Quarles,’ ‘Telemachus,’ ‘Gil Blas,’ and
‘Junius’s Letters.’ I don’t remember more at this moment, such as
are of good sale. I haven’t included poetry, because I’m speaking
of English classics, and of course they must be oldish works to be
classics.”
Concerning the street sale of poetical works I learned from street
book-sellers, that their _readiest_ sale was of volumes of Shakespeare,
Pope, Thomson, Goldsmith, Cowper, Burns, Byron, and Scott. “You must
recollect, sir,” said one dealer, “that in nearly all those poets
there’s a double chance for sale at book-stalls. For what with old
editions, and new and cheap editions, there’s always plenty in the
market, and very low. No, I can’t say I could sell Milton as quickly as
any of those mentioned, nor ‘Hudibras,’ nor ‘Young’s Night Thoughts,’
nor Prior, nor Dryden, nor ‘Gay’s Fables.’ It’s seldom that we have
any works of Hood, or Shelley, or Coleridge, or Wordsworth, or Moore
at street stalls--you don’t often see them, I think, at booksellers’
stalls--for they’re soon picked up. Poetry sells very fair, take it
altogether.”
Another dealer told me that from twenty to thirty years ago there were
at the street-stalls a class of works rarely seen now. He had known
them in all parts and had disposed of them in his own way of business.
He specified the “Messiah” (Klopstock’s) as of this class, the “Death
of Abel,” the “Castle of Otranto” (“but that’s seen occasionally
still,” he observed), the “Old English Baron” (“and that’s seen
still too, but nothing to what it were once”), the “Young Man’s Best
Companion,” “Zimmerman on Solitude,” and “Burke on the Sublime and
Beautiful” (“but I have that yet sometimes.”) These works were of heavy
sale in the streets, and my informant thought they had been thrown into
the street-trade because the publishers had not found them saleable in
the regular way. “I was dead sick of the ‘Death of Abel,’” observed the
man, “before I could get out of him.” Occasionally are to be seen at
most of the stalls, works of which the majority of readers have heard,
but may not have met with. Among such I saw “Laura,” by Capel Lloftt,
4 vols. 1_s._ 6_d._ “Darwin’s Botanic Garden,” 2_s._ “Alfred, an Epic
Poem,” by H. J. Pye, Poet Laureate, 10_d._ “Cœlebs in search of a
Wife,” 2 vols. in one, 1_s._
The same informant told me that he had lived near an old man who died
twenty-five years ago, or it might be more, with whom he was somewhat
intimate. This old man had been all his life familiar with the street
trade in books, which he had often hawked--a trade now almost unknown;
his neighbour had heard him say that fifty to seventy years ago, he
made his two guineas a week “without distressing hisself,” meaning, I
was told, that he was drinking every Monday at least. This old man used
to tell that in his day, the “Whole Duty of Man,” and the “Tale of a
Tub,” and “Pomfret’s Poems,” and “Pamela,” and “Sir Charles Grandison”
went off _well_, but “Pamela” the best. “And I’ve heard the old man
say, sir,” I was further told, “how he had to tread his shoes straight
about what books he showed publicly. He sold ‘Tom Paine’ on the sly. If
anybody bought a book and would pay a good price for it, three times
as much as was marked, he’d _give_ the ‘Age of Reason’ in. I never see
it now, but I don’t suppose anybody would interfere if it was offered.
A sly trade’s always the best for paying, and for selling too. The old
fellow used to laugh and say his stall was quite a godly stall, and he
wasn’t often without a copy or two of the ‘Anti-Jacobin Review,’ which
was all for Church and State and all that, though he had ‘Tom Paine’ in
a drawer.”
The books sold at the street-stalls are purchased by the retailers
either at the auctions of the regular trade, or at “chance,” or general
auctions, or of the Jews or others who may have bought books cheap
under such circumstances. Often, however, the stall-keeper has a market
peculiarly his own. It is not uncommon for working men or tradesmen, if
they become “beaten-down and poor” to carry a basket-full of books to
a stall-keeper, and say, “Here, give me half-a-crown for these.” One
man had forty parts, each issued at 1_s._, of a Bible, offered to him
at 1_d._ a part, by a mechanic who could not any longer afford to “take
them in,” and was at last obliged to sell off what he had. Of course
such things are nearly valueless when imperfect. Very few works are
bought for street-stall sale of the regular booksellers.
OF THE EXPERIENCE OF A STREET BOOK-SELLER.
I now give a statement, furnished to me by an experienced man, as to
the nature of his trade, and the class of his customers. Most readers
will remember having seen an account in the life of some poor scholar,
having read--and occasionally, in spite of the remonstrances of the
stall-keeper--some work which he was too needy to purchase, and even of
his having read it through at intervals. That something of this kind is
still to be met with will be found from the following account:
“My customers, sir, are of all sorts,” my informant said. “They’re
gentlemen on their way from the City, that have to pass along here
by the City-road. Bankers’ clerks, very likely, or insurance-office
clerks, or such like. They’re fairish customers, but they often screw
me. Why only last month a gentleman I know very well by sight, and
I see him pass in his brougham in bad weather, took up an old Latin
book--if I remember right it was an odd volume of a French edition
of Horace--and though it was marked only 8_d._, it was long before
he would consent to give more than 6_d._ And I should never have got
my price if I hadn’t heard him say quite hastily, when he took up
the book, ‘The very thing I’ve long been looking for!’ Mechanics are
capital customers for scientific or trade books, such as suit their
business; and so they often are for geography and history, and some
for poetry; but _they’re_ not so screwy. I know a many such who are
rare ones for searching into knowledge. Women buy very little of me
in comparison to men; sometimes an odd novel, in one volume, when its
cheap, such as ‘The Pilot,’ or ‘The Spy,’ or ‘The Farmer of Inglewood
Forest,’ or ‘The Monk.’ No doubt some buy ‘The Monk,’ not knowing
exactly what sort of a book it is, but just because it’s a romance;
but some young men buy it, I know, because they have learned what sort
it’s like. Old three vol. novels won’t sell at all, if they’re ever so
cheap. Boys very seldom buy of me, unless it’s a work about pigeons, or
something that way.
“I can’t say that odd vols. of Annual Registers are anything but a bad
sale, but odd vols. of old Mags. (magazines), a year or half-year bound
together, are capital. Old London Mags., or Ladies’, or Oxford and
Cambridges, or Town and Countrys, or Universals, or Monthly Reviews,
or Humourists, or Ramblers, or Europeans, or any of any sort, that’s
from 40 to 100 years old, no matter what they are, go off rapidly at
from 1_s._ 6_d._ to 3_s._ 6_d._ each, according to size, and binding,
and condition. Odd numbers of Mags. are good for little at a stall. The
old Mags. in vols. are a sort of reading a great many are very fond of.
Lives of the Princess Charlotte are a ready penny enough. So are Queen
Carolines, but not so good. Dictionaries of all kinds are nearly as
selling as the old Mags., and so are good Latin books. French are only
middling; not so well as you might think.”
My informant then gave me a similar account to what I had previously
received concerning English classics, and proceeded: “Old religious
books, they’re a fair trade enough, but they’re not so plentiful on
the stalls now, and if they’re black-letter they don’t find their way
from the auctions or anywhere to any places but the shops or to private
purchasers. Mrs. Rowe’s ‘Knowledge of the Heart’ goes off, if old.
Bibles, and Prayer-books, and Hymn-books, are very bad.” [This may be
accounted for by the cheapness of these publications, when new, and
by the facilities afforded to obtain them gratuitously.] “Annuals are
dull in going off; very much so, though one might expect different.
I can hardly sell ‘Keepsakes’ at all. Children’s books, such as are
out one year at 2_s._ 6_d._ apiece, very nicely got up, sell finely
next year at the stalls for from 6_d._ to 10_d._ Genteel people buy
them of us for presents at holiday times. They’ll give an extra penny
quite cheerfully if there’s ‘Price 2_s._ 6_d._’ or ‘Price 3_s._ 6_d._’
lettered on the back or part of the title-page. School-books in good
condition don’t stay long on hand, especially Pinnock’s. There’s not
a few people who stand and read and read for half an hour or an hour
at a time. It’s very trying to the temper when they take up room that
way, and prevent others seeing the works, and never lay out a penny
theirselves. But they seem quite lost in a book. Well, I’m sure I don’t
know what they are. Some seem very poor, judging by their dress, and
some seem shabby genteels. I can’t help telling them, when I see them
going, that I’m much obliged, and I hope that perhaps next time they’ll
manage to say ‘thank ye,’ for they don’t open their lips once in twenty
times. I know a man in the trade that goes dancing mad when he has
customers of this sort, who aren’t customers. I dare say, one day with
another, I earn 3_s._ the year through; wet days are greatly against
us, for if we have a cover people won’t stop to look at a stall.
Perhaps the rest of my trade earn the same.” This man told me that he
was not unfrequently asked, and by respectable people, for indecent
works, but he recommended them to go to Holywell-street themselves. He
believed that some of his fellow-traders _did_ supply such works, but
to no great extent.
An elderly man, who had known the street book-trade for many years,
but was not concerned in it when I saw him, told me that he was
satisfied he had sold old books, old plays often, to Charles Lamb,
whom he described as a stuttering man, who, when a book suited him,
sometimes laid down the price, and smiled and nodded, and then
walked away with it in his pocket or under his arm, without a word
having been exchanged. When we came to speak of dates, I found that
my informant--who had only conjectured that this was Lamb--was
unquestionably mistaken. One of the best customers he ever had for
anything old or curious, and in Italian, if he remembered rightly, as
well as in English, was the late Rev. Mr. Scott, who was chaplain on
board the Victory, at the time of Nelson’s death at Trafalgar. “He had
a living in Yorkshire, I believe it was,” said the man, “and used to
come up every now and then to town. I was always glad to see his white
head and rosy face, and to have a little talk with him about books and
trade, though it wasn’t always easy to catch what he said, for he spoke
quick, and not very distinct. But he was a pleasant old gentleman, and
talked to a poor man as politely as he might to an admiral. He was very
well known in my trade, as I was then employed.”
The same man once sold to a gentleman, he told me, and he believed it
was somewhere about twenty-five years ago, if not more, a Spanish or
Portuguese work, but what it was he did not know. It was marked 1_s._
9_d._, being a good-sized book, but the stall-keeper was tired of
having had it a long time, so that he gladly would have taken 9_d._ for
it. The gentleman in question handed him half-a-crown, and, as he had
not the change, the purchaser said: “O, don’t mind; it’s worth far
more than half-a-crown to me.” When this liberal customer had walked
away, a gentleman who had been standing at the stall all the time, and
who was an occasional buyer, said, “Do you know him?” and, on receiving
an answer in the negative, he rejoined, “That’s Southey.”
Another stall-keeper told me that his customers--some of whom he
supplied with any periodical in the same way as a newsvendor--had now
and then asked him, especially “the ladies of the family,” who glanced,
when they passed, at the contents of his stall, why he had not newer
works? “I tell them,” said the stall-keeper, “that they haven’t become
cheap enough yet for the streets, but that they would come to it in
time.” After some conversation about his trade, which only confirmed
the statements I have given, he said laughingly, “Yes, indeed, you
all come to such as me at last. Why, last night I heard a song about
all the stateliest buildings coming to the ivy, and I thought, as I
listened, it was the same with authors. The best that the best can do
is the book-stall’s food at last. And no harm, for he’s in the best of
company, with Shakespeare, and all the great people.”
Calculating 15_s._ weekly as the average earnings of the street
book-stall keepers--for further information induces me to think that
the street bookseller who earned 18_s._ a week regularly, cleared it
by having a “tidy pitch”--and reckoning that, to clear such an amount,
the bookseller takes, at least, 1_l._ 11_s._ 6_d._ weekly, we find
5,460 guineas yearly expended in the purchase of books at the purely
street-stalls, independently of what is laid out at the open-air stalls
connected with book-shops.
OF STREET BOOK-AUCTIONEERS.
The sale of books by auction, in the streets, is now inconsiderable
and irregular. The “auctioning” of books--I mean of new books--some of
which were published principally with a view to their sale by auction,
was, thirty to forty years ago, systematic and extensive. It was not
strictly a street-sale. The auctioneer offered his books to the public,
nine cases out of ten, in town, in an apartment (now commonly known as
a “mock-auction room”), which was so far a portion of the street that
access was rendered easier by the removal of the door and window of any
room on a ground-floor, and some of the bidders could and did stand
in the street and take part in the proceedings. In the suburbs--which
at that period were not so integral a portion of the metropolis as at
present--the book-auction sales were carried on strictly in the open
air, generally in front of a public-house, and either on a platform
erected for the purpose, or from a covered cart; the books then being
deposited in the vehicle, and the auctioneer standing on a sort of
stage placed on the propped-up shafts. In the country, however, the
auction was often carried on in an inn.
The works thus sold were generally standard works. The poems were
those of Pope, Young, Thomson, Goldsmith, Falconer, Cowper, &c. The
prose writings were such works as “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” “The
Travels of Mr. Lemuel Gulliver,” “Johnson’s Lives of the Poets,”
“The Vicar of Wakefield,” the most popular of the works of Defoe,
Fielding, and Smollett, and “Hervey’s Meditations among the Tombs”
(at one time highly popular). These books were not correctly printed,
they were printed, too, on inferior paper, and the frontispiece--when
there _was_ a frontispiece--was often ridiculous. But they certainly
gave to the public what is called an “impetus” for reading. Some were
published in London (chiefly by the late Mr. Tegg, who at one time,
I am told, himself “offered to public competition,” by auction, the
works he published); others were printed in Edinburgh, Aberdeen,
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Ipswich, Bungay, &c.
One of my informants remembered being present at a street-sale, about
twenty or thirty years ago; he perfectly remembered, however, the
oratory of the auctioneer, of whom he purchased some books. The sale
was in one of the streets in Stoke Newington, a door or two from a
thoroughfare. My informant was there--as he called it--“accidentally,”
and knew little of the neighbourhood. The auctioneer stood at the
door of what appeared to have been a coach-house, and sold his books,
which were arranged within, very rapidly: “Byron,” he exclaimed; “Lord
Byron’s latest and best po’ms. Sixpence! Sixpence! Eightpence! I take
penny bids under a shilling. Eightpence for the poems written by a
lord--Gone! Yours, sir” (to my informant). The auctioneer, I was told,
“spoke very rapidly, and clipped many of his words.” The work thus
sold consisted of some of Byron’s minor poems. It was in the pamphlet
form, and published, I have no doubt, surreptitiously; for there was,
in those days, a bold and frequent piracy of any work which was thought
distasteful to the Government, or to which the Court of Chancery might
be likely to refuse the protection of the law of copyright.
The auctioneer went on: “Coop’r--Coop’r! Published at 3_s._ 6_d._, as
printed on the back. Superior to Byron--Coop’r’s ‘Task.’ No bidders?
Thank you, sir. One-and-six,--your’s, sir. Young--‘Young’s Night
Thoughts. Life, Death, and Immortality,’--great subjects. London
edition, marked 3_s._ 6_d._ Going!--last bidder--two shillings--gone!”
The purchaser then complained that the frontispiece--a man seated on
a tombstone--was exactly the same as to a copy he had of “Hervey’s
Meditations,” but the auctioneer said it was impossible.
I have thus shown what _was_ the style and nature of the address of
the street book-auctioneer, formerly, to the public. If it were not
strictly “patter,” or “pompous oration,” it certainly partook of some
of the characteristics of patter. At present, however, the street
book-auctioneer may be described as a true patterer.
[Illustration: THE STREET-STATIONER.
[_From a Daguerreotype by_ BEARD.]]
It will be seen from the account I have given, that the books were
then really “sold by auction”--knocked down to the highest bidder.
This however was, and is not always the case. Legally to sell by
auction, necessitates the obtaining of a licence, at an annual cost
of 5_l._; and if the bookseller conveys his stock of books from place
to place, a hawker’s licence is required as well,--which entails an
additional expenditure of 4_l._ The itinerant bookseller evades, or
endeavours to evade, the payment for an auctioneer’s licence, by
“putting-up” his books at a high price, and _himself_ decreasing the
terms, instead of offering them at a low price, and allowing _the
public_ to make a series of “advances.” Thus, a book may be offered by
a street-auctioneer at half-a-crown--two shillings--eighteenpence--a
shilling--tenpence, and the moment any one assents to a specified sum,
the volume handed to him; so that there is no competition--no bidding
by the public one in advance of another. Auction, however, is resorted
to as often as the bookseller dares.