poets for the same trade. Indeed, there is now but one man who can
be said to be _solely_ a street-artist. The inopportune illustration
of ballads of which specimens have already been given--or of any of
the street papers--are the work of cheap wood-engravers, who give the
execution of these orders to their boys. But it is not often that
illustrations are prepared expressly for anything but what I have
described as “Gallows literature.” Of these, samples have also been
furnished. The one of a real murder, and the other of a fabulous one,
or “cock,” together with a sample (in the case of Mr. Patrick Connor)
of the portraits given in such productions. The cuts for the heading of
ballads are very often such as have been used for the illustration of
other works, and are “picked up cheap.”
The artist who works especially for the street trade--as in the case of
the man who paints the patterers’ boards--must address his art plainly
to the eye of the spectator. He must use the most striking colours, be
profuse in the application of scarlet, light blue, orange--not yellow I
was told, it ain’t a good candlelight colour--and must leave nothing to
the imagination. Perspective and back-grounds are things of but minor
consideration. Everything must be sacrificed for effect.
These paintings are in water colours, and are rubbed over with a
solution of some gum-resin to protect them from the influence of rainy
weather. Two of the subjects most in demand of late for the patterers’
boards were “the Sloanes” and “the Mannings.” The treatment of Jane
Wilbred was “worked” by twenty boardmen, each with his “illustration”
of the subject. The illustrations were in six “compartments.” In the
first Mr. and Mrs. Sloane are “picking out” the girl from a line of
workhouse children. She is represented as plump and healthy, but with
a stupid expression of countenance. In another compartment, Sloane is
beating the girl, then attenuated and wretched-looking, with a shoe,
while his wife and Miss Devaux (a name I generally heard pronounced
among the street-people as it is spelt to an English reader) look
approvingly on. The next picture was Sloane compelling the girl to
swallow filth. The fourth represented her as in the hospital, with
her ribs protruding from her wasted body--“just as I’ve worked Sarah
Simpole,” said a patterer, “who was confined in a cellar and fed on
’tato peels. Sarah was a cock, sir, and a ripper.” Then came the attack
of the people on Sloane, one old woman dressed after the fashion of
Mrs. Gamp, “prodding” him with a huge and very green umbrella. The
sixth and last was, as usual, the trial.
I have described the “Sloanes’ board” first, as it may be more fresh
in the remembrance of any reader observant of such things. In the
“Mannings’ board” there were the same number of compartments as in
the Sloanes’; showing the circumstances of the murder, the discovery
of the body of Connor, the trial, &c. One standing patterer, who
worked a Mannings’ board, told me that the picture of Mrs. Manning,
beautifully “dressed for dinner” in black satin, with “a low front,”
firing a pistol at Connor, who was “washing himself,” while Manning,
in his shirt sleeves, looked on in evident alarm, was greatly admired,
especially out of town. “The people said,” observed the patterer, “‘O,
look at him a-washing hisself; he’s a doing it so nattral, and ain’t
a-thinking he’s a-going to be murdered. But was he really so ugly as
that? Lor! such a beautiful woman to have to do with him.’ You see,
sir, Connor weren’t flattered, and perhaps Mrs. Manning was. I have
heard the same sort of remarks both in town and country. I patters hard
on the women such times, as I points them out on my board in murders or
any crimes. I says: ‘When there’s mischief a woman’s always the first.
Look at Mrs. Manning there on that werry board--the work of one of the
first artists in London--it’s a faithful likeness, taken from life at
one of her examinations, look at _her_. She fires the pistol, as you
can see, and her husband was her tool.’ I said, too, that Sloane was
Mrs. Sloane’s tool. It answers best, sir, in my opinion, going on that
patter. The men likes it, and the women doesn’t object, for they’ll
say: ‘Well, when a woman is bad, she _is_ bad, and is a disgrace to her
sex.’ There’s the board before them when I runs on that line of patter,
and when I appeals to the ’lustration, it seems to cooper the thing.
They _must_ believe their eyes.”
When there is “a run” on any particular subject, there are occasionally
jarrings--I was informed by a “boardman”--between the artist and his
street-customers. The standing patterers want “something more original”
than their fellows, especially if they are likely to work in the same
locality, while the artist prefers a faithful copy of what he has
already executed. The artist, moreover, and with all reasonableness,
will say: “Why, you must have the facts. Do you want me to make Eliza
Chestney killing Rush?” The matter is often compromised by some change
being introduced, and by the characters being differently dressed. One
man told me, that in town and country he had seen Mrs. Jermy shot in
the following costumes, “in light green welwet, sky-blue satin, crimson
silk, and vite muslin.” It was the same with Mrs. Manning.
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.