Marylebone and Hyde Park were a royal hunting-ground, with a manor house,
where the Earls of Oxford lived in later times. Piccadilly was 'the road
to Reading,' with foxgloves growing in its ditches, gathered by the
simple dealers of Bucklersbury, to make anodynes for the weary-hearted.
Chelsea was a village; Pimlico a country hamlet, where pudding-pies were
eaten by strolling Londoners on a Sunday. Westminster was a city standing
by itself, with its Royal Palace, its Great Hall for banquets and the
trial of traitors, its sanctuary, its beautiful Abbey, and its famous
Almonry. St. James's Park was walled with red brick, and contained the
palace Henry VIII. had built for Anne Boleyn. Whitehall Palace was in its
glory. The Strand, along which gay ladies drove in their 'crab-shell
coaches,' had been recently paved, and its streams of water diverted. A
few houses had made their appearance on the north side of the Strand,
between the timber house and its narrow gateway, which then formed Temple
Bar, the boundary between London and Westminster, and the church of St.
Mary-le-Strand. The southern side was adorned with noble episcopal
residences, and with handsome turreted mansions, extending to the river,
rich with trees and gardens, and relieved by flashes of sparkling water.
[Illustration: SMITH'S ARMS, BANKSIDE.[2]]
"To the south, Lambeth, with its palace and church, and Faux Hall, were
conspicuous objects. Here were pretty gardens and rustic cottages. The
village of Southwark, with its prisons, its public theatres, its palace,
and its old Tabard Inn, had many charms. It was the abode of Shakespeare
himself, as he resided in a good house in the Liberty of the Clink, and
was assessed in the weekly payment of 6d., no one but Henslowe, Alleyn,
Collins, and Barrett, being so highly rated. That part of the Borough of
Southwark known as Bankside was not only famous in Shakespeare's time for
its Theatres, but also as the acknowledged retreat of the warmest of the
_demi-monde_!
"'And here, as in a tavern, or a stew,
He and his wild associates spend their hours.'"
--_Ben Jonson._
"We fear our best zeal for the drama will not authorise us to deny that
Covent-garden and Drury-lane have succeeded to the _Bank-side_ in every
species of fame!
[Illustration: THE GLOBE THEATRE.]
"We must not forget the river Thames. It was one of the sights of the
time. Its waters were pure and bright, full of delicate salmon, and
flecked by snowy swans, 'white as Lemster wool.' Wherries plied freely on
its surface. Tall masts clustered by its banks. Silken-covered tiltboats,
freighted with ruffed and feathered ladies and gentlemen, swept by, the
watermen every now and then breaking the plash of the waves against their
boats by singing out, in their bass voices, 'Heave and how, rumbelow.' At
night, the scene reminded the travelled man of Venice. All the mansions by
the water-side had river-terraces and steps, and each one its own
tiltboat, barge, and watermen. Down these steps, lighted by torches and
lanterns, stepped dainty ladies, in their coloured shoes, with masks on
their faces, and gay gallants, in laced cloaks, by their side, bound for
Richmond or Westminster, to mask and revel. Noisy parties of wits and
Paul's men crossed to Bankside to see _Romeo and Juliet_, or _Hamlet the
Dane_, or else 'The most excellent historie of the _Merchant of Venice_,
with the extreme crueltie of _Shylocke_, the Jewe, towards the sayd
merchant, in cutting a just pound of his flesh, and obtaining of Portia by
the choyse of three caskets, as it hath diverse times been acted by the
Lord Chamberlain, his servants. Written by William Shakespeare.'
[Illustration: BAYNARD'S CASTLE.]
"From Westminster to London Bridge was a favourite trip. There was plenty
to see. The fine Strand-side houses were always pointed
out--Northumberland House, York House, Baynard's Castle, the scene of the
secret interview between the Duke of York and the Earls of Salisbury and
Warwick, was singled out, between Paul's Wharf and Puddle Dock. Next to
the Temple, and between it and Whitefriars, was the region known as
Alsatia. Here safe from every document but the writ of the Lord Chief
Justice and the Lords of the Privy Council, in dark dwellings, with
subterranean passages, narrow streets, and trap-doors that led to the
Thames, dwelt all the rascaldom of the time--men who had been 'horned' or
outlawed, bankrupts, coiners, thieves, cheaters at dice and cards,
duellists, homicides, and foreign bravoes, ready to do any desperate deed.
At night the contents of this kingdom of villany were sprayed out over
London, to the bewilderment of good-natured Dogberries, and country
gentlemen, making their first visit to town.
"Still further down the river was the famous London Bridge. It consisted
of twenty arches; its roadway was sixty feet from the river; and the
length of the bridge from end to end was 926 feet.
"It was one of the wonders that strangers never ceased to admire. Its many
shops were occupied by pin nacres, just beginning to feel the competition
with the Netherland pin-makers, and the tower at its Southwark end was
adorned with three hundred heads, stuck on poles, like gigantic pins,
memorials of treachery and heresy.
"The roar of the river through the arches was almost deafening. 'The noise
at London Bridge is nothing near her,' says one of the characters in
Beaumont and Fletcher's _Woman's Prize_. Shakespeare, Ben Jonson & Co.,
must have crossed the bridge many a time on their visits to the City, to
'gather humours of men daily,' as Aubrey quaintly expresses it."
The name of Ben Jonson reminds us that in _The Silent Woman_,--one of the
most popular of his Comedies,--we have presented to us a more vivid
picture than can elsewhere be found of the characteristic noises, and
street-cries of London more than two centuries ago. It is easy to form to
ourselves a general idea of the hum and buzz of the bees and drones of
this mighty hive, under a state of manners essentially different from our
own; but it is not so easy to attain a lively conception of the particular
sounds that once went to make up this great discord, and so to compare
them in their resemblances and their differences with the roar which the
great Babel _now_ "sends through all her gates." We propose, therefore, to
put before our readers this passage of Jonson's comedy; and then,
classifying what he describes, illustrate our fine old dramatic painter of
manners by references to other writers, and by the results of our own
observation.
[Illustration]
The principal character of Jonson's _Silent Woman_ is founded upon a
sketch by a Greek writer of the fourth century, Libanius. Jonson
designates this character by the name of "Morose;" and his peculiarity is
that he can bear no kind of noise, not even that of ordinary talk. The
plot turns upon this affectation; for having been entrapped into a
marriage with the "Silent Woman," she and her friends assail him with
tongues the most obstreperous, and clamours the most uproarious, until, to
be relieved of this nuisance, he comes to terms with his nephew for a
portion of his fortune and is relieved of the "Silent Woman," who is in
reality a boy in disguise. We extract the dialogue of the whole scene; the
speakers being "Truewitt," "Clerimont," and a "Page":--
"_True._ I met that stiff piece of formality, Master Morose, his
uncle, yesterday, with a huge turban of night-caps on his head,
buckled over his ears.
"_Cler._ O! that's his custom when he walks abroad. He can endure no
noise, man.
"_True._ So I have heard. But is the disease so ridiculous in him as
it is made? They say he has been upon divers treaties with the
fish-wives and orange-women; and articles propounded between them:
marry, the chimney-sweepes will not be drawn in.
"_Cler._ No, nor the broom-men: they stand out stiffly. He cannot
endure a costard-monger; he swoons if he hear one.
"_True._ Methinks a smith should be ominous.
"_Cler._ Or any hammer-man. A brasier is not suffer'd to dwell in the
parish, nor an armourer. He would have hang'd a pewterer's 'prentice
once upon a Shrove-Tuesday's riot, for being of that trade, when the
rest were quit.
"_True._ A trumpet should fright him terribly, or the hautboys.
"_Cler._ Out of his senses. The waits of the City have a pension of
him not to come near that ward. This youth practised on him one night
like the bellman, and never left till he had brought him down to the
door with a long sword; and there left him flourishing with the air.
"_Page._ Why, sir, he hath chosen a street to lie in, so narrow at
both ends that it will receive no coaches, nor carts, nor any of these
common noises; and therefore we that love him devise to bring him in
such as we may now and then, for his exercise, to breathe him. He
would grow resty else in his cage; his virtue would rust without
action. I entreated a bearward, one day, to come down with the dogs of
some four parishes that way, and I thank him he did; and cried his
games under Master Morose's window; till he was sent crying away, with
his head made a most bleeding spectacle to the multitude. And, another
time, a fencer marching to his prize had his drum most tragically run
through, for taking that street in his way at my request.
"_True._ A good wag! How does he for the bells?
"_Cler._ O! In the queen's time he was wont to go out of town every
Saturday at ten o'clock, or on holiday eves. But now, by reason of the
sickness, the perpetuity of ringing has made him devise a room with
double walls and treble ceilings; the windows close shut and caulk'd;
and there he lives by candlelight."
The first class of noises, then, against which "Morose" protected his ears
by "a huge turban of night-caps," is that of the ancient and far-famed
LONDON CRIES. We have here the very loudest of them--fish-wives,
orange-women, chimney-sweepers, broom-men, costard-mongers. But we might
almost say that there were _hundreds_ of other cries; and therefore,
reserving to ourselves some opportunity for a special enumeration of a few
of the more remarkable of these cries, we shall now slightly group them,
as they present themselves to our notice during successive generations.
We shall not readily associate any very agreeable sounds with the voices
of the "fish-wives." The one who cried "_Mackerel_" in Lydgate's day had
probably no such explanatory cry as the "_Mackerel alive, alive ho!_" of
modern times. In the seventeenth century the cry was "_New Mackerel_." And
in the same way there was:--
[Illustration: NEW WALL-FLEET OYSTERS.]
[Illustration: NEW FLOUNDERS.]
[Illustration: NEW WHITING.]
[Illustration: NEW SALMON.]
The freshness of fish must have been a considerable recommendation in
those days of tardy intercourse. But quantity was also to be taken into
the account, and so we find the cries of "_Buy my dish of Great Smelts_;"
"_Great Plaice_;" "_Great Mussels_." Such are the fish-cries enumerated in
Lauron's and various other collections of "London Cries."
[Illustration: BUY GREAT SMELTS.]
[Illustration: BUY GREAT PLAICE.]
[Illustration: BUY GREAT MUSSELS.]
[Illustration: BUY GREAT EELS.]
But, we are forgetting "Morose," and his "turban of night-caps." Was
Hogarth familiar with the old noise-hater when he conceived his own:--
[Illustration: ENRAGED MUSICIAN.]
In this extraordinary gathering together of the producers of the most
discordant sounds, we have a representation which may fairly match the
dramatist's description of street noises. Here we have the milk-maid's
scream, the mackerel seller's shout, the sweep upon the house top,--to
match the fish-wives and orange-women, the broom-men and costard-mongers.
The smith, who was "ominous," had no longer his forge in the busy streets
of Hogarth's time; the armourer was obsolete: but Hogarth can rival their
noises with the pavior's hammer, the sow-gelder's horn, and the
knife-grinder's wheel. The waits of the city had a pension not to come
near "Morose's" ward; but it was out of the power of the "Enraged
Musician" to avert the terrible discord of the blind hautboy-player. The
bellman who frightened the sleepers at midnight, was extinct; but modern
London had acquired the dustman's bell. The bear-ward no longer came down
the street with the dogs of four parishes, nor did the fencer march with a
drum to his prize; but there was the ballad-singer, with her squalling
child, roaring worse than bear or dog; and the drum of the little boy
playing at soldiers was a more abiding nuisance than the fencer. "Morose"
and the "Enraged Musician" had each the church bells to fill up the
measure of discord.
[Illustration]
The fish-wives are no longer seen in our great city of London
thoroughfares. In Tottenham Court-road, Hoxton, Shoreditch, Kingsland,
Whitechapel, Hackney-road, and many other suburban districts, which still
retain the character of a street-market, they stand in long rows as the
evening draws in, with paper-lanterns stuck in their baskets on dark
nights; and there they vociferate as loudly as in the olden time.
[Illustration]
The "costard-monger" whom Morose dreaded, still lives amongst us, and is
still noisy. He bawls so loud even to this day, that he puts his hand
behind his ear to mitigate the sensation which he inflicts upon his own
tympanum. He was originally an apple-seller, whence his name; and, from
the mention of him in the old dramatists, he appears to have been
frequently an Irishman. In Jonson's "Bartholomew Fair," he cries
"_pears_." Ford makes him cry "_pippins_." He is a quarrelsome fellow,
according to Beaumont and Fletcher:--
"And then he'll rail like a rude costermonger,
That schoolboys had cozened of his apple,
As loud and senseless."
The costermonger is now a travelling shopkeeper. We encounter him not in
Cornhill, or Holborn, or the Strand: in the neighbourhood of the great
markets and well-stored shops he travels not. But his voice is heard in
some silent streets stretching into the suburbs; and there, with his
donkey and hampers stands at the door, as the servant-maid cheapens a
bundle of cauliflowers. He has monopolized all the trades that were
anciently represented by such cries as "_Buy my artichokes, mistress_;"
"_Ripe cowcumbers_;" "_White onions, white St. Thomas' onions_;" "_White
radish_;" "_Ripe young beans_;" "_Any baking pears_;" "_Ripe
sparrowgrass_." He would be indignant to encounter such petty chapmen
interfering with his wholesale operations. He would rail against them as
the city shopkeepers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries railed
against itinerant traders of every denomination. In the days of Elizabeth,
they declare by act of common council, that in ancient times the open
streets and lanes of the city have been used, and ought to be used, as the
common highway only, and not for hucksters, pedlars, and hagglers, to
stand or sit to sell their wares in, and to pass from street to street
hawking and offering their wares. In the seventh year of Charles I. the
same authorities denounce the oyster-wives, herb-wives, tripe-wives, and
the like, as "unruly people;" and they charge them somewhat unjustly, as
it must appear, with "framing to themselves a way whereby to live a more
easy life than by labour."
"How busy is the man the world calls idle!"
The evil, as the citizens term it, seems to have increased; for in 1694
the common council threatened the pedlars and petty chapmen with the
terrors of the laws against rogues and sturdy beggars, the least penalty
being whipping, whether for male or female. The reason for this terrible
denunciation is very candidly put: the citizens and shopkeepers are
greatly hindered and prejudiced in their trades by the hawkers and
pedlars. Such denunciations as these had little share in putting down the
itinerant traders. They continued to flourish, because society required
them; and they vanished from our view when society required them no
longer. In the middle of the last century they were fairly established as
rivals to the shopkeepers. Dr. Johnson, than whom no man knew London
better, thus writes in the "Adventurer:"--"The attention of a new-comer is
generally first struck by the multiplicity of cries that stun him in the
streets, and the variety of merchandise and manufactures which the
shopkeepers expose on every hand." The shopkeepers have now ruined the
itinerants--not by putting them down by fiery penalties, but by the
competition amongst themselves to have every article at hand for every
man's use, which shall be better and cheaper than the wares of the
itinerant. Whose ear is now ever deafened by the cries of the broom-man?
He was a sturdy fellow in the days of old "Morose," carrying on a barter
which in itself speaks of the infancy of civilization. His cry was "_Old
Shoes for some Brooms_." Those proclamations for barter no doubt furnished
a peculiar characteristic of the old London Cries. The itinerant buyers
were as loud, though not so numerous, as the sellers.
[Illustration: NEW BROOMS FOR OLD SHOES!]
[Illustration: OLD CLOWZE, ANY OLD CLO', CLO'.]
The familiar voice of "_Old Clowze, any old Clo' Clo_," has lasted through
some generations; but the glories of Monmouth-street were unknown when a
lady in a peaked bonnet and a laced stomacher went about proclaiming "_Old
Satin, old Taffety, or Velvet_." And a singular looking party of the
Hebrew persuasion, with a cocked hat on his head, and a bundle of rapiers
and sword-sticks under his arm, which he was ready to barter for:--
[Illustration: OLD CLOAKS, SUITS, OR COATS.]
[Illustration: HATS OR CAPS--BUY, SELL, OR EXCHANGE.]
While another of the tribe proclaimed aloud from east to west--and back
again, "From morn to noon, from noon to dewy eve," his willingness to
"_Buy, sell, or exchange Hats or Caps_." Why should the Hebrew race
appear to possess a monopoly in the purchase and sale of dilapidated
costumes? Why should their voices, and theirs alone, be employed in the
constant iteration of the talismanic monosyllables "Old Clo'?" Is it
because Judas carried the bag that all the children of Israel are to
trudge through London streets to the end of their days with sack on
shoulder? Artists generally represent the old clothesman with three, and
sometimes four, hats, superposed one above the other. Now, although we
have seen him with many hats in his hands or elsewhere, we never yet saw
him with more than one hat on his head. The three-hatted clothesman, if
ever he existed, is obsolete. According to Ingoldsby, however, when
"Portia" pronounced the law adverse to "Shylock":
"Off went his three hats, and he look'd as the cats
Do, whenever a mouse has escaped from their claw."
[Illustration: ANY KITCHEN-STUFF HAVE YOU MAIDS?]
There was trading then going forward from house to house, which careful
housewifery and a more vigilant police have banished from the daylight,
if they have not extirpated it altogether. Before the shops are open and
the chimneys send forth their smoke, there may be now, sometimes, seen
creeping up an area a sly-looking beldam, who treads as stealthily as a
cat. Under her cloak she has a pan, whose unctuous contents will some day
assist in the enlightenment or purification of the world, in the form of
candles or soap. But the good lady of the house, who is a late riser,
knows not of the transformation that is going forward. In the old days she
would have heard the cry of a maiden, with tub on head and pence in hand,
of "_Any Kitchen-stuff have you Maids?_" and she probably would have dealt
with her herself, or have forbidden her maids to deal.
So it is with the old cry of "_Any Old Iron take Money for?_" The fellow
who then went openly about with sack on back was a thief, and an
encourager of thieves; he now keeps a marine-store.
[Illustration: ANY OLD IRON TAKE MONEY FOR?]
[Illustration: OLD LONDON SHOP.]
Sir Walter Scott, in his _Fortunes of Nigel_, has left us a capital
description of the shop of a London tradesman during the reign of King
James in England, the shop in question being that of David Ramsay, maker
of watches and horologes, within Temple-bar--a few yards eastward of St.
Dunstan's church, Fleet-street, and where his apprentice, Jenkin
Vincent--abbreviated to Jin Vin, when not engaged in 'prentices-riots--is
crying to every likely passer-by:--
"What d'ye lack?--What d'ye lack?--Clocks--watches--barnacles?--What
d'ye lack?--Watches--clocks--barnacles?--What d'ye lack, sir? What
d'ye lack, madam?--Barnacles--watches--clocks? What d'ye lack, noble
sir?--What d'ye lack, beauteous madam?--God bless your reverence, the
Greek and Hebrew have harmed your reverence's eyes. Buy a pair of
David Ramsay's barnacles. The king, God bless his sacred Majesty!
never reads Hebrew or Greek without them. What d'ye lack? Mirrors for
your toilets, my pretty madam; your head-gear is something awry--pity,
since it so well fancied. What d'ye lack? a watch, Master Sargeant?--a
watch that will go as long as a lawsuit, as steady and true as your
own eloquence? a watch that shall not lose thirteen minutes in a
thirteen years' lawsuit--a watch with four wheels and a
bar-movement--a watch that shall tell you, Master Poet, how long the
patience of the audience will endure your next piece at the Black
Bull."
The verbal proclaimers of the excellence of their commodities, had this
advantage over those who, in the present day, use the public papers for
the same purpose, that they could in many cases adapt their address to the
peculiar appearance and apparent taste of the passengers. This direct and
personal mode of invitation to customers became, however, a dangerous
temptation to the young wags who were employed in the task of solicitation
during the absence of the principal person interested in the traffic; and,
confiding in their numbers and civic union, the 'prentices of London were
often seduced into taking liberties with the passengers, and exercising
their wit at the expense of those whom they had no hopes of converting
into customers by their eloquence. If this were resented by any act of
violence, the inmates of each shop were ready to pour forth in succour;
and in the words of an old song which Dr. Johnson was used to hum,--
"Up then rose the 'prentices all,
Living in London, both proper and tall."
Desperate riots often arose on such occasions, especially when the
Templars, or other youths connected with the aristocracy, were insulted,
or conceived themselves so to be. Upon such occasions, bare steel was
frequently opposed to the clubs of the citizens, and death sometimes
ensued on both sides. The tardy and inefficient police of the time had no
other resource than by the Alderman of the ward calling out the
householders, and putting a stop to the strife by overpowering numbers, as
the Capulets and Montagues are separated upon the stage.
[Illustration: ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL.]
It must not be imagined that these 'prentices of the City of London were
of mean and humble origin. The sons of freemen of the City, or country
boys of good and honourable families, alone were admitted to the seven
years' apprenticeship. The common people--the _ascripti glebae_--the poor
rustics who were bound to the soil, had little or no share in the fortunes
of the City of London. Many of the burgesses were as proud of their
descent as of their liberties.
[Illustration: A STREET AT NIGHT--SHAKESPEARE'S LONDON.]
Once apprenticed, and having in a few weeks imbibed the spirit of the
place, the lad became a Londoner. It is one of the characteristics of
London, that he who comes up to the City from the country speedily becomes
penetrated with the magic of the golden pavement, and falls in love with
the great City. And he who has once felt that love of London can never
again be happy beyond the sound of Bow Bells, which could formerly be
heard for ten miles and more. The greatness of the City, its history, its
associations, its ambitions, its pride, its hurrying crowds--all these
things affect the imagination and fill the heart. There is no place in the
world, and never has been, which so stirs the heart of her children with
love and pride as the City of London.
A year or two later on, the boy would learn, with his fellow-'prentices
that he must betake himself to the practice of bow and arrow, "pellet and
bolt," with a view to what might happen. Moorfields was convenient for the
volunteers of the time. There was, however, never any lack of excitement
and novelty in the City of London. But this is a digression.
[Illustration]
Amongst the earliest of the Cries of London we must class the "cry" of the
City watchman; although it essentially differed from the "cries" of the
shopkeepers and the hawkers; for they, as a rule, had something to
exchange or sell--_copen or buy?_ as Lydgate puts it--then the watchmen
were wont to commence their "cry" at, or about, the hour of night when all
others had finished for the day. After that it was the business of the
watchman to make his first call, or cry after the manner inscribed over
the figure here given.
[Illustration]