At present I shall deal with the Ethiopian serenaders, and the better
class of ballad-singers. Two young men who are of the former class gave
the following account. Both were dressed like decent mechanics, with
perfectly clean faces, excepting a little of the professional black at
the root of the hair on the forehead:--
[Illustration: ETHIOPIAN SERENADERS.
[_From a Photograph._]]
“We are niggers,” said one man, “as it’s commonly called; that is,
negro melodists. Nigger bands vary from four to seven, and have
numbered as many as nine; our band is now six. We all share alike.
I (said the same man) was the first who started the niggers in the
streets, abour four years ago. I took the hint from the performance
of Pell and the others at the St. James’s. When I first started in
the streets I had five performers, four and myself. There were the
banjo-player, the bones, fiddle, and tambourine. We are regularly
full-dressed, in fashionable black coats and trowsers, open white
waistcoats, pumps (bluchers some had, just as they could spring them),
and wigs to imitate the real negro head of hair. Large white wrists or
cuffs came out after. It was rather a venturesome ’spec, the street
niggers, for I had to find all the clothes at first start, as I set
the school a-going. Perhaps it cost me 6_s._ a-head all round--all
second-hand dress except the wigs, and each man made his own wig
out of horse-hair dyed black, and sewn with black thread on to the
skin of an old silk hat. Well, we first started at the top of the
Liverpool-road, but it was no great success, as we weren’t quite up in
our parts and didn’t play exactly into one another’s hands. None of us
were perfect, we’d had so few rehearsals. One of us had been a street
singer before, another a street fiddler, another had sung nigger-songs
in public-houses, the fourth was a mud-lark, and I had been a street
singer. I was brought up to no trade regularly. When my father died
I was left on the world, and I worked in Marylebone stone-yard, and
afterwards sung about the streets, or shifted as I could. I first sung
in the streets just before the Queen’s coronation--and a hard life
it was. But, to tell the truth, I didn’t like the thoughts of hard
labour--bringing a man in so little, too--that’s where it is; and as
soon as I could make any sort of living in the streets with singing
and such-like, I got to like it. The first ‘debew,’ as I may say, of
the niggers, brought us in about 10_s._ among us, besides paying for
our dinner and a pint of beer a-piece. We were forced to be steady you
see, sir, as we didn’t know how it would answer. We sang from eleven
in the morning till half-past ten at night, summer time. We kept on
day after day, not rehearsing, but practising in the streets, for
rehearsing in private was of little use--voices are as different in
private rooms and the public streets as is chalk from cheese. We got
more confidence as we went along. To be sure we had all cheek enough
to start with, but this was a fresh line of business. Times mended as
we got better at our work. Last year was the best year I’ve known. We
start generally about ten, and play till it’s dark in fine weather.
We averaged 1_l._ a-week last year. The evenings are the best time.
Regent-street, and Oxford-street, and the greater part of St. James’s,
are our best places. The gentry are our best customers, but we get
more from gentlemen than from ladies. The City is good, I fancy, but
they won’t let us work it; it’s only the lower parts, Whitechapel and
Smithfield ways, that we have a chance in. Business and nigger-songs
don’t go well together. The first four days of the week are pretty much
alike for our business. Friday is bad, and so is Saturday, until night
comes, and we then get money from the working people. The markets, such
as Cleveland-street, Fitzroy-square (Tottenham-court-road’s no good at
any time). Carnaby-market, Newport-market, Great Marylebone-street,
and the Edgeware-road, are good Saturday nights. Oxford-street is
middling. The New-cut is as bad a place as can be. When we started,
the songs we knew was ‘Old Mr. Coon,’ ‘Buffalo Gals,’ ‘Going ober de
Mountain,’ ‘Dandy Jim of Carolina,’ ‘Rowly Boly O,’ and ‘Old Johnny
Booker.’ We stuck to them a twelvemonth. The ‘Buffalo Gals’ was best
liked. The ‘bones’--we’ve real bones, rib-of-beef bones, but some
have ebony bones, which sound better than rib-bones--they tell best
in ‘Going ober de Mountain,’ for there’s a symphony between every
line. It’s rather difficult to play the bones well; it requires hard
practice, and it brings the skin off; and some men have tried it, but
with so little success that they broke their bones and flung them away.
The banjo is the hardest to learn of the lot. We have kept changing our
songs all along; but some of the old ones are still sung. The other
favourites are, or were, ‘Lucy Neale,’ ‘O, Susannah,’ ‘Uncle Ned,’
‘Stop dat Knocking,’ ‘Ginger Blue,’ and ‘Black-eyed Susannah.’ Things
are not so good as they were. We can average 1_l._ a-piece now in the
week, but it’s summer-time, and we can’t make that in bad weather.
Then there’s so many of us. There’s the Somer’s-town ‘mob’ now in
London; the King-street, the four St. Giles’s mobs, the East-end (but
they’re white niggers), the two Westminster mobs, the Marylebone, and
the Whitechapel. We interfere with one another’s beats sometimes, for
we have no arrangement with each other, only we don’t pitch near the
others when they’re at work. The ten mobs now in London will have 50
men in them at least; and there’s plenty of stragglers, who are not
regular niggers: there’s so many dodges now to pick up a living, sir.
The Marylebone and Whitechapel lots play at nights in penny theatres.
I have played in the Haymarket in ‘the New Planet,’ but there’s no
demand for us now at the theatres, except such as the Pavilion. There
are all sorts of characters in the different schools, but I don’t know
any runaway gentleman, or any gentleman of any kind among us, not one;
we’re more of a poorer sort, if not to say a ragged sort, for some
are without shoes or stockings. The ‘niggers’ that I know have been
errand-boys, street-singers, turf-cutters, coalheavers, chandlers,
paviours, mud-larks, tailors, shoemakers, tinmen, bricklayers’
labourers, and people who have had no line in particular but their
wits. I know of no connexion with pickpockets, and don’t believe there
is any, though pickpockets go round the mobs; but the police fling it
in our teeth that we’re connected with pickpockets. It’s a great injury
to us is such a notion. A good many of the niggers--both of us here
likes a little drop--drink as hard as they can, and a good many of them
live with women of the town. A few are married. Some niggers are Irish.
There’s Scotch niggers, too. I don’t know a Welsh one, but one of the
street nigger-singers _is_ a real black--an African.”