subject of the "Two Catnachs," nearly up to the last moment of our going
to press with our own "Life and Times of James Catnach," and to him we are
greatly indebted for much of the information therein contained. And it was
at his suggestion that we wrote the following letter to the _Alnwick
Journal_--Mr. Skelly at the same time furnishing the local paragraph.
Letter to the Editor.
_To the Editor of the Alnwick Journal._
76, Rose Hill Terrace, Brighton,
June 16th, 1876.
SIR,--Your townsman, Mr. George Skelly, in the concluding chapter of
his excellent article of "John and James Catnach," makes mention of my
name as being engaged in preparing for publication "The Life and Times
of James Catnach, formerly of Seven Dials, printer of ballads, &c."
Such being the fact, I shall therefore be glad if you would allow me
sufficient space in the _Alnwick Journal_, to ask your readers and
correspondents who possess any additional facts, sayings, doings, or
letters of the two Catnachs--John and James--to supply me with the
same, when I shall have much pleasure in assigning to any such
contributions a proper chronological place in my work, and of
acknowledging the source of the same, while all documents or books
will be faithfully returned by yours, &c., &c.,
CHARLES HINDLEY.
* * * * *
JOHN AND JAMES CATNACH.--It will be seen by a correspondence in
another page that Mr. Charles Hindley, of Brighton, is preparing for
publication the "Life and Times of James Catnach," and he respectfully
solicits from our readers any facts and scraps they may be possessed
of, also the loan of any letters or books suitable for the extention
of the life of the celebrated and withal eccentric printer, who,
although a native of Alnwick, settled in London, and occupied a
peculiar position for upwards of a quarter of a century in the Seven
Dials district. We trust that our correspondent may be enabled to add
to his all ready large stock of material in hand a few more items, by
the publication of his letter in our columns. Mr. Hindley's work,
will, it is expected, be published by Messrs. Reeves and Turner, of
the Strand, London, during the coming autumn.
The above letter to the _Alnwick Journal_ was the means of obtaining
another valuable correspondent--Mr. George H. Thompson, also of Alnwick,
who volunteered his services to aid and assist, to the best of his time
and ability, in supplying all the information he possessed or could glean
from his friends and acquaintances in the good old borough of Alnwick, or
the county at large. And _inter alia_ copied out _verbatim_ from the
Parish Register of Baptisms in St. Michael's Church all the entries in
connection with the family of John and Mary Catnach and which will be
found _in extenso_ at pages 2-3 of this work.
Mr. George Skelly and Mr. G. H. Thompson are fortunate by their residence
in Alnwick in having had the acquaintance and friendship of the late Mr.
Mark Smith--James Catnach's fellow apprentice, Mr. Thomas Robertson, Mr.
Tate, the local historian, and several other _Alnwick-folk_. And they have
made the best possible use of the circumstance to supply us with
information on the subject of our enquiry.
Recently Mr. Geo. Skelly has forwarded to us an original trade invoice of
John Catnach of which we here append a _fac-simile_ copy:--
[Illustration] _ALNWICK_
_Mr. Smart_,
_Bought of_ J. CATNACH,
1807.
_July 29._ _£ s. d._
_Printing 500 Bills_ 8 ,, 6
----------
[Signature: Paid
J. Catnach]
We have now brought up the history of our pursuit of knowledge to the eve
of the publication of the Life and Times of James Catnach--late of Seven
Dials, Ballad-monger--which was first announced in 1878 in the manner
following.
YE LIFE OF JEMMY CATNACH.
[Illustration]
Now, my friends, you have here just printed and pub--lish--ed, the
Full, True, and Particular account of the Life, Trial, Character,
Confession, Condemnation, and Behaviour, together with an authentic
copy of the last Will and Testament: or DYING SPEECH, of that
eccentric individual "Old Jemmy Catnach," late of the _Seven Dials_,
printer, publisher, toy-book manufacturer, dying-speech merchant, and
ballad-monger. Here, you may read how he was bred and born the son of
a printer, in the ancient Borough of Alnwick, which is in
Northumberlandshire. How he came to London to seek his fortune. How he
obtained it by printing and publishing children's books, the
chronicling of doubtful scandals, fabulous duels between ladies of
fashion, "cooked" assassinations, and sudden deaths of eminent
individuals, apocryphal elopements, real or catch-penny accounts of
murders, impossible robberies, delusive suicides, dark deeds and
public executions, to which was usually attached the all-important and
necessary "Sorrowful Lamentations," or, "Copy of Affectionate Verses,"
which, according to the established custom, the criminal composed, in
the condemned cell, the night before his execution.
Yes, my customers, in this book you'll read how Jemmy Catnach made his
fortune in Monmouth Court, which is to this day in the Seven Dials,
which is in London. Not only will you read how he did make his
fortune, but also what he did and what he didn't do with it after he
had made it. You will also read how "Old Jemmy" set himself up as a
fine gentleman:--JAMES CATNACH ES--QUIRE.
And how he didn't like it when he had done it. And how he went back
again to dear old Monmouth Court, which is in the Seven Dials
aforesaid. And how he languished, and languishing, did die--leaving
all his old mouldy coppers behind him--and how being dead, he was
buried in Highgate Cemetery.
Furthermore, my ready-money customers, you are informed that there are
only 750 copies of the work print-ed and pub-lish-ed, viz., namely
that is to say;--500 copies on crown 8vo, at 12/6 each.
250 copies on demy 8vo., at 25/- each.
LONDON:
REEVES AND TURNER,
196, STRAND, W.C.
1878.
The Seven Dials!--Jemmy Catnach and Street Literature are, as it were, so
inseparably bound together that we now propose to give a short history of
the former to enable us to connect our own history with the later:--
The Seven Dials were built for wealthy tenants, and Evelyn, in his
_Diary_, 1694, notes: "I went to see the building near St. Giles's, where
Seven Dials make a star from a Doric pillar placed in the middle of a
circular area, in imitation of Venice." The attempt was not altogether in
vain. This part of the parish has ever since "worn its _dirt_ with a
difference." There is an air of shabby gentility about it. The air of the
footman or waiting-maid can be recognised through the tatters, which are
worn with more assumption than those of their unsophisticated neighbours.
"You may break, you may shatter the vase if you will;
But the scent of the roses will hang round it still."
The Seven Dials are thus described in Gay's Trivia:--
"Where famed St. Giles's ancient limits spread,
An in-railed column rears its lofty head;
Here to seven streets, seven dials count their day,
And from each other catch the circling ray;
Here oft the peasant, with inquiring face,
Bewildered, trudges on from place to place;
He dwells on every sign with stupid gaze--
Enters the narrow alley's doubtful maze--
Tries every winding court and street in vain,
And doubles o'er his weary steps again."
This column was removed in July, 1773, on the supposition that a
considerable sum of money was lodged at the base; but the search was
ineffectual.
Charles Knight, in his "London," writes thus of Seven Dials:--
"It is here that the literature of St. Giles's has fixed its abode;
and a literature the parish has of its own, and that, as times go, of
a very respectable standing in point of antiquity. In a letter from
Letitia Pilkington, to the demure author of 'Sir Charles Grandison,'
and published by the no less exemplary and irreproachable Mrs.
Barbauld, the lady informs her correspondent that she has taken
apartments in Great White Lion Street, and stuck up a bill intimating
that all who have not found 'reading and writing come by nature,' and
who had had no teacher to make up the defect by art, might have
'letters written here.' With the progress of education, printing
presses have found their way into St. Giles's, and what with
literature and a taste for flowers and birds, there is much of the
'sweet south' about the Seven Dials harmonising with the out-of-door
habits of its occupants. It was here--in Monmouth Court, a
thoroughfare connecting Monmouth Street with Little Earl Street--that
the late eminent Mr. Catnach developed the resources of his genius and
trade. It was he who first availed himself of greater mechanical skill
and a larger capital than had previously been employed in the
department of THE TRADE, to substitute--for the excrable tea-paper,
blotched with lamp-black and oil, which characterised the old
broadside and ballad printing--tolerably white paper and real
printer's ink. But more than that, it was he who first conceived and
carried into effect, the idea of publishing collections of songs by
the yard, and giving to purchasers, for the small sum of one penny (in
former days the cost of a single ballad), strings of poetry,
resembling in shape and length the list of Don Juan's mistresses,
which Leporello unrolls on the stage before Donna Anna. He was no
ordinary man, Catnach; he patronised original talents in many a bard
of St Giles's and is understood to have accumulated the largest store
of broadsides, last dying speeches, ballads and other stock-in-trade
of the flying stationer's upon record."
Douglas Jerrold in his article on the Ballad Singer, published in "Heads
of the People; or Portraits of the English"--1841, writes thus of Seven
Dials and its surroundings:--
"The public ear has become dainty, fastidious, hypercritical; hence
the Ballad-Singer languishes and dies. Only now and then, his pipings
are to be heard * * * With the fall of Napoleon, declined the English
Ballad-Singer. During the war, it was his peculiar province to vend
halfpenny historical abridgments to his country's glory; recommending
the short poetic chronicle by some familiar household air, that fixed
it in the memory of the purchaser, who thus easily got hatred of the
French by heart, with a new assurance of his own invulnerability. No
battle was fought, no vessel taken or sunken, that the triumph was not
published, proclaimed in the national gazette of our Ballad-Singer. If
he were not the clear silver trump of Fame, he was at least her tin
horn. It was he who bellowed music into news, which, made to jingle,
was thus, even to the weakest understanding, rendered portable. It was
his narrow strips of history that adorned the garrets of the poor; it
was he who made them yearn towards their country, albiet to them so
rough and niggard a mother.
Napoleon lost Waterloo, and the English Ballad-Singer not only lost
his greatest prerogative, but was almost immediately assailed by
foreign rivals, who had well-nigh played him dumb. Little thought the
Ballad-Singer, when he crowed forth the crowning triumphs of the war,
and in his sweetest possible modulations breathed the promised
blessings of a golden peace, that he was then, swan-like, singing his
own knell; that he did but herald the advent of his own provençal
destroyers.
Oh muse! descend and say, did no omen tell the coming of the fall? Did
no friendly god give warning to the native son of song? Burned the
stars clearly, tranquilly in heaven,--or shot they madly across
Primrose-hill, the Middlesex Parnassus?
* * * * *
Evening had gathered o'er Saint Giles's, and Seven Dials. So tranquil
was the season, even publishers were touched. Catnach and Pitts sat
silent in their shops; placing their hands in breeches-poke, with that
serenity which pockets best convey, they looked around their
walls--walls more richly decked than if hung with triumphs of Sidonian
looms, arrayed with Bayeux stitchings; walls, where ten thousand
thousand ballads--strips harmonious, yet silent as Apollo's unbraced
strings,--hung pendulous, or crisply curling, like John Braham's hair.
Catnach and Pitts, the tuneful masters of the gutter-choir, serenely
looked, yet with such comprehensive glance, that look did take their
stock. Suddenly, more suddenly than e'er the leaves in Hornsey wood
were stirred by instant blast, the thousand thousand ballads swung and
rustled on the walls; yet wind there was not, not the lightest breath.
Still like pendants fluttering in a northern breeze, the ballads
streamed towards Catnach, and towards Pitts! Amazing truth--yet more;
each ballad found a voice! 'Old Towler' faintly growled; 'Nancy
Dawson' sobbed and sighed; and, 'Bright Chanticleer' crowed weakly,
dolorously, as yet in chickenhood, and smitten with the pip. At the
same instant, the fiddle, the antique viol of Roger Scratch, fell from
its garret-peg, and lay shivered, even as glass.
A cloud fell upon Seven Dials; dread and terror chilled her many
minstrels: and why--and wherefore?
At that dread moment, a ministrel from the sunny south, with
barrel-organ, leapt on Dover beach! Seven Dials felt the shock: her
troubadours, poor native birds, were to be out-carrolled and
out-quavered, by Italian opera retailed by penn'orths to them, from
the barrel-organs: and prompt to follow their masters, they let the
English ballad singer sing unheard.
The Ballad-Singer has lost his occupation; yet should he not pass away
unthanked, unrecompensed. We have seen him a useful minister in rude
society; we have heard him a loud-mouthed advocate of party zeal, and
we have seen him almost ground into silence by the southern
troubadour. Yet was he the first music-seller in the land. Ye
well-stocked, flourishing vendors of fashionable scores, deign to cast
a look through plate glass at your poor, yet great original,
bare-footed and in rags, singing, unabashed, amidst London
wagon-wheels: behold the true decendant of the primative
music-seller."
Charles Dickens, as Boz, long since "sketched" the Seven Dials, and at the
same time and place given us his--"Meditations in Monmouth Street":--
"Seven Dials! the region of song and poetry--first effusions, and last
dying speechees: hallowed by the names of Catnach and Pitts--names
that will entwine themselves with costermongers, and barrel-organs,
when penny magazines shall have superseded penny yards of song, and
capital punishment be unknown."
Several years ago Mr. Albert Smith, who lived at Chertsey, discovered in
his neighbourhood part of the Seven Dials--the column doing duty as a
monument to a Royal Duchess--when he described the circumstance in a
pleasant paper, entitled "Some News of a famous Old Fellow," in his "Town
and Country Magazine." The communication is as follows:--
"Let us now quit the noisome mazes of St. Giles's and go out and away
into the pure leafy country. Seventeen or eighteen miles from town, in
the county of Surrey, is the little village of Weybridge.
One of the lions to be seen at Weybridge is Oatlands, with its large
artificial grotto and bath-room, which is said--but we cannot
comprehend the statement--to have cost the Duke of Newcastle, who had
it built, £40,000. The late Duchess of York died at Oatlands, and lies
in a small vault under Weybridge Church, wherein there is a monument,
by Chantrey, to her memory. She was an excellent lady, well-loved by
all the country people about her, and when she died they were anxious
to put up some sort of a tribute to her memory. But the village was
not able to offer a large some of money for this purpose. The good
folks did their best, but the amount was still very humble, so they
were obligated to dispense with the service of any eminent architect,
and build up only such a monument as their means could compass.
Someone told them that there was a column to be sold cheap in a
stonemason's yard, which might answer their purpose. It was
accordingly purchased; a coronet was placed upon its summit; and the
memorial was set up on Weybridge Green, in front of the Ship Inn, at
the junction of the roads leading to Oatlands, to Shepperton Lock, and
to Chertsey. This column turned out to be the original one from Seven
Dials.
The stone on which the dials were engraved or fixed, was sold with it.
The poet Gay, however, was wrong when he spoke of its seven faces. It
is hexagonal in its shape; this is accounted for by the fact that two
of the streets opened into one angle. It was not wanted to assist in
forming the monument, but was turned into a stepping stone, near the
adjoining inn, to assist the infirm in mounting their horses, and
there it now lies, having sunk by degrees into the earth; but its
original form can still be easily surmised. It may be about three feet
in diameter.
The column itself is about thirty feet high and two feet in diameter,
displaying no great architectural taste. It is surmounted by a
coronet, and the base is enclosed by a light iron railing. An
appropriate inscription on one side of the base indicates its erection
in the year 1822, on the others are some lines to the memory of the
Duchess.
Relics undergo strange transpositions. The obelisk from the mystic
solitudes of the Nile to the centre of the Place de la Concorde, in
bustling Paris--the monuments of Nineveh to the regions of Great
Russell Street--the frescoes from the long, dark, and silent Pompeii
to the bright and noisy Naples--all these are odd changes. But in
proportion to their importance, not much behind them is that old
column from the crowded dismal regions of St. Giles to the sunny
tranquil Green of Weybridge."
We are now approaching--"The beginning of the end"--of our history. We
were not taken by surprise as we know that "coming events cast their
shadows before," and that:--
Often do the spirits
Of great events stride on before the events,
And in to-day already walks to-morrow.
Therefore we were well prepared to read in the newspapers of October,
1883, the following paragraph:--
The old-established printing and publishing house formerly occupied by
James Catnach, 2, Monmouth-court, Seven Dials, will soon be amongst
the lost landmarks of London. The Metropolitan Board of Works have
purchased the house, and it is to be pulled down to make the new
street from Leicester-square to New Oxford-street. The business of the
literature of the street was founded by James Catnach in 1813, who
retired in 1840. The ballads and broadsides he printed, many of them
illustrated with cuts by Bewick, helped to furnish the people with
news and political and social ballads for generations.
All that is fortold in the above has since taken place, Monmouth-court and
the house and shop wherein old Jemmy Catnach established the "Catnach
Press" in the year 1813 has disappeared to make way for the "New
Thoroughfare" from Leicester-square to New Oxford street, and:--
THE CATNACH PRESS
removed by Mr. W. S. Fortey--Catnach's successor--to Great St.
Andrew-street, Bloomsbury, W.C.
_O tempora! O mores!_
[Illustration: THE HISTORY OF THE CATNACH PRESS, AND THE TWO CATNACHS,
JOHN & JAMES, FATHER & SON, _Printers_, 1769-1841.]
[Illustration]
THOMAS BEWICK,
Thomas Bewick died at his house on the Windmill-Hills, Gateshead, November
the 8th, 1828, in the seventy-sixth year of his age, and on the 13th he
was buried in the family burial-place at Ovingham, where his parents,
wife, and brother were interred.
[Illustration]
THE CATNACH PRESS.
In addition to the full title of our work--"The History of the Catnach
Press"--the two Catnachs--John and James--father and son, we deem it
necessary to incidentally introduce into our pages some notice of Alnwick,
an ancient borough, market-town and parish of Northumberland, also a few
passing remarks on the life and doings of Mr. William Davison, who, in
conjunction with the elder Catnach as a business partner and subsequent
successor, employed Thomas Bewick--an English artist, who imparted the
first impulse to the art of wood-engraving--for many of their
publications.
Of the early life of John Catnach, (_Kat-nak_), the father, we have little
information. He was born in 1769, at Burntisland, a royal burgh and parish
of Fifeshire, Scotland, where his father was possessed of some
powder-mills. The family afterwards removed to Edinburgh, when their son
John was bound apprentice to his uncle, Sandy Robinson, the printer. After
having duly served out his indentures, he worked for some short time in
Edinburgh, as a journeyman, then started in a small business of his own in
Berwick-upon-Tweed, where he married Mary Hutchinson, who was a native of
Dundee, a seaport-town in Scotland. While at Berwick a son and heir, John,
was born. In 1790 they removed their business to Alnwick, and during their
residence there seven children were born to them and from the Register of
Baptisms in St. Michael's Church we glean that four of them were baptised
at one time, viz., September 24, 1797, and there described as "of John
Catnach, printer, and Mary his wife: Dissenter."[?] John Catnach had been
brought up in the Roman Catholic faith, and his wife as a Presbyterian.
The following is taken _verbatim_ from the Parish Register:--
Sep{t.} 24, 1797.
Margaret, Daug{r.} of John Catnach, printer, and Mary his Wife. Born
Dec{r.} 26{th}, 1790. Dissenter.
James, son of John Catnach, printer, and Mary his Wife. Born August
18{th}, 1792. Dissenter.
Mary, Daug{r.} of John Catnach, printer, and Mary his Wife. Born
February 26{th}, 1794. Dissenter.
Nancy, Daug{r.} of John Catnach, printer, and Mary his Wife. Born
Sep{r.} 2{nd}, 1795. Dissenter.
May 23, 1798.
Elizabeth Catnach. Born March 21, 1797, 4{th} Daughter of John
Catnach, printer, native of Burnt Island, Shire of Fife, by his wife
Mary Hutchinson, Native of Dundee, Angus Shire, Scotland.
Dec{r.} 14, 1798.
Isabella Catnach. Born Nov{r.} 2, 1798. 5th Daughter of Jn{o.}
Catnach, Stationer, Nat. of Scotland, by his wife, Mary Hutchinson,
Nat. of Dundee, Angus Shire, Scotland.
March 28, 1800.
Jane Catnach, 6{th} Daughter of John Catnach, printer, Native of
Edinburgh (_sic_) by his wife Mary Hutchinson, Native of Dundee,
Scotland.
To the above we have to add that there were two sons--John, born to John
and Mary Catnach. John I. who was born at Berwick-upon-Tweed, died August
27, 1794, aged 5 years and 7 months, and we find him duly recorded in the
Register of Deaths. John II., whose name appears at the end of the
inscription on a tombstone in Alnwick churchyard, and of which further
mention will be made in another portion of our work, died, presumably
unbaptized, March 5, 1803, aged 4 months.
John Catnach was not long a resident in the borough of Alnwick before he
became acquainted with many of the principal tradesmen in the place.
Naturally he was of a free-and-easy disposition, and, like many of his
kinsman on the Borders, was particularly fond of the social glass. The
latter practice he allowed to grow upon him in such a way that it
ultimately interfered very much with his business prospects, and finally
hastened his death.
The shop that he commenced business in, was situated in Narrowgate-street,
and adjoining the old Half-Moon hostelry. In gaining access to the place
one had to ascend a flight of steps. Whilst in this shop he secured a fair
amount of patronage, and the specimens of printing that emanated from his
press are of such a character as to testify to his qualifications and
abilities in the trade which he adopted as his calling. He possessed a
fond regard for the traditions and customs which for centuries had been so
closely associated with the Border country.
When the printing press was first introduced into Alnwick is not exactly
known; but that it was considerably before the time of Catnach is certain.
John Vint, the bookseller and author of the "Burradon Ghost," for several
years used a press for printing purposes in the town, and Thomas Lindsay
carried on a similar business at a still earlier period.