University of Virginia Library

OF THE QUANTITY OF SHRUBS, "ROOTS,"
FLOWERS, ETC., SOLD IN THE STREETS,
AND OF THE BUYERS.

The returns which I caused to be procured,
to show the extent of the business carried on
in the metropolitan markets, give the following
results as to the quantity of trees, shrubs,
flowers, roots, and branches, sold wholesale in
London, as well as the proportion retailed in
the streets.

Perhaps the pleasantest of all cries in early
spring is that of "All a-growing — all a-blow-
ing" heard for the first time in the season. It
is that of the "root-seller" who has stocked
his barrow with primroses, violets, and daisies.
Their beauty and fragrance gladden the senses;
and the first and, perhaps, unexpected sight of
them may prompt hopes of the coming year,
such as seem proper to the spring.

Cobbett has insisted, and with unquestioned
truth, that a fondness for bees and flowers is
among the very best characteristics of the
English peasant. I consider it equally un-
questionable that a fondness for in-door flowers,
is indicative of the good character and healthful
tastes, as well as of the domestic and indus-
trious habits, of the city artizan. Among some
of the most intelligent and best-conducted of
these artizans, I may occasionally have found,
on my visits to their homes, neither flowers nor
birds, but then I have found books.

United with the fondness for the violet, the
wallflower, the rose — is the presence of the
quality which has been pronounced the hand-
maiden of all the virtues — cleanliness. I
believe that the bunch of violets, on which a
poor woman or her husband has expended 1d., rarely ornaments an unswept hearth. In my
investigations, I could not but notice how the
presence or absence of flowers, together with
other indications of the better tastes, marked
the difference between the well-paid and the
ill-paid workman. Concerning the tailors, for
instance, I had occasion to remark, of the
dwellings of these classes: — "In the one, you
occasionally find small statues of Shakspere
beneath glass shades; in the other, all is dirt
and foetor. The working-tailor's comfortable
first-floor at the West-end is redolent with the
perfume of the small bunch of violets that
stands in a tumbler over the mantel-piece; the
sweater's wretched garret is rank with the
stench of filth and herrings." The presence of
the bunch of flowers of itself tells us of "a better
state of things" elevating the workman; for,
amidst the squalid poverty and fustiness of a
slopworker's garret, the nostril loses its dain-
tiness of sense, so that even a freshly fragrant
wallflower is only so many yellow petals and
green leaves.

A love of flowers is also observable among
men whose avocations are out of doors, and
those whose habits are necessarily those of
order and punctuality.

Among this class are such persons as gentle-
men's coachmen, who delight in the display
of a flower or two in the button-holes of
their coats when out of doors, and in small
vases in their rooms in their masters' mews. I
have even seen the trellis work opposite the
windows of cabmen's rooms, which were over
stables, with a projecting roof covering the whole,
thickly yellow and green with the flowers and
leaves of the easily-trained nasturtium and herb
"twopence." The omnibus driver occasion-
ally "sports a nosegay" — as he himself might
word it — in his button-hole; and the stage-
coachman of old felt he was improperly dressed
if a big bunch of flowers were not attached to
his coat. Sailors ashore are likewise generally
fond of flowers.

A delight in flowers is observable, also,
among the workers whose handicraft requires
the exercise of taste, and whose eyes are sen-
sible, from the nature of their employment, to
the beauty of colour. To this class belong
especially the Spitalfields' silk-weavers. At one
time the Spitalfields weavers were almost the
only botanists in London, and their love of
flowers is still strong. I have seen fuchsias
gladdening the weaver's eyes by being placed
near his loom, their crimson pendants swinging
backwarks and forwards to the motion of the
treadles, while his small back garden has been
many-coloured with dahlias. These weavers,
too, were at one time highly-successful as
growers of tulips.

Those out-door workmen, whose calling is of
coarse character, are never known to purchase
flowers, which to them are mere trumpery. Per-
haps no one of my readers ever saw a flower in
the possession of a flusherman, nightman, slaugh-
terer, sweep, gaslayer, gut and tripe-preparer,
or such like labourer. Their eyes convey to
the mind no appreciation of beauty, and the
sense of smell is actually dead in them, except
the odour be rank exceedingly.

The fondness for flowers in London is
strongest in the women, and, perhaps, strongest
in those whose callings are in-door and seden-
tary. Flowers are to them a companionship.

It remains only for me to state that, in the
poorest districts, and among people where there
is no sense of refinement or but a small love
for natural objects, flowers are little known.
Flowers are not bought by the slop-workers, the
garret and chamber-masters of Bethnal-green,
nor in the poor Irish districts, nor by the City
people Indeed, as I have observed, there is
not a flower-stand in the city.

It should be remembered that, in poor dis-
tricts, the first appearance of flowers conveys
to the slop-workman only one pleasurable asso-
ciation — that the season of warmth has arrived,
and that he will not only escape being chilled
with cold, but that he will be delivered from
the heavy burden of providing fire and candle.

A pleasant-looking man, with an appearance
which the vulgar characterise as "jolly," and
with hearty manners, gave me the following
account as to the character of his customers.
He had known the business since he was a
boy, his friends having been in it previously.
He said:

"There's one old gentleman a little way out
of town, he always gives 1s. for the first violet
root that any such as me carries there. I'm
often there before any others: `Ah!' he says,
`here you are; you've come, like Buonaparte,
with your violet.' I don't know exactly what
he means. I don't like to ask him you see;
for, though he's civil, he's not what you

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may call a free sort of man — that's it." [I
explained to him that the allusion was to
Buonaparte's emblem of the violet, with the
interpretation he or his admirers gave to it —
"I come in the spring."] "That's it, sir, is
it?" he resumed; "well, I'm glad I know,
because I don't like to be puzzled. Mine's a
puzzling trade, though. Violets have a good
sale. I've sold six dozen roots in a day, and
only half as many primroses and double-daisies,
if half. Everybody likes violets. I've sold
some to poor people in town, but they like their
roots in pots. They haven't a bit of a garden for
'em. More shame too I say, when they pays
such rents. People that sits working all day is
very fond of a sweet flower. A gentleman that's
always a-writing or a-reading in his office — he's
in the timber-trade — buys something of me every
time I see him; twice or thrice a week, some-
times. I can't say what he does with them
all. Barmaids, though you mightn't think it, sir,
is wery tidy customers. So, sometimes, is young
women that's in an improper way of life, about
Lisson-grove, and in some parts near Oxford-
street. They buys all sorts. Perhaps more
stocks than anything, for they're beautiful roots,
and not dear. I've sold real beauties for 2d. —
real beauties, but small; 6d. is a fair price; one
stock will perfume a house. I tell my customers
not to sleep with them in the room; it isn't good
for the health. A doctor told me that, and said,
`You ought to give me a fuchsia for my opinion.'
That was his joke. Primroses I sell most of —
they're not in pots — two or three or four miles
out of town, and most if a family's come into
a new house, or changed their house, if there's
children. The young ones teases the old ones
to buy them to set in the garden, and when
children gets fairly to work that way, it's a
sure sale. If they can't get over father,
they'll get over mother. Busy men never buy
flowers, as far as I've seen." [`In no tho-
roughfare in the city, I am assured, is there
a flower-stand — a circumstance speaking vo-
lumes as to the habits and tastes of the
people. Of fruit-stalls and chop-houses there
are in the neighbourhood of the Exchange, more
than in any other part of London perhaps —
the faculty of perceiving the beauty of colour,
form, and perfume, as combined in flowers is
not common to the man of business. The
pleasures of the palate, however, they can all
understand.'] "Parsons and doctors are often
tidy customers," resumed my informant. "They
have a good deal of sitting and reading, I be-
lieve. I've heard a parson say to his wife,
`Do, my dear, go and buy a couple of those
wallflowers for my study.' I don't do much
for working-men; the women's my best cus-
tomers. There's a shoemaker to be sure comes
down sometimes with his old woman to lay out
2d. or 3d. on me; `Let's have something that
smells strong,' he'll say, `stronger than cob-
bler's wax; for, though I can't smell that, others
can.' I've sold him musks (musk-plants) as
often as anything.

"The poor people buy rather largely at
times; that is, many of them buy. One day last
summer, my old woman and me sold 600 penny
pots of mignonette; and all about you saw them
— and it was a pleasure to see them — in the poor
women's windows. The women are far the best
customers. There was the mignonette behind
the bits of bars they have, in the shape of
gates and such like, in the front of their win-
dows, in the way of preventing the pots falling
into the street. Mignonette's the best of all
for a sure sale; where can you possibly have a
sweeter or a nicer penn'orth, pot and all."