 | OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF STATIONERY, LITERATURE,
AND THE FINE ARTS. London Labour and the London Poor, volume 1 |  |
OF THE FORMER AND PRESENT STREET-
PATTERERS.
Of the street-patterers the running (or flying)
trader announces the contents of the paper he is
offering for sale, as he proceeds on his mission.
It is usually the detail of some "barbarious and
horrible murder," or of some extraordinary occur-
rence — such as the attack on Marshal Haynau —
which has roused public attention; or the paper
announced as descriptive of a murder, or of
some exciting event, may in reality be some
odd number of a defunct periodical. "It's
astonishing," said one patterer to me, "how few
people ever complain of having been took in. It
hurts their feelings to lose a halfpenny, but it
[Description: 915EAF. Page 216.]
grumble in public about it." On this head,
then, I need give no further general explanation.
In times of excitement the running patterer (or
"stationer," as he was and is sometimes called)
has reaped the best harvest. When the Popish
plot agitated England in the reign of Charles II.
the "Narratives" of the design of a handful of
men to assassinate a whole nation, were eagerly
purchased in the streets and taverns. And this
has been the case during the progress of any ab-
sorbing event subsequently. I was told by a very
old gentleman, who had heard it from his grand-
father, that in some of the quiet towns of the
north of England, in Durham and Yorkshire,
there was the greatest eagerness to purchase
from the street-sellers any paper relative to the
progress of the forces under Charles Edward
Stuart, in 1745. This was especially the case
when it became known that the "rebels" had
gained possession of Carlisle, and it was un-
certain what might be their route southward.
About the period of the "affair of the '45,"
and in the autumn following the decisive battle
of Culloden (in April, 1746), the "Northern
Lights" were more than usually brilliant, or
more than usually remarked, and a meteor or
two had been seen. The street-sellers were then
to be found in fairs and markets, vending won-
derful accounts of these wonderful phenomena.
I have already alluded to the character of
the old mountebank, and to his "pompous
orations," having "as little regard to truth as to
propriety." There certainly is little pompous-
ness in the announcements of the patterers,
though in their general disregard of truth they
resemble those of the mountebank. The
mountebank, however, addressed his audience
from a stage, and made his address attractive
by mixing up with it music, dancing, and
tumbling; sometimes, also, equestrianism on
the green of a village; and by having always
the services of a merry-andrew, or clown. The
nostrums of these quacks were all as unequalled
for cheapness as for infallibility, and their im-
pudence and coolness ensured success. Their
practices are as well exposed in some of the
Spectators of 1711-12 as the puppet-playing of
Powel was good-humouredly ridiculed. One
especial instance is cited, where a mountebank,
announcing himself a native of Hammersmith,
where he was holding forth, offered to make a
present of 5s. to every brother native of Ham-
mersmith among his audience. The mounte-
bank then drew from a long bag a handful of
little packets, each of which, he informed the
spectators, was constantly sold for 5s. 6d., but
that out of love to his native hamlet he would
bate the odd 5s. to every inhabitant of the place.
The whole assembly immediately closed with
his generous offer."
There is a scene in Moncrieff's popular farce
of "Rochester," where the hero personates a
mountebank, which may be here cited as afford-
ing a good idea of the "pompous orations" in-
dulged in by the street orators in days of yore:
"Silence there, and hear me, for my words are more
precious than gold; I am the renowned and far-famed
Doctor Paracelsus Bombastes Esculapus Galen dam
Humbug von Quack, member of all the colleges under
the Moon: M.D., L.M.D., F.R.S., L.L.D., A.S.S. —
and all the rest of the letters in the alphabet: I am the
seventh son of a seventh son — kill or cure is my motto
— and I always do it; I cured the great Emperor of
Nova Scotia, of a polypus, after he had been given over
by all the faculty — he lay to all appearance dead; the
first pill he took, he opened his eyes; the second, he
raised his head; and the third, he jumped up and
danced a hornpipe. I don't want to sound my own
praise — blow the trumpet, Balaam (Balaam blows
trumpet); but I tapped the great Cham of Tartary at a
sitting, of a terrible dropsy, so that I didn't leave a
drop in him! I cure the palsy, the dropsy, the lunacy,
and all the sighs, without costing anybody a sigh;
vertigo, pertigo, lumbago, and all the other go's are
sure to go, whenever I come."
In his unscrupulousness and boldness in street
announcements, and sometimes in his humour
and satire, we find the patterer of the present
day to be the mountebank of old descended from
his platform into the streets — but without his
music, his clown, or his dress.
There was formerly, also, another class, dif-
fering little from the habits of that variety of
patterers of the present day who "busk" it, or
"work the public-houses."
"The jestours," says Mr. Strutt, in his "Sports and
Pastimes of the People of England," "or, as the word
is often written in the old English dialect, `gesters,'
were the relaters of the gestes, that is, the actions of
famous persons, whether fabulous or real; and these
stories were of two kinds, the one to excite pity, and
the other to move laughter, as we learn from Chaucer:
Both of wepying and of game.'
The tales of `game,' as the poet expresses himself
were short jocular stories calculated to promote mer-
riment, in which the reciters paid little respect to the
claims of propriety or even of common decency. The
tales of `game,' however, were much more popular
than those of weeping, and probably for the very
reason that ought to have operated the most power-
fully for their suppression. The gestours, whose
powers were chiefly employed in the hours of convivi-
ality, finding by experience that lessons of instruction
were much less seasonable at such times, than idle tales
productive of mirth and laughter, accommodated their
narrations to the general taste of the times, regard-
less of the mischiefs they occasioned by vitiating the
morals of their hearers. Hence it is that the author
of the `Vision of Pierce the Ploughman' calls them
contemptibly `japers and juglers, and Janglers of
gests.' He describes them as haunters of taverns and
common ale-house, amusing the lower classes of the
people with `myrth of minstrelsy and losels' tales,'
(loose vulgar tales,) and calls them tale-tellers and
`tutelers in ydell,' (tutors of idleness,) occasioning their
auditory, `for love of tales, in tavernes to drink,'
where they learned from them to jangle and to jape,
instead of attending to their more serious duties.
"The japers, I apprehend, were the same as the
bourdours, or rybauders, an inferior class of min-
strels, and properly called jesters in the modern ac-
ceptation of the word; whose wit, like that of the
merry-andrews of the present day (1806) consisted in
low obscenity accompanied with ludicrous gesticula-
tion. They sometimes, however, found admission into
the houses of the opulent. Knighton, indeed, men-
tions one of these japers who was a favourite in the
English court, and could obtain any grant from the
king `a burdando,' that is, by jesting. They are well
described by the poet:
Fayneth them fantasies, and fooles them maketh."
[Description: 915EAF. Page 217.]
"It was a very common and a very favourite amuse-
ment, so late as the 16th century, to hear the recital of
verses and moral speeches, learned for that purpose
by a set of men who obtained their livelihood thereby,
and who, without ceremony, intruded themselves, not
only into taverns and other places of public resort, but
also into the houses of the nobility"
The resemblance of the modern patterer to
the classes above mentioned will be seen when I
describe the public-house actor and reciter of
the present day, as well as the standing patterer,
who does not differ so much from the running
patterer in the quality of his announcements, as
in his requiring more time to make an impres-
sion, and being indeed a sort of lecturer needing
an audience; also of the present reciters "of
verses and moral speeches." But of these curious
classes I shall proceed to treat separately.
| OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF STATIONERY, LITERATURE,
AND THE FINE ARTS. London Labour and the London Poor, volume 1 | |