Days and Nights in London: or, Studies in Black and Gray

XI. – STREET SALESMEN

That we are a nation of shopkeepers I believe, not only on the evidence of the first Napoleon, but from what I see and hear every day. There are few people in the City who are born wealthy, compared with the number who do manage in the course of a successful mercantile career to win for themselves a fair share of this world’s goods. The other night I was spending the evening at the West-End mansion of a City millionaire. As I left, I asked a friend what was the secret of our host’s success, “Why,” was the answer, “I have always understood he began life with borrowing ten shillings.”

If that is all, thought I to myself, it is not difficult to make a fortune, after all. Accordingly, I negotiated a loan of a sovereign, thinking that if I failed with ten shillings I should be sure to succeed with double that number. At present, I regret to say, the loan has not been so successful in its results as I anticipated, and fortune seems as far off as ever. Should it turn out otherwise, and my wild expectations be realised, I will publish a book, and let the reader know how a sovereign became ten thousand pounds. And yet I believe such a feat has been often accomplished in the City and by City men. Everybody knows a man who walked up to town with twopence-halfpenny in his pocket, who lived to enjoy a nice fortune himself, and to leave his wife and family well provided for.

I met the other day in the Gray’s Inn Road a master-builder, who told me that he was going to retire from business and pass the evening of his days in quiet. I had known the man since he was a boy. I knew his father and his mother and all his family. If ever a fellow had a chance of going to the bad that poor boy had. His father was a drunkard; the poverty of the family was extreme; of schooling he had none whatever; yet he left the little village in Suffolk where he was born, resolved, as he told me, to be either a man or a mouse; and fortune favoured him beyond his most sanguine expectations. Yes, the streets of London are paved with gold, but it is not everyone who has sense to see it or strength to pick it up.

It is to be feared the large class who come into the streets to deal are not of the class who mean to rise, but who have seen better days. For instance, I often meet a porter selling Persian sherbet in the City, who seems to have dropped into that situation from mere laziness. He had a fair chance of getting on in life, but he never seems to have had pluck enough to succeed. Another man I know held a respectable situation as clerk; he appeared to me economical in his habits, he was always neatly dressed, he was never the worse for liquor, nor did he seem to keep bad company. All at once he left his situation, and rapidly went to the dogs. For a little while he borrowed of his friends; but that was a precarious source of existence, and now he may be seen dealing in small articles, on which it is to be hoped for his own sake the profits are large, as I fear the demand for them is small. Then there are the restless characters who take up street-selling partly because they like to gammon the public, partly because they dislike steady industry, and partly because I fancy they cherish expectations of another sort. These are the men who give away gold rings, who exhibit mice that have a wonderful way of running up and down the arms, who sell gutta-percha dolls which seem in their hands to have a power of vocalisation which leaves them at once and for ever as soon as you have purchased the puppet and paid for it and made it your own, who deal in cement which will make an old jug better than new, who retail corn-plasters which are an inevitable cure, and who occasionally deal in powders which are a sure means of getting rid of certain objectionable specimens of the insect tribe.

“But how do you use the powder?” asked a flat of a countryman who had been deluded into the purchase of sixpenny-worth of the invaluable powder. “How do you use it?” repeated the purchaser.

“Well, you see, you catch the animal and hold him by the back of the neck, and then when his mouth opens, just shove in the powder, and he’ll die fast enough.”

“But,” said the countryman, “I suppose I could kill the insect at once when I’ve caught him?”

“Well,” said the salesman, “of course you can, but the powder is, I repeat, fatal nevertheless.”

A little while ago there was an illustrated paper presumedly more fitted for the moral atmosphere of New York than London. Its chief sale, before it was suppressed by the law, was in the streets, where, with its doubtful engravings, it was a bit of a nuisance. Of course, the sale of Evening Hechoes, and Hextra Standards, is a thing one is obliged to put up with; nevertheless, one must often regret that so useful a trade cannot be pushed in a quieter and less ostentatious way. The ingenious youth, who devote themselves to the sale of a paper especially devoted to the interests of matrimony, are a real nuisance. How they pester many a lad that passes with their intimation that, by the purchase of their trumpery paper, they can secure an heiress with a thousand a year, as if such bargains were to be had any day, whereas, the truth is, that they are rather scarce, and that – whether with that sum or without – matrimony is a very serious affair. Unprotected females have to suffer a deal of impudence from these fellows. I saw a respectable, decently-dressed, manifest old maid, exceedingly annoyed and shocked by one of these fellows pursuing her half way up Cheapside, with his shouts, “Want a ’usband, ma’am?” “Here’s a chance for you, ma’am,” “Lots of ’usbands to be had,” and so on, in a way which she seemed to feel – and I quite understood her feelings – was singularly indelicate. What an insult to suppose that any virtuous and accomplished lady is in seed of a husband, when she has only to raise a finger and she has, such is the chivalry of the age, a score of adorers at her feet!

The newsboys are, of course, the most prominent of our street salesmen, and they affect the City for many reasons. In the first place, in and around the Mansion House there is a finer opening for business than anywhere else; and in the second place, a City business is often a very remunerative one. City men who have made their thousands on the Stock Exchange or elsewhere are not particular in the matter of change; and a fourpence or a sixpence is often the reward of the lad who is the first to rush up to a City swell as he leaves his office with a “third hedition of the Hecho” or a special Standard with some important telegram. In wet weather times go very hard with these poor fellows. On the contrary, when it is fine, business is brisk. They rely much on sensational telegrams. A war is a fine thing for them, and so is a case like that of the Claimant, or a spicy divorce case, or an atrocious murder. It is when such things as these occur that they flourish, and that their joy is abounding. They must make a good deal of money, but it goes as fast as it comes. An attempt was made to establish a news-room for these boys, and very nice premises were taken in Gray’s Inn Lane. The coffee and bread and butter were excellent, and the arrangements were all that could be desired. Nevertheless the undertaking was a failure, because it was not supported by the class for whose benefit it was especially intended. The news-boys did not like the confinement, the regular hours, the decent behaviour, the cleanliness and attention to little things required. They wanted beer and ’baccy, and other little amusements, more in accordance with their independent position in fife. As a rule I fancy they are honest; they certainly never cheat a man if they think they will be found out. I never had any difficulty in getting my change but once, and then I was in an omnibus, and the chances were in the boy’s favour. What is wonderful is that they do not meet with more accidents. How they rush after omnibuses as they urge on their wild career! Some of them are great radicals. “Allus reads The Hecho of a Saturday,” said one of them to me, “to see how it pitches into the haristocracy,” when the articles signed “Noblesse Oblige” were being published. It is to be wondered at now and then that their impertinence does not get them into grief. For instance, to the young man who has any respect for the fair sex, how disgusting to be told of women, good-looking, amiable and accomplished, well-to-do, and apparently possessed of every virtue under heaven, advertising for husbands. I suppose The Matrimonial News is a success; but, if so, certainly that is not a pleasant sign of the times. If people will buy it, the newsboys are not to be blamed for hawking it about. They take up what they think the public will buy. Last year they were retailing “The Devil,” price one penny, and this year they have taken up Town Talk, and an ingenious puzzle, called, “How to find out Lord Beaconsfield.” I wonder some of our publishers of real good illustrated literature do not try to push the sale of it in this way. I think it would pay. The public would then have the bane and the antidote side by side. Mr. Smithies might do much to increase the sale of The British Workman if he had it hawked about the streets.

As to the costermongers, their name is legion; and that they are a real service to the community must be evident to anyone who sees what their prices are and what are those of the fruiterers in the shops. They bring fruit within the reach of the community. In the summer-time we naturally require fruit. It is good for grown-up men and women, it is good for little children. In London they have no chance of tasting it were it not for the costermonger who floods the streets with all that is desirable in this respect; one day he has West India pineapples for sale; another bananas or shaddocks; another grapes, and apples, and pears, and apricots, and greengages, and plums. One day he deals in strawberries and another in cherries; and then, when the autumn comes on, what a tempting display he makes of filberts, and walnuts, and chestnuts! The amount of fruit thus poured in upon the market, much of which would have perished had it not been sold off at once, is really prodigious; and infinitely indebted to him are the poor clerks who lay in a pennyworth of apples or pears as they leave the office for the little ones at home. At one time I had a prejudice against these rough and noisy dealers; that prejudice has vanished since I have taken to dining in the City and indulging in “a penny lot” after dinner. What I admire is the way in which they do up strawberries, and cherries, and plums in little paper bags, which seem to contain as much again as they really do. Occasionally a man gets cheated, but that is when there is a woman in the case.

Oh, the flower-girls of the streets, what deceiving creatures they are! It is not that, like the flower-girls of Paris, they spoil a romance with pecuniary views, but it is that they cheat you through thick and thin, and sell you camellias made of turnips, and roses and azaleas equally fair to see and equally false and vain. Can I ever forget my friend Dr. R. and the little mishap that befell him when he assisted at a little dinner – at which I had the honour to be a guest – given by a Scotch poet to Scotch poets, and press-men, and barristers, in honour of the immortal Robert Burns? Crossing by the Mansion House, in the dim light of a winter evening, the doctor was accosted by a handsome lass, who offered to sell him a camellia. The lady pressed her suit, and the doctor fell. Granite in the discharge of duty, the doctor has a soft place in his heart, and that woman finds out at once. It is the old tale – the woman tempted and the doctor gave way. As he came proud and smiling into the drawing-room, the splendour of the doctor’s camellia arrested every eye. A near scrutiny was the result, and at length the doctor had to confess that he had been the victim of misplaced confidence in a London street flower-girl.

Then there are the men who deal in what they call pineapple sweetmeat; their barrows are adorned with paintings representing dimly the riches and luxuriance of the East.

Sunday brings with it its own peculiar dealers and trades. One of the sights of poor neighbourhoods is that of a large barrel, painted red, on wheels. At the top is a seat for the driver; at the other end there is a small shelf on which are placed a tray of water and a row of glasses. Some of these glasses look like porter with a head, and are retailed at prices varying from a penny to twopence. Outside, in great gilt letters, I read, “The Great Blood Purifier;” then we have another line, “Sarsaparilla, Hilder, King’s Road, Chelsea.” Another line is devoted to the announcement of “Dandelion and Sarsaparilla Pills.” Another intimates that sarsaparilla is the “Elixir of Life.” At the back, the door over the shelf contains a portrait of apparently a fine gay person, female of course, who has received signal benefit from the ardour with which she has swallowed the dandelion and sarsaparilla pills; and around her, as witnesses and approvers of such conduct on her part, shines a row of stars. The salesman is assisted by a small boy, who washes the glasses and places them on the rack, and in other ways makes himself generally useful. The salesman is by no means guilty of the trick of underrating his wares. Accordingly, he lifts up his voice like a trumpet as he deals out his pennyworths of the Elixir of Life. In some cases he is familiar, in others argumentative, in others bold as brass; and he gets a good many customers. The race of fools who rush in where angels fear to tread is by no means extinct. As I watched the poor skinny quadruped, groggy and footsore, I felt how hard it was that Sunday should shine no day of rest for him; but he had a good deal more go in him than you would have imagined from his appearance. All at once in the far distance appeared two respected members of the City police; the gentleman with the Elixir of Life closed his door, jumped up into his seat, pulled his small boy up after him, and was off like lightening. This Arab steed could run after him.

XII. – CITY NUISANCES

There are some people who are always grumbling. Hit them high or hit them low, you can’t please them. I don’t think I belong to that class. I like to look on the sunny side, remembering as the poet used to say when I was a good deal younger than I am now —

’Tis wiser, better far.

In the words of a still greater poet —

I take the goods the gods provide me.

And if the lovely Thais sits beside me, provided she does not lay a stress upon my head and purse (I am a married man, and the father of a family, and always hope to behave as such), I don’t object. He is not a wise man who quarrels with his bread and butter; he is a fool who expects to find no thorns amongst his roses. What I have gone through, dear madam – for it is to the ladies I appeal – what I have gone through, dear madam, is really astounding, at any rate to myself. How I have survived at all is “one of those things no fellah can understand.” Repeatedly ruin has stared me in the face. Repeatedly have my young affections run to waste. Repeatedly have I been crossed in love, and tramped up and down Cheapside and Fleet Street, a blighted being. At this very moment, if I may trust to my medical knowledge, I am now suffering from three distinct diseases, any one of which is mortal; and yet if you were to meet me in the street, or have a chat with me in a quiet café over a cigar, or sit next me at a City dinner, you would swear that I was one of those old fogies whom nothing troubles, without nerves or feelings, who vegetated rather than lived in the little tragi-comedy we call life. It may be that little personal details are uninteresting. I admit they are not matters of transcendent importance. You do not need master them if you are going up for your degree, or going in for a Civil Service examination. I mention these merely to show that I can put up with a good deal – that I am not easily put out of the way; and that I should be one of the last persons in the world to call anything a nuisance, unless it were really such. Under these circumstances, I may claim a right to be heard; and, when I state that I have no private aim, that, laying my hand upon my heart, my only motive is the public good, I believe that I shall not lift up my voice in vain.

Well, to waste no more words about it, of the nuisances of London it may be said their name is legion. In the first place, there are the streets. If you get out at Farringdon Street Station, and walk towards the Holborn Viaduct, it is of little use your having had your boots cleaned that morning – a little shower of rain, and the pavement is covered with mud. This ought not to be. Let us take another nuisance. All at once, as you walk along, you see a chimney vomiting forth clouds of smoke. This is a great nuisance, especially on a fine summer day, when the atmosphere of the City may be said to be almost clear; and this nuisance is the more unbearable as there is a law to put it down, which law is actually to a certain extent carried out. Let anyone take his stand on some spot where he can get a good view around him, and he will be sure to see some chimney, in spite of the law, darkening the sky and poisoning the air. Then there is the orange-peel, which has shortened many a valuable life, and quenched the light of many a home. Then there is the crowded traffic of the streets, which renders all locomotion impossible, and keeps you sitting, angry and fuming, in a cab, when it may be you are hurrying off to save a bill from being dishonoured, to keep an appointment with a rich aunt or uncle from whom you have great expectations, to have a last fond look at someone whom you dearly love. As to the disputed points as to the pavements, I have nothing to offer. To those who have to live and sleep in the City, asphalte, I should say, must be the greatest boon devised by the art of man. With asphalte you may talk pleasantly to a friend in Cheapside, you may get a reasonable night’s sleep in St. Paul’s Churchyard, or you may crack a joke without bursting a blood-vessel opposite the Mansion House itself. Be that as it may, as the question as to the comparative merits of asphalte, or granite, or wood will be settled by wiser heads than mine, I say no more; but what I complain of, and what is a nuisance to everyone, is the perpetual tinkering and repairing always going on in the streets, and the consequent blockade for a time of certain important thoroughfares. What with the drainage, and the water, and the gas pipes, and the telegraph wires, there is in most of the City ways as much bustle almost under the street as on it, and an ominous board with a notice from the Lord Mayor turns aside a tremendous traffic, and is a terrible nuisance as long as it lasts. Surely this waste of time and annoyance is, a great deal of it, unnecessary. All that is wanted is a little more contrivance and forethought. I was once discussing the subject with a leading City man and an M.P., as we were travelling together in a railway carriage on our way to a pleasant gathering of City people many miles away beyond the sound of Bow Bells. “Well,” said he, with a suggestive wink, “the thing is easily explained; the rule is, for the surveyor’s son to marry the contractor’s daughter, or something of that sort, and so between them they manage to play into each other’s hands, and always have done so.” Of course the M.P. was joking. No one could conceive it possible that our civic guardians, our common councilmen, our aldermen, our City officers, would allow themselves to be imposed on, and the public to be robbed in this way; but, alas! it is a pity that there should be ground for such a joke, that it should seem in any way to be founded on a fact. We are not so bad as we were, I admit, but that is no reason why we should not be better. Even now there are parts of London to which Gay’s lines are applicable when he writes:

Though expedition bids, yet never stray

 
Where no ranged post defends the rugged way;
Here laden carts with thundering waggons meet,
Wheels clash with wheels, and bar the narrow street,
The lashing whip resounds, the horses strain,
And blood in anguish bursts the swelling vein.
 

Something like this may be met with any day when the stones are greasy on Fish Street Hill, as the waggons turn up from Thames Street laden with the heavy merchandise of that quarter of the town. As I have quoted Gay, let me give another quotation from him. In one of his fables he writes:

 
How many saucy airs we meet
From Temple Bar to Aldgate Street.
Proud rogues who shared the South Sea prey,
And spring like mushrooms in a day,
They think it mean to condescend
To know a brother or a friend.
They blush to hear their mother’s name,
And by their pride expose their shame.
 

There are just such men as Gay wrote of to be met in our streets, and they are a nuisance, but the law of libel, in the interest of rogues who live by getting up bubble companies, is hard on the press, and I prefer to quote Gay to making original remarks of my own, remarks which may be true, which may be useful, but for which the proprietor of any paper that would publish them would have to pay heavily, at any rate in the way of costs.

Later in the day, one of the nuisances in the streets is “Those horrid boys.” They have come home from work, or school; they have had their tea, it is too early for them to go to bed, their fathers and mothers don’t know what to do with them at home, and so they loiter about the streets, and carry on their little games in them, much to their own satisfaction, but very much to the annoyance of everyone else. One of their favourite amusements is to run in groups, like so many wild Indians or a pack of wolves, howling and shrieking in a way very alarming. It is no use talking to them. It is no use putting the police on after them. The belated citizen, on his way home to the inevitable suburb, is frightened into fits ere he reaches his much-hoped-for haven of rest. And the small shopkeepers in the quiet streets – which they more especially affect – in terror rush to the door, believing either that there is a fire, or that Bedlam has broken loose, or that the Fenians have come. In some parts, as in Whitechapel, the wild girls of the streets are even worse.

There are many local nuisances in London; one of the chief of these is the conduct of the watermen about the landing-places near the Custom House. Females and foreigners, who have to take boats to the large steamers lying in the river, are frightfully plundered in this way. These men feel that they can rob you with impunity, and they abuse their privileges.

“Ah,” said one, after he had squeezed a five-shilling piece out of a poor foreigner for rowing him a few yards, “I’ll put up with it this time, but don’t do it again,” as if he, the boatman, and not the poor foreigner, had been the victim of a most atrocious fraud. Such fellows as these should be kept honest somehow. Who does not recollect that chapter in “Vilette,” in which Charlotte Brontë has recorded her waterside experiences? How she was landed by the coachman in the midst of a throng of watermen, who gathered around her like wolves; how she stepped at once into a boat, desiring to be taken to the Vivid; how she was fleeced by the waterman, as she paid an exorbitant sum, as the steward, a young man, was looking over the ship’s side, grinning a smile in anticipation of the row there would have been had she refused to pay. I had an experience somewhat similar myself. Perhaps I got off easily. In those dark wharves on that black river, here and there lit by a distant and dimly-burning lamp – at that midnight hour, when all good people are in bed, it is well that there is nothing going on worse than robbery in such a mild form. Had I been dropped overboard, I am sure few people would have known it; and I am not certain that I have no reason to be grateful to the lot amongst whom I found myself that they attempted nothing of the kind. Late at night there are many dark and lonely spots in the City suggestive of dark deeds. In some one walks with fear and trembling. Suspicious people have a knack of turning up in such dark places; and the police can’t be everywhere.

Then there is the water supply. It is all very well to have a spirited foreign policy abroad, but we do want a little common sense at home; and the sanitary state of the nation is of the first importance. You cannot blame a man that he refuses to drink bad water, and takes beer instead; and if anything be clearer than another, it is that the water supplied to the working man is bad; for whilst the rich man can have his cisterns regularly cleaned out, and his water filtered, the working man, as a rule, uses the water as he can get it, and suffers in consequence, both in person and in pocket. Under the influence of this state of things, it is not surprising to find mothers refusing to allow their children to drink water on the plea that it is bad for their health. Nor are these mothers to be blamed. It is a fact that in England and Wales alone upwards of eight hundred persons die every month from typhoid fever; a disease which is now believed to be caused almost entirely through drinking impure water. It is a fact that in London we have little pure water to drink, the companies are put to a great expense to filter their water, and yet every week we read such reports as the following from Dr. Frankland, the official to whom is entrusted the analysing of such matters: “The Thames water, delivered by the West Middlesex, Southwark, and Grand Junction Companies, was so much polluted by organic matter as to be quite unfit for dietetic purposes.” The other day I had to pay my water rates; imagine my disgust at having to do so when the Government inspector in the daily papers informed me that the water supplied by the company was totally unfit for dietetic purposes! The evil is no new one. It has been ventilated in every way; and yet in London, the wealthiest city in the world, we cannot get a cup of pure water. People can have it in Manchester and Glasgow and New York; but in London – which claims to be the capital of commerce, the seat of Legislation, the model city – we have poison in the cup – as science tells us that we cannot take with impunity the living organisms and fungoid growths with which London water more or less abounds. Lately the working men met at Exeter Hall to say that it was time to put a stop to this disgraceful state of things. As Cardinal Manning said, if they wanted to give a subject the slip, the proper way was to get a committee of inquiry, and if they wanted to bury it altogether the right thing to do was to have a Royal Commission. Action is what is wanted. There are ten Parliamentary boroughs, and it was proposed to hold public meetings in each of them, to form a central committee, and thus to create a public pressure to which Parliament would have to give way. As it is, as Sir Charles Dilke pointed out, we have eight water companies in London who have increased the cost of water all round without improving the quality. What is to be asked is, that a body of men be formed in London to have the care of the water supply; and, as Mr. J. Holms, M.P., pointed out, the sooner this is done the better, as every year the companies’ properties increase in value, and there will have to be paid to them additional compensation. The importance of the subject was, perhaps, most pointedly brought out by Dr. Lyon Playfair, who argued that, as in each average individual there were 98 lb. of water to 40 lb. of flesh and bone, he calculated that there were before him at that time as many as 25,000 gallons of water; and if that water was impure it must vitiate the blood and lower the health of all. We must have, he said, a good supply of water, pure at the source. We must have good receptacles for storing it, and we must have a constant system of supply.

What great events from little causes spring! Last year a gentleman was run over by a butcher’s cart through the careless driving of the butcher; and finding that accidents of that nature were of frequent occurrence and were increasing, he, with other gentlemen, obtained a return of the number of accidents from Sir Edmund Henderson, the chief of the Metropolitan Police, which showed that, in 1878, 124 persons were killed and 3,052 run over in the Metropolitan districts. But this is not all. The return only showed such accidents as came under the knowledge of the Metropolitan police. Accordingly application was made to the Registrar-General of Deaths, and from him it was ascertained that 237 persons were killed by vehicles and 3,399 run over during that year in and around London; and hence the formation of the society for the prevention of street accidents. Further researches made by the secretary among the London hospitals resulted in learning that run-over cases formed the most common class of accidents. The house surgeon of the principal hospital wrote that he computed there was an average of thirty “run-over” cases a week brought there for treatment, which, in that one hospital alone, would make 930 accidents attended to there yearly. The result of the society’s operations are satisfactory. At any rate this year the returns show one death less, and a falling off in run-over cases to the number of 517. Such decrease the society claims to be the result of its labours, on the ground that every year during the last ten years has showed an increase of six per cent. If this be so, it was well that the secretary was run over, especially as apparently he was not much hurt by the operation. Physically he is as fine a man as you would wish to see; and though undoubtedly the sensation at the time was not an agreeable one, yet, if it has led to the reduction of street accidents, how much cause have we to rejoice. It seems almost as if Mr. Buckle were right when he questions the beneficial effect of morality on national progress. At any rate, if I were a lover of paradox I would quote Mandeville to show how private vices become public benefits. A butcher boy recklessly ran over Mr. Keevil, and the result is a decrease of street accidents and mortality. Statues have been erected to men who have less benefited the public than that butcher boy.