A History of the Cries of London Part 2

Chelsea was a village; Pimlico a country hamlet, where pudding-pies were eaten by strolling Londoners on a Sunday. Westminster was a city standing by itself, with its Royal Palace, its Great Hall for banquets and the trial of traitors, its sanctuary, its beautiful Abbey, and its famous Almonry. St. James's Park was walled with red brick, and contained the palace Henry VIII. had built for Anne Boleyn. Whitehall Palace was in its glory. The Strand, along which gay ladies drove in their 'crab-sh.e.l.l coaches,' had been recently paved, and its streams of water diverted. A few houses had made their appearance on the north side of the Strand, between the timber house and its narrow gateway, which then formed Temple Bar, the boundary between London and Westminster, and the church of St.

Mary-le-Strand. The southern side was adorned with n.o.ble episcopal residences, and with handsome turreted mansions, extending to the river, rich with trees and gardens, and relieved by flashes of sparkling water.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SMITH'S ARMS, BANKSIDE.[2]]

"To the south, Lambeth, with its palace and church, and Faux Hall, were conspicuous objects. Here were pretty gardens and rustic cottages. The village of Southwark, with its prisons, its public theatres, its palace, and its old Tabard Inn, had many charms. It was the abode of Shakespeare himself, as he resided in a good house in the Liberty of the Clink, and was a.s.sessed in the weekly payment of 6d., no one but Henslowe, Alleyn, Collins, and Barrett, being so highly rated. That part of the Borough of Southwark known as Bankside was not only famous in Shakespeare's time for its Theatres, but also as the acknowledged retreat of the warmest of the _demi-monde_!

"'And here, as in a tavern, or a stew, He and his wild a.s.sociates spend their hours.'"

--_Ben Jonson._

"We fear our best zeal for the drama will not authorise us to deny that Covent-garden and Drury-lane have succeeded to the _Bank-side_ in every species of fame!

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GLOBE THEATRE.]

"We must not forget the river Thames. It was one of the sights of the time. Its waters were pure and bright, full of delicate salmon, and flecked by snowy swans, 'white as Lemster wool.' Wherries plied freely on its surface. Tall masts cl.u.s.tered by its banks. Silken-covered tiltboats, freighted with ruffed and feathered ladies and gentlemen, swept by, the watermen every now and then breaking the plash of the waves against their boats by singing out, in their ba.s.s voices, 'Heave and how, rumbelow.' At night, the scene reminded the travelled man of Venice. All the mansions by the water-side had river-terraces and steps, and each one its own tiltboat, barge, and watermen. Down these steps, lighted by torches and lanterns, stepped dainty ladies, in their coloured shoes, with masks on their faces, and gay gallants, in laced cloaks, by their side, bound for Richmond or Westminster, to mask and revel. Noisy parties of wits and Paul's men crossed to Bankside to see _Romeo and Juliet_, or _Hamlet the Dane_, or else 'The most excellent historie of the _Merchant of Venice_, with the extreme crueltie of _Shylocke_, the Jewe, towards the sayd merchant, in cutting a just pound of his flesh, and obtaining of Portia by the choyse of three caskets, as it hath diverse times been acted by the Lord Chamberlain, his servants. Written by William Shakespeare.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: BAYNARD'S CASTLE.]

"From Westminster to London Bridge was a favourite trip. There was plenty to see. The fine Strand-side houses were always pointed out--Northumberland House, York House, Baynard's Castle, the scene of the secret interview between the Duke of York and the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick, was singled out, between Paul's Wharf and Puddle Dock. Next to the Temple, and between it and Whitefriars, was the region known as Alsatia. Here safe from every doc.u.ment but the writ of the Lord Chief Justice and the Lords of the Privy Council, in dark dwellings, with subterranean pa.s.sages, narrow streets, and trap-doors that led to the Thames, dwelt all the rascaldom of the time--men who had been 'horned' or outlawed, bankrupts, coiners, thieves, cheaters at dice and cards, duellists, homicides, and foreign bravoes, ready to do any desperate deed.

At night the contents of this kingdom of villany were sprayed out over London, to the bewilderment of good-natured Dogberries, and country gentlemen, making their first visit to town.

"Still further down the river was the famous London Bridge. It consisted of twenty arches; its roadway was sixty feet from the river; and the length of the bridge from end to end was 926 feet.

"It was one of the wonders that strangers never ceased to admire. Its many shops were occupied by pin nacres, just beginning to feel the compet.i.tion with the Netherland pin-makers, and the tower at its Southwark end was adorned with three hundred heads, stuck on poles, like gigantic pins, memorials of treachery and heresy.

"The roar of the river through the arches was almost deafening. 'The noise at London Bridge is nothing near her,' says one of the characters in Beaumont and Fletcher's _Woman's Prize_. Shakespeare, Ben Jonson & Co., must have crossed the bridge many a time on their visits to the City, to 'gather humours of men daily,' as Aubrey quaintly expresses it."

The name of Ben Jonson reminds us that in _The Silent Woman_,--one of the most popular of his Comedies,--we have presented to us a more vivid picture than can elsewhere be found of the characteristic noises, and street-cries of London more than two centuries ago. It is easy to form to ourselves a general idea of the hum and buzz of the bees and drones of this mighty hive, under a state of manners essentially different from our own; but it is not so easy to attain a lively conception of the particular sounds that once went to make up this great discord, and so to compare them in their resemblances and their differences with the roar which the great Babel _now_ "sends through all her gates." We propose, therefore, to put before our readers this pa.s.sage of Jonson's comedy; and then, cla.s.sifying what he describes, ill.u.s.trate our fine old dramatic painter of manners by references to other writers, and by the results of our own observation.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The princ.i.p.al character of Jonson's _Silent Woman_ is founded upon a sketch by a Greek writer of the fourth century, Libanius. Jonson designates this character by the name of "Morose;" and his peculiarity is that he can bear no kind of noise, not even that of ordinary talk. The plot turns upon this affectation; for having been entrapped into a marriage with the "Silent Woman," she and her friends a.s.sail him with tongues the most obstreperous, and clamours the most uproarious, until, to be relieved of this nuisance, he comes to terms with his nephew for a portion of his fortune and is relieved of the "Silent Woman," who is in reality a boy in disguise. We extract the dialogue of the whole scene; the speakers being "Truewitt," "Clerimont," and a "Page":--

"_True._ I met that stiff piece of formality, Master Morose, his uncle, yesterday, with a huge turban of night-caps on his head, buckled over his ears.

"_Cler._ O! that's his custom when he walks abroad. He can endure no noise, man.

"_True._ So I have heard. But is the disease so ridiculous in him as it is made? They say he has been upon divers treaties with the fish-wives and orange-women; and articles propounded between them: marry, the chimney-sweepes will not be drawn in.

"_Cler._ No, nor the broom-men: they stand out stiffly. He cannot endure a costard-monger; he swoons if he hear one.

"_True._ Methinks a smith should be ominous.

"_Cler._ Or any hammer-man. A brasier is not suffer'd to dwell in the parish, nor an armourer. He would have hang'd a pewterer's 'prentice once upon a Shrove-Tuesday's riot, for being of that trade, when the rest were quit.

"_True._ A trumpet should fright him terribly, or the hautboys.

"_Cler._ Out of his senses. The waits of the City have a pension of him not to come near that ward. This youth practised on him one night like the bellman, and never left till he had brought him down to the door with a long sword; and there left him flouris.h.i.+ng with the air.

"_Page._ Why, sir, he hath chosen a street to lie in, so narrow at both ends that it will receive no coaches, nor carts, nor any of these common noises; and therefore we that love him devise to bring him in such as we may now and then, for his exercise, to breathe him. He would grow resty else in his cage; his virtue would rust without action. I entreated a bearward, one day, to come down with the dogs of some four parishes that way, and I thank him he did; and cried his games under Master Morose's window; till he was sent crying away, with his head made a most bleeding spectacle to the mult.i.tude. And, another time, a fencer marching to his prize had his drum most tragically run through, for taking that street in his way at my request.

"_True._ A good wag! How does he for the bells?

"_Cler._ O! In the queen's time he was wont to go out of town every Sat.u.r.day at ten o'clock, or on holiday eves. But now, by reason of the sickness, the perpetuity of ringing has made him devise a room with double walls and treble ceilings; the windows close shut and caulk'd; and there he lives by candlelight."

The first cla.s.s of noises, then, against which "Morose" protected his ears by "a huge turban of night-caps," is that of the ancient and far-famed LONDON CRIES. We have here the very loudest of them--fish-wives, orange-women, chimney-sweepers, broom-men, costard-mongers. But we might almost say that there were _hundreds_ of other cries; and therefore, reserving to ourselves some opportunity for a special enumeration of a few of the more remarkable of these cries, we shall now slightly group them, as they present themselves to our notice during successive generations.

We shall not readily a.s.sociate any very agreeable sounds with the voices of the "fish-wives." The one who cried "_Mackerel_" in Lydgate's day had probably no such explanatory cry as the "_Mackerel alive, alive ho!_" of modern times. In the seventeenth century the cry was "_New Mackerel_." And in the same way there was:--

[Ill.u.s.tration: NEW WALL-FLEET OYSTERS.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: NEW FLOUNDERS.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: NEW WHITING.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: NEW SALMON.]

The freshness of fish must have been a considerable recommendation in those days of tardy intercourse. But quant.i.ty was also to be taken into the account, and so we find the cries of "_Buy my dish of Great Smelts_;"

"_Great Plaice_;" "_Great Mussels_." Such are the fish-cries enumerated in Lauron's and various other collections of "London Cries."

[Ill.u.s.tration: BUY GREAT SMELTS.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BUY GREAT PLAICE.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BUY GREAT MUSSELS.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BUY GREAT EELS.]

But, we are forgetting "Morose," and his "turban of night-caps." Was Hogarth familiar with the old noise-hater when he conceived his own:--

[Ill.u.s.tration: ENRAGED MUSICIAN.]

In this extraordinary gathering together of the producers of the most discordant sounds, we have a representation which may fairly match the dramatist's description of street noises. Here we have the milk-maid's scream, the mackerel seller's shout, the sweep upon the house top,--to match the fish-wives and orange-women, the broom-men and costard-mongers.

The smith, who was "ominous," had no longer his forge in the busy streets of Hogarth's time; the armourer was obsolete: but Hogarth can rival their noises with the pavior's hammer, the sow-gelder's horn, and the knife-grinder's wheel. The waits of the city had a pension not to come near "Morose's" ward; but it was out of the power of the "Enraged Musician" to avert the terrible discord of the blind hautboy-player. The bellman who frightened the sleepers at midnight, was extinct; but modern London had acquired the dustman's bell. The bear-ward no longer came down the street with the dogs of four parishes, nor did the fencer march with a drum to his prize; but there was the ballad-singer, with her squalling child, roaring worse than bear or dog; and the drum of the little boy playing at soldiers was a more abiding nuisance than the fencer. "Morose"

and the "Enraged Musician" had each the church bells to fill up the measure of discord.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The fish-wives are no longer seen in our great city of London thoroughfares. In Tottenham Court-road, Hoxton, Sh.o.r.editch, Kingsland, Whitechapel, Hackney-road, and many other suburban districts, which still retain the character of a street-market, they stand in long rows as the evening draws in, with paper-lanterns stuck in their baskets on dark nights; and there they vociferate as loudly as in the olden time.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The "costard-monger" whom Morose dreaded, still lives amongst us, and is still noisy. He bawls so loud even to this day, that he puts his hand behind his ear to mitigate the sensation which he inflicts upon his own tympanum. He was originally an apple-seller, whence his name; and, from the mention of him in the old dramatists, he appears to have been frequently an Irishman. In Jonson's "Bartholomew Fair," he cries "_pears_." Ford makes him cry "_pippins_." He is a quarrelsome fellow, according to Beaumont and Fletcher:--

"And then he'll rail like a rude costermonger, That schoolboys had cozened of his apple, As loud and senseless."

The costermonger is now a travelling shopkeeper. We encounter him not in Cornhill, or Holborn, or the Strand: in the neighbourhood of the great markets and well-stored shops he travels not. But his voice is heard in some silent streets stretching into the suburbs; and there, with his donkey and hampers stands at the door, as the servant-maid cheapens a bundle of cauliflowers. He has monopolized all the trades that were anciently represented by such cries as "_Buy my artichokes, mistress_;"

"_Ripe cowc.u.mbers_;" "_White onions, white St. Thomas' onions_;" "_White radish_;" "_Ripe young beans_;" "_Any baking pears_;" "_Ripe sparrowgra.s.s_." He would be indignant to encounter such petty chapmen interfering with his wholesale operations. He would rail against them as the city shopkeepers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries railed against itinerant traders of every denomination. In the days of Elizabeth, they declare by act of common council, that in ancient times the open streets and lanes of the city have been used, and ought to be used, as the common highway only, and not for hucksters, pedlars, and hagglers, to stand or sit to sell their wares in, and to pa.s.s from street to street hawking and offering their wares. In the seventh year of Charles I. the same authorities denounce the oyster-wives, herb-wives, tripe-wives, and the like, as "unruly people;" and they charge them somewhat unjustly, as it must appear, with "framing to themselves a way whereby to live a more easy life than by labour."

"How busy is the man the world calls idle!"