Of the Street-sellers of Manuscript and other Music.
This trade used to be more extensively carried on in the streets than it is at present. The reasons I heard assigned for the decadence were the greater cheapness of musical productions generally, and the present fondness for lithographic embellishments to every polka, waltz, quadrille, ballad, &c., &c. “People now hates, I do believe, a bare music-sheet,” one street-seller remarked.
The street manuscript-music trade was, certainly, and principally, piratical. An air became popular perhaps on a sudden, as it was pointed out to me, in the case, of “Jump, Jim Crow.” At a musical publisher’s, such an affair in the first bloom of its popularity, would have been charged from 2s. to 3s. 6d., twenty-five years ago, and the street-seller at that time, often also a book-stall keeper, would employ, or buy of those who offered them for sale, and who copied them for the purpose, a manuscript of the demanded music, which he could sell cheap in comparison.
A man who, until the charges of which I have before spoken, kept a second-hand book-stall, in a sort of arched passage in the New Cut, Lambeth, sold manuscript-music, and was often “sadly bothered,” he said, at one time by the musical propensities of a man who looked like a journeyman tailor. This man, whenever he had laid out a trifle at the book-stall, looked over the music, and often pulled a small flute from his pocket, and began to play a few bars from one of the manuscripts, and this he continued doing, to the displeasure of the stall-keeper, until a crowd began to assemble, thinking, perhaps, that the flute-player was a street-musician; he was then obliged to desist. Of the kind of music he sold, or of its mode of production, this street-bookseller knew nothing. He purchased it of a man who carried it to his stall, and as he found it sell tolerably well, he gave himself no further trouble concerning it. The supplier of the manuscript pencilled on each sheet the price it was to be offered at, allowing the stall-keeper from 50 to 150 per cent. profit, if the price marked was obtained. “I haven’t seen anything of him, sir,” said the street-bookseller, “for a long while. I dare say he was some poor musicianer, or singer, or a reduced gentleman, perhaps, for he always came after dusk, or else on bad dark days.”
Although but partially connected with street-art, I may mention as a sample of the music sometimes offered in street-sale, that a book-stall keeper, three weeks ago showed me a pile of music which he had purchased from a “waste collector,” about eight months before, at 2½d. the pound. Among this was some MS. music, which I specify below, and which the book-stall keeper was confident, on very insufficient grounds, I think, had been done for street-sale.
The music had, as regards three-fourths of it, evidently been bound, and had been torn from the boards of the book, as only the paper portion is purchased for “waste.” Some, however, were loose sheets, which had evidently never been subjected to the process of stitching. I now cite some of the titles of this street-sale: “Le Petit Tambour. Sujet d’un Grand Rondeau pour le Piano Forte. Composé par L. Zerbini,” (MS.) “Di Tanti Palpiti. The Celebrated Cavatina, by Rossini, &c.” “Twenty Short Lessons, or Preludes in the most Convenient Keys for the Harp. Composed and Respectfully Dedicated to Lady Ann Collins. By John Baptist Meyer. Price 5s.” “An Cota Caol (given in the ancient Irish character.) The Slender Coat,” (MS.) “Cailin beog chruite na mbo (also in Irish). The Pretty Girl Milking the Cow,” (MS.)
There are now no persons regularly employed in preparing MS. music for the streets. But occasionally a person skilled in music writing will, when he or she, I was told, had nothing better in hand, do a little for the street sale, disposing of the MSS. to any street-stationer or bookseller. If four persons are this way employed, receiving 4s. a week each, the year through—which I am assured is the extent—we find upwards of 40l. thus earned, and about twice that sum taken by the street retailers.
OF THE CAPITAL AND INCOME OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF STATIONERY, LITERATURE, AND THE FINE ARTS.
I now proceed to give a summary of the capital, and income of the above classes. I will first however, endeavour to give a summary of the number of individuals belonging to the class.
This appears to be made up (so far as I am able to ascertain) of the following items:—120 sellers of stationery; 20 sellers of pocket-books and diaries; 50 sellers of almanacks and memorandum-books; 12 sellers of account-books; 31 card-sellers; 6 secret papers-sellers; 250 sellers of songs and ballads; 90 running patterers; 20 standing patterers; 8 sellers of “cocks” (principally elopements); 15 selling conundrums, “comic exhibitions,” &c.; 200 selling play-bills and books for the play; 40 back-number-sellers; 4 waste paper-sellers at Billingsgate; 40 sellers of tracts and pamphlets; 12 newsvenders, &c., at steam-boat piers; 2 book auctioneers; 70 book-stall keepers and book barrow-men; 16 sellers of guide-books; 30 sellers of song-books and children’s books; 40 dealers in pictures in frames; 30 vendors of engravings in umbrellas, and 4 sellers of manuscript music—making altogether a total of 1,110. Many of the above street-trades are, however, only temporary. As, for instance, the street-sale of playing-cards, continues only fourteen days in the year; pocket-books and diaries, four weeks; others, again, are not regularly pursued from day to day, as the sale of prints and engravings in umbrellas, which affords employment for but twelve weeks out of the fifty-two, and conundrums for two months. One trade, however, (namely, that of “Comic Exhibition Papers,” gelatine and engraved cards of the Exhibition) is entirely now in the streets. In the broad-sheet trade, again, the “running patterers” work what are called “cocks,” when there are no incidents happening to incite the public mind. Hence, making due allowances for such variations, we may fairly assume that the street-sellers belonging to this class number at least 1,000. The following statistics will show the whole amount of capital, and the gross income of this branch of street traffic.