MANNERS OF A LONDON WATERMAN, AND HIS FARE, A HUNDRED YEARS AGO.
What I have [said last] [of the Manners of a spruce London Mercer,[184]] makes me think on another way of inviting customers, the most distant in the world from what I have been speaking of, I mean that which is practised by the watermen, especially on those whom by their mien and garb they know to be peasants. It is not unpleasant to see half a dozen people surround a man they never saw in their lives before, and two of them that can get the nearest, clapping each an arm over his neck, hug him in as loving and familiar a manner as if he were their brother newly come home from an East India voyage; a third lays hold of his hand, another of his sleeve, his coat, the buttons of it, or any thing he can come at, whilst a fifth or a sixth, who has scampered twice round him already without being able to get at him, plants himself directly before the man in hold, and within three inches of his nose, contradicting his rivals with an open-mouthed cry, shows him a dreadful set of large teeth, and a small remainder of chewed bread and cheese, which the countryman’s arrival had hindered from being swallowed. At all this no offence is taken, and the peasant justly thinks they are making much of him; therefore far from opposing them he patiently suffers himself to be pushed or pulled which way the strength that surrounds him shall direct. He has not the delicacy to find fault with a man’s breath, who has just blown out his pipe, or a greasy head of hair that is rubbing against his chaps: dirt and sweat he has been used to from his cradle, and it is no disturbance to him to hear half a score people, some of them at his ear, and the furthest not five feet from him, bawl out as if he was a hundred yards off: he is conscious that he makes no less noise when he is merry himself, and is secretly pleased with their boisterous usages. The hawling and pulling him about he construes in the way it is intended; it is a courtship he can feel and understand: he can’t help wishing them well for the esteem they seem to have for him: he loves to be taken notice of, and admires the Londoners for being so pressing in their offers of service to him, for the value of threepence or less; whereas in the country, at the shop he uses, he can have nothing but he must first tell them what he wants, and, though he lays out three or four shillings at a time, has hardly a word spoke to him unless it be in answer to a question himself is forced to ask first. This alacrity in his behalf moves his gratitude, and unwilling to disoblige any, from his heart he knows not whom to choose. I have seen a man think all this, or something like it, as plainly as I could see the nose on his face; and at the same time move along very contentedly under a load of watermen, and with a smiling countenance carry seven or eight stone more than his own weight, to the water side.
Fable of the Bees: 1725.
[184] See Table Book, [p. 567].