It does seem indeed incredible that one house should expend upon the mere advertising of quack pills and ointment a sum equal to the entire revenue of many a German principality. Can it possibly pay? asks the astonished reader. Let the increasing avenue of assistants, to be seen “from morn to dewy eve” wrapping up pills in the “professor’s” establishment within the shadow of Temple Bar, supply the answer.[2] Vastly as the press of this country has expanded of late years, it has proved insufficient to contain within its limits the rapid current of puffing which has set in. Advertisements now overflow into our omnibuses, our cabs, our railway carriages, and our steamboats. Madame Tussaud pays 90l. monthly to the Atlas Omnibus Company alone for the privilege of posting her bills in their vehicles. They are inked upon the pavement, painted in large letters under the arches of the bridges and on every dead wall. Lloyd’s weekly newspaper is stamped on the “full Guelph cheek” of the plebeian penny; the emissaries of Moses shower perfect libraries through the windows of the carriages which ply from the railway stations; and, as a crowning fact, Thackeray, in his “Journey from Cornhill to Cairo,” tells us that Warren’s blacking is painted up over an obliterated inscription to Psammetichus on Pompey’s Pillar!
Having shown the reader the slow growth of the advertising column; having climbed, like “Jack in the Bean-stalk,” from its humble root in the days of the Commonwealth up its still increasing stem in the succeeding hundred years, we now come upon its worthy flower in the shape of the sixteen-paged Times of the present day. Spread open its broad leaves, and behold the greatest marvel of the age—the microcosm in type. Who can recognize in its ample surface, which reflects like some camera-obscura the wants, the wishes, the hopes, and the fears of this great city, the news-book of the Cromwellian times with its leash of advertisements? Herein we see how fierce is the struggle of two millions and a half of people for dear existence. Every advertisement writhes and fights with its neighbour, and every phase of society, brilliant, broken, or dim, is reflected in this battle-field of life. Let us tell off the rank and file of this army of announcements. On the 24th of May, 1855, the Times, in its usual sixteen-paged paper, contained the incredible number of 2,575 advertisements. Amazing as this total appears, we only arrive at its full significance by analyzing the vast array. Then, indeed, we feel what an important power is the great British publie. Of old the antechambers of the noble were thronged with poets, artists, publishers, tradesmen, and dependants of all kinds, seeking for the droppings of their favour; but what lordly antechamber ever presented such a crew of place-hunters, servitors, literary and scientific men, schemers, and shopkeepers as daily offer their services to the humblest individual who can spare a penny for an hour’s perusal of the Times? Let us take this paper of the 24th of May and examine the crowd of persons and things which cry aloud through its pages, each attempting to make its voice heard above the other. Here we see a noble fleet of ships, 129 in number, chartered for the regions of gold, for America, for India, for Africa—for every port, in fact, where cupidity, duty, or affection holds out an attraction for the British race. Another column wearies the eye with its interminable line of “Wants.” Here in long and anxious row we see the modern “mop” or statute-fair for hiring; 429 servants of all grades, from the genteel lady’s-maid or the “thorough cook,” who will only condescend to accept service where two footmen are kept, to the humble scullery-maid, on that day passed their claims before us for inspection. Another column is noisy with auctioneers; 136 of whom notify their intention of poising their impatient hammers when we have favoured them with our company. Here we see a crowd of booksellers offering, hot from the press, 195 new volumes, many of which, we are assured by the appended critique, “should find a place in every gentleman’s library.” There are 378 houses, shops, and establishments presented to us to select from; and 144 lodging-house keepers, “ladies having houses larger than they require,” and medical men who own “retreats,” press forward with genteel offers of board and lodging. Education pursues her claims by the hands of no less than 144 preceptors, male and female; whilst the hair, the skin, the feet, the teeth, and the inward man are offered the kind attention of thirty-six professors who possess infallible remedies for all the ills that flesh is heir to. The remainder is made up of the miscellaneous cries of tradesmen, whose voices rise from every portion of the page like the shouting of chapmen from a fair. In the midst of all this struggle for gold, place, and position, which goes on every day in this wonderful publication, outcries from the very depths of the heart, passionate tears, bursts of indignation, and heartrending appeals, startle one as they issue from the second column of its front page. Here the father sees his prodigal son afar off and falls upon his neck; the heartbroken mother implores her runaway child to return; or the abandoned wife searches through the world for her mate. It is strange how, when the eye is saturated with the thirst after mammon exhibited by the rest of the broadsheet, the heart becomes touched by these plaintive but searching utterances, a few of which we reproduce:—
The one-winged Dove must die unless the Crane returns to be a shield against her enemies.—Times of 1850.
Or here is another which moves still more:—
B. J. C.—How more than cruel not to write. Take pity on such patient silence.—Times, 1850.
The most ghastly advertisement which perhaps ever appeared in a public journal we copy from this paper of the year 1845. It is either a threat to inter a wrong body in the “family vault,” or an address to a dead man:—
To The Party Who Posts His Letters In Prince’s Street, Leicester Square.—Your family is now in a state of excitement unbearable. Your attention is called to an advertisement in Wednesday’s Morning Advertiser, headed, “A body found drowned at Deptford.” After your avowal to your friend as to what you might do, he has been to see the decomposed remains, accompanied by others. The features are gone; but there are marks on the arm; so that, unless they hear from you to-day, it will satisfy them that the remains are those of their misguided relative, and steps will be directly taken to place them in the family vault, as they cannot bear the idea of a pauper’s funeral.
Sometimes we see the flashing eyes of indignation gleaming through the very words. The following is evidently written to an old lover with all the burning passion of a woman deceived:—
It is enough; one man alone upon earth have I found noble. Away from me for ever! Cold heart and mean spirit, you have lost what millions—empires—could not have bought, but which a single word truthfully and nobly spoken might have made your own to all eternity. Yet you are forgiven: depart in peace: I rest in my Redeemer.—Times, Sept. 1st, 1852.
Sometimes it is more confiding love “wafting a sigh from Indus to the pole,” or, finger on lip, speaking secretly, and as he thinks securely, through the medium of cipher advertisements to the loved one. Sweet delusion! There are wicked philosophers abroad who unstring the bow of harder toil by picking your inmost thoughts! Lovers beware! intriguers tremble! Many a wicked passage of illicit love, many a joy fearfully snatched, which passed through the second column of the first page of the Times as a string of disjointed letters, unintelligible as the correspondents thought, to all the world but themselves, have we seen fairly copied out in plain if not always good English in the commonplace books of these cunning men at cryptographs. Here, for instance, we give an episode from the life of “Flo,” which appeared in the Times of 1853-54, as a proof:—