James Sharpe England,
The Flying Pieman.
The London pieman, as he takes his walks abroad, makes a practice of “looking in” at all the taverns on his way. Here his customers are found principally in the tap-room. “Here they are, all ’ot!” the pieman cries, as he walks in; “toss or buy! up and win ’em!” For be it known to all whom it may concern, the pieman is a gambler, both from inclination and principle, and will toss with his customers, either by the dallying shilly-shally process of “best five in nine,” or “best two in three,” or the desperate dash of “sudden death!” in which latter case the first toss decides the matter, viz:—a pie for a penny, or your penny gone for nothing, but he invariably declines the mysterious process of “odd man,” not being altogether free from suspicion on the subject of collusion between a couple of hungry, and not over honestly inclined customers.
Of the “stuff” which pie-dealers usually make their wares, much has been sung and said, and in some neighbourhoods the sight of an approaching pieman seems to get about an immediate desire for imitating the harmless cat and its “Mee-yow,” or the “Bow-wow-wow!” of the dog. And opprobrious epithets are hurled at the piemen as they parade the streets and alleys, and even kidnapping has been slyly hinted at, for the mother of Tom Cladpole, finding her son so determined to make a “Jurney to Lunnun”—least he should die a fool, tries to frighten the boy out of his fixed intention by informing him in pure Sussex dialect that:—
| “Besides, dey kidnap people dere, Ah! ketch um by supprize, An send um off where nub’dy knows, Or baak um up in pies.” |
It was ever a safe piece of comic business with Old Joey Grimaldi and his favourite pupil and successor, Tom Matthews, together with all other stage clowns following them, that a penny pieman and the bright shining block-tin can should be introduced into every Christmas pantomime. The pataloon is made to be tossing the safe game of—“heads I win, tails you lose” with the stage pieman, while the roguish clown is adroitly managing to swallow the whole of the stock of pies from the can, and which are made by the stage property-man for the occasion out of tissue-paper painted in water-colours. Then follows the wry faces and spasmodic stomach-pinchings of the clown, accompanied with the echoing cries of “Mee, mee, mow, woo!” while the pantaloon takes from the pieman’s can some seven or eight fine young kittens and the old tabby-cat—also the handy-work of the stage property-man. The whole scene usually finishes by the pantaloon pointedly sympathizing with the now woebegone clown to the tune of “Serve ye right—Greedy! greedy!! greedy!!!” when enter six supernumeraries dressed as large and motherly-looking tabbies with aprons and bibs, and bedizened with white linen night caps of the pattern known in private life to middle-aged married men only. The clown and pantaloon then work together in hunting down, and then handing over the poor pieman to the tender mercies and talons of the stage-cats, who finish up the “business” of the scene by popping the pieman into what looks like a copper of boiling water.
Mr. Samuel Weller,—otherwise, Veller, that great modern authority on Ye Manners and Ye Customs, of Ye English in general, and of London Life wery Particular:—for “Mr. Weller’s knowldge of London was extensive and peculiar”—has left us his own ideas of the baked “mysteries” of the pieman’s ware:—
“Weal pie,” said Mr. Weller, soliloquising, as he arranged the eatables on the grass. “Werry good thing is a weal pie, when you know the lady as made it, and is quite sure it an’t kittens; and arter all, though, where’s the odds, when they’re so like weal that the wery piemen themselves don’t know the difference?”
“Don’t they, Sam?” said Mr. Pickwick.
“Not they, sir,” replied Mr. Weller, touching his hat. “I lodged in the same house vith a pieman once, sir, and a wery nice man he was—reg’lar clever chap too—made pies out o’ anything, he could. ‘What a number o’ cats you keep, Mr. Brooks,’ says I, when I’d got intimate with him. ‘Ah,’ says he, ‘I do—a good many,’ says he. ‘You must be wery fond o’ cats,’ says I. ‘Other people is,’ says he, a winkin’ at me; ‘they an’t in season till the winter though,’ says he. ‘Not in season!’ says I. ‘No,’ says he, ‘fruits is in, cats is out.’ ‘Why, what do you mean?’ says I. ‘Mean?’ says he. ‘That I’ll never be a party to the combination o’ the butchers, to keep up the prices o’ meat,’ says he. ‘Mr. Weller,’ says he, a squeezing my hand wery hard, and vispering in my ear—‘don’t mention this here agin—but it’s the seasonin’ that does it. They’re all made o’ them noble animals,’ says he, a pointin’ to a wery nice little tabby kitten, ‘and I seasons ’em for beef-steaks, weal, or kidney, ’cordin to demand. And more than that,’ says he, ‘I can make a weal a beef-steak, or a beef-steak a kidney, or any one on ’em a mutton, at a minute’s notice, just as the market changes, and appetites wary!”