The Long Song-Seller.
Songs and Song Literature.
“Old songs, old songs—what heaps I knew,
From ‘Chevy Chase’ to ‘Black-eyed Sue’;
From ‘Flow, thou regal, purple stream,’
To ‘Rousseau’s melancholy Dream!’
I loved the pensive ‘Cabin Boy,’
With earnest truth and real joy.
To greet ‘Tom Bowling’ and ‘Poor Jack’;
And, oh! ‘Will Watch,’ the ‘Smuggler’ bold,
My plighted troth thou’lt ever hold.”
Eliza Cook.
“Songs! Songs! Songs! Beautiful songs! Love songs! Newest songs! Old songs! Popular songs! Songs, Three Yards a Penny!” was a “standing dish” at the “Catnach Press,” and Catnach was the Leo X. of street publishers. And it is said that he at one time kept a fiddler on the premises, and that he used to sit receiving ballad-writers and singers, and judging of the merits of any production which was brought to him, by having it sung then and there to some popular air played by his own fiddler, and so that the ballad-singer should be enabled to start at once, not only with the new song, but also the tune to which it was adapted. His broad-sheets contain all sorts of songs and ballads, for he had a most catholic taste, and introduced the custom of taking from any writer, living or dead, whatever he fancied, and printing it side by side with the productions of his own clients.
He naturally had a bit of a taste for old ballads, music, and song writing; and in this respect he was far in advance of many of his contemporaries. To bring within the reach of all the standard and popular works of the day, had been the ambition of the elder Catnach; whilst the son was, nolens volens, incessant in his endeavours in trying to promulgate and advance, not the beauty, elegance, and harmony which pervades many of our national airs and ballad poetry, but very often the worst and vilest of each and every description—in other words, those most suitable for street-sale. His stock of songs was very like his customers, diversified. There were all kinds, to suit all classes. Love, sentimental, and comic songs were so interwoven as to form a trio of no ordinary amount of novelty. At ordinary times, when the Awfuls and Sensationals were flat, Jemmy did a large stroke of business in this line.
It is said that when the “Songs—Three-yards-a-penny”—first came out and had all the attractions of novelty, some men sold twelve or fourteen dozen on fine days during three or four of the summer months, so clearing between 6s. and 7s. a day, but on the average about 25s. a week profit. The “long songs,” however, have been quite superseded by the “Monster” and “Giant Penny Song Books.” Still there are a vast number of half-penny ballad-sheets worked off, and in proportion to their size, far more than the “Monsters” or “Giants.”