THE LONDON COSTERMONGER.
“Here Pertaters! Kearots and Turnups! Fine Brockello-o-o!”
[From a Daguerreotype by Beard.]
The other amusements of this class of the community are the theatre and the penny concert, and their visits are almost entirely confined to the galleries of the theatres on the Surrey-side—the Surrey, the Victoria, the Bower Saloon, and (but less frequently) Astley’s. Three times a week is an average attendance at theatres and dances by the more prosperous costermongers. The most intelligent man I met with among them gave me the following account. He classes himself with the many, but his tastes are really those of an educated man:—“Love and murder suits us best, sir; but within these few years I think there’s a great deal more liking for deep tragedies among us. They set men a thinking; but then we all consider them too long. Of Hamlet we can make neither end nor side; and nine out of ten of us—ay, far more than that—would like it to be confined to the ghost scenes, and the funeral, and the killing off at the last. Macbeth would be better liked, if it was only the witches and the fighting. The high words in a tragedy we call jaw-breakers, and say we can’t tumble to that barrikin. We always stay to the last, because we’ve paid for it all, or very few costers would see a tragedy out if any money was returned to those leaving after two or three acts. We are fond of music. Nigger music was very much liked among us, but it’s stale now. Flash songs are liked, and sailors’ songs, and patriotic songs. Most costers—indeed, I can’t call to mind an exception—listen very quietly to songs that they don’t in the least understand. We have among us translations of the patriotic French songs. ‘Mourir pour la patrie’ is very popular, and so is the ‘Marseillaise.’ A song to take hold of us must have a good chorus.” “They like something, sir, that is worth hearing,” said one of my informants, “such as the ‘Soldier’s Dream,’ ‘The Dream of Napoleon,’ or ‘I ’ad a dream—an ’appy dream.’”
The songs in ridicule of Marshal Haynau, and in laudation of Barclay and Perkin’s draymen, were and are very popular among the costers; but none are more popular than Paul Jones—“A noble commander, Paul Jones was his name.” Among them the chorus of “Britons never shall be slaves,” is often rendered “Britons always shall be slaves.” The most popular of all songs with the class, however, is “Duck-legged Dick,” of which I give the first verse.
“Duck-legged Dick had a donkey,
And his lush loved much for to swill,
One day he got rather lumpy,
And got sent seven days to the mill.