London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 1

by Henry Mayhew

The same man once sold to a gentleman, he told me, and he believed it was somewhere about twenty-five years ago, if not more, a Spanish or Portuguese work, but what it was he did not know. It was marked 1s. 9d., being a good-sized book, but the stall-keeper was tired of having had it a long time, so that he gladly would have taken 9d. for it. The gentleman in question handed him half-a-crown, and, as he had not the change, the purchaser said: “O, don’t mind; it’s worth far more than half-a-crown to me.” When this liberal customer had walked away, a gentleman who had been standing at the stall all the time, and who was an occasional buyer, said, “Do you know him?” and, on receiving an answer in the negative, he rejoined, “That’s Southey.”

Another stall-keeper told me that his customers—some of whom he supplied with any periodical in the same way as a newsvendor—had now and then asked him, especially “the ladies of the family,” who glanced, when they passed, at the contents of his stall, why he had not newer works? “I tell them,” said the stall-keeper, “that they haven’t become cheap enough yet for the streets, but that they would come to it in time.” After some conversation about his trade, which only confirmed the statements I have given, he said laughingly, “Yes, indeed, you all come to such as me at last. Why, last night I heard a song about all the stateliest buildings coming to the ivy, and I thought, as I listened, it was the same with authors. The best that the best can do is the book-stall’s food at last. And no harm, for he’s in the best of company, with Shakespeare, and all the great people.”

Calculating 15s. weekly as the average earnings of the street book-stall keepers—for further information induces me to think that the street bookseller who earned 18s. a week regularly, cleared it by having a “tidy pitch”—and reckoning that, to clear such an amount, the bookseller takes, at least, 1l. 11s. 6d. weekly, we find 5,460 guineas yearly expended in the purchase of books at the purely street-stalls, independently of what is laid out at the open-air stalls connected with book-shops.

Of Street Book-auctioneers.

The sale of books by auction, in the streets, is now inconsiderable and irregular. The “auctioning” of books—I mean of new books—some of which were published principally with a view to their sale by auction, was, thirty to forty years ago, systematic and extensive. It was not strictly a street-sale. The auctioneer offered his books to the public, nine cases out of ten, in town, in an apartment (now commonly known as a “mock-auction room”), which was so far a portion of the street that access was rendered easier by the removal of the door and window of any room on a ground-floor, and some of the bidders could and did stand in the street and take part in the proceedings. In the suburbs—which at that period were not so integral a portion of the metropolis as at present—the book-auction sales were carried on strictly in the open air, generally in front of a public-house, and either on a platform erected for the purpose, or from a covered cart; the books then being deposited in the vehicle, and the auctioneer standing on a sort of stage placed on the propped-up shafts. In the country, however, the auction was often carried on in an inn.

The works thus sold were generally standard works. The poems were those of Pope, Young, Thomson, Goldsmith, Falconer, Cowper, &c. The prose writings were such works as “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” “The Travels of Mr. Lemuel Gulliver,” “Johnson’s Lives of the Poets,” “The Vicar of Wakefield,” the most popular of the works of Defoe, Fielding, and Smollett, and “Hervey’s Meditations among the Tombs” (at one time highly popular). These books were not correctly printed, they were printed, too, on inferior paper, and the frontispiece—when there was a frontispiece—was often ridiculous. But they certainly gave to the public what is called an “impetus” for reading. Some were published in London (chiefly by the late Mr. Tegg, who at one time, I am told, himself “offered to public competition,” by auction, the works he published); others were printed in Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Ipswich, Bungay, &c.

One of my informants remembered being present at a street-sale, about twenty or thirty years ago; he perfectly remembered, however, the oratory of the auctioneer, of whom he purchased some books. The sale was in one of the streets in Stoke Newington, a door or two from a thoroughfare. My informant was there—as he called it—“accidentally,” and knew little of the neighbourhood. The auctioneer stood at the door of what appeared to have been a coach-house, and sold his books, which were arranged within, very rapidly: “Byron,” he exclaimed; “Lord Byron’s latest and best po’ms. Sixpence! Sixpence! Eightpence! I take penny bids under a shilling. Eightpence for the poems written by a lord—Gone! Yours, sir” (to my informant). The auctioneer, I was told, “spoke very rapidly, and clipped many of his words.” The work thus sold consisted of some of Byron’s minor poems. It was in the pamphlet form, and published, I have no doubt, surreptitiously; for there was, in those days, a bold and frequent piracy of any work which was thought distasteful to the Government, or to which the Court of Chancery might be likely to refuse the protection of the law of copyright.

The auctioneer went on: “Coop’r—Coop’r! Published at 3s. 6d., as printed on the back. Superior to Byron—Coop’r’s ‘Task.’ No bidders? Thank you, sir. One-and-six,—your’s, sir. Young—‘Young’s Night Thoughts. Life, Death, and Immortality,’—great subjects. London edition, marked 3s. 6d. Going!—last bidder—two shillings—gone!” The purchaser then complained that the frontispiece—a man seated on a tombstone—was exactly the same as to a copy he had of “Hervey’s Meditations,” but the auctioneer said it was impossible.

I have thus shown what was the style and nature of the address of the street book-auctioneer, formerly, to the public. If it were not strictly “patter,” or “pompous oration,” it certainly partook of some of the characteristics of patter. At present, however, the street book-auctioneer may be described as a true patterer.