The pictures for the umbrellas are bought at the warehouse, or the swag-shops, of which I have before spoken. At these establishments “prints” are commonly supplied from 3d. to 5s. the dozen. The street-sellers buy at 5d. and 6d. the dozen, to sell at a 1d. a piece; and at 3d. to sell at ½d. None of the pictures thus sold are prepared expressly for the streets.
In so desultory and—as one intelligent street-seller with whom I conversed on the subject described it—so weathery a trade, it is difficult to arrive at exact statistics. From the best data at my command, it may be computed, that for twelve weeks of the year, there are thirty umbrella print-sellers (all exceptional traders therein included) each clearing 6s. weekly, and taking 12s. Thus it appears that 216l. is yearly expended in the streets in this purchase. Many of the sellers are old or infirm; one who was among the most prosperous before the changes in the streets of Lambeth, was dwarfish, and was delighted to be thought “a character.”
Of the Street-sellers of Pictures in Frames.
From about 1810, or somewhat earlier, down to 1830, or somewhat later, the street-sale of pictures in frames was almost entirely in the hands of the Jews. The subjects were then nearly all scriptural: “The Offering up of Isaac;” “Jacob’s Dream;” “The Crossing of the Red Sea;” “The Death of Sisera;” and “The Killing of Goliath from the Sling of the youthful David.” But the Jew traders did not at all account it necessary to confine the subjects of their pictures to the records of the Old—their best trade was in the illustrations of the New Testament. Perhaps the “Stoning of St. Stephen” was their most saleable “picture in a frame.” There were also “The Nativity;” “The Slaying of the Children, by order of Herod” (with the quotation of St. Matthew, chap. ii. verse 17, “Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet”); “The Sermon on the Mount;” “The Beheading of John the Baptist;” “The Entry of Christ into Jerusalem;” “The Raising of Lazarus;” “The Betrayal on the part of Judas;” “The Crucifixion;” and “The Conversion of St. Paul.” There were others, but these were the principal subjects. All these pictures were coloured, and very deeply coloured. St. Stephen was stoned in the lightest of sky-blue short mantles. The pictures were sold in the streets of London, mostly in the way of hawking; but ten times as extensively, I am told, in the country, as in town. Indeed, at the present time, many a secluded village ale-house has its parlour walls decorated with these scriptural illustrations, which seem to have superseded
“The pictures placed for ornament and use;
The twelve good rules; the royal game of goose,”
mentioned by Goldsmith as characteristic of a village inn. These “Jew pictures” are now yielding to others.
Most of these articles were varnished, and 2s. or 2s. 6d. each was frequently the price asked, 1s. 6d. being taken “if no better could be done,” and sometimes 1s. A smaller amount per single picture was always taken, if a set were purchased. These productions were prepared principally for street-sale and for hawkers. The frames were narrower and meaner-looking than in the present street-pictures of the kind; they were stained like the present frames, in imitation of maple, but far less skilfully. Sometimes they were a black japan; sometimes a sorry imitation of mahogany.
In the excitement of the Reform Bill era, the street-pictures in frames most in demand were Earl Grey, Earl Spencer’s (or Lord Althorp), Lord Brougham’s, and Lord John Russell’s. O’Connell’s also “sold well,” as did William IV. “Queen Adelaide,” I was told, “went off middling, not much more than half as good as William.” Towards the close of King William’s life, the portraits of the Princess Victoria of Kent were of good sale in the streets, and her Royal Highness was certainly represented as a young lady of undue plumpness, and had hardly justice done to her portraiture. The Duchess of Kent, also, I was informed, “sold fairish in the streets.” In a little time, the picture in a frame of the Princess Victoria of Kent, with merely an alteration in the title, became available as Queen Victoria I., of Great Britain and Ireland. Since that period, there have been the princes and princesses, her Majesty’s offspring, who present a strong family resemblance.
The street pictures, so to speak, are not unfrequently of a religious character. Pictures of the Virgin and Child, of the Saviour seated at the Last Supper, of the Crucifixion, or of the different saints, generally coloured. The principal purchasers of these “religious pictures” are the poorer Irish. I remember seeing, in the course of an inquiry among street-performers last summer, the entire wall of a poor street-dancer’s one room, except merely the space occupied by the fireplace, covered with small coloured pictures in frames, the whole of which, the proprietor told me, with some pride, he had picked up in the streets, according as he could spare a few pence. Among them were a crucifix (of bone), and a few medallions, of a religious character, in plaster or wax. This man was of Italian extraction; but I have seen the same thing in the rooms of the Roman Catholic Irish, though never to the same extent.