London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 3

by Henry Mayhew

Rennie, in his Insect Miscellanies, says, “We have been as unsuccessful in transplanting the hearth-cricket as White was with the field-crickets. In two different houses we have repeatedly introduced crickets, but could not prevail on them to stay. One of our trials, indeed, was made in summer, with insects brought from a garden-wall, and it is probable they thought the kitchen fire-side too hot at that season.”—(p. 82.)

The so-called chirp of the cricket is a vulgar error. The instrument (for so it may be styled) upon which the male cricket plays (the female is mute) consists of strong nervures or rough strings in the wing-cases, by the friction of which against each other a sound is produced and communicated to the membranes stretched between them, in the same manner as the vibrations caused by the friction of the finger upon the tambourine are diffused over its surface. It is erroneously stated in a popular work, that “the organ is a membrane, which in contracting, by means of a muscle and tendon placed under the wings of the insect, folds down somewhat like a fan;” and this, being “always dry, yields by its motion a sharp piercing sound.”—(Bing, Anim. Biog. iv. 6th edit. Rennie’s Insect Miscellanies, p. 62.)

OUR STREET FOLK.

I.—STREET EXHIBITORS.

Punch.

The performer of Punch that I saw was a short, dark, pleasant-looking man, dressed in a very greasy and very shiny green shooting-jacket. This was fastened together by one button in front, all the other button-holes having been burst through. Protruding from his bosom, a corner of the pandean pipes was just visible, and as he told me the story of his adventures, he kept playing with the band of his very limp and very rusty old beaver hat. He had formerly been a gentleman’s servant, and was especially civil in his manners. He came to me with his hair tidily brushed for the occasion, but apologised for his appearance on entering the room. He was very communicative, and took great delight in talking like Punch, with his call in his mouth, while some young children were in the room, and who, hearing the well-known sound of Punch’s voice, looked all about for the figure. Not seeing the show, they fancied the man had the figure in his pocket, and that the sounds came from it. The change from Punch’s voice to the man’s natural tone was managed without an effort, and instantaneously. It had a very peculiar effect.

“I am the proprietor of a Punch’s show,” he said. “I goes about with it myself, and performs inside the frame behind the green baize. I have a pardner what plays the music—the pipes and drum; him as you see’d with me. I have been five-and-twenty year now at the business. I wish I’d never seen it, though it’s been a money-making business—indeed, the best of all the street hexhibitions I may say. I am fifty years old. I took to it for money gains—that was what I done it for. I formerly lived in service—was a footman in a gentleman’s family. When I first took to it, I could make two and three pounds a-day—I could so. You see, the way in which I took first to the business was this here—there was a party used to come and ‘cheer’ for us at my master’s house, and her son having a hexhibition of his own, and being in want of a pardner, axed me if so be I’d go out, which was a thing that I degraded at the time. He gave me information as to what the money-taking was, and it seemed to me that good, that it would pay me better nor service. I had twenty pounds a-year in my place, and my board and lodging, and two suits of clothes, but the young man told me as how I could make one pound a-day at the Punch-and-Judy business, after a little practice. I took a deal of persuasion, though, before I’d join him—it was beneath my dignity to fall from a footman to a showman. But, you see, the French gennelman as I lived with (he were a merchant in the city, and had fourteen clerks working for him) went back to his own country to reside, and left me with a written kerrackter; but that was no use to me: though I’d fine recommendations at the back of it, no one would look at it; so I was five months out of employment, knocking about—living first on my wages and then on my clothes, till all was gone but the few rags on my back. So I began to think that the Punch-and-Judy business was better than starving after all. Yes, I should think anything was better than that, though it’s a business that, after you’ve once took to, you never can get out of—people fancies you know too much, and won’t have nothing to say to you. If I got a situation at a tradesman’s, why the boys would be sure to recognise me behind the counter, and begin a shouting into the shop (they must shout, you know): ‘Oh, there’s Punch and Judy—there’s Punch a-sarving out the customers!’ Ah, it’s a great annoyance being a public kerrackter, I can assure you, sir; go where you will, it’s ‘Punchy, Punchy!’ As for the boys, they’ll never leave me alone till I die, I know; and I suppose in my old age I shall have to take to the parish broom. All our forefathers died in the workhouse. I don’t know a Punch’s showman that hasn’t. One of my pardners was buried by the workhouse; and even old Pike, the most noted showman as ever was, died in the workhouse—Pike and Porsini. Porsini was the first original street Punch, and Pike was his apprentice; their names is handed down to posterity among the noblemen and footmen of the land. They both died in the workhouse, and, in course, I shall do the same. Something else might turn up, to be sure. We can’t say what this luck of the world is. I’m obliged to strive very hard—very hard indeed, sir, now, to get a living; and then not to get it after all—at times, compelled to go short, often.

“Punch, you know, sir, is a dramatic performance in two hacts. It’s a play, you may say. I don’t think it can be called a tragedy hexactly; a drama is what we names it. There is tragic parts, and comic and sentimental parts, too. Some families where I performs will have it most sentimental—in the original style; them families is generally sentimental theirselves. Others is all for the comic, and then I has to kick up all the games I can. To the sentimental folk I am obliged to perform werry steady and werry slow, and leave out all comic words and business. They won’t have no ghost, no coffin, and no devil; and that’s what I call spiling the performance entirely. It’s the march of hintellect wot’s a doing all this—it is, sir. But I was a going to tell you about my first jining the business. Well, you see, after a good deal of persuading, and being drew to it, I may say, I consented to go out with the young man as I were a-speaking about. He was to give me twelve shillings a-week and my keep, for two years certain, till I could get my own show things together, and for that I was to carry the show, and go round and collect. Collecting, you know, sounds better than begging; the pronounciation’s better like. Sometimes the people says, when they sees us a coming round, ‘Oh, here they comes a-begging’—but it can’t be begging, you know, when you’re a hexerting yourselves. I couldn’t play the drum and pipes, so the young man used to do that himself, to call the people together before he got into the show. I used to stand outside, and patter to the figures. The first time that ever I went out with Punch was in the beginning of August, 1825. I did all I could to avoid being seen. My dignity was hurt at being hobligated to take to the streets for a living. At fust I fought shy, and used to feel queer somehow, you don’t know how like, whenever the people used to look at me. I remember werry well the first street as ever I performed in. It was off Gray’s Inn, one of them quiet, genteel streets, and when the mob began to gather round I felt all-overish, and I turned my head to the frame instead of the people. We hadn’t had no rehearsals aforehand, and I did the patter quite permiscuous. There was not much talk, to be sure, required then; and what little there was, consisted merely in calling out the names of the figures as they came up, and these my master prompted me with from inside the frame. But little as there was for me to do, I know I never could have done it, if it hadn’t been for the spirits—the false spirits, you see (a little drop of gin), as my master guv me in the morning. The first time as ever I made my appearance in public, I collected as much as eight shillings, and my master said, after the performance was over, ‘You’ll do!’ You see I was partly in livery, and looked a little bit decent like. After this was over, I kept on going out with my master for two years, as I had agreed, and at the end of that time I had saved enough to start a show of my own. I bought the show of old Porsini, the man as first brought Punch into the streets of England. To be sure, there was a woman over here with it before then. Her name was——I can’t think of it just now, but she never performed in the streets, so we consider Porsini as our real forefather. It isn’t much more nor seventy years since Porsini (he was a werry old man when he died, and blind) showed the hexhibition in the streets of London. I’ve heerd tell that old Porsini used to take very often as much as ten pounds a-day, and he used to sit down to his fowls and wine, and the very best of everything, like the first gennelman in the land; indeed, he made enough money at the business to be quite a tip-top gennelman, that he did. But he never took care of a halfpenny he got. He was that independent, that if he was wanted to perform, sir, he’d come at his time, not your’n. At last, he reduced himself to want, and died in St. Giles’s workhouse. Ah, poor fellow! he oughtn’t to have been allowed to die where he did, after amusing the public for so many years. Every one in London knowed him. Lords, dukes, princes, squires, and wagabonds—all used to stop to laugh at his performance, and a funny clever old fellow he was. He was past performing when I bought my show of him, and werry poor. He was living in the Coal-yard, Drury-lane, and had scarcely a bit of food to eat. He had spent all he had got in drink, and in treating friends,—aye, any one, no matter who. He didn’t study the world, nor himself neither. As fast as the money came it went, and when it was gone, why, he’d go to work and get more. His show was a very inferior one, though it were the fust—nothing at all like them about now—nothing near as good. If you only had four sticks then, it was quite enough to make plenty of money out of, so long as it was Punch. I gave him thirty-five shillings for the stand, figures and all. I bought it cheap, you see, for it was thrown on one side, and was of no use to any one but such as myself. There was twelve figures and the other happaratus, such as the gallows, ladder, horse, bell, and stuffed dog. The characters was Punch, Judy, Child, Beadle, Scaramouch, Nobody, Jack Ketch, the Grand Senoor, the Doctor, the Devil (there was no Ghost used then), Merry Andrew, and the Blind Man. These last two kerrackters are quite done with now. The heads of the kerrackters was all carved in wood, and dressed in the proper costume of the country. There was at that time, and is now, a real carver for the Punch business. He was dear, but werry good and hexcellent. His Punch’s head was the best as I ever seed. The nose and chin used to meet quite close together. A set of new figures, dressed and all, would come to about fifteen pounds. Each head costs five shillings for the bare carving alone, and every figure that we has takes at least a yard of cloth to dress him, besides ornaments and things that comes werry expensive. A good show at the present time will cost three pounds odd for the stand alone—that’s including baize, the frontispiece, the back scene, the cottage, and the letter cloth, or what is called the drop-scene at the theatres. In the old ancient style, the back scene used to pull up and change into a gaol scene, but that’s all altered now.