In the same gossiping manner Stuart speaks again of this rage for swarming advertisements: “The booksellers and others crowded to the Morning Post, when its circulation and character raised it above all competitors. Each was desirous of having his cloud of advertisements inserted at once in the front page. I would not drive away the short, miscellaneous advertisements by allowing space to be monopolised by any class. When a very long advertisement of a column or two came, I charged enormously high, that it might be taken away without the parties being able to say it was refused admission. I accommodated the booksellers as well as I could with a few new and pressing advertisements at a time. That would not do: they would have the cloud; then, said I, there is no place for the cloud but the last page, where the auctioneers already enjoy that privilege. The booksellers were affronted, indignant. The last page! To obtain the accommodation refused by the Morning Post, they set up a morning paper, the British Press; and to oppose the Courier, an evening one—the Globe. Possessed of general influence among literary men, could there be a doubt of success?” The Globe has stood the test of time, and though it has seen vicissitudes, and has changed its politics within recent years, it now seems as firmly established as any of its contemporaries that is independent of connection with a morning paper.

We have now reached the end of our journey so far as the education of advertisers and the development of advertisements are concerned. By the commencement of the present century matters were very nearly as we find them now; and so in the following chapters only those examples which have peculiar claims to attention will be submitted.

CHAPTER XI.
CURIOUS AND ECCENTRIC ADVERTISEMENTS.

Advertisements of the kind which form the subject of this chapter have been so often made matter of comment and speculation, have so often received the attention of essayists and the ridicule of comic writers, that it is hard to keep out of the beaten track, and to find anything fresh to say upon a topic which seems utterly exhausted. Yet the store of fun is so great, and the excellence of many old and new stories so undoubted, that courage is easily found for this the most difficult part of the present work. Difficult, because there is an embarrassment of riches, an enormous mine of wealth, at command, and the trouble is not what to put in, but what to leave out, from a chapter on quaint and curious advertisements. Difficult again, because some of the best stories have been told in so many and such various guises, that until arriving at the ends it is hard to tell they have a common origin, and then the claims of each version are as near as possible equal. There is, however, a way out of all difficulties, and the way in this is to verify the advertisements themselves, and pay no attention to the apocrypha to which they give rise; and though it is a tedious proceeding, and one which shows little in return for the pains taken, it may be something to our readers to know, that curious as many of the specimens given are, they are real and original, and that in the course of our researches we have unearthed many impostures in the way of quotations from advertisements which have never yet appeared, unless private views of still more private copies of papers have been allowed their promulgators. There is, after all, little reason for a display of inventive power, for the real material is so good, and withal so natural, as to completely put the finest fancy to a disadvantage. It has already been remarked that in the whole range of periodical literature there is no greater curiosity than the columns daily devoted to advertisements in the Times. From them, says a writer a few years back, “the future historian will be able to glean ample and correct information relative to the social habits, wants, and peculiarities of this empire. How we travel, by land or sea—how we live, and move, and have our being—is fully set forth in the different announcements which appear in a single copy of that journal. The means of gratifying the most boundless desires, or the most fastidious taste, are placed within the knowledge of any one who chooses to consult its crowded columns. Should a man wish to make an excursion to any part of the globe between Cape Horn and the North Pole, to any port in India, to Australia, to Africa, or to China, he can, by the aid of one number of the Times, make his arrangements over his breakfast. In the first column he will find which ‘A 1 fine, fast-sailing, copper-bottomed’ vessel is ready to take him to any of those distant ports. Or, should his travelling aspirations be of a less extended nature, he can inform himself of the names, size, horse-power, times of starting, and fares, of numberless steamers which ply within the limits of British seas. Whether, in short, he wishes to be conveyed five miles—from London to Greenwich—or three thousand—from Liverpool to New York—information equally conclusive is afforded him. The head of the second, or sometimes the third column, is interesting to a more extensive range of readers—namely, to the curious; for it is generally devoted to what may be called the romance of advertising. The advertisements which appear in that place are mysterious as melodramas, and puzzling as rebuses.” These incentives to curiosity will receive attention a little further on; meanwhile we will turn to those which are purely curious or eccentric.

The record of these notices to the public is so extensive, and its ramifications so multifarious, that so far as those advertisements which simply contain blunders are concerned, we must be satisfied with a simple summary, and in many cases leave our readers to make their own comments. Here is a batch of those whose comicality is mainly dependent upon sins against the rules of English composition. We will commence with the reward offered for “a keyless lady’s gold watch,” which is, though, but a faint echo of the “green lady’s parasol” and the “brown silk gentleman’s umbrella” anecdotes; but the former we give as actually having appeared, while so far the two latter require verification. A lady advertises her desire to obtain a husband with “a Roman nose having strong religious tendencies.” A nose with heavenly tendencies we can imagine, but even then it would not be Roman. “A spinster particularly fond of children,” informs the public that she “wishes for two or three having none of her own.” Then a dissenter from grammar as well as from the Church Established wants “a young man to look after a horse of the Methodist persuasion;” a draper desires to meet with an assistant who would “take an active and energetic interest in a small first-class trade, and in a quiet family;” and a chemist requests that “the gentleman who left his stomach for analysis, will please call and get it, together with the result.” Theatrical papers actually teem with advertisements which, either from technology or an ignorance of literary law, are extremely funny, and sometimes alarming, and even the editorial minds seem at times to catch the infection. One of these journals, in a puff preliminary of a benefit, after announcing the names of the performers and a list of the performances, went on: “Of course every one will be there, and for the edification of those who are absent, a full report will be found in our next paper.” This is worthy of a place in any collection: “One pound reward—Lost, a cameo brooch, representing Venus and Adonis on the Drumcondra-road, about ten o’clock, on Tuesday evening.” And so is this: “The advertiser, having made an advantageous purchase, offers for sale, on very low terms, about six dozen of prime port wine, late the property of a gentleman forty years of age, full in the body and with a high bouquet.” The lady spoken of in the following would meet with some attention from the renowned Barnum: “To be sold cheap, a splendid grey horse, calculated for a charger, or would carry a lady with a switch tail.” But she would find a formidable rival in the gentleman whose advertisement we place as near as possible, so as to make a pair: “To be sold cheap, a mail phaeton, the property of a gentleman with a moveable head, as good as new.” Students of vivisection, and lovers of natural history generally, would have been glad to meet with this specimen of life after decapitation: “Ten shillings reward—Lost by a gentleman, a white terrier dog, except the head, which is black.” And as congenial company we append this: “To be sold, an Erard grand piano, the property of a lady, about to travel in a walnut wood case with carved legs.”

Differing somewhat, though still of the same kind, is the advertisement of a governess, who, among other things, notifies that “she is a perfect mistress of her own tongue.” If she means what she says, she deserves a good situation and a high rate of wages. An anecdote is told of a wealthy widow who advertised for an agent, and, owing to a printer’s error, which made it “a gent,” she was inundated with applications by letter, and pestered by personal attentions. This story requires, however, a little assistance, and may be taken for what it is worth. Not long ago, a morning paper contained an announcement that a lady going abroad would give “a medical man” £100 a year to look after “a favourite spaniel dog” during her absence. This may not be funny, but it is certainly curious, and in these days, when starvation and misery are rampant, when men are to be found who out of sheer love kill their children rather than trust them to the tender mercies of the parish officials, and when these same officials are proved guilty of constructive homicide, it is indeed noticeable. A kindred advertisement, also real and unexaggerated, asks for “an accomplished poodle nurse. Wages £1 per week.” This has double claims upon our attention here, for in addition to the amount offered for such work, there is a doubt as to the actual thing required. Is it a nurse for accomplished poodles, or an accomplished nurse? And, if the latter, what in the name of goodness and common sense is accomplishment at such work? Do poodles require peculiar nursery rhymes and lullabies, or are they nursed, as a vulgar error has it about West-country babies, head downwards? This is not the exact expression used with regard to the infants; but it will do. We will conclude this short list of peculiarities with two which deserve notice. The first is the notice of a marriage, which ends, “No cards, no cake, no wine.” This is evidently intended for friends other than those “at a distance,” whose polite attention is so constantly invoked. The remaining specimen appeared in the Irish Times, and runs thus: “To Insurance Offices.—Whatever office the late William H. O’Connell, M.D. life was insured will please to communicate or call on his widow, 23 South Frederick Street, without delay.” One hardly knows which to admire most, the style or the insouciance of the demand.

Of curious advertisements which are such independent of errors, selfishness, or moral obliquity, we have in the purely historical part of this work given plenty specimens from olden times; but there are still a few samples of the peculiarities of our ancestors which will bear repetition in this chapter, more especially as most of them have not before been unearthed from their original columns. Before quoting any of those which are purely advertisements in the ordinary sense of the word, we will present to our readers a curious piece of puffery which appeared in an Irish paper for May 30, 1784, and which from its near connection with open and palpable advertising, and from its whimsical character, will not be at all out of place, and will doubtless prove interesting, especially to those of a theatrical turn of mind, as it refers to the gifted Sarah Siddons’s first appearance in Dublin. The article runs thus: “On Saturday, Mrs Siddons, about whom all the world has been talking, exposed her beautiful, adamantine, soft, and lovely person, for the first time, at Smock-Alley Theatre, in the bewitching, melting, and all-tearful character of Isabella. From the repeated panegyrics in the impartial London newspapers, we were taught to expect the sight of a heavenly angel; but how were we supernaturally surprised into the most awful joy, at beholding a mortal goddess. The house was crowded with hundreds more than it could hold,—with thousands of admiring spectators, that went away without a sight. This extraordinary phenomenon of tragic excellence! this star of Melpomene! this comet of the stage! this sun of the firmament of the Muses! this moon of blank verse! this queen and princess of tears! this Donnellan of the poisoned bowl! this empress of the pistol and dagger! this chaos of Shakspeare! this world of weeping clouds! this Juno of commanding aspects! this Terpsichore of the curtains and scenes! this Proserpine of fire and earthquake! this Katterfelto of wonders! exceeded expectation, went beyond belief, and soared above all the natural powers of description! She was nature itself! She was the most exquisite work of art! She was the very daisy, primrose, tuberose, sweet-brier, furze-blossom, gilliflower, wall-flower, cauliflower, auricula, and rosemary! In short, she was the bouquet of Parnassus! Where expectation was raised so high, it was thought she would be injured by her appearance; but it was the audience who were injured:—several fainted before the curtain drew up! When she came to the scene of parting with her wedding-ring, ah! what a sight was there! the very fiddlers in the orchestra, ‘albeit, unused to the melting mood,’ blubbered like hungry children crying for their bread and butter; and when the bell rang for music between the acts, the tears ran from the bassoon players’ eyes in such plentiful showers, that they choked the finger stops; and making a spout of the instrument, poured in such torrents on the first fiddler’s book, that, not seeing the overture was in two sharps, the leader of the band actually played in one flat. But the sobs and sighs of the groaning audience, and the noise of corks drawn from the smelling-bottles, prevented the mistake between flats and sharps being discovered. One hundred and nine ladies fainted! forty-six went into fits! and ninety-five had strong hysterics! The world will scarcely credit the truth, when they are told, that fourteen children, five old women, one hundred tailors, and six common-councilmen, were actually drowned in the inundation of tears that flowed from the galleries, the slips, and the boxes, to increase the briny pond in the pit; the water was three feet deep; and the people that were obliged to stand upon the benches, were in that position up to their ankles in tears! An Act of Parliament against her playing any more will certainly pass.” As this effusion appeared almost immediately after the famous actress’s first appearance, we are hardly wrong in considering it as half an advertisement. It must certainly have helped to draw good houses during the rest of her stay.

Lovers of the gentle craft maybe interested to know that what was perhaps the earliest advertisement of Izaak Walton’s famous little book “The Compleat Angler” was published in one of Wharton’s Almanacs. It is on the back of the dedication-leaf to “Hemeroscopeion: Anni Æra Christianæ, 1654.” Hemeroscopeion was William Lilly, and the almanac appeared in 1653, the year in which Walton’s book was printed. The advertisement says:—

There is published a Booke of Eighteen-pence price, called The Compleat Angler, Or, The Contemplative man’s Recreation: being a Discourse of Fish and Fishing. Not unworthy the perusall. Sold by Richard Marriot in S. Dunstan’s Church-yard, Fleetstreet.