Every phase of human nature was thus served up for a penny. In those days, people were more apt to want tales with heroes and heroines of their own rank and station; a certain appropriateness in this way was satisfied. Such correspondence was common as early as 1415, when a mystery play was presented by the crafts, and the Plasterers were given the “Creation of the World” to depict, while the Chandlers were assigned the “Lighting of the Star” upon the birth of Christ.
There were to be had primers, song-books, and joke-books; histories, stories, and hero tales. Printed in type to ruin eyes, pictured in wood-cuts to startle fancy and to shock taste—for they were not always suited to childhood—these pamphlets, 2½″ × 3½″, sometimes 5½″ × 4¼″ in size, and composed of from four to twenty-four pages, served a useful purpose. They placed literature within reach of all who could read. Queer dreams, piety of a pronounced nature, jests with a ribald meaning, and riddles comprised the content of many of them. A child who could not buy a horn-book turned to the “battle-dore” with his penny—a crude sheet of cardboard, bicoloured and folded either once or twice, with printing on both sides; the reading matter was never-failingly the same in these horn-books and “battle-dores,” although sometimes the wood-cuts varied. A horn-book is recorded with a picture of Charles I upon it.
The sixteenth or seventeenth-century boy could own his “Jack and the Giants” and “Guy of Warwick,” his “Hector of Troy” and “Hercules of Greece”; he could even have the latest imported novelty. Some believe that because Shakespeare based many of his plays upon Continental legends, a demand was started for such chap-books as “Fortunatus,” “Titus Andronicus,” or “Valentine and Orson.” The printers of these crude booklets were on the alert for every form of writing having a popular appeal; there was rivalry among them as there is rivalry among publishers to-day. Not long after the appearance of the English translation of Perrault’s “Tales of Mother Goose,” each one of them, given a separate and attractive form—“Blue-beard” in awful ferocity, “Cinderella” in gorgeous apparel, and the others—was made into a chap-book. In Ashton, we find mention of an early catalogue “of Maps, Prints, Copy-books, Drawing-books, Histories, Old Ballads, Patters, Collections, etc., printed and sold by Cluer Dicey and Richard Marshall at the Printing-Office in Aldermary (4) Church Yard, London. Printed in the year MDCCLXIV.” These men appear to have been important chap-book publishers.
The hawkers, who went through the streets and who travelled the country-side, much as our pioneer traders were accustomed to do, were termed chapmen. They were eloquent in the manner of describing their display; they were zealous as to their line of trade. Imagine, if you will, the scene in some isolated village—the wild excitement when the good man arrived. He was known to Piers Plowman in 1362, he perhaps wandered not far away from the Canterbury Pilgrims; each of Chaucer’s Tales might well be fashioned as a chap-book. Along the dusty highway this old-time peddler travelled, with packet on his back and a stout staff in hand—such a character maybe as Dougal Grahame, hunch-backed and cross-eyed—by professions, a town crier and bellman, as well as a trader in literature. On his tongue’s tip he carried the latest gossip; he served as an instrument of cross-fertilisation, bringing London-town in touch with Edinburgh or Glasgow, and with small hamlets on the way.
“Do you wish to know, my lady,” he would ask, “how fares the weather on the morrow?” From the depths of his packet he would draw “The Shepherd’s Prognostication” (1673), wherein is told that “the blust’ring and noise of leaves and trees and woods, or other places is a token of foul weather.” “And prithee, mistress,” he would add, “I have a warning herein for you. A mole on the forehead denotes fair riches, but yonder brown spot on your eyebrow bids me tell you to refrain from marriage, for if he marry you, he shall have seven wives in his life-time!”
Many a modern reader would be interested in the detailed directions given for falling in love and for falling out again; for determining whom fate had decreed as the husband, or who was to be the wife. It is more wholesome in these days to name the four corners of a bedroom than to submit to the charm of a pared onion, wrapped in a kerchief and placed on the pillow; yet the two methods must be related.
For the little ones, there were picture-books in bright colours, smug in their anachronisms. The manufacturers of chap-books never hesitated to use the same wood-cuts over and over again; Queen Anne might figure in a history, but she served as well in the capacity of Sleeping Beauty; more appropriate in its historical application seems to have been the appearance of Henry VIII as Jack the Giant-Killer.
The subject of chap-books is alluring; the few elements here noted suggest how rich in local colour the material is. Undoubtedly the roots of juvenile literature are firmly twined about these penny sheets. Their circulation is a matter that brings the social student in touch with the middle-class life. Not only the chap-books and the horn-books, but the so-called Garlands, rudimentary anthologies of popular poems and spirited ballads, served to relieve the drudgery of commonplace lives, toned the sluggish mind by quickening the imagination. A curious part of the history of these Garlands is their sudden disappearance, brought about by two types of hawkers, known as the “Primers-up” and “Long-Song Sellers,” who peddled a new kind of ware.
The Primers-up are relatives of our city venders. They clung to corners, where dead walls gave them opportunity to pin their literature within sight of the public. Wherever there happened to be an unoccupied house, one of these fellows would be found with his songs, coarse, sentimental, and spirited, cut in slips a yard long—three yards for a penny. Thus displayed, he would next open a gaudy umbrella, upon the under side of which an art gallery of cheap prints was free to look upon. Conjure up for yourselves the apprentice peering beneath the large circumference of such a gingham tent.
Across the way, the Long-Song Sellers marched up and down, holding aloft stout poles, from which streamed varied ribbons of verse—rhythm fluttering in the breeze—and yelling, “Three yards a penny, songs, beautiful songs, nooest songs.”