The Cries of London Part 9

5.

To Church fine ladies do resort, New fashions for to spy, And others go to Church sometimes, To shew their bravery.

6.

Hot-house makes a rough skin smooth, And doth it beautify; Fine gossips use it every week, Their skins to purify.

7.

At the conduit striving for their turn, The quarrel it grows great, That up in arms they are at last, And one another beat.

8.

Washing at the river's side Good housewives take delight; But scolding s.l.u.ts care not to work, Like wrangling queens they fight.

9.

Then gossips all a warning take, Pray cease your tongue to rattle; Go knit, and sew, and brew, and bake, And leave off t.i.tTLE-TATTLE.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _"Smithfield Saloop"_]

SMITHFIELD SALOOP.

PLATE XXVIII.

About a century ago, almost every corner of the more public streets was occupied at midnight, until six or seven in the morning, by the sellers of frumenty, barley broth, cow-heel soup, and baked ox-cheek; and in those days when several hundreds of chairmen were nightly waiting in the metropolis, and it was the fashion for the bloods of the day to beat the rounds, as they termed it, there was a much greater consumption of such refreshments.

The scenes of vice at the above period were certainly far more frequent than they are at present, for hard drinking, and the visitation of brothels were then esteemed as the completion of what was termed genteel education; and it was no unusual thing to see the famous Quin, with his inseparable a.s.sociate Frank Hayman, the painter, swearing at each other in the kennel, but both with a full determination to remain there until the watchman went his round.

The numerous songs of the day, and the incomparable plates by Hogarth, will sufficiently show the folly and vice of those drinking times, when the courtier, after attending the drawing-room of St. James's, would walk in his full dress, with bag and sword, from the palace, to the diabolical coffee-room of Moll King, in Covent Garden, where he would mix, sit, and converse with every description of character.

Moll King's was the house now the sign of the Green Man, and was a mere hovel, so dest.i.tute of accommodation that the princ.i.p.al chamber of vice was immediately over the coffee room, and could only be ascended by a drop ladder.

Saloop, the subject of this etching, has superseded almost every other midnight street refreshment, being a beverage easily made, and a long time considered as a sovereign cure for head-ache arising from drunkenness. But no person, unless he has walked through the streets from the hour of twelve, can duly paint the scenes of the saloop stall with its variety of customers.

Whoever may be desirous of tasting saloop in the highest perfection, may be gratified at Reid's Coffee House,[16] No. 102, Fleet Street, which was the first respectable house where it was to be had, and established in the year 1719. The following lines are painted on a board, and suspended in the coffee room:

"Come all degrees now pa.s.sing by, My charming liquor taste and try; To Lockyer[17] come, and drink your fill; Mount Pleasant[18] has no kind of ill.

The fumes of wine, punch, drams, and beer, It will expell; your spirits cheer; From drowsiness your spirits free.

Sweet as a rose your breath shall be.

Come taste and try, and speak your mind; Such rare ingredients here are joined, Mount Pleasant pleases all mankind."

The following extract respecting saloop, is taken from p. 38 of "Flora Diaetetica, or History of Esculent Plants," by Charles Bryant, of Norwich, 1783. "Orchis Mascula. This is very common in our woods, meadows, and pastures, and the powdered roots of it are said to be the saloop which is sold in the shops; but the shop roots come from Turkey.

"The flowers of most of the plants of this genus are indiscriminately called cuckoo-flowers by the country people. Though it has been affirmed that saloop is the root of the mascula only, yet those of the morio, and of some other species of orchis, will do equally as well, as I can affirm from my own experience; consequently, to give a description of the mascula in particular will be useless. As most country people are acquainted with these plants by the name of cuckoo-flowers, it certainly would be worth their while to employ their children to collect the roots for sale; and though they may not be quite so large as those that come from abroad, yet they may be equally as good, and as they are exceedingly plentiful, enough might annually be gathered for our own consumption, and thus a new article of employment would be added to the poorer sort of people.

"The time for taking them up is when the seed is about ripe, as then the new bulbs are fully grown; and all the trouble of preparing them is, to put them, fresh taken up, into scalding hot water for about half a minute; and on taking them out, to rub off the outer skin; which done, they must be laid on tin plates, and set in a pretty fierce oven for eight or ten minutes, according to the size of the roots; after this, they should be removed to the top of the oven, and left there till they are dry enough to pound.

"Saloop is a celebrated restorative among the Turks, and with us it stands recommended in consumptions, bilious cholics, and all disorders proceeding from an acrimony in the juices.

"Some people have a method of candying the roots, and thus prepared they are very pleasant, and may be eaten with good success against coughs and inward soreness."

SMITHFIELD PUDDING.

PLATE XXIX.

It would be almost criminal to proceed in my account of the present cry without pa.s.sing a due encomium on the subject of it. The good qualities of an English pudding, more especially when it happens to be enriched with the due portion of enticing plums, are well known to most of us. It is a luxury to which our Gallic neighbours are entire strangers, and an article of cookery worth any dozen of their harlequin kick-shaws.

The justly-celebrated comedian, Ned Shuter, was so pa.s.sionately fond of this article that he would never dine without it, and anything that led to the bare mention of a pudding would burst the silence of a couple of hours' smoking; he was on one occasion known to lay down his pipe, and to exclaim, that the dinner the gentleman had just described would have been a very good one if there had but been a plum-pudding. The places where this excellent commodity is chiefly exposed to sale in the manner described in the engraving, are those of the greatest traffic or publicity, such as Smithfield on a market morning, where waggoners, butchers, and drovers, are sure to find their pence for a slice of hot pudding. Fleet Market, Leadenhall, Honey Lane, and Spital Fields, have each their hot-pudding men. In the lowest neighbourhoods in Westminster, where the soldiers reside, cook-shops find great custom for their pudding.

The stalls, near the Horse Guards always have large quant.i.ties ready cut into penny slices, piled up like boards in a timber-yard.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Smithfield Pudding_]

At the time of relieving guard, vendors of pudding are always to be found on the parade. There is a black man, a handsome, well-made fellow, remarkably clean in his person, and always drest in the neatest manner, who never fails to sell his pudding; he also frequents the Regent's Park on a Sunday afternoon, and, though he has no wit, his nonsense pleases the crowd. This person, who is now at the top of his calling, had a predecessor of the name of Eglington, who likewise carried on the business of a tailor.

He was a well-made and very active man, and by reason of his being seen in various parts of London nearly at the same time, was denominated the "Flying Pudding Man." His princ.i.p.al walk was in the neighbourhood of Fleet Market and Holborn Bridge, and his smartness of dress and quickness of repartee gained the attention of his customers; he seldom appeared but in a state of perfect sobriety, and many curious anecdotes are related of him.

On the approach of Edmonton Fair, wishing to see the sports and pastimes of the place, he ordered his wife to make as many puddings as to fill a hackney coach. This being done, on the morning of the opening of the fair a coach was hired for the puddings, and the pudding man and pudding lady took their seats by the side of the coachman. On their arrival at the fair he put on his well-known dress, and instantly commenced his cry of "pudding," whilst the lady supplied him from the coach. In a few hours'

time, when his stock was all disposed of, he resumed his best attire, and with his fair spouse proceeded to visit the various shows.

His well-known features were soon recognized by thousands who frequented the fair, and their jeers of "hot, hot, smoking hot," resounded from booth to booth. At the close of the day this constant couple walked home well laden with the profits they had made. There is hardly a fight on the Scrubs,[19] nor a walking match on Blackheath, that are not visited by the pudding men.

When malefactors were executed at Tyburn, the pudding men of the day were sure to be there, and indeed so many articles were sold, and the cries of new milk, curds and whey, spice cakes, barley sugar, and hot spice gingerbread, were so numerous and loud, that this place on the day of execution was usually designated by the thousands of blackguards who attended it under the appellation of Tyburn Fair. The reader may see a faithful representation of this melancholy and humourous scene by the inimitable Hogarth, in the Execution Plate of his Idle Apprentice. In this engraving he will also find a correct figure of the triangular gallows, commonly called the "Three-legged Mare," and which stood upon the site afterwards occupied by the turnpike house, at the end of Oxford Street.

In many instances the pudding sold in the streets has a favourable aspect, and under some circ.u.mstances perhaps proves a delicious treat to the purchaser.

Nothing can be more gratifying than to enable a poor little chimney-sweeper to indulge his appet.i.te with a luxury before which he has for some minutes been standing with a longing inclination; and as this gratification can be accomplished at a very trifling expense, it were surely much better to behold it realized than to see the canting Tabernacle beggar carry away the pennies he has obtained to the gin shop.

It gives the writer great pleasure to state to the readers of Jonas Hanway's little tract in defence of chimney-sweepers, that, after witnessing with the most painful sensations the great and wanton cruelty which has for years been exercised upon that defenceless object the infant chimney-sweeper, he has of late frequently visited several houses of their masters, where he found in some instances that they had much better treatment than formerly, and, to the credit of many of the masters, that the boys had been as well taken care of, as to bedding and food, as the nature of their wretched calling could possibly admit of. By three or four of the princ.i.p.al master chimney-sweepers, the boys were regaled on Sundays with the old English fare of roast beef and plum pudding. Whatever may be the opinion of grave and elderly persons with respect to the lads of the present day, who as soon as they are indulged with a dandy coat by their silly mothers strut about like jackdaws and attempt to look big, even upon their grandfathers, yet we must declare, and perhaps to the satisfaction of these little men of sixteen, that they do not stand alone, for even some of the chimney-sweepers' boys, particularly those of the higher masters, regard the custom of dancing about the streets on May-day as low and vulgar, and prefer visiting the tea gardens, where they can display their shirt collars drawn up to their eyes.

Certain it is that the greater number of those who now perambulate the streets as chimney-sweeps on May-day, are in reality disguised gypsies, cinder-sifters, and nightmen. Nor is the protraction of this ceremony in modern times from one to three days, even by its legitimate owners, unworthy of notice in this place; inasmuch as there is good reason for supposing that the money collected during the first two of those days is transferred to the pockets of the masters, instead of being applied for the benefit of the poor boys, whilst the well-meant benevolence of the public is shamefully deluded.

THE BLADDER MAN.

PLATE x.x.x.

Within the memory of the author's oldest friends, London has been visited by men similar to Bernardo Millano, whose figure is pourtrayed in the following Plate. About sixty years ago there was a Turk, of a most pompous appearance, who entertained crowds in the street by playing on an instrument of five strings pa.s.sed over a bladder, and drawn up to the ends of a long stick, something like that exhibited in the etching, and which instrument is said to have been the original hurdy-gurdy. This Turk contrived by the a.s.sistance of his nose, which was a pretty large one, to produce a noise with which most of the spectators seemed to be pleased.