by Henry Mayhew
‘The chanter of the pipes I play on has been in my family very near 450 years. It’s the oldest in Scotland, and is a heir-loom in our family, and they wouldn’t part with it for any money. Many’s a time the Museum in Edinburgh has wanted me to give it to them, but I won’t give it to any one till I find myself near death, and then I’ll obligate them to keep it. Most likely my youngest son will have it, for he’s as steady as a man. You see, the holes for the fingers is worn as big round as sixpences, and they’re quite sharp at the edges. The ivory at the end is the same original piece as when the pipe was made. It’s breaking and splitting with age, and so is the stick. I’ll have my name and the age of the stick engraved on the sole of the ivory, and then, if my boy seems neglectful of the chanter, I’ll give it to the Museum of Edinburgh. I’ll have German silver rings put round the stick, to keep it together, and then, with nice waxed thread bound round it, it will last for centuries yet.
‘This chanter was made by old William McDonnall, who’s been dead these many hundred years. He was one of the best pipe-makers that’s in all Scotland. There’s a brother of mine has a set of drones made by him, and he wouldn’t give them for any sit of money. Everybody in Scotland knows William McDonnall. Ask any lad, and he’ll tell you who was the best pipe-maker that ever lived in Scotland – aye, and ever will live. There’s many a farmer in Scotland would give 30l. for a set of pipes by old William McDonnall, sooner than they’d give 30s. for a set of pipes made now. This chanter has been in our family ever since McDonnall made it. It’s been handed down from father to son from that day to this. They always give it to the eldest. William McDonnall lived to be 143 years old, and this is the last chanter he made. A gentleman in London, who makes chanters, once gave me a new one, merely for letting him take a model of my old one, with the size of the bore and the place for the holes. You tell a good chanter by the tone, and some is as sweet as a piano. My old chanter has got rather too sharp by old age, and it’s lost its tone; for when a stick gets too sharp a sound, it’s never no good. This chanter was played by my family in the battles of Wallace and Bruce, and at the battle of Bannockburn, and every place whenever any of the Macgregor clan fought. These are the traditions given from family to family. I heard it from my father, and now I tell my lads, and they know it as well as I do myself. My great grandfather played on this stick when Charley Stuart, the Pretender, came over to Scotland from France, and he played on it before the Prince himself, at Stirling and the Island of Skye, and at Preston Pans and Culloden. It was at Preston Pans that the clans were first formed, and could be told by their tartans – the Macgregors, and the Stuart, and the Macbeths, and the Camerons, and all of them. I had three brothers older than me, but I’ve got this chanter, for I begged it of them. It’s getting too old to play on, and I’ll have a copper box made for it, and just carry it at my side, if God is good to me, and gives me health to live three weeks.
‘About my best friends in London are the French people – they are the best I can meet, they come next to the Highlanders. When I meet a Highlander he will, if he’s only just a labouring man, give me a few coppers. A Highlander will never close his eye upon me. It’s the Lowlander that is the worse to me. They never takes no notice of me when I’m passing: they’ll smile and cast an eye as I pass by. Many a time I’ll say to them when they pass, “Well, old chap, you don’t like the half-naked men, I know you don’t!” and many will say, “No, I don’t!” I never play the pipes when I go through the Lowlands – I’d as soon play poison to them. They never give anything. It’s the Lowlanders that get the Scotch a bad name for being miserable, and keeping their money, and using a small provision. They’re a disgrace to their country.
‘The Highlander spends his money as free as a duke. If a man in the 93rd had a shilling in his pocket, it was gone before he could turn it twice. All the Lowlanders would like to be Highlanders if they could, and they learn Gaelic, and then marry Highland lassies, so as to become Highlanders. They have some clever regiments composed out of the Lowlanders, but they have only three regiments and the Highlanders have seven; yet there’s nearly three to one more inhabitants in the Lowlands. It’s a strange thing, they’d sooner take an Irishman into a Highland regiment than a Lowlander. They owe them such a spleen, they don’t like them. Bruce was a Lowlander, and he betrayed Wallace; and the Duke of Buccleuch, who was a Lowlander, betrayed Stuart.
‘I never go playing at public-houses, for I don’t like such places. I am not a drinker, for as much whisky as will fill a teaspoon will lay me up for a day. If I take anything, it’s a sup of porter. I went once into a public-house, and there was a woman drinking in it, and she was drunk. It was the landlord told me to come inside. She told me to leave the house, and I said the master told me to come: then she took up one of these pewter pots and hit me in the forehead. It was very sore for three weeks afterwards, and made a hole. I wouldn’t prosecute her.
‘My little boy that goes about is fourteen years old, and he’s as straight and well-formed as if he was made of wax-work. He’s the one that shall have the chanter, if anybody does; but I’m rather doubtful about it, for he’s not steady enough, and I think I’ll leave it to a museum.
‘If I had a good set of pipes, there’s not many going about the streets could play better; but my pipes are not in good order. I’ve got three tunes for one that the Queen’s piper plays; and I can play in a far superior style, for he plays in the military style. McKay the former piper to her majesty, he was reckoned as good a player as there is in Scotland. I knew him very well, and many and many a time I’ve played with him. He was took bad in the head and obliged to go back to Scotland. He is in the Isle of Skye now. I belong to Peterhead. If I had a good set of pipes I wouldn’t be much afraid of playing with any of the pipers.
‘In the country towns I would sometimes be called into Highland gentlemen’s houses, to play to them, but never in London.
‘I make all my reeds myself to put in the stick. I make them of Spanish cane. It’s the outer glazed bark of it. The nearer you go to the shiny part, the harder the reed is, and the longer it lasts. In Scotland they use the Spanish cane. I have seen a man, at one time, who made a reed out of a piece of white thorn, and it sounded as well as ever a reed I saw sound; but I never see a man who could make them, only one.’
STATEMENT OF A PHOTOGRAPHIC MAN
[pp. 216–20] ‘I’ve been on and off at photographic-portrait taking since its commencement – that is to say, since they were taken cheap – two years this summer. I lodged in a room in Lambeth, and I used to take them in the back-yard – a kind of garden; I used to take a blanket off the bed, and used to tack it on a clothes-horse, and my mate used to hold it, if the wind was high, whilst I took the portrait.
‘The reason why I took to photographing was, that I thought I should like it better than what I was at. I was out busking and drag-pitching with a banjo then. Busking is going into public-houses and playing, and singing, and dancing; and drag-pitching is going out in the day down the little courts – tidy places, little terraces, no thoroughfares, we call drags. I’m a very determined chap, and when I take a hidea into my head I always do it somehow or other. I didn’t know any thing about photographs then, not a mite, but I saved up my money; sometimes a 1s.; if I had a good day, 1s. 6d.; and my wife she went to work at day boot-binding, and at night dancing at a exhibition, or such-like (she’s a tolerable good dancer – a penny exhibition or a parade dancer at fairs; that is, outside a show); sometimes she is Mademoiselle, or Madame, or what it may be. I got a loan of 3l. (and had to pay 4l. 3s. for it), and with what I’d saved, I managed to get together 5l. 5s., and I went to Gilbert Flemming’s, in Oxford-street, and bought a complete apparatus for taking pictures; 6½ by 4¾, for 5l. 5s. Then I took it home and opened the next day to take portraits for what we could get – 1s. and over. I never knew anything about taking portraits then, though they showed me when I bought the apparatus (but that was as good as nothing, for it takes months to learn). But I
had cards ready printed to put in the window before I bought the apparatus. The very next day I had the camera, I had a customer before I had even tried it, so I tried it on him, and I gave him a black picture (for I didn’t know how to make the portrait, and it was all black when I took the glass out), and told him that it would come out bright as it dried, and he went away quite delighted. I took the first Sunday after we had opened 1l. 5s. 6d., and everybody was quite pleased with their spotted and black pictures, for we still told them they would come out as they dried. But the next week they brought them back to be changed, and I could do them better, and they had middling pictures – for I picked it up very quick.
‘I had one fellow for a half-guinea portrait, and he was from Woolwich, and I made him come three times, like a lamb, and he stood pipes and ’bacca, and it was a thundering bad one after all. He was delighted, and he swears now it’s the best he ever had took, for it don’t fade, but will stop black to the end of the world; though he remarks that I deceived him in one thing, for it don’t come out bright.
‘You see, when first photography come up I had my eye on it, for I could see it would turn me in something some time. I went and worked as a regular labourer, carrying pails and so on, so as to try and learn something about chemistry; for I always had a hankling after science. Me and Jim was out at Stratford, pitching with the banjo, and I saw some men coming out of a chemical works, and we went to “nob” them (that’s get some halfpence out of them). Jim was tambo beating, and we was both black, and they called us lazy beggars, and said we ought to work as they did. So we told them we couldn’t get work, we had no characters. As we went home I and Jim got talking, and he says, “What a fine thing if we could get into the berth, for you’d soon learn about them portraits if you get among the chemicals;” so I agreed to go and try for the situation, and told him that if I got the berth I’d “nanti panka his nabs snide;” that means, I wouldn’t turn him up, or act nasty to him, but would share money the same as if we were pitching again. That slang is mummers’ slang, used by strolling professionals.
‘I stopped there for near twelve months, on and off. I had 10s. at first, but I got up to 16s.; and if I’d stopped I’ve no doubt I should have been foreman of one of the departments, for I got at last to almost the management of the oxalic acid. They used to make sulphate of iron – ferri sulp is the word for it – and carbonate of iron, too, and I used to be like the red man of Agar then, all over red, and a’most thought of cutting that to go for a soldier, for I shouldn’t have wanted a uniform. Then I got to charging the retorts to make carbonate of ammonia, and from that I went to oxalic acid.
‘At night me and Jim used to go out with the banjo and tamborine, and we could manage to make up our shares to from 18s. to a guinea a week each; that is, sharing my wages and all; for when we chum together we always panka each other bona (that is, share). We always made our ponta (that is, a pound) a week, for we could average our duey bionk peroon a darkey,’ or two shillings each, in the night.
‘That’s how I got an idea of chemicals, and when I went to photography many of the very things I used to manufacture was the very same as we used to take portraits, such as the hyposulphate of soda, and the nitrate of silver, and the sulphate of iron.
‘One of the reasons why I couldn’t take portraits was, that when I bought my camera at Flemming’s he took a portrait of me with it to show me how to use it, and as it was a dull afternoon he took 90 seconds to produce the picture. So, you see, when I went to work I thought I ought to let my pictures go the same time; and hang me if I didn’t, whether the sun was shining or not. I let my plate stop 90 seconds, and of course they used to come out overdone and quite white, and as the evening grew darker they came better. When I got a good one I was surprised, and that picture went miles to be shown about. Then I formed an idea that I had made a miscalculation as to my time, and by referring to the sixpenny book of instructions I saw my mistake, and by the Sunday – that was five days after – I was very much improved, and by a month I could take a very tidy picture.
‘I was getting on so well I got some of my portraits, when they was good ones, put in a chandler’s shop; and to be sure I got first-rate specimens. I used to go to the different shilling portrait galleries and have a likeness of myself or friends done, to exhibit in my own window. That’s the way I got my samples to begin with, and I believe it’s done all over London.
‘I kept at this all the winter, and all the time I suppose I earned 30s. a week. When summer come again I took a place with a garden in the Old Kent-road, and there I done middling, but I lost the majority of my business by not opening on a Sunday, for it was a religious neighbourhood, and I could have earned my 5l. a week comfortable, for as it was I cleared my 2l. regular. Then I had a regular tent built up out of clothes-horses. I stopped there till I had an offer of a good situation, and I accepted of it, at 2l. a week.
‘My new place was in Whitechapel, and we lowered the price from a shilling to sixpence. We did well there, that is the governor did, you know, for I’ve taken on the average from 60 to 100 a day, varying in price from sixpence to half-a-guinea, and the majority was shilling ones. The greatest quantity I ever took was 146 in one day, and 124 was taken away as they was done. The governor used to take 20l. a week, and of that 8l. clear profit, after paying me 2l., the men at the door 24s., a man and woman 29s., and rent 2l. My governor had, to my knowledge, 11 other shops, and I don’t know all of his establishments; I managed my concern for him, and he never come near us sometimes for a month.
‘I left on my own accord after four months, and I joined two others on equal shares, and opened a place of my own in Southwark. Unfortunately, I begun too late in the season, or I should have done well there; but at first we realised about 2l. a week each, and up to last week we have shared our 25s. a head.
‘Sunday is the best day for shilling portraits; in fact, the majority is shilling ones, because then, you see, people have got their wages, and don’t mind spending. Nobody knows about men’s ways better than we do. Sunday and Monday is the Derby-day like, and then after that they are about cracked up and done. The largest amount I’ve taken at Southwark on a Sunday is 80 – over 4l. worth, but then in the week-days it’s different; Sunday’s 15s. we think that very tidy, some days only 3s. or 4s.
‘You see we are obliged to resort to all sort of dodges to make sixpenny portraits pay. It’s a very neat little picture our sixpenny ones is; with a little brass rim round them, and a neat metal inside, and a front glass; so how can that pay if you do the legitimate business? The glass will cost you 2d. a dozen – this small size – and you give two with every picture; then the chemicals will cost quite a halfpenny, and varnish, and frame, and fittings, about 2d. We reckon 3d. out of each portrait. And then you see there’s house-rent and a man at the door, and boy at the table, and the operator, all to pay their wages out of this 6d.; so you may guess where the profit is.
‘One of our dodges is what we term “An American Air-Preserver”; which is nothing more than a card – old benefit tickets, or, if we are hard up, even brown paper, or anythink – soap wrappings, just varnished on one side. Between our private residence and our shop, no piece of card or old paper escapes us. Supposing a party come in, and says “I should like a portrait;” then I inquire which they’ll have, a shilling or a sixpenny one. If they prefer a sixpenny one, I then make them one up, and I show them one of the air-preservers, – which we keep ready made up – and I tell them that they are all chemicalized, and come from America, and that without them their picture will fade. I also tell them that I make nothing out of them, for that they are only 2d. and cost all the money; and that makes ’em buy one directly. They always bite at them; and we’ve actually had people come to us to have our preservers put upon other persons’ portraits, saying they’ve been everywhere for them and can’t get them. I charge 3d. if it’s not one of our pictures. I’m the original inventor of the “Patent American Air-Preserver”. We first called them the “
London Air-Preservers”; but they didn’t go so well as since they’ve been the Americans.
‘Another dodge is, I always take the portrait on a shilling size; and after they are done, I show them what they can have for a shilling – the full size, with the knees; and table and a vase on it – and let them understand that for sixpence they have all the back-ground and legs cut off; so as many take the shilling portraits as sixpenny ones.
‘Talking of them preservers, it is astonishing how they go. We’ve actually had photographers themselves come to us to buy our “American Air-Preservers”. We tells them it’s a secret, and we manufacture them ourselves. People won’t use their eyes. Why, I’ve actually cut up an old band-box afore the people’s eyes, and varnished it and dried it on the hob before their eyes, and yet they still fancy they come from America! Why, we picks up the old paper from the shop-sweeping, and they make first-rate “Patent American Air-Preservers”. Actually, when we’ve been short, I’ve torn off a bit of old sugar-paper, and stuck it on without any varnish at all, and the party has gone away quite happy and contented. But you must remember it is really a useful thing, for it does do good and do preserve the picture.