The streets at Christmas time by the oldest inhabitant, Old Father Christmas is a
great receiver of goods. Seated on his throne at this season he receives the
offerings of his subjects, droves of oxen, of sheep and of pigs,
flocks of geese and turkeys, Men and carts laden with all descriptions of game
in season, Carts of fish, baskets of fruits and vegetables, barrels of
ale and wine. All are proceeding to the feet of the King of Good.
Cheer boys and girls are rushing pell Mell from school, delighted at the
prospect of catching a glimpse of his jolly and kindly face. For a few
weeks before Christmas, the streets of London begin to assume a new aspect.
It is not in Region Street, or Oxford Street, or the fashionable streets
were linen drapers, jewelers and other traders who administer to fashion and to all
the wants and adornments of the outward man or woman reside that the change is
perceptible. Such streets are uniformly cheerful. Such shops are always luxuriant and always
displayed to the greatest possible advantage the commodities upon which their owners thrive to them.
All seasons are alike. Christmas and Midsummer, spring or autumn sees them
equally attractive. The jeweler's shop is splendid of necessity. The mercer but changes
from muslins and cottons to silks and satins, and from these to woolen textures
and furs, according to the season. But it is in the minor streets
inhabited by dealers in eatables of all kinds, that the approach of Christmas is
manifested by outward and visible signs about which there can be no mistake. Region
Street is too proud to show any symptoms of rejoicing at Christmas, but more
homely Tottenham Court Road puts on a new face for the occasion and decks herself
out with attractions never thought of at any other time. Oxford Street would scorn
to be too Christmas like, but her tributary streets on either side, except
those somber and highly respectable streets in which there are no shops, look upon
Christmas as an era and rejoice accordingly. The immense increase of population in London
has not only led to the multiplication of these signs of Christmas, but to
a greater competition among shopkeepers to attract notice. London is not merely a city.
It may be called a nation. Anyone who would wish to examine the
manners and customs of its people could have no better opportunity for the purpose than
Christmas. It is to be questioned whether he could have any so good.
Formerly, say, thirty or forty years ago, ingenuity was not much taxed
to tempt the purchasers of good things. People knew it was Ristmas without being
told so by advertisements, and knew where to go for the commodities they require
to celebrate the festival, without any announcement by placard or handbill. But year
after year up to the present period, the rivalry of business consequent upon the
immense number of streets opened up in all quarters, and the establishment of thousands
of new shops in almost every parish, the old shopkeepers have been gradually compelled
to resort to something like publicity to preserve their custom. Among shops, those
of the butcher's stand pre eminent and give us prospects not alone of the good
feeling for which December is famous, but of the good lighting that we may
expect in January and February. Old Father Christmas has a capacious stomach, and
the maw of London, not easily filled at any time, becomes all but
insatiable. Towards the close of the year, the droves of oxen in the
streets nuisance which has antiquity in its favor but nothing else, increase in numbers
and in the bulk of the animals that form them. The future dinners,
as well as the future candles of the million, wend their way to Smithfield
in all but countless multitudes. The butcher's shops soon give evidence of the new
demand that is certain to spring up. Beef ries is twenty percent in value,
and mutton at a somewhat smaller ratio. As soon as the carcasses of
prize animals are displayed in the great thoroughfares of the people, Prince Albert's oxen
and the Earl of Leicester's sheep or other animals bred by celebrated agriculturists are exhibited.
The oxen in portions and the sheep whole with labels upon them, pointing
out to the admiring crowds that gather around the shops, the place where,
and the owner by whom they were fed, as well as the amount of
prize they obtained. In many instances the carcasses are adorned with ribbons or wreaths,
and in almost all cases with sprigs of holly. It is a glorious
time for the butchers of London. There is a vastly increased supply, and
there is a vastly increased demand, And these tradesmen contrive upon what principle is
a mystery of London never thoroughly explained, to make an extra profit of both
circumstances. Suet, which, in those quiet and ordinary times, when sue
it is neither abundant nor scarce, fetches eight pence a pound rises to a
shilling when all the world is bent upon making plum pudding happy. Sometimes is
the housewife that can obtain it even at that price. But it is not
only in meat. There is in fact a general rise in the price of
all agricultural produce at this time. Butter, for which it cannot be supposed
there is any extra demand or any diminished supply at Christmas is an instance of
it. The price is increased by twopence or threepence a pound, as every
housekeeper knows, although she may not be able to account for it on any
known principles, either of political or domestic economy. The reason may be that
the butter man, having to pay an extra sum to the butcher, takes
it out of the pockets of the public. The butcher, too may plead
that he has to pay extra to the agriculturists for the flesh that Londoners will
consume, so that the farmer and grazer, after all, may be the
grand recipients of the prophets or the plunder of Christmas. Beef eating. London
must admit, even although it grumble, the infliction it is to be feared,
is wholly irremediable. Next to the butcher's shops, the porkman's, the
poulterers, and the dealers in game are the most crowded with the future good
cheer of the London nation. If the streets of the metropolis give unpleasant evidence
of the living beef and mutton that are to be offered up at the shrine
of Old Father Christmas, they give evidence equally strong and a vast deal more
pleasant, of the old gentleman's capabilities in the way of game and poultry.
The portmen may be passed over. They share the good fortune of Christmas like
their neighbors. But the dealers in domestic poultry and in game of all descriptions
reap a more abundant harvest and offer more tempting inducements for the expenditure of the
million. The family that never tastes game or poultry at any other period of
the year indulge themselves in it at Christmas, and chickens, geese, and
turkeys, dead and alive, are dispatched to the metropolis to help in the
honors of Christmas, in numbers commensurate with the magnitude of the city and the
joviality of the occasion. While poultry which is bought has its thousands and tens
of thousands of purchasers, game which is given away has also its thousands and
tens of thousands of grateful recipients. Blessed is the London family that has friends
in the country. Blessed at Christmas time is he who has a relative or
friend who loves sport, and who, knowing how to enjoy his sport,
knows quite as well how to cultivate friendship. And render relationship agreeable to him.
Comes the welcome present from the fields, the moors, or the mountains,
and for him the railways bear the welcome gifts from all quarters of the
land. This large portion of the Christmas consumption of the metropolis does not grace
the shops. It is only to be seen in its transit from the railway
station to the houses of the grateful recipients. But a portion equally large finds
its way to the dealers. In the days of stage and mail coaches,
it was a pleasant sight to see how picturesquely they were loaded. But the
railway, which does more business, does it without a tithe of the display.
All game is not given away what it were, but a goodly share
of it, because ms merchandise and is set forth with tempting beauty in the
shops. The butcher's shops may be disgusting, and they are so to all
who think upon the subject, which, however, the majority of man and
womankind do not. But the shop of the dealer in game cannot be considered
repulsive. The victims of our appetite which he supplies, are not always stripped
of their beautiful plumage, and the pheasant dead is only less lovely than the
pheasant alive. Even poor puss the hair, with their warm jacket on,
suggests no ideas akin to those which are felt on the contemplation of the joints
that hang from the rafters of the butcher's shop may no revenan pas ah,
no mouton. But far more attractive than those of the game dealer are the
shops of the grocer's. The grocers look upon Christmas as their peculiar time,
and they take all due pains to set themselves forth in their fairest trim.
Neither do they take such advantage of the day as the dealers in home agricultural
produce. The grocers provide large and abundant stores of raisins, currants, spices,
and preserved fruits, and put no additional price upon them. On the
contrary, they often ask less for their wares than at other seasons, a
piece of good generalship on their parts, which our friends the flesh dealers,
might imitate with advantage to themselves as well as to the public. The grocers
are not greedy. They encourage the manufacture of pudding their pleasant and wholesome shops,
which meet the eye. In all our great thoroughfares are shrines to which
the devotees of Christmas pay a willing visit. Many are their devices to attract
notice. Sometimes a flag is displayed from the first floor windows, or the
whole front of the house is beplastered with placards announcing the arrival of millions of
pounds of currants and raisins, all for the use of the pudding loving people,
and to be obtained within at prices defying competition. One placard exhibited a
few years ago by a grocer was in the form of a playbill announcing the
production of a new pantomime to be called Harlequin Peel or the Magic Pudding.
This was not intended as a political sneer at a great statesman, though at
first glance it would seem suggestive of such an idea. It was simply a
social and domestic affair to attract customers. Sometimes the grocer gives his customers the
additional attraction of a pictorial pudding in his window, with the figure of a
sturdy John Bull surrounded by his family cutting into the dainty. His face is
redolent of good humor, and a scroll issuing from his mouth informs all men,
sometimes in a couplet of choice doggerel, that the plums and spices of
which that pudding was compounded were bought at mister Snook's, or mister Jones's,
or whatever the name may be of the enterprising trader. Very often a long
string of rhymes, almost as good as those remarkable lyrics with which mister Moses
and his poets amuse the public, is printed in large type and affixed to
the grocer's door post, that all who run may read. Indeed, of
late years, the majority of grocers in crowded streets think it necessary to become
poetical. There's a good time coming, boys, said one effusion of the
kind a few years ago. There's a good time coming. Raisins will be
cheap at Robinson's, while a rival grocer on the other side of the way
put up a placard with a more delightful announcement, The good time has come,
boys. Raisins are cheap at Smith's. The grocers and the keepers of
those compound establishments half grocers and half Italian warehouses, have of late years very
much increase their trade by large importations of preserved fruits. The English as a
people do not excel in this manufacture, but the French and Italians, who
have long been famous for it, improve in it every year. The English
demand that has arisen, and which seems to go on increasing every year,
will doubtless give a further impetus to their ingenuity. It is worth while to
spend a few hours in the shop of a large importer of these elegant articles,
not merely for the sake of the fruits themselves, crystallized and uncrystallized,
but for a sight of the boxes in which they are packed. The French
prints used for the purpose have long been celebrated for their beauty and fancy,
and the boxes in which plums and those delicious little oranges known as sheenas are
packed are worth preserving for their own sakes. After the fruit has been consumed.
Some of the larger receptacles are fit to convert into workboxes after thee have
served their original intention, and many are paired with a view to such a
purpose. In these times, it might be worth the while of capitalists to
devote their attention to the home manufacture of these articles, and also to the
preservation of fruits. Sugar is as cheap in England as in France, and
there is no reason why jams and marmalade, good as they are, should
be the sole products of English industry as regards the preservation of fruit. The
most pleasing, as well as the most common symptom of Christmas in the streets
is the holly displayed in shops of every kind wherever eatables or drinkables are sold,
and which is almost invariably to be seen at kitchen windows for a week
or two before and after Christmas Day. Love in the kitchen could not prosper
without the holly, and the policeman, in search of affection or of cold
mutton, would think the kitchen of his fair friend unseasonable in its appearance if
the sprigs of dark green intermingled with the bright red berries were absent from the
window. The holly, chart of which a most admirable representation is given in
our engraving, is also a pleasant sight in the streets, either of the
outskirts of the metropolis as represented by the artist, or of the dense heart
of the old city. Holly is a great article of commerce at Christmas time
and yields a good prophet both to those who cultivate it and those who vended
in the streets. Never was it more in request than it is now.
Never may it be less sought after as the verdant symbol of the loving kindness
of the season. There is one other aspect of the streets of London at
Christmas which requires notice, the public heart being open. At Christmas beggars usually
venture out with more certain hope of our charity than at other times. Nor
is their hope disappointed, to say nothing of the carol singers, who seem
to look upon themselves as privileged for the sake of the old familiar chain which
they musically or unmusically, pour into our ears, And who of all ages
and of both sexes, swarm in every street, in numbers of which an
accurate estimate would convey a somewhat alarming idea of the poverty of London. Troops
of unmusical beggars make their appearance in the streets. Ireland evidently contributes a large
portion to this multitude of misery, and the mind is driven to reflect amid
the gaiety and joviality of the time, not only upon the pauperism of that
unhappy land, but of the pauperism of this which is made more wretched by
the influx of these interlopers. The pauperism of England amounts to one million,
four hundred thousand people. The Irish vagrants that come over to take their chance
amongst us cannot account to many less than three hundred thousand, and possibly they
amount to many more, forming an aggregate of one million and three quarters.
When we fancy that this is almost equal to the whole population of London,
Westminster, Lambeth, Southwark, Finsbury, Marleybone, the Tower, Hamlets,
Kensington, Hammersmith, Greenwich and Woolwich. And when we attempt to realize to
our mind how vast a multitude this is, and how fearful it would be
if it were all congregated together in one place, we are compelled to ask,
if there be not something radically wrong in our civilization which not only permits
the growth of such a sore in the body politic, but which actually favors
its growth. Let the minds of our great thinkers be directed to it.
The chief difficulty of a time not far distant will be the existence and maintenance
of this immense standing army of poverty. If there ever be a time when
it is the duty of individuals to attempt to relieve it. That time is
Christmas, at a period of feasts, when the paupers and the union workhouses
are embraced in the large circle of our sympathies and cared for a little more
liberally than usual. Let us draw a circle around the circle and include within
it the beggars in the streets. It may be wrong as a rule to
encourage street beggars by donations of any kind. But Christmas is an exceptional period,
and though possibly in being charitable to all, we may be charitable to
many worthless persons, the good will and the good day will consecrate the deed
at least, although political theorists may dissent, and although the man who paid
a very heavy poorest rate yesterday may see reason to be unconvinced. Such is
the opinion until Christmas has passed of the oldest inhabitant end of the streets at
Christmas time, by the oldest inhabitant