TABLE SHOWING THE QUANTITY OF TREES, SHRUBS, FLOWERS, ROOTS, AND BRANCHES SOLD ANNUALLY, WHOLESALE, AT THE METROPOLITAN MARKETS, AND THE PROPORTION RETAILED IN THE STREETS.[6]

Perhaps the pleasantest of all cries in early spring is that of “All a-growing—all a-blowing” heard for the first time in the season. It is that of the “root-seller” who has stocked his barrow with primroses, violets, and daisies. Their beauty and fragrance gladden the senses; and the first and, perhaps, unexpected sight of them may prompt hopes of the coming year, such as seem proper to the spring.

Cobbett has insisted, and with unquestioned truth, that a fondness for bees and flowers is among the very best characteristics of the English peasant. I consider it equally unquestionable that a fondness for in-door flowers, is indicative of the good character and healthful tastes, as well as of the domestic and industrious habits, of the city artizan. Among some of the most intelligent and best-conducted of these artizans, I may occasionally have found, on my visits to their homes, neither flowers nor birds, but then I have found books.

United with the fondness for the violet, the wallflower, the rose—is the presence of the quality which has been pronounced the handmaiden of all the virtues—cleanliness. I believe that the bunch of violets, on which a poor woman or her husband has expended 1d., rarely ornaments an unswept hearth. In my investigations, I could not but notice how the presence or absence of flowers, together with other indications of the better tastes, marked the difference between the well-paid and the ill-paid workman. Concerning the tailors, for instance, I had occasion to remark, of the dwellings of these classes:—“In the one, you occasionally find small statues of Shakspere beneath glass shades; in the other, all is dirt and fœtor. The working-tailor’s comfortable first-floor at the West-end is redolent with the perfume of the small bunch of violets that stands in a tumbler over the mantel-piece; the sweater’s wretched garret is rank with the stench of filth and herrings.” The presence of the bunch of flowers of itself tells us of “a better state of things” elevating the workman; for, amidst the squalid poverty and fustiness of a slopworker’s garret, the nostril loses its daintiness of sense, so that even a freshly fragrant wallflower is only so many yellow petals and green leaves.

A love of flowers is also observable among men whose avocations are out of doors, and those whose habits are necessarily those of order and punctuality.

Among this class are such persons as gentlemen’s coachmen, who delight in the display of a flower or two in the button-holes of their coats when out of doors, and in small vases in their rooms in their masters’ mews. I have even seen the trellis work opposite the windows of cabmen’s rooms, which were over stables, with a projecting roof covering the whole, thickly yellow and green with the flowers and leaves of the easily-trained nasturtium and herb “twopence.” The omnibus driver occasionally “sports a nosegay”—as he himself might word it—in his button-hole; and the stage-coachman of old felt he was improperly dressed if a big bunch of flowers were not attached to his coat. Sailors ashore are likewise generally fond of flowers.

A delight in flowers is observable, also, among the workers whose handicraft requires the exercise of taste, and whose eyes are sensible, from the nature of their employment, to the beauty of colour. To this class belong especially the Spitalfields’ silk-weavers. At one time the Spitalfields weavers were almost the only botanists in London, and their love of flowers is still strong. I have seen fuchsias gladdening the weaver’s eyes by being placed near his loom, their crimson pendants swinging backwards and forwards to the motion of the treadles, while his small back garden has been many-coloured with dahlias. These weavers, too, were at one time highly-successful as growers of tulips.

Those out-door workmen, whose calling is of coarse character, are never known to purchase flowers, which to them are mere trumpery. Perhaps no one of my readers ever saw a flower in the possession of a flusherman, nightman, slaughterer, sweep, gaslayer, gut and tripe-preparer, or such like labourer. Their eyes convey to the mind no appreciation of beauty, and the sense of smell is actually dead in them, except the odour be rank exceedingly.

The fondness for flowers in London is strongest in the women, and, perhaps, strongest in those whose callings are in-door and sedentary. Flowers are to them a companionship.

It remains only for me to state that, in the poorest districts, and among people where there is no sense of refinement or but a small love for natural objects, flowers are little known. Flowers are not bought by the slop-workers, the garret and chamber-masters of Bethnal-green, nor in the poor Irish districts, nor by the City people. Indeed, as I have observed, there is not a flower-stand in the city.

It should be remembered that, in poor districts, the first appearance of flowers conveys to the slop-workman only one pleasurable association—that the season of warmth has arrived, and that he will not only escape being chilled with cold, but that he will be delivered from the heavy burden of providing fire and candle.

A pleasant-looking man, with an appearance which the vulgar characterise as “jolly,” and with hearty manners, gave me the following account as to the character of his customers. He had known the business since he was a boy, his friends having been in it previously. He said:

“There’s one old gentleman a little way out of town, he always gives 1s. for the first violet root that any such as me carries there. I’m often there before any others: ‘Ah!’ he says, ‘here you are; you’ve come, like Buonaparte, with your violet.’ I don’t know exactly what he means. I don’t like to ask him you see; for, though he’s civil, he’s not what you may call a free sort of man—that’s it.” [I explained to him that the allusion was to Buonaparte’s emblem of the violet, with the interpretation he or his admirers gave to it—“I come in the spring.”] “That’s it, sir, is it?” he resumed; “well, I’m glad I know, because I don’t like to be puzzled. Mine’s a puzzling trade, though. Violets have a good sale. I’ve sold six dozen roots in a day, and only half as many primroses and double-daisies, if half. Everybody likes violets. I’ve sold some to poor people in town, but they like their roots in pots. They haven’t a bit of a garden for ’em. More shame too I say, when they pays such rents. People that sits working all day is very fond of a sweet flower. A gentleman that’s always a-writing or a-reading in his office—he’s in the timber-trade—buys something of me every time I see him; twice or thrice a week, sometimes. I can’t say what he does with them all. Barmaids, though you mightn’t think it, sir, is wery tidy customers. So, sometimes, is young women that’s in an improper way of life, about Lisson-grove, and in some parts near Oxford-street. They buys all sorts. Perhaps more stocks than anything, for they’re beautiful roots, and not dear. I’ve sold real beauties for 2d.—real beauties, but small; 6d. is a fair price; one stock will perfume a house. I tell my customers not to sleep with them in the room; it isn’t good for the health. A doctor told me that, and said, ‘You ought to give me a fuchsia for my opinion.’ That was his joke. Primroses I sell most of—they’re not in pots—two or three or four miles out of town, and most if a family’s come into a new house, or changed their house, if there’s children. The young ones teases the old ones to buy them to set in the garden, and when children gets fairly to work that way, it’s a sure sale. If they can’t get over father, they’ll get over mother. Busy men never buy flowers, as far as I’ve seen.” [‘In no thoroughfare in the city, I am assured, is there a flower-stand—a circumstance speaking volumes as to the habits and tastes of the people. Of fruit-stalls and chop-houses there are in the neighbourhood of the Exchange, more than in any other part of London perhaps—the faculty of perceiving the beauty of colour, form, and perfume, as combined in flowers is not common to the man of business. The pleasures of the palate, however, they can all understand.’] “Parsons and doctors are often tidy customers,” resumed my informant. “They have a good deal of sitting and reading, I believe. I’ve heard a parson say to his wife, ‘Do, my dear, go and buy a couple of those wallflowers for my study.’ I don’t do much for working-men; the women’s my best customers. There’s a shoemaker to be sure comes down sometimes with his old woman to lay out 2d. or 3d. on me; ‘Let’s have something that smells strong,’ he’ll say, ‘stronger than cobbler’s wax; for, though I can’t smell that, others can.’ I’ve sold him musks (musk-plants) as often as anything.

“The poor people buy rather largely at times; that is, many of them buy. One day last summer, my old woman and me sold 600 penny pots of mignonette; and all about you saw them—and it was a pleasure to see them—in the poor women’s windows. The women are far the best customers. There was the mignonette behind the bits of bars they have, in the shape of gates and such like, in the front of their windows, in the way of preventing the pots falling into the street. Mignonette’s the best of all for a sure sale; where can you possibly have a sweeter or a nicer penn’orth, pot and all.”

Of the Street Sale of Trees and Shrubs.

The street-trade in trees and shrubs is an appendage of “root-selling,” and not an independent avocation. The season of supply at the markets extends over July, August, September, and October, with a smaller trade in the winter and spring months. At the nursery gardens, from the best data I can arrive at, there are about twice as many trees and shrubs purchased as in the markets by the costermongers. Nor is this the only difference. It is the more costly descriptions that are bought at the nursery grounds.

The trees and shrubs are bought at the gardens under precisely the same circumstances as the roots, but the trade is by no means popular with the root-sellers. They regard these heavy, cumbrous goods, as the smarter costers do such things as turnips and potatoes, requiring more room, and yielding less profit. “It breaks a man’s heart,” said one dealer, “and half kills his beast, going round with a lot of heavy things, that perhaps you can’t sell.” The street-dealers say they must keep them, “or people will go, where they can get roots, and trees, and everything, all together.” In winter, or in early spring, the street-seller goes a round now and then, with evergreens and shrubs alone, and the trade is then less distasteful to him. The trees and shrubs are displayed, when the market-space allows, on a sort of stand near the flower-stand; sometimes they are placed on the ground, along-side the flower-stand, but only when no better display can be made.

The trees and shrubs sold by the costers are mezereons, rhododendrons, savine, laurustinus, acacias (of the smaller genera, some being highly aromatic when in flower), myrtles, guelder-roses (when small), privet, genistas, broom, furze (when small), the cheaper heaths, syringas (small), lilacs (almost always young and for transplanting), southernwood (when large), box (large) dwarf laurels, variegated laurels (called a cuber by the street-people), and young fir-trees, &c.

The prices of trees vary far more than flower-roots, because they are dependent upon size for value. “Why,” said one man, “I’ve bought roddies, as I calls them (rhododendrons), at 4s. a dozen, but they was scrubby things, and I’ve bought them at 14s. 6d. I once gave 5s. for two trees of them, which I had ordered, and there was a rare grumbling about the price, though I only charged 7s. 6d. for the two, which was 1s. 3d. a piece for carriage, and hard earned too, to carry them near five miles in my cart, almost on purpose, but I thought I was pleasing a good customer. Then there’s myrtles, why I can get them at 5d. a piece, and at 5s., and a deal more if wanted. You can have myrtles that a hat might be very big for them to grow in, and myrtles that will fill a great window in a fine house. I’ve bought common heaths at 1s. 3d. a dozen.”

The coster ordinarily confines himself to the cheaper sorts of plants, and rarely meddles with such things as acacias, mezereons, savines, syringas, lilacs, or even myrtles, and with none of these things unless cheap. “Trees, real trees,” I was told, “are often as cheap as anything. Them young firs there was 4s. 6d. a dozen, and a man at market can buy four or six of them if he don’t want a dozen.”

The customers for trees and shrubs are generally those who inhabit the larger sort of houses, where there is room in the hall or the windows for display; or where there is a garden capacious enough for the implantation of the shrubs. Three-fourths of the trees are sold on a round, and when purchased at a stall the costermonger generally undertakes to deliver them at the purchaser’s residence, if not too much out of his way, in his regular rounds. Or he may diverge, and make a round on speculation, purposely. There is as much bartering trees for old clothes, as for roots, and as many, or more, complaints of the hard bargainings of ladies: “I’d rather sell polyanthuses at a farthing a piece profit to poor women, if I could get no more,” said one man, “than I’d work among them screws that’s so fine in grand caps and so civil. They’d skin a flea for his hide and tallow.”

The number of trees and shrubs sold annually, in the streets, are, as near as I can ascertain, as follows—I have added to the quantity purchased by the street-sellers, at the metropolitan markets, the amount bought by them at the principal nursery-gardens in the environs of London:

The London Flower Girls.

It is not easy to arrive at any accurate estimate of the number of flower-sellers in the streets of London. The cause of the difficulty lies in the fact that none can be said to devote themselves entirely to the sale of flowers in the street, for the flower-sellers, when oranges are cheap and good, find their sale of the fruit more certain and profitable than that of flowers, and resort to it accordingly. Another reason is, that a poor costermonger will on a fine summer’s day send out his children to sell flowers, while on other days they may be selling water-cresses or, perhaps, onions. Sunday is the best day for flower-selling, and one experienced man computed, that in the height and pride of the summer 400 children were selling flowers, on the Sundays, in the streets. Another man thought that number too low an estimate, and contended that it was nearer 800. I found more of the opinion of my last mentioned informant than of the other, but I myself am disposed to think the smaller number nearer the truth. On week days it is computed there are about half the number of flower-sellers that there are on the Sundays. The trade is almost entirely in the hands of children, the girls outnumbering the boys by more than eight to one. The ages of the girls vary from six to twenty; few of the boys are older than twelve, and most of them are under ten.

Of flower-girls there are two classes. Some girls, and they are certainly the smaller class of the two, avail themselves of the sale of flowers in the streets for immoral purposes, or rather, they seek to eke out the small gains of their trade by such practises. They frequent the great thoroughfares, and offer their bouquets to gentlemen, whom on an evening they pursue for a hundred yards or two in such places as the Strand, mixing up a leer with their whine for custom or for charity. Their ages are from fourteen to nineteen or twenty, and sometimes they remain out offering their flowers—or dried lavender when no fresh flowers are to be had—until late at night. They do not care, to make their appearance in the streets until towards evening, and though they solicit the custom of ladies, they rarely follow or importune them. Of this class I shall treat more fully under another head.

The other class of flower-girls is composed of the girls who, wholly or partially, depend upon the sale of flowers for their own support or as an assistance to their parents. Some of them are the children of street-sellers, some are orphans, and some are the daughters of mechanics who are out of employment, and who prefer any course rather than an application to the parish. These girls offer their flowers in the principal streets at the West End, and resort greatly to the suburbs; there are a few, also, in the business thoroughfares. They walk up and down in front of the houses, offering their flowers to any one looking out of the windows, or they stand at any likely place. They are generally very persevering, more especially the younger children, who will run along, barefooted, with their “Please, gentleman, do buy my flowers. Poor little girl!”—“Please, kind lady, buy my violets. O, do! please! Poor little girl! Do buy a bunch, please, kind lady!”

The statement I give, “of two orphan flower-sellers” furnishes another proof, in addition to the many I have already given, of the heroic struggles of the poor, and of the truth of the saying, “What would the poor do without the poor?”

The better class of flower-girls reside in Lisson-grove, in the streets off Drury-lane, in St. Giles’s, and in other parts inhabited by the very poor. Some of them live in lodging-houses, the stench and squalor of which are in remarkable contrast to the beauty and fragrance of the flowers they sometimes have to carry thither with them unsold.

Of Two Orphan Flower Girls.

Of these girls the elder was fifteen and the younger eleven. Both were clad in old, but not torn, dark print frocks, hanging so closely, and yet so loosely, about them as to show the deficiency of under-clothing; they wore old broken black chip bonnets. The older sister (or rather half-sister) had a pair of old worn-out shoes on her feet, the younger was barefoot, but trotted along, in a gait at once quick and feeble—as if the soles of her little feet were impervious, like horn, to the roughness of the road. The elder girl has a modest expression of countenance, with no pretensions to prettiness except in having tolerably good eyes. Her complexion was somewhat muddy, and her features somewhat pinched. The younger child had a round, chubby, and even rosy face, and quite a healthful look. Her portrait is here given.

They lived in one of the streets near Drury-lane. They were inmates of a house, not let out as a lodging-house, in separate beds, but in rooms, and inhabited by street-sellers and street-labourers. The room they occupied was large, and one dim candle lighted it so insufficiently that it seemed to exaggerate the dimensions. The walls were bare and discoloured with damp. The furniture consisted of a crazy table and a few chairs, and in the centre of the room was an old four-post bedstead of the larger size. This bed was occupied nightly by the two sisters and their brother, a lad just turned thirteen. In a sort of recess in a corner of the room was the decency of an old curtain—or something equivalent, for I could hardly see in the dimness—and behind this was, I presume, the bed of the married couple. The three children paid 2s. a week for the room, the tenant an Irishman out of work paying 2s. 9d., but the furniture was his, and his wife aided the children in their trifle of washing, mended their clothes, where such a thing was possible, and such like. The husband was absent at the time of my visit, but the wife seemed of a better stamp, judging by her appearance, and by her refraining from any direct, or even indirect, way of begging, as well as from the “Glory be to Gods!” “the heavens be your honour’s bed!” or “it’s the thruth I’m telling of you sir,” that I so frequently meet with on similar visits.

The elder girl said, in an English accent, not at all garrulously, but merely in answer to my questions: “I sell flowers, sir; we live almost on flowers when they are to be got. I sell, and so does my sister, all kinds, but it’s very little use offering any that’s not sweet. I think it’s the sweetness as sells them. I sell primroses, when they’re in, and violets, and wall-flowers, and stocks, and roses of different sorts, and pinks, and carnations, and mixed flowers, and lilies of the valley, and green lavender, and mignonette (but that I do very seldom), and violets again at this time of the year, for we get them both in spring and winter.” [They are forced in hot-houses for winter sale, I may remark.] “The best sale of all is, I think, moss-roses, young moss-roses. We do best of all on them. Primroses are good, for people say: ‘Well, here’s spring again to a certainty.’ Gentlemen are our best customers. I’ve heard that they buy flowers to give to the ladies. Ladies have sometimes said: ‘A penny, my poor girl, here’s three-halfpence for the bunch.’ Or they’ve given me the price of two bunches for one; so have gentlemen. I never had a rude word said to me by a gentleman in my life. No, sir, neither lady nor gentleman ever gave me 6d. for a bunch of flowers. I never had a sixpence given to me in my life—never. I never go among boys, I know nobody but my brother. My father was a tradesman in Mitchelstown, in the County Cork. I don’t know what sort of a tradesman he was. I never saw him. He was a tradesman I’ve been told. I was born in London. Mother was a chairwoman, and lived very well. None of us ever saw a father.” [It was evident that they were illegitimate children, but the landlady had never seen the mother, and could give me no information.] “We don’t know anything about our fathers. We were all ‘mother’s children.’ Mother died seven years ago last Guy Faux day. I’ve got myself, and my brother and sister a bit of bread ever since, and never had any help but from the neighbours. I never troubled the parish. O, yes, sir, the neighbours is all poor people, very poor, some of them. We’ve lived with her” (indicating her landlady by a gesture) “the two years, and off and on before that. I can’t say how long.” “Well, I don’t know exactly,” said the landlady, “but I’ve had them with me almost all the time, for four years, as near as I can recollect; perhaps more. I’ve moved three times, and they always followed me.” In answer to my inquiries the landlady assured me that these two poor girls, were never out of doors all the time she had known them after six at night. “We’ve always good health. We can all read.” [Here the three somewhat insisted upon proving to me their proficiency in reading, and having produced a Roman Catholic book, the “Garden of Heaven,” they read very well.] “I put myself,” continued the girl, “and I put my brother and sister to a Roman Catholic school—and to Ragged schools—but I could read before mother died. My brother can write, and I pray to God that he’ll do well with it. I buy my flowers at Covent Garden; sometimes, but very seldom, at Farringdon. I pay 1s. for a dozen bunches, whatever flowers are in. Out of every two bunches I can make three, at 1d. a piece. Sometimes one or two over in the dozen, but not so often as I would like. We make the bunches up ourselves. We get the rush to tie them with for nothing. We put their own leaves round these violets (she produced a bunch). The paper for a dozen costs a penny; sometimes only a halfpenny. The two of us doesn’t make less than 6d. a day, unless it’s very ill luck. But religion teaches us that God will support us, and if we make less we say nothing. We do better on oranges in March or April, I think it is, than on flowers. Oranges keep better than flowers you see, sir. We make 1s. a day, and 9d. a day, on oranges, the two of us. I wish they was in all the year. I generally go St. John’s-wood way, and Hampstead and Highgate way with my flowers. I can get them nearly all the year, but oranges is better liked than flowers, I think. I always keep 1s. stock-money, if I can. If it’s bad weather, so bad that we can’t sell flowers at all, and so if we’ve had to spend our stock-money for a bit of bread, she (the landlady) lends us 1s., if she has one, or she borrows one of a neighbour, if she hasn’t, or if the neighbours hasn’t it, she borrows it at a dolly-shop” (the illegal pawn-shop). “There’s 2d. a week to pay for 1s. at a dolly, and perhaps an old rug left for it; if it’s very hard weather, the rug must be taken at night time, or we are starved with the cold. It sometimes has to be put into the dolly again next morning, and then there’s 2d. to pay for it for the day. We’ve had a frock in for 6d., and that’s a penny a week, and the same for a day. We never pawned anything; we have nothing they would take in at the pawnshop. We live on bread and tea, and sometimes a fresh herring of a night. Sometimes we don’t eat a bit all day when we’re out; sometimes we take a bit of bread with us, or buy a bit. My sister can’t eat taturs; they sicken her. I don’t know what emigrating means.” [I informed her and she continued]: “No, sir, I wouldn’t like to emigrate and leave brother and sister. If they went with me I don’t think I should like it, not among strangers. I think our living costs us 2s. a week for the two of us; the rest goes in rent. That’s all we make.”

The brother earned from 1s. 6d. to 2s. a week, with an occasional meal, as a costermonger’s boy. Neither of them ever missed mass on a Sunday.

Of the Life of a Flower Girl.

Some of these girls are, as I have stated, of an immoral character, and some of them are sent out by their parents to make out a livelihood by prostitution. One of this class, whom I saw, had come out of prison a short time previously. She was not nineteen, and had been sentenced about a twelvemonth before to three months’ imprisonment with hard labour, “for heaving her shoe,” as she said, “at the Lord Mayor, to get a comfortable lodging, for she was tired of being about the streets.” After this she was locked up for breaking the lamps in the street. She alleged that her motive for this was a belief that by committing some such act she might be able to get into an asylum for females. She was sent out into the streets by her father and mother, at the age of nine, to sell flowers. Her father used to supply her with the money to buy the flowers, and she used to take the proceeds of the day’s work home to her parents. She used to be out frequently till past midnight, and seldom or never got home before nine. She associated only with flower-girls of loose character. The result may be imagined. She could not state positively that her parents were aware of the manner in which she got the money she took home to them. She supposes that they must have imagined what her practices were. He used to give her no supper if she “didn’t bring home a good bit of money.” Her father and mother did little or no work all this while. They lived on what she brought home. At thirteen years old she was sent to prison (she stated) “for selling combs in the street” (it was winter, and there were no flowers to be had). She was incarcerated fourteen days, and when liberated she returned to her former practices. The very night that she came home from gaol her father sent her out into the streets again. She continued in this state, her father and mother living upon her, until about twelve months before I received this account from her, when her father turned her out of his house, because she didn’t bring home money enough. She then went into Kent, hop-picking, and there fell in with a beggar, who accosted her while she was sitting under a tree. He said, “You have got a very bad pair of shoes on; come with me, and you shall have some better ones.” She consented, and walked with him into the village close by, where they stood out in the middle of the streets, and the man began addressing the people, “My kind good Christians, me and my poor wife here is ashamed to appear before you in the state we are in.” She remained with this person all the winter, and travelled with him through the country, begging. He was a beggar by trade. In the spring she returned to the flower-selling, but scarcely got any money either by that or other means. At last she grew desperate, and wanted to get back to prison. She broke the lamps outside the Mansion-house, and was sentenced to fourteen days’ imprisonment. She had been out of prison nearly three weeks when I saw her, and was in training to go into an asylum. She was sick and tired, she said, of her life.

Of the Street Sale of Lavender.

The sale of green lavender in the streets is carried on by the same class as the sale of flowers, and is, as often as flowers, used for immoral purposes, when an evening or night sale is carried on.

The lavender is sold at the markets in bundles, each containing a dozen branches. It is sold principally to ladies in the suburbs, who purchase it to deposit in drawers and wardrobes; the odour communicated to linen from lavender being, perhaps, more agreeable and more communicable than that from any other flower. Nearly a tenth of the market sale may be disposed of in this way. Some costers sell it cheap to recommend themselves to ladies who are customers, that they may have the better chance for a continuance of those ladies’ custom.

The number of lavender-sellers can hardly be given as distinct from that of flower-sellers, because any flower-girl will sell lavender, “when it is in season.” The season continues from the beginning of July to the end of September. In the winter months, generally after day-fall, dried lavender is offered for sale; it is bought at the herb-shops. There is, however, an addition to the number of the flower-girls of a few old women, perhaps from twenty to thirty, who vary their street-selling avocations by going from door to door in the suburbs with lavender for sale, but do not stand to offer it in the street.

The street-seller’s profit on lavender is now somewhat more than cent. per cent., as the bundle, costing 2½d., brings when tied up in sprigs, at least, 6d. The profit, I am told, was, six or seven years ago, 200 per cent.; “but people will have better penn’orths now.” I was informed, by a person long familiar with the trade in flowers, that, from twenty to twenty-five years ago, the sale was the best. It was a fashionable amusement for ladies to tie the sprigs of lavender together, compressing the stems very tightly with narrow ribbon of any favourite colour, the heads being less tightly bound, or remaining unbound; the largest stems were in demand for this work. The lavender bundle, when its manufacture was complete, was placed in drawers, or behind books in the shelves of a glazed book-case, so that a most pleasant atmosphere was diffused when the book-case was opened.

Cut Flowers.

I now give the quantity of cut flowers sold in the streets. The returns have been derived from nursery-men and market-salesmen. It will be seen how fully these returns corroborate the statement of the poor flower-girl—(p. 135)—“it’s very little use offering anything that’s not sweet.”

I may remark, too, that at the present period, from “the mildness of the season,” wallflowers, primroses, violets, and polyanthuses are almost as abundant as in spring sunshine.

Of the Street Sale of Flowers in Pots, Roots, etc.

The “flower-root sellers”—for I heard them so called to distinguish them from the sellers of “cut flowers”—are among the best-mannered and the best-dressed of all the street-sellers I have met with, but that only as regards a portion of them. Their superiority in this respect may perhaps be in some measure attributable to their dealing with a better class of customers—with persons who, whether poor or rich, exercise healthful tastes.

I may mention, that I found the street-sellers of “roots”—always meaning thereby flower-roots in bloom—more attached to their trade than others of their class.

The roots, sold in the streets, are bought in the markets and at the nursery-gardens; but about three-fourths of those required by the better class of street-dealers are bought at the gardens, as are “cut flowers” occasionally. Hackney is the suburb most resorted to by the root-sellers. The best “pitches” for the sale of roots in the street are situated in the New-road, the City-road, the Hampstead-road, the Edgeware-road, and places of similar character, where there is a constant stream of passers along, who are not too much immersed in business. Above three-fourths of the sale is effected by itinerant costermongers. For this there is one manifest reason: a flower-pot, with the delicate petals of its full-blown moss-rose, perhaps, suffers even from the trifling concussion in the journey of an omnibus, for instance. To carry a heavy flower-pot, even any short distance, cannot be expected, and to take a cab for its conveyance adds greatly to the expense. Hence, flower-roots are generally purchased at the door of the buyer.

For the flowers of commoner or easier culture, the root-seller receives from 1d. to 3d. These are primroses, polyanthuses, cowslips (but in small quantities comparatively), daisies (single and double,—and single or wild, daisies were coming to be more asked for, each 1d.), small early wallflowers, candy-tufts, southernwood (called “lad’s love” or “old man” by some), and daffodils, (but daffodils were sometimes dearer than 3d.). The plants that may be said to struggle against frost and snow in a hard season, such as the snowdrop, the crocus, and the mezereon, are rarely sold by the costers; “They come too soon,” I was told. The primroses, and the other plants I have enumerated, are sold, for the most part, not in pots, but with soil attached to the roots, so that they may be planted in a garden (as they most frequently are) or in a pot.

Towards the close of May, in an early season, and in the two following months, the root-trade is at its height. Many of the stalls and barrows are then exceedingly beautiful, the barrow often resembling a moving garden. The stall-keepers have sometimes their flowers placed on a series of shelves, one above another, so as to present a small amphitheatre of beautiful and diversified hues; the purest white, as in the lily of the valley, to the deepest crimson, as in the fuschia; the bright or rust-blotted yellow of the wallflower, to the many hues of the stock. Then there are the pinks and carnations, double and single, with the rich-coloured and heavily scented “clove-pinks;” roses, mignonette, the velvetty pansies (or heart’s-ease), the white and orange lilies, calceolarias, balsams (a flower going out of fashion), geraniums (flowers coming again into fashion), musk-plants, London pride (and other saxifrages; the species known, oddly enough, as London pride being a native of wild and mountainous districts, such as botanists call “Alpine habitats,”) and the many coloured lupins. Later again come the China-asters, the African marigolds, the dahlias, the poppies, and the common and very aromatic marigold. Later still there are the Michaelmas daisies—the growth of the “All-Hallow’n summer,” to which Falstaff was compared.

There is a class of “roots” in which the street-sellers, on account of their general dearness, deal so sparingly, that I cannot class them as a part of the business. Among these are anemones, hyacinths, tulips, ranunculuses, and the orchidaceous tribe. Neither do the street people meddle, unless very exceptionally, with the taller and statelier plants, such as foxgloves, hollyoaks, and sunflowers; these are too difficult of carriage for their purpose. Nor do they sell, unless again as an exception, such flowers as require support—the convolvolus and the sweet-pea, for instance.

The plants I have specified vary in price. Geraniums are sold at from 3d. to 5s.; pinks at from 3d. for the common pink, to 2s. for the best single clove, and 4s. for the best double; stocks, as they are small and single, to their being large and double, from 3d. (and sometimes less) to 2s.; dahlias from 6d. to 5s.; fuschias, from 6d. to 4s.; rose-bushes from 3d. to 1s. 6d., and sometimes, but not often, much higher; musk-plants, London pride, lupins, &c., are 1d. and 2d., pots generally included.

To carry on his business efficiently, the root-seller mostly keeps a pony and a cart, to convey his purchases from the garden to his stall or his barrow, and he must have a sheltered and cool shed in which to deposit the flowers which are to be kept over-night for the morrow’s business. “It’s a great bother, sir,” said a root-seller, “a man having to provide a shed for his roots. It wouldn’t do at all to have them in the same room as we sleep in—they’d droop. I have a beautiful big shed, and a snug stall for a donkey in a corner of it; but he won’t bear tying up—he’ll fight against tying all night, and if he was loose, why in course he’d eat the flowers I put in the shed. The price is nothing to him; he’d eat the Queen’s camellias, if he could get at them, if they cost a pound a-piece. So I have a deal of trouble, for I must block him up somehow; but he’s a first-rate ass.” To carry on a considerable business, the services of a man and his wife are generally required, as well as those of a boy.

The purchases wholesale are generally by the dozen roots, all ready for sale in pots. Mignonette, however, is grown in boxes, and sold by the box at from 5s. to 20s., according to the size, &c. The costermonger buys, for the large sale to the poor, at a rate which brings the mignonette roots into his possession at something less, perhaps, than a halfpenny each. He then purchases a gross of small common pots, costing him 1½d. a dozen, and has to transfer the roots and soil to the pots, and then offer them for sale. The profit thus is about 4s. per hundred, but with the drawback of considerable labour and some cost in the conveyance of the boxes. The same method is sometimes pursued with young stocks.

The cheapness of pots, I may mention incidentally, and the more frequent sale of roots in them, has almost entirely swept away the fragment of a pitcher and “the spoutless tea-pot,” which Cowper mentions as containing the poor man’s flowers, that testified an inextinguishable love of rural objects, even in the heart of a city. There are a few such things, however, to be seen still.

Of root-sellers there are, for six months of the year, about 500 in London. Of these, one-fifth devote themselves principally, but none entirely, to the sale of roots; two-fifths sell roots regularly, but only as a portion, and not a larger portion of their business; and the remaining two-fifths are casual dealers in roots, buying them—almost always in the markets—whenever a bargain offers. Seven-eighths of the root-sellers are, I am informed, regular costers, occasionally a gardener’s assistant has taken to the street trade in flowers, “but I fancy, sir,” said an experienced man to me, “they’ve very seldom done any good at it. They’re always gardening at their roots, trimming them, and such like, and they overdo it. They’re too careful of their plants; people like to trim them theirselves.”

“I did well on fuschias last season,” said one of my informants; “I sold them from 6d. to 1s. 6d. The ‘Globes’ went off well. Geraniums was very fair. The ‘Fairy Queens’ of them sold faster than any, I think. It’s the ladies out of town a little way, and a few in town, that buy them, and buy the fuschias too. They require a good window. The ‘Jenny Linds’—they was geraniums and other plants—didn’t sell so well as the Fairy Queens, though they was cheaper. Good cloves (pinks) sell to the better sort of houses; so do carnations. Mignonette’s everybody’s money. Dahlias didn’t go off so well. I had very tidy dahlias at 6d. and 1s., and some 1s. 6d. I do a goodish bit in giving flowers for old clothes. I very seldom do it, but to ladies. I deal mostly with them for their husbands’ old hats, or boots, or shoes; yes, sir, and their trowsers and waistcoats sometimes—very seldom their coats—and ladies boots and shoes too. There’s one pleasant old lady, and her two daughters, they’ll talk me over any day. I very seldom indeed trade for ladies’ clothes. I have, though. Mostly for something in the shawl way, or wraps of some kind. Why, that lady I was telling you of and her daughters, got me to take togs that didn’t bring the prime cost of my roots and expenses. They called them by such fine names, that I was had. Then they was so polite; ‘O, my good man,’ says one of the young daughters, ‘I must have this geranium in ’change.’ It was a most big and beautiful Fairy Queen, well worth 4s. The tog—I didn’t know what they called it—a sort of cloak, fetched short of half-a-crown, and that just with cheaper togs. Some days, if it’s very hot, and the stall business isn’t good in very hot weather, my wife goes a round with me, and does considerable in swopping with ladies. They can’t do her as they can me. The same on wet days, if it’s not very wet, when I has my roots covered in the cart. Ladies is mostly at home such times, and perhaps they’re dull, and likes to go to work at a bargaining. My wife manages them. In good weeks, I can clear 3l. in my trade; the two of us can, anyhow. But then there’s bad weather, and there’s sometimes roots spoiled if they’re not cheap, and don’t go off—but I’ll sell one that cost me 1s. for 2d. to get rid of it; and there’s always the expenses to meet, and the pony to keep, and everything that way. No, sir, I don’t make 2l. a week for the five months—its nearer five than six—the season lasts; perhaps something near it. The rest of the year I sell fruit, or anything, and may clear 10s. or 15s. a week, but, some weeks, next to nothing, and the expenses all going on.

“Why, no, sir; I can’t say that times is what they was. Where I made 4l. on my roots five or six years back, I make only 3l. now. But it’s no use complaining; there’s lots worse off than I am—lots. I’ve given pennies and twopences to plenty that’s seen better days in the streets; it might be their own fault. It is so mostly, but perhaps only partly. I keep a connection together as well as I can. I have a stall; my wife’s there generally, and I go a round as well.”

One of the principal root-sellers in the streets told me that he not unfrequently sold ten dozen a day, over and above those sold not in pots. As my informant had a superior trade, his business is not to be taken as an average; but, reckoning that he averages six dozen a day for 20 weeks—he said 26—it shows that one man alone sells 8,640 flowers in pots in the season. The principal sellers carry on about the same extent of business.

According to similar returns, the number of the several kinds of flowers in pots and flower roots sold annually in the London streets, are as follows: