“I take all the money I earn home to father, and he gives me a few halfpence for myself. All the year round it comes to 5s. a-day. I buy my own food when I’m out on the boats. I go to a cookshop. I like pudding or pie better than anything, and next to that I like a bit of bread and butter as well as anything, except pie. I have meat or veal pies. They charge you 6d. a-plate, and you have potatoes and all. After that I have a couple of pen’orth of pudding with sugar. I drink water. My dinner comes to about 9d. a-day, for I generally have a pen’orth of apples as dessert. It makes you very hungry going about in the steam-boats—very much so.
“I’m the only boy that goes about the steam-boats with a concertina; indeed, I’m the only boy above-bridge that goes about with music at all on the boats. I know the old gentleman who plays the harp at the Essex pier. I often go and join in with him when I land there, and we go shares. He mostly plays there of a morning, and we mostly of an afternoon. We two are the only ones that play on the piers.”
Within the last few years East Indians playing on the tom-tom have occasionally made their appearance in the London streets. The Indian or Lascar crossing-sweepers, who earned their living by alternately plying the broom and sitting as models to artists—the Indian converted to Christianity, who, in his calico clothes, with his brown bosom showing, was seen, particularly on cold days, crouching on the pavement and selling tracts, have lately disappeared from our highways, and in their stead the tom-tom players have made their appearance.
I saw two of these performers in one of the West-end streets, creeping slowly down the centre of the road, and beating their drums with their hands, whilst they drawled out a kind of mournful song. Their mode of parading the streets is to walk one following the other, beating their oyster-barrel-shaped drums with their hands, which they make flap about from the wrist like flounders out of water, whilst they continue their droning song, and halt at every twenty paces to look round.
One of these performers was a handsome lad, with a face such as I have seen in the drawings of the princes in the “Arabian Nights Entertainments.” He had a copper skin and long black hair, which he brushed behind his ears. On his head was a white turban, made to cock over one ear, like a hat worn on one side, and its rim stood out like the stopper to a scent-bottle.
The costume of the man greatly resembled that of a gentleman wearing his waistcoat outside his shirt, only the waistcoat was of green merino, and adorned with silk embroidery, his waist being bound in with a scarf. Linen trowsers and red knitted cuffs, to keep his wrists warm, completed his costume.
This man was as tall, slim, and straight, and as gracefully proportioned, as a bronze image. His face had a serious, melancholy look, which seemed to work strongly on the feelings of the nurses and the servant-girls who stopped to look at him. His companion, although dressed in the same costume, (the only difference being that the colour of his waistcoat was red instead of green,) formed a comical contrast to his sentimental Othello-looking partner, for he was what a Yankee would call “a rank nigger.” His face, indeed, was as black and elastic-looking as a printer’s dabber.
The name of the negro boy was Peter. Beyond “Yes” and “No,” he appeared to be perfectly unacquainted with the English language. His Othello friend was 17 years of age, and spoke English perfectly. I could not help taking great interest in this lad, both from the peculiarity of his conversation, which turned chiefly upon the obedience due from children to their parents, and was almost fanatical in its theory of perfect submission, and also from his singularly handsome countenance; for his eyes were almond-shaped, and as black as elder-berries, whilst, as he spoke, the nostrils of his aquiline nose beat like a pulse.
When I attempted to repeat after them one of their Indian songs, they both burst out into uproarious merriment. Peter rolling about in his chair like a serenader playing “the bones,” and the young Othello laughing as if he was being tickled.
In speaking of the duties which they owed to their parents, the rules of conduct which they laid down as those to be followed by a good son were wonderful for the completeness of the obedience which they held should be paid to a father’s commands. They did not seem to consider that the injunctions of a mother should be looked upon as sacredly as those of the male parent. They told me that the soul of the child was damned if even he disputed to obey the father’s command, although he knew it to be wrong, and contrary to God’s laws. “Allah,” they said, would visit any wickedness that was committed through such obedience upon the father, but he would bless the child for his submission. Their story was as follows:—
“Most of the tom-tom players are Indians, but we are both of us Arabs. The Arabs are just equally as good as the Indians at playing the tom-tom, but they haven’t got exactly to the learning of the manufacture of them yet. I come from Mocha, and so does Peter, my companion; only his father belongs to what we call the Abshee tribe, and that’s what makes him so much darker than what I am. The Abshee tribe are now outside of Arabia, up by the Gulf of Persia. They are much the same as the Mucdad people,—it’s all the same tribe like.
“My name is Usef Asman, and my father has been over here twelve years now. He came here in the English army, I’ve heard him say, for he was in the 77th Bengal Native Infantry; but he wasn’t an Indian, but enlisted in the service and fought through the Sikh war, and was wounded. He hasn’t got a pension, for he sent his luggage through Paris to England, and he lost his writings. The East India Company only told him that he must wait until they heard from India, and that’s been going on for now six years.
“Mother came home with father and me, and two brothers and a sister. I’m the second eldest. My brother is thirty-six, and he was in the Crimea, as steward on board the Royal Hydaspes, a steam screw she is. He was 17 and I was 6 years old when I came over. My brother is a fine strapping fellow, over six feet high, and the muscles in his arms are as big round as my thigh.
“I don’t remember my native country, but Peter does, for he’s only been here for two years and five months. He likes his own country better than England. His father left Arabia to go to Bombay, and there he keeps large coffee-shops. He’s worth a little money. His shops are in the low quarter of the town, just the same as Drury Lane may be, though it’s the centre of the town. They call the place the Nacopoora taleemoulla.
“Before father went into the army he was an interpreter in Arabia. His father was a horse-dealer. My father can speak eight or nine different languages fluently, besides a little of others. He was the interpreter who got Dr. Woolfe out of Bokhara prison, when he was put in because they thought he was a spy. Father was sent for by the chief to explain what this man’s business was. It is the Mogul language they speak there. My father was told to get him out of the country in twenty-four hours, and my father killed his own horse and camel walking so hard to get him away.
“We was obliged to put ourselves up to going about the streets. Duty and necessity first compelled me to do it. Father couldn’t get his pension, and, of course, we couldn’t sit at home and starve; so father was obliged to go out and play the drum. He got his tom-toms from an Arab vessel which came over, and they made them a present to him.
“We used before now, father and myself, to go to artists or modelers, to have our likenesses taken. We went to Mr. Armitage, when he was painting a battle in India. If you recollect, I’m leaning down by the rocks, whilst the others are escaping. I’ve also been to Mr. Dobson, who used to live in Newman-street. I’ve sat to him in my costume for several pictures. In one of them I was like a chief’s son, or something of that, smoking a hubble-bubble. Father used to have a deal of work at Mr. Gale’s, in Fitzroy-square. I don’t know the subjects he painted, for I wasn’t there whilst father used to sit. It used to tire me when I had to sit for two or three hours in one position. Sometimes I had to strip to the waist. I had to do that at Mr. Dobson’s in the winter time, and, though there was a good fire in the room, it was very wide, and it didn’t throw much heat out, and I used to be very cold. He used to paint religious subjects. I had a shilling an hour, and if a person could get after-work at it, I could make a better living at it than in the streets; in fact, I’d rather do it any time, though it’s harder work, for there is a name for that, but there is no name for going about playing the tom-tom; yet it’s better to do that than sit down and see other people starving.
“Father is still sitting to artists. He doesn’t go about the streets—he couldn’t face it out.
“It’s about eight years ago since father got the tom-toms. They are very good ones, and one of them is reckoned the best in England. They are made out of mango tree. It grows just the same as the bamboo tree; and they take a joint of it, and take out the pith—for it’s pithy inside, just like elderberry wood, with the outside hard. Father had these tom-toms for a month before we went out with them.
“The first day father went out with me, and kept on until he got employ; and then I went out by myself. I was about for four years by myself, along with sister; and then I went with Peter; and now we go out together. My sister was only about seven years old when she first went out, and she used to sing. She was dressed in a costume with a short jacket, with a tight waistcoat, and white trowsers. She had a turban and a sash.
“When we first went out we done very well. We took 6, 7, or 8s. a-day. We was the first to appear with it; indeed there’s only me and my cousin and another man that does it now. Peter is my cousin. His real name is Busha, but we call him Peter, because it’s more a proper name like, because several people can call him that when they can’t Busha. We are all turned Christians; we go to school every Sunday, in Great Queen-street, Lincoln’s Inn, and always to chapel. They are joined together.
“I and Peter take now, on a fine day in summer-time, generally 5 or 6s., but coming on winter as it does now it’s as much as we can do to take 2s. or 3s. Sometimes in winter we don’t take more than 1s. 6d., and sometimes 1s. Take the year round it would come, I should think, to 3s. a-day. On wet days we can’t do nothing.
“We were forced to become Christians when we came here. Of course a true Mussulman won’t take anything to eat that has been touched by other people’s hands. We were forced to break caste. The beasts were slaughtered by other people, and we wanted meat to eat. The bread, too, was made by Christians. The school-teachers used to come to father. We remained as Mussulmen as long as we could, but when winter came on, and we had no money, we was obliged to eat food from other people’s hands.
“Persons wouldn’t believe it, but little family as we are it takes 4s. a-day to keep us. Yet mother speaks English well. I’m sure father doesn’t go out and drink not half-a pint a beer of a night, but always waits till we come home, and then our 3s. or 4s. go to get bread and rice and that, and we have a pot of beer between us.
“Peter’s father married my father’s sister, that’s how we are cousins. He came over by ship to see us. He sent a message before to say that he was coming to see his uncle, and he expected to go back by the same ship, but he was used so cruelly on board that he preferred staying with us until we can all return together. Because he couldn’t understand English and his duty, and coming into a cold country and all, he couldn’t do his work, and they flogged him. Besides, they had to summon the captain to get their rights. He very much wants to get back to India to his father, and our family wants to get back to Mocha. I’ve forgot my Arabic, and only talk Hindostanee. I did speak French very fluently, but I’ve forgot it all except such things as Venez ici, or Voulez-vous danser? or such-like.
“When we are at home we mostly eat rice. It’s very cheap, and we like it better than anything else, because it fills our bellies better. It wouldn’t be no use putting a couple of half-quartern loaves before us two if we were hungry, for, thank God, we are very hearty-eating, both of us. Rice satisfies us better than bread. We mix curry-powder and a little meat or fish with it. If there’s any fish in season, such as fresh herrings or mackerel, we wash it and do it with onions, and mix it with the curry-powder, and then eat it with rice. Plaice is the only fish we don’t use, for it makes the curry very watery. We wash the rice two or three times after looking over it to take out any dirt or stones, and then we boil it and let it boil about five minutes. Rice-water is very strengthening, and the Arabs drink a deal of it, because whenever it lays in the stomach it becomes solid. It turns, when cold, as thick as starch, and with some salt it’s not a bad thing.
“Our best places for playing the tom-tom is the West-end in summer-time, but in winter we goes round by Islington and Shoreditch, and such-like, for there’s no quality at home, and we have to depend on the tradespeople. Sometimes we very often happen to meet with a gentleman—when the quality’s in town—who has been out in India, and can speak the language, and he will begin chatting with us and give us a shilling, or sometimes more. I’ve got two or three ladies who have taken a fancy to us, and they give me 6d. or 1s. whenever I go round. There’s one old lady and two or three young ones, at several houses in different places, who have such kindness for us. I was in place once with Captain Hines, and he was very kind to me. He had been out in India, and spoke the language very fluently. I didn’t leave him, he left me to go to the Crimea; and he told me he was very sorry, but he had a servant allowed him by the Government, and couldn’t take me.
“Some of the servant-girls are very kind to us, and give us a 1d. or 2d. We in general tries to amuse the people as much as we can. All the people are very fond of Peter, he makes them laugh; and the same people generally gives us money when we goes round again.
“When we are out we walk along side by side beating the tom-toms. We keep on singing different songs,—foreign ones to English tunes. The most favourite tune is what we calls in Hindostanee,—
“This means:—
“‘I want something fresh (such as fish) in the value of nine. And after he went and bought these fresh goods he looked at them, and found them so good, that he was very pleased with them (‘mutra bakooch’ is pleased), that he says to his servant that he will give him leave to go about his business, because he’s made such a good bargain.’
“That’s all the meaning of that, sir, and we sing it to its original Indian tune. We sometimes sing Arab songs—one or two. They are very different, but we can’t explain them so well as we can the Hindostanee. They’re more melancholy, and towards the parents sentimental-like. There’s one song they sing in Arabia, that it puts them in that way they don’t know what they are doing of. They begin the song, and then they bend the body about and beat their knees, and keep on so until they tumble off their chairs. They nearly strangle themselves sometimes. It’s about love to their parents, and as if they left them and went far away. It’s a sort of a cutting song, and very sentimental. There’s always a man standing in one corner, looking after those singing, and when he sees them get into a way, he reads a book and comes and rouses them. He’s a kind of magician-like. Father sings it, and I know a verse or two of it. I’ve seen father and another man singing it, and they kept on see-sawing about, and at last they both fell off the chair. We got a little water and sprinkled their faces, and hit them on the back very hard, and said, ‘Sallee a nabbee,’ which is just the same as ‘Rise, in the name of the Lord,’ and they came to instantly, and after they got up was very calm—ah, very tame afterwards!
“The tom-tom hasn’t got much music in it beyond beating like a drum. There are first-rate players in India, and they can make the tom-tom speak in the same way as if you was to ask a gentleman, ‘How do you do?’ and they’ll answer you, ‘Very well, thank you.’ They only go to the feasts, which are called ‘madggeless,’ and then the noblemen, after hearing them, will give them great sums of money as a handsome present. The girls, too, dance to the tom-tom in India. Peter is a very good player, and he can make the tom-tom to answer. One side of the drum asks the question, that is the treble side, and the bass one answers it, for in a tom-tom each end gives a different note.
“Father makes all our clothes for us. We wear flannel under our shirts, which a lady made me a present of, or else we never used to wear them before. All through that sharp winter we never used to wear anything but our dress. All the Arab boys are brought up to respect their parents. If they don’t they will be punished. For myself, I always obey mine. My father has often called shame on the laws of this country, to hear the children abusing their parents. In our country, if a son disobeys his father’s command, he may, even though the child be as tall as a giant, take up his sword and kill him. My brother, who is on board ship, even though he has learnt the laws of this country, always obeys my father. One night he wouldn’t mind what was said, so my father goes up and hit him a side slap on the chops, and my brother turned the other cheek to him, and said in Arabic, ‘Father, hit this cheek, too; I have done wrong.’ He was about 30 then. Father said he hoped he’d never disobey his orders again.
“The Arabs are very clean. In our country we bathe three times a-day; but over here we only go to the bath in Endell-street (a public one) twice a-week. We always put on clean things three times a-week.
“There’s a knack in twisting the turban. A regular Arab always makes the rim bind over the right ear, like Peter’s. It don’t take more than five minutes to put the turban on. We do it up in a roll, and have nothing inside it to stiffen it. Some turbans have 30 yards in them, all silk, but mine is only 3½ yards, and is calico. The Arab waistcoat always has a pocket on each side of the breast, with a lengthways opening, and a bit of braid round the edge of the stuff, ending where the waist is, so that the flaps are not bound.
“The police are very kind to us, and never interfere with us unless there is somebody ill, and we are not aware of it. The tom-tom makes a very humming sound, and is heard to a great distance.”
A very handsome man, swarthy even for a native of Bengal, with his black glossy hair most picturesquely disposed, alike on his head and in his whiskers and moustache, gave me, after an Oriental salute, the following statement. His teeth were exquisitely white, and his laugh or smile lighted up his countenance to an expression of great intelligence. His dress was a garb of dark-brown cloth, fitting close to his body and extending to his knee. His trowsers were of the same coloured cloth, and he wore a girdle of black and white cotton round his waist. He was accompanied by his son, (whom he sometimes addressed in Hindoostanee), a round-faced boy, with large bright black eyes and rosy cheeks. The father said:—
“I was born in Calcutta, and was Mussulman—my parents was Mussulman—but I Christian now. I have been in dis contree ten year. I come first as servant to military officer, an Englishman. I lived wit him in Scotland six, seven mont. He left Scotland, saying he come back, but he not, and in a mont I hear he dead, and den I com London. London is very great place, and Indian city little if you look upon London. I use tink it plenty pleasure look upon London as de great government place, but now I look upon London, and it is plenty bad pleasure. I wish very often return to my own contree, where everyting sheap—living sheap, rice sheap. I suffer from climate in dis contree. I suffer dis winter more dan ever I did. I have no flannels, no drawer, no waistcoat, and have cold upon my chest. It is now near five year I come London. I try get service, but no get service. I have character, but not from my last master. He could not give me; he dead ven I want it. I put up many insult in dis contree. I struck sometime in street. Magistrate punish man gave me blow dat left mark on my chin here. Gentlemen sometime save me from harm, sometime not. De boys call me black dis or de oder. Wen I get no service, I not live, and I not beg in street, so I buy tom-tom for 10s. De man want 30s. De 10s. my last money left, and I start to play in streets for daily bread. I beat tom-tom, and sing song about greatness of God, in my own language. I had den wife, Englishwoman, and dis little boy. I done pretty well first wid tom-tom, but it is very bad to do it now. Wen I began first, I make 3s., 4s., 5s., or 6s. a-day. It was someting new den, but nine or ten monts it was someting old, and I took less and less, until now I hardly get piece of bread. I sometime get few shilling from two or three picture-men, who draw me. It is call model. Anyting for honest bread. I must not be proud. I cannot make above 6s. a-week of tom-tom in street. Dare is, well as I know, about fifty of my contreemen playing and begging in streets of London. Dose who sweep crossing are Malay, some Bengal. Many are impostor, and spoil ’spectable men. My contreemen live in lodging-house; often many are plenty blackguard lodging-houses, and dere respectable man is always insult. I have room for myself dis tree mont, and cost me tree shilling and sixpennies a-week; it is not own furniture; dey burn my coke, coal, and candle too. My wife would make work wid needle, but dere is no work for her, poor ting. She servant when I marry her. De little boy make jump in my contree’s way wen I play tom-tom—he too little to dance—he six year. Most of my contreemen in street have come as Lascar, and not go back for bosen and bosen-mate, and flog. So dey stay for beg, or sweep, or anyting. Dey are never pickpocket dat I ever hear of.”
A stout, reddish-faced man, who was familiar with all kinds of exhibitions, and had the coaxing, deferential manner of many persons who ply for money in the streets, gave me an account of what he called “his experience” as the “drum and pipes:”—
“I have played the pandean pipes and the drum for thirty years to street exhibitions of all kinds. I was a smith when a boy, serving seven years’ apprenticeship; but after that I married a young woman that I fell in love with, in the music line. She played a hurdy-gurdy in the streets, so I bought pandean pipes, as I was always fond of practising music, and I joined her. Times for street-musicianers were good then, but I was foolish. I’m aware of that now; but I wasn’t particularly partial to hard work; besides, I could make more as a street-musicianer. When I first started, my wife and I joined a fantoccini. It did well. My wife and I made from 9s. to 10s. a-day. We had half the profits. At that time the public exhibitions were different to what they are now. Gentlemen’s houses were good then, but now the profession’s sunk to street corners. Bear-dancing was in vogue then, and clock-work on the round board, and Jack-i’-the-green was in all his glory every May, thirty years ago. Things is now very dead indeed. In the old times, only sweeps were allowed to take part with the Jack; they were particular at that time; all were sweeps but the musicianers. Now it’s everybody’s money, when there’s any money. Every sweep showed his plate then when performing. ‘My lady’ was anybody at all likely that they could get hold of; she was generally a watercress-seller, or something in the public way. ‘My lady’ had 2s. 6d. a-day and her keep for three days—that was the general hire. The boys, who were climbing-boys, had 1s. or 6d., or what the master gave them; and they generally went to the play of a night, after washing themselves, in course. I had 6s. a-day and a good dinner—shoulder of mutton, or something prime—and enough to drink. ‘My lord’ and the other characters shared and shared alike. They have taken, to my knowledge, 5l. on the 1st of May. This year, one set, with two ‘My ladies,’ took 3l. the first day. The master of the lot was a teetotaler, but the others drank as they liked. He turned teetotaler because drink always led him into trouble. The dress of the Jack is real ivy tied round hoops. The sweeps gather the ivy in the country, and make the dresses at their homes. My lord’s and the other dresses are generally kept by the sweeps. My lord’s dress costs a mere trifle at the second-hand clothes shop, but it’s gold-papered and ornamented up to the mark required. What I may call war tunes, such as ‘The White Cockade,’ the ‘Downfall of Paris,’ (I’ve been asked for that five or six times a-day—I don’t remember the composer), ‘Bonaparte’s March,’ and the ‘Duke of York’s March,’ were in vogue in the old times. So was ‘Scots wha hae’ (very much), and ‘Off she goes!’ Now new tunes come up every day. I play waltzes and pokers now chiefly. They’re not to compare to the old tunes; it’s like playing at musicianers, lots of the tunes now-a-days. I’ve played with Michael, the Italy Bear. I’ve played the fife and tabor with him. The tabor was a little drum about the size of my cap, and it was tapped with a little stick. There are no tabors about now. I made my 7s. or 8s. a-day with Michael. He spoke broken English. A dromedary was about then, but I knew nothing of that or the people; they was all foreigners together. Swinging monkeys were in vogue at that time as well. I was with them, with Antonio of Saffron Hill. He was the original of the swinging monkeys, twenty years ago. They swing from a rope, just like slack-wire dancers. Antonio made money and went back to his own country. He sold his monkeys,—there was three of them,—small animals they were, for 70l. to another foreigner; but I don’t know what became of them. Coarse jokes pleased people long ago, but don’t now; people get more enlightened, and think more of chapel and church instead of amusements. My trade is a bad one now. Take the year through, I may make 12s. a-week, or not so much; say 10s. I go out sometimes playing single,—that’s by myself,—on the drum and pipes; but it’s thought nothing of, for I’m not a German. It’s the same at Brighton as in London; brass bands is all the go when they’ve Germans to play them. The Germans will work at 2s. a-day at any fair, when an Englishman will expect 6s. The foreigners ruin this country, for they have more privileges than the English. The Germans pull the bells and knock at the doors for money, which an Englishman has hardly face for. I’m now with a fantoccini figures from Canton, brought over by a seaman. I can’t form an exact notion of how many men there are in town who are musicianers to the street exhibitions; besides the exhibitions’ own people, I should say about one hundred. I don’t think that they are more drunken than other people, but they’re liable to get top-heavy at times. None that I know live with women of the town. They live in lodgings, and not in lodging-houses. Oh! no, no, we’ve not come to that yet. Some of them succeeded their fathers as street-musicianers; others took it up casalty-like, by having learned different instruments; none that I know were ever theatrical performers. All the men I know in my line would object, I am sure, to hard work, if it was with confinement along with it. We can never stand being confined to hard work, after being used to the freedom of the streets. None of us save money; it goes either in a lump, if we get a lump, or in dribs and drabs, which is the way it mostly comes to us. I’ve known several in my way who have died in St. Giles’s workhouse. In old age or sickness we’ve nothing but the parish to look to. The newest thing I know of is the singing dogs. I was with that as musician, and it answers pretty well amongst the quality. The dogs is three Tobies to a Punch-and-Judy show, and they sing,—that is, they make a noise,—it’s really a howl,—but they keep time with Mr. Punch as he sings.”