The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1893-06-18
WAKEMAN'S WANDERINCS.
Days and Nights With London COSteT-
mOngeTS--ll.

n01geTS--ll.
The Costers of London Its Only
True Cockneys - Wakeman Makes
Clear the Distinction Between the
Cockney and the Cad-Costers' Life
and Ways an Untitled Field for
Dramatist and Novelist - Albert
Chevalier, the Great Music Hall
Coster Impersonator Who, at so,
Earns an Income Equal to Presi-
dent Cleveland's - Curious Coster
Dialect.
(Copyright)
London, June 5.-During the somewhat
extended period in which / actually lived
the daily life of a costermonger in Lon
don, many interesting observations and
experiences, aside from those connected
with the immediate concerns of buying
and hawking vegetables, fish, flesh and
fowl, were naturally resultant from my
association with "Slumpsy Jem" the
coster, and his wife Becky and what NAV
be regarded as the aristOcratic coster So
ciety, to which our signal financial sue
cess speedily gave US admittance.
1t may not have been an original dis
covery on my part, but / was soon con-
WINGED of the correctness of a curious
series of surmises growing out of much
previous observation and study of the
habits, manners and speech of London
folk in general; a conclusion which seems
worthy of extended discussion by others
more able to make exact and authorita-
tive comparison. This was, in brief that
the generic things we call 'cockneyisms,"
in speech and manners, really have their
icrTTl oh nHKr L .lg.v,
mongers.
1t is exceedingly difficult to make this
clear to those who have not lived in Lon
don and also in large cities Of other coun-
tries, long enough to have caught that
exceedingly winsome feature of all great,
old and compact communities which, for
a better name, may be called ''local color
Observation will nearly always disclose
IL to largely consist of the refleXive intiu-
ence upon higher classes from unique or
outlandish lower classes, that genial
dlablerie and humorous or tragic realism
of the lOwly almost instantly transformed
into the wit, humor, repartee and "slang"
of those above them; until, in degree,
habit of speech, form of the COmmoner
colloquial expressions and even distinctive
mannerisms, become fixed and character
istic with and upon that grade of folk
closest in mind, feeling and vocation to
the characterize lOwly people whom they
have uncOnsciously initiated.
Thus l have heard in noted Paris salons
the common jibes of the canaille and the
boulevardieres, from lips quite UncOn-
scious of their origin; in American clubs
and drawing rooms, countless can't and
patter expressions already long previ-
ously discarded in New Yorks bowery
slums, where they first took form; in the
finest Edinburgh homes, the wise, curt
and droll sayings of Newhayen fish wives
and the denizens of Cowgate and Grass
market; and from London concert halls,
up through London clubs, past English
castles and noblemen's city homes, to the
floor of parliament itself, the latest cpl
tibet and newest catch phrase of London
costermongers, coined by my coster
friends in moments of "fOurale" inspi-
ration at free smoking room concerts, at
''penny-gaffs," or in valiant blaclI-guard-
ing battles with Covent garden porters
and the glib-tongued "mobbers" or fish
carriers of ancient and odorous Billings
gate.
AS to ''cockney'' London folk high and
low, clear and distinct lines may be drawn
The coster is the typical, indeed the
genuine, cocl1ney. His vernacular which
is so outlandish that one has to have long
acquaintance with it to understand it at
all, is not slang, because it is his original
and unaffected mode of expression. His
bNdkRGE. HIS uIGbUOQS OGbilS, HIS bGIHlDlG
objurgatiOns, his impulsiVe generosity,
his reckless gambling, his fondness for
pets, his rowing ways within the great
city, his grotesque apparel, his aversion
to fixed habitation, his suspicion of any
thing savoring of religion, his uncOnquer-
able agnosticism, his self-reliance, his
fatalism, his fOndness for his kind and
kin and yet his seeming brutality in all
domestic relations, his hardness and
his fpnGarupGu and his 41mOgt STERN
and Spartan loyalty to his friends, his
race and his traditions, are all ineXplica-
BILE and tantalizing to one studying his
character little or long; but they are alb
solutely and inviolably his own. There is
not an iota of pretense, hypocrisy or atfec-
tation about him. Because of this, mil
lions of London lOwly next him in the
social scale, have in from 400 to 500 years
time been unconscious imitators Of much
of his speech, some of his manners good
deal Of his swagger and buster, and not
little of his hardness and brutality All
these latter folk are often generically re-
garded as "cockneys" But their cock
neyism is assumed, copied, unreal. Con-
sequontly, it is as offensive to the intelli-
gent Englishman, who often errs in mis-
taking it for the genuine article eXclu-
sively possessed by the costermongers, as
it is to the wondering American, who
knows nothing whatever about its origin.
There is another class of folk in London
and throughout England immeasurably
less in number and real Importance, but
inexpressibly more omnipresent and often
sive, who masquerade as ''cockneys" and
who, more than all others, bring the true
coster cockney into permanent disrepute.
They are a sort of chrome cockneys when
the genuine Turneresque reds gnd solemn
Millet grays of the true coclzney coster
are brought into analytic comparison.
They comprise mixed and murrained
multitude Of London men-about-town,
answering somewhat TO the dude Cholly
Wobblers of America-young noblemen
and other choice aristocrats who "go i'll
for long and strong pull, v kneow."
To these are added a few fash journalists,
1 am sorry to say, fellows
who are on the outskirts of
even the lowest of London Bohemias;
not many actors, for London actors
are almost invariably London gentlemen;
some hangers-on of clubs; all pugilists,
sprinters, horsemen. jockeys and profess
sionaI sporting men generally; thousands
of music hall performers and the other
thousands of Tommy Rots' gulped out
of the free smoking room concerts OF the
public houses, who are found every Mon
day morning at their weekly Poverty
junction" symposium at the corner of
York and Waterloo roads; and tens OF
thousands more of London clerks and APP
j