Henry Mayhew's people

I had hoped to see Margie today, but it was not to be. She was with her carer in the morning, and in the afternoon her cleaner came and stayed three hours, so there was no hour when we could have time to ourselves. Instead we exchanged some texts, I got a haircut, began packing for the next five days with the grandkids, walked to the post office (which seemed further away today than the last time I went, and on the way there I found this photograph--sharper in large). Home again after that longish walk, I continued my sorting of books. Which to let go, which to keep. 

One I cannot possibly let go, that I have read over and over with pleasure, is a gift from Ceridwen a number of years ago. It is one of my most treasured books: Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor. He wrote the chapters as a weekly serial from 1850-1852. It is dear to me because I see Mayhew as a colleague, a comrade who lived at a different time but did the same work. We spent our lives trying to cobble enough money together to pay the rent, persuading people to talk to us and then offering their stories to anyone who would read (or hear) them. Mayhew, like me, was a theatre person; he loved people’s stories; and our work lies somewhere between oral history, interview, and monologue. I imagine his process was much like mine: build trust, ask questions, listen intently. Take a few notes and quickly go home and write like mad, trying to hear the voice as it was and reproduce it on paper. I’ve been doing this since 1975, and like Mayhew, I fell into the work by accident.

His interviewees were what he called “London Street Folk,” hawkers mostly. I love them all, even the seller of rat poison. One of my favorites is a “Street-seller of Dolls”: 

They call me Dick the Dollman. I was, I believe, the first as ever cried dolls three a shilling in the streets. Afore I began they al’ays stood still with ‘em; but I cried ‘em out same as they do mackrel; that is twenty years ago. 

The way I took to the dolls was this; I met a girl with a doll basket one day as I was standing at Somerset-house corner; she and I got a talking…. She used to buy her dolls ready made; I soon finds out where to get the heads—and the profits when we made them ourselves was much greater…(135).

I have now decided to keep Henry Mayhew and let Samuel Pepys go. For years Pepys was my go-to when I needed to escape some unbearable situation in life. But now it’s Mayhew. I like him better because he writes about the kind of people I know.