Three tunes

I recently purchased from BoundlessBookstore (Wallingford, Oxfordshire):

DAVIDSON'S | UNIVERSAL MELODIST, | CONSISTING OF | THE MUSIC AND WORDS | OF | POPULAR, STANDARD, AND ORIGINAL SONGS, &c. | ARRANGED SO AS TO BE EQUALLY ADAPTED FOR: | THE SIGHT-SINGER, | THE PERFORMANCE ON THE FLUTE, CORNOPEAN, ACCORDION, | VIOLIN, OR OTHER TREBLE INSTRUMENT. | VOL. II. | LONDON: | G. H. DAVIDSON, 19, PETER'S HILL, DOCTORS' COMMONS. | MDCCCLIV.
[16], 436 p.;

Bookseller's description: "General wear to boards with corners bumped. Hinges are a bit cracked with webbing visible. Content mainly clean with some foxing. Age toned pages throughout with some spotting to page ends."
<APKD; vol. 2 only, of perhaps 2 volumes published. The publishing history is complicated and unclear.>

Davidson's Universal Melodist is a later rival to The Universal Songster. But this time developments in printing music from moveable type mean that melody lines can be provided for all the songs included.

The three Bloomfield songs are in Volume II, as follows:

page 89: "The Fakenham Ghost" (music by W. A. Neild)

A setting of "The Fakenham ghost" by William Ashton Nield was published in 1834. This is presumably one of the "original songs" of the title page.

page 249, "Old Ringwood" (music by William Hawes)

I cannot trace any earlier publication, unless this is the setting previously attributed to Isaac Bloomfield.

page 401, "The Woodland Hallo" (music by G. Langham)

I cannot trace any earlier publication. There is an earlier setting (1807) by Nina d'Aubigny.

The Fakenham Ghost

Old Ringwood

The Woodland Hallo

I should acknowledge here that I would never have found these songs without the indexes created by the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library at Cecil Sharp House (http://www.vwml.org/).

The snob

SNOB. A nick name for a shoemaker.

(Grose)

Trade card of Bloomfield, Boot & shoe maker, c. 1790:

<Bodleian Library. John Johnson Collection; British Museum. Prints & Drawings, Heal 18.8>

There is some doubt whether this trade card is Robert Bloomfield's or that of his brother George.

1781
By the time Bloomfield was thirteen or fourteen, it was apparent that he was not cut out for the rigours of farm labour. Bloomfield’s mother was advised to find him a situation more suited to his physical capabilities. Her eldest sons, George and Nathaniel, then living in London, offered to take their younger brother into their charge. George, a shoemaker, would take in Robert and teach him the trade, while Nathaniel, a tailor, would provide him with clothing. Accordingly, on 29 June 1781, Bloomfield and his mother completed the stagecoach trip to London, where he was left in his brothers’ keeping. Bloomfield lived with his brother George and four other cobblers in a small, low-rent garret (which also doubled as their workshop) at 7 Pitcher’s Court, Bell Alley, Coleman Street.

The house in Pitcher’s Court, Bell Alley. Bloomfield’s workshop in garrett:

A row of three terraced houses, one said to be the residence of Robert Bloomfield; clothes hanging from a washing line in foreground, two women stand to the left, two boys playing marbles to the right; illustration to the Gentleman’s Magazine.
Etching and engraving, lettered with title below image, followed by “Once the Residence of Robert Bloomfield”, and at top right “Gent. Mag. Dec. 1823 Pl II p.497”.
Height: 171 millimetres. Width: 119 millimetres
<APKD>

1783
About 1783, Robert and George decamped and took up residence at Blue Hart Court, Bell Alley.

1784
In 1784, fearing prosecution by the Committee of the Lawful Crafts for illegally cobbling without having been officially apprenticed, Bloomfield returns to Suffolk. Despite ongoing legal difficulties Bloomfield returned to London after a two-month retreat and managed to finagle a quasi-legal standing as a cobbler by paying 5s. to John Dudbridge, who acted as his pro forma journey-master.

1786
Bloomfield sets up on his own as a shoemaker. His brother George leaves London.

It was also about this time that the earliest evidence that Bloomfield was composing poetry surfaces. Poems that he had apparently composed in his mind while engaged in cobbling and later copied down were dispatched to the London Magazine for publication in the “Poet’s corner”, but his earliest published poem, “A Village Girl”, appeared in another periodical, 24 May 1786.

1790
On 12 December 1790 Bloomfield married Mary-Anne Church, the daughter of a shipbuilder from Woolwich. In the following year the Bloomfields took up residence at 14 Bell Alley, Coleman Street, where the growing family lived and struggled to make ends meet for the next seven years.

1796
May: Bloomfield began composing The Farmer’s Boy.

1798
His brother George in a biography prefacing the Poems 1809 says that in 1798 “Robert is a ladies shoemaker & works for Mr Davies of Lombard Street”.

His last years were spent as a shoemaker at Shefford-cum-Campton, Bedfordshire where he died in 1823.


The shoemaker, from L’encyclopédie: "Cordonnier et cordonnier-bottier," Planche 1ére.

Legend

La vignette ou le haut de la Planche représente la boutique d'un cordonnier.

Fig. 1. Cordonnier qui prend mesure.
2. Ouvrier qui cherche la forme qui convient.
3. Ouvrier qui coud une semelle
4. Ouvrier qui enforme une botte.
5, 6. Deux compagnons.
7. Un savetier sous son échoppe.
a, b, c, rangs de différentes formes.
d, formes de bottes.
e, e, bottes toutes faites.
f, mesures.
g, patron d'empeigne.
h, table chargée de différentes outils.

Bas de la Planche.

Fig. 1. Pince.
2. Tenaille.
3. Chausse - pié anglois.
4. Range - trépointe de derriere.
5. Bésaiguë ou buis.
6, 6. Tranchets.
7. Botte renvoyée à la fig. 48 de la seconde Planche.
8. n. 1. Astic de buis.
8. n. 2. Couteau à pié.
9. Astic d'os.
10. Clou à trois têtes.
11. Clou à deux têtes.
12. Clou à monter.
13. Clou d'épingle.
14. Compas ou mesure.
15. Carrelet.
16. Marteau.
17. Claques d'homme.
18. Claques de femmes.
19. Range - couture anglois.
20. Tranchet à ficher.
21. Etoile.
22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, A, B, C, D, E, F, alenes à l'angloise.
28. n. 1. Forme à monter.
28. n. 2. Forme brisée.
28. n. 3. Autre forme brisée.

[Translation
(A work in progress: corrections and suggestions for improvement gratefully accepted.)

The vignette or upper part of the plate represents a shoemaker's shop.

Fig. 1. Shoemaker who takes measure.
2. Worker looking for the right shape.
3. Worker who sews a sole
4. Worker who wraps a boot.
5, 6. Two companions.
7. A cobbler under his stall.
A, b, c, rows of different shapes.
D, forms of boots.
E, e, ready made boots.
F, measures.
G, uppers pattern.
H, table loaded with different tools.

Lower part of the plate.

Fig. 1. Pliers
2. Pincers
3. Lasting pliers
4. Rear thrust.
5. Bésaiguë or boxwood.
6, 6. Paring knives
7. Boot as shown in Fig. 48 of Plate 2.
8. n. 1. Boxwood burnisher
8. n. 2. Half-moon knife.
9. Bone burnisher
10. Nail with three heads.
11. Nail with two heads.
12. Nail to be mounted.
13. Pin nail.
14. Shoemaker's rule or caliper measure
15. Square section needle
16. Hammer.
17. Vamp (men)
18. Vamp (women)
19. English stitching.
20. Cutting edge.
21. Etoile.
22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, A, B, C, D, E, F, English awls
28. n. 1. Last to be assembled.
28. n. 2. A broken last.
28. n. 3. Another broken last.]


Epitaph

Bloomfield left an epitaph for himself, which was not used:

First made a Farmer’s Boy, and then a snob,
A poet he became, and here lies Bob.
                                                     April 1823.

<BL Add MS 30809 f.11, quoted in Selected Poems, page 131.>


Sources and further reading

Robert Bloomfield.—Selected Poems; edited by John Goodridge and John Lucas.—Nottingham: Trent Editions, 1998.

Denis Diderot & Jean le Rond d'Alembert.—L’Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers.—Planches.—3e vol.—Paris, 1763.

Le grand dictionnaire terminologique
http://gdt.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/

Francis Grose.—A classical dictionary of the vulgar tongue.—3rd ed., corrected & enlarged.—London: printed for Hooper & Co., 1796.

David Kaloustian, “Bloomfield, Robert (1766–1823)”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/2676]

William Edward Winks.—Lives of illustrious shoemakers.—New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1882.

The Universal Songster

Wood-engraved half-title

Steel-engraved frontispiece to the first volume of The Universal Songster. Published by John Fairburn, Broadway Ludgate Hill. June 11th 1825. Lettered with publication line and artist’s name “Designed & Etched on Steel for the Universal Songster; By George Cruikshank”. The centre of the design shows two seated men (one of whom resembles a Toby Jug caricature) smoking pipes within a decorative foliate frame. The rest of the design depicts ten other characters, including a soldier and a Scotsman, amidst large decorative swirls. Height: 30.2 cm, width: 21.5 cm.

At the beginning of this year I acquired a copy of The Universal Songster from the bookseller Stephen Foster, Fosters’ Bookshop, 183 Chiswick High Road, London W4.

The Universal songster, or, Museum of mirth : forming the most complete, extensive, and valuable collection of ancient and modern songs in the English language : with a copious and classified index which will, under its various heads, refer the reader to the following descriptions of songs—viz. ancient, amatory, bacchanalian, comic (English), Dibdins’ miscellaneous, duets, trios, glees, chorusses, Irish, Jews, Masonic, military, naval, Scotch, sentimental, sporting, Welsh, Yorkshire, etc.—3 vols.—London: John Fairburn, 1825.

The volumes include three etched frontispieces by Cruikshank and 84 wood-engravings, of which 24 are after George Cruikshank, and 57 after his brother Robert. My three volumes have been recently rebound by Maltby’s of Oxford in quarter brown morocco, cloth boards, with gilt lettering. I think it would be almost impossible to find clean copies in the original publisher’s cloth—these books were read and reread. The books contain the texts only of popular “songs of the people” and have, as their title-pages reveal, an idiosyncratic classification system for the songs included. There are six times as many Irish songs as Jewish, and four times as many Scotch as Jewish, and twice as many Jewish as Welsh. As one might expect, the Irish and Jewish songs are filled with coarse ethnic stereotypes; the Scotch and Welsh are not. The songs by Bloomfield included are variously amatory, sentimental, and Scotch. The Universal Songster was reprinted several times throughout the nineteenth century.

Between the 1790s and the 1850s a vast output of chapbooks and songsters was issued under the imprint of the London printer-publisher John Fairburn, one of a dynasty of Fairburns, many of them named John. The family bookshop was initially situated at 146 Minories, close to Tower Hill, but in 1812, John Fairburn senior opened additional premises on the other side of the City in a court off Ludgate. The area was peppered with booksellers spreading west between Paternoster Row and Fleet Street. Fairburn notably employed members of the Cruikshank family of artists as illustrators and caricaturists. Thackeray, in an essay on George Cruikshank, remembered

… walks through Fleet Street, to vanish abruptly down Fairburn’s passage, and there make one at his ‘charming gratis’ exhibition. There used to be a crowd round the window in those days, of grinning good-natured mechanics, who spelt the songs, and spoke then out for the benefit of the company, and who received the points of humour with a general sympathizing roar. (6)

One is tempted to imagine Bloomfield in his way to or from the West End making a detour past Fairburn’s window.

A songster is an anthology of secular song lyrics, popular, traditional, or topical, and typically designed to fit into the pocket. Some later songsters carried melody lines but most songsters are text only. The use of musical notation was limited by the page size and the fact that it had to be engraved rather than set from moveable type. Fairburn Senr’s Laughable Song Book for 1812 has 33 pages, words only, including Bloomfield’s “Love’s Holiday”. So the Universal Songster’s substantial volumes are exceptional. According to Fairburn, the three volumes form: “... the most complete, extensive and valuable collection of ancient and modern songs in the English language ... ”. The public wanted the words to the most popular songs and it was only natural that these would end up in a printed form. There really wasn’t a popular music industry as such at this time—no enforceable copyright ownership in songs and no one could prevent the printing of a song in a newspaper or book. Bloomfield would have received no payment for the pirating of his poems in songsters.

In some ways songsters follow on from the broadside ballad sheets, which were the main printed carrier of songs in the eighteenth century. But in terms of both printed format and means of distribution they relate to the chapbook, still going strong in the early nineteenth century, and its sub-genre, the “garland”.

Chapbooks were small, inexpensive eight-page booklets were often illustrated with woodcuts and printed on coarse paper. They were distributed by traveling “chapmen” who sold the books at markets and door-to-door in rural areas. Chapbooks (called garlands if they included songs) were a popular form of entertainment in the 18th and early 19th centuries and the principal way that ordinary people encountered songs and poetry. Chapbooks and garlands would have provided the young Robert Bloomfield with reading matter and a first introduction to poetry.

Costing a penny for eight small pages (the first given over to a title-page adorned with a crudely-cut and often irrelevant woodcut), a garland would contain the words—but not the music—of perhaps half-a-dozen songs, covering a wide variety of subjects and appealing to a number of levels of taste; a sentimental love lyric in eighteenth-century cliché, a humorous poem describing an Irishman’s adventures in London, a poem in praise of the Battle of the Nile, a sailor’s lament at his absence from home, and so forth. Towards the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth an enormous number of song-collections designed for the cheapest market were published, the eight-page garland growing into the slightly more extensive songster.

These garlands and songsters throw an interesting light on the popular taste of the time. They were aimed at both genteel and vulgar audiences, and appeared in many thousands of printings between the mid-eighteenth century and the end of the nineteenth with occasional appearances even in the twentieth century. Here’s a song from the Universal Songster that catches the flavour of the period and mentions several extremely popular songs.

The Ballad Seller

Here are catches, songs and glees,
Some are twenty for a penny,
You shall have whatever you please,
Take your choice for here are many,
Hear is ‘Nan of Glo’ster-Green’,
Here’s ‘Lily Of The Valley’,
Here is ‘Kate of Aberdeen’,
Here is ‘Sally In Our Alley’.
Here is ‘Mary’s Dream’ ‘Poor Jack’,
Here’s ‘The Tinker and The Tailor’,
Here’s ‘Bow Wow’ and ‘Paddy Whack’,
‘Tally-Ho’ ‘The Hardy Sailor’,
Here’s ‘Dick Dook’ ‘The Heart Blade’,
‘Captain Wattle’ and ‘The Grinder’,
And I’ve got ‘The Country Maid’,
Confound me though, if I can find her.
Drinking songs, too here abound,
‘Toby Philpot’ ‘Fill The Glasses’
And, ‘Here’s A Health To All Good Lasses’,
Here’s ‘Come, Let Me Dance & Sing’,
And, What’s better far than any finer,
Here’s ‘God Save Great George Our King’
‘Hearts of Oak’ and ‘Rule Britannia’.

The Universal Songster contains ten poems by Bloomfield:

Vol. I.
page 65: THE WOODLAND HALLO! (Bloomfield.)
page 89: WELCOME SILENCE, WELCOME PEACE. (R. Bloomfield.)
page 174: ROSAMOND’S SONG OF HOPE. (Bloomfield.)

Vol. II.
page 28: HAIL, MAY! LOVELY MAY. (R. Bloomfield.)
page 106: ROSY HANNAH IS MY OWN.  (R. Bloomfield.)
page 329: OLD WINTER COMES ON WITH A FROWN. (Bloomfield.)

Vol. III.
page 24: HERE FIRST I MET THE LOVELY MAID (R. Bloomfield.)
page 88: THE PLOUGHMAN’S COURTSHIP (R. Bloomfield.)
page 218: LOVE’S HOLIDAY (R. Bloomfield.)
page 295: HOME IS SO SWEET, AND MY MOGGY’S SO KIND. (Bloomfield.)

The implication must be that all ten poems are well-known songs, and readers of the Universal Songster only need a reminder of the words.

The songs in detail:

THE WOODLAND HALLO!
Category: Amatory.
Composer: Nina d’Aubigny von Engelbrunner (London: Vollweiler, 1806).
On 2 January 1807 the following advertisement was printed on the first page of The Morning Post:

NEW MUSIC, by Miss Nina d’Aubigny Von Engelbrunner, Author of The Essay on Harmony, Letters on the Art of Singing, &c.—This Day is published, in a style particularly elegant and new, Bloomfield’s Woodland Hallo, composed by Miss Nina d’Aubigny Von Engelbrunner, price 1s. Also, a Collection of Songs with English and German Words, by the same Composer. ...  Printed on stone and sold for G. J. Vollweiler, at his Poliautographic Press, No. 9, Buckingham-place, Fitzroy-square …

WELCOME SILENCE WELCOME PEACE

Category: Sentimental.
No composer known.
First published in Wild Flowers (1806) as “Love of the Country”.

ROSAMOND’S SONG OF HOPE
Category: Sentimental.
Composed by Isaac Bloomfield.
First published in May Day with the Muses (1822), page 67.

HAIL MAY! LOVELY MAY
Category: Amatory.
No composer known.
First line: Hail, May! lovely May! how replenish’d my pails!
First published in the Preface to The Farmer’s Boy (1801), page xi, as “The Milk-maid on the first of May”.

ROSY HANNAH IS MY OWN
Category: Amatory.
Settings by both Isaac Bloomfield and James Hook.
First published in Rural tales, ballads, and songs (1802), page 96, as “Rosy Hannah”.

OLD WINTER COMES ON WITH A FROWN
Category: Sentimental.
Setting composed by James Hook.
First line: Dear boy, throw that icicle down,
First published in Rural tales, ballads, and songs (1802), page 104, as “Winter Song”.

HERE FIRST I MET THE LOVELY MAID
Category: Amatory.

No composer known.

First line: Here first I met the lovely maid.

“Air” from Hazelwood-Hall (1823).
As evidence of its continued popularity, later published in The Crotchet; or the Songster and Toast-master's companion: consisting of several thousand favourite songs & popular toasts containing all that is requisite to enable any one to take a part in social and convivial meetings (London: published for the booksellers, 1854), page 178.

THE PLOUGHMAN’S COURTSHIP
Category: Amatory.
No composer known.
First line: Down Abner sate, with glowing heart,
I found the following in Tammas Bodkin: or the humours of a Scottish tailor, a collection of humorous essays in Scots vernacular.

It bein’ Andro’s prerogative to fix upon the individual wha was to sing the neist sang, he pitched upon Miss Swingletree, whase musical reputation was scarcely inferior to that o’ her respected faither. Hoosondever, she beggit to be excused on the grund that she had a sair throat, an’ was as hearse as a crowpie, but she wad ask Mr Hoggie to ack as her substitute, an’ wad feel particularly flattered if he wad favour the company by singin’ “The Ploughman’s courtship,” whilk he furthwith proceeded to do, the haill assembly joinin’ in the chorus, snappin’ their fingers an’ stampin’ on the floor wi’ their tackety shoon like very mad. (362)

Could this be Bloomfield’s poem, now absorbed into folk-song? There is another song of the same title (first line: “When first a-courting I did go”), printed in a Scottish chapbook, which might be considered a more likely candidate. But the chapbook (and the song) is known only in a single copy and no tune has so far been traced. I would like to think that Bloomfield has another shadowy existence as a Scottish poet.

LOVE’S HOLIDAY
Category: Amatory.
Setting composed by James Hook.
First line: Thy Fav’rite bird is soaring still,
Earlier issued by Fairburn in Fairburn Senr’s Laughable Song Book for 1812. With note “Written by Robert Bloomfield, composed by Mr. Hook, and sung by Master Hopkins, with universal applause; at Vauxhall Gardens. Season 1811.”

HOME IS SO SWEET AND MY MOGGY’S SO KIND
Category: Scotch.
Settings by both Isaac Bloomfield and by Robert himself, but presently untraced.
Extract from Bloomfield’s “Song for a Highland Drover returning from England”.
Beginning with the third verse: O Tweed! gentle Tweed, as I pass your green vales.
Verse ends: For home is so sweet, and my Maggy so kind.
First published in Rural tales, ballads, and songs (1802), page 97. Why “Maggy” should be changed to “Moggy” just baffles me.

Sources and further reading

John Fairburn.—Fairburn Senr’s Laughable Song Book for 1812.—London: John Fairburn, 1811.

Michael Kassler, “Vollweiler’s Introduction of Music Lithography to England”, chapter 9 of Michael Kassler, ed., The music trade in Georgian England.—Farnham: Ashgate, 2011.

The Ploughman’s courtship. To which are added, Johnny Coup’s defeat, and The Distressed lover.—Falkirk: T. Johnston, printer, [181-?].
An apparently unique surviving copy in Glasgow University Special Collections.

Tammas Bodkin: or the humours of a Scottish tailor.—Edinburgh: John Menzies, 1864.
A collection of humorous essays in broad Scots, published anonymously, though by William Duncan Latto.

William Makepeace Thackeray.—Essay on the genius of George Cruikshank. With numerous illustrations of his works.—London: Henry Hooper, 1840.
From the Westminster Review, No. LXVI.