‘Cheap Music’, 1830

Description

Mounted hand coloured etching and aquatint, entitled ‘CHEAP MUSIC’, drawn by Joe Lisle, etched by anon, and published by S. Gans, Southampton Street in 1830.

The scene is set in a music shop with various string instruments on the wall and shelves of sheet music. A customer, in a top hat with an umbrella, asks the man behind the counter: “Mr Catgut I want to purchase a Cheap Fiddle”.

The man replies: “Then you had better go to the next Chemist and purchase four Penny-worth of Daffy’s Elixir and he’ll give you a VIAL-IN.”

Daffy’s Elixir was a famous and well-established proprietary medicine. The pun concerns the supply of the container that the product was packaged in (Daffy’s Elixir was produced in a distinctively shaped bottle).