PETTICOAT LANE.
There is no Petticoat Lane any more, some finnicky board having very
foolishly changed the good old name to Middlesex street. There was
something suggestive in the name "Petticoat Lane," for it indicated with
great accuracy the business carried on there, but there is nothing
suggestive about Middlesex street. It might as well have been called
Wellington street, or Wesley street, or Washington street. I hate these
changes. A street is a street, and calling it an avenue don't make it
so. Why not Petticoat Lane? By any other name it smells as strong. It
_is_ Petticoat Lane and always will be Petticoat Lane, and despite the
edict of the board, the Londoner calls it by that title and always will.
Petticoat Lane is a long, tortuous narrow street, properly a lane,
(about the width of an ordinary alley in an American city,) in the heart
of the city proper. It is probably the dirtiest spot on the globe. If
there is a dirtier I do not wish to see it--or, more especially, to
smell it. It is the very acme of filth, the incarnation of dirt, and the
very top, the peaked point of the summit of rottenness.
A friend of mine who had lost the sense of smell was condoled with on
his misfortune.
"Don't pity me," he said, "please don't. It is a blessing, and not a
misfortune. In this imperfect world there are more bad smells than
perfumes. If I am deprived of one delight I escape a dozen inflictions.
If I can't enjoy the rose, I, at least, dodge the tan yard."
Precisely so another friend who had his right leg torn off in a
threshing machine during the war, reveled in his cork leg, because,
having but one flesh and blood foot, he only took half the chances of
ordinary mortals of taking cold from wet feet.
So does philosophy turn misfortunes into blessings. To carry out the
idea I suppose the more troubles happen to a man the happier he should
be. Would that I could take life that way, but I can't. Unfortunately
the day I was in Petticoat Lane my sense of smell was unusually acute,
at least so it seemed to me.
Philosophers of this school should spend a great deal of their time in
Petticoat Lane, for in that savory locality all the senses one needs are
his eyes and ears. A loss of smell there would be a blessing.
It is the especial street belonging to the Jews. Not the Jews we have in
America, the bright, busy, active men, who have left their impress upon
every spot they have touched, who have done so much to make America what
it is--not the well-dressed, well-housed leader in business and
everything else he puts his hands to, but the old kind of Jew, the Jew
of Poland, with the long beard and long coat, very like the gaberdine we
see in pictures and on the stage, the Jew of Shakespeare, the Jew who
will trade in anything, and live in a way that no other race or section
of a race on earth can live. There is a denser population in Petticoat
Lane, I verily believe, than anywhere else on the globe, outside of
China, and it is all Hebrew.
You should go Sunday morning, which is their especial day, and get there
about ten o'clock, to see it in all its glory. All places for selling
liquor in London are closed part of the day Sunday, except in this
street; but here they are all open and in full blast. Whether there is a
special exception made by law, or whether there is a tacit winking at
the violation by the authorities because of the religion of the people,
I do not know; but it is a fact that in this street the beer shops are
open all day and a thriving business they do.
[Sidenote: THE HOME OF SECOND-HAND.]
It is the busiest place I ever saw. The streets are crowded, not the
sidewalks only, but the streets, to the very center. You see no
horse-drawn vehicles--it is all people. Barrows and carts drawn by
people, men or women, are the only vehicles. There would be no room for
any other. The fiery steed attached to a hansom, which shares its
driver's noble ambition to run down a foot passenger, would be tamed in
Petticoat Lane. The number of opportunities to run down people would
embarrass, and, finally, subdue him.
[Illustration: THE SIDEWALK SHOE-STORE.]
What do all these people do? It would be easier to answer the question,
What don't they do? They do everything. If there is an article on
earth--that is, a second-hand article,--that is not bought and sold in
Petticoat Lane on Sunday morning, I have not seen it. You can buy
anything you want there, provided you want it second-hand, from a
knitting needle to a ship's anchor. There is nothing in the street that
is not second-hand, except the people. They all bear the stamp of
originality, every one of them. They are born traders. If a pair of
Petticoat Lane Jew twins in a cradle don't trade teething rings, and
attempt to swindle each other, the father and mother drop tears of
sorrow over them, and as soon as they are old enough, take them out of
the place and apprentice them to a trade. Without this manifestation
they would not be considered good enough for Petticoat Lane. Very few
have, however, been so apprenticed.
Here is a hideous old woman on the sidewalk with her stock in trade
under her eye, and a sharp eye it is, arranged along the curb. What is
it? A few dozen or more pairs of boots and shoes, in all stages of
dilapidation, carefully polished, and made to look as respectable as
possible, any pair of which (by the way, they are not always mates,) you
shall buy, if you desire, at any price ranging from a penny to a
shilling. No matter what the ancient dame gets for them, she has made a
profit. She picked them up on the streets, save a few that she may have
borrowed when the owner was not looking. What anybody wants of these
remnants, these ghosts of foot wear, I can't conceive. But she sells
them. The trade is consummated easily after the chaffering is over with.
The purchaser pays the woman, and sheds the worse ones he has on, and
puts on his acquisition, and wends his way. Probably in an hour he would
be glad to trade back, but it is too late.
Next to her stands a cart, which is a portable hardware store. There are
hinges, nails, all second-hand, carpenter's tools, axes, locks, keys,
and all sorts of iron-mongery, and he sells, too. Somebody wants these
goods, and he gets his price. As these things are collected as were the
boots, the vender is happy at every pennyworth he sells.
[Sidenote: THE CLOTHING DEALER.]
Here is a clothing merchant with his stock laid conveniently on the
sidewalk. It is a motley mass, and his method of disposing of it is
precisely the same as that of the second-hand clothing dealer the world
over. I don't know as these dealers rise to the sublime height of the
New York Chatham street Jew, who claimed that a villainous green coat
was made for General Grant, but that he wouldn't have it because the
velvet on the collar was too fine for his taste, but they approach it.
He has everything that one can conceive of. There are flunkeys'
uniforms, sailors' jackets, worn-out dress coats that once figured in
the best society, but they decayed, and went down and down through all
the grades of society, till they finally landed in Petticoat Lane, where
they will be sold for a shilling, and the purchaser will tear the tails
off as useless encumbrances that give no warmth and are simply in the
way, and comfortable jackets will be made of them.
[Illustration: "SHEAP CLODINK!"]
Under this head I might ring in _Hamlet's_ soliloquy about the dust of
great men stopping cracks, and preach a very pretty sermon on the
mutability of human affairs, but I won't. Petticoat Lane is not exactly
the place for philosophizing, nor will it be for me till I get its smell
out of my nostrils. Visiting Petticoat Lane is very much like eating
onions--you carry the taste with you a long time, which is a
blessing--for those who like onions. The onion is an economical
vegetable at any price. It may come high to begin with, but it lasts a
long time.
I saw General's uniforms, American sack-coats, trowsers that may have
graced the legs of royalty, and a great many that had not, there not
being many of the royalty. There were French blouses, police uniforms,
Irish knee-breeches, everything. One coat I saw sold for a penny, the
vender originally asking two shillings for it.
Next to this merchant was a man who had an assortment of sewing
machines--Wheeler & Wilson, Wilcox & Gibbs, the Domestic, Singer--all
the American machines were represented, and he sold them, too. People
come there to buy these things. They went as low as three dollars, and
as high as five. One bloated aristocrat, who was particular as to
appearances, actually paid seven dollars for a Wheeler & Wilson, and was
not above carrying it off himself.
In Petticoat Lane they don't have wagons to deliver your purchases as
they do in Regent street and elsewhere, nor do they sell on time. You
buy, and pay for what you buy, and to prevent mistakes you pay for your
goods just before you get them. It's a habit they have.
The furniture stores--all on the sidewalk--are curiosities. It would
delight a gatherer-up of unconsidered trifles to see one of them. I did
not notice a whole piece of furniture in the lot. There was either a leg
gone, or two legs, or the top, or the side, something must be gone. But
the dealer didn't mind that. "You see, ma teer, all you hef to do ish to
get dot leg put on, and its shoost ash goot as new, efery bit." Bureaus
with missing drawers, tables with three legs where four were essential,
chairs with the top, bottom and legs gone; in short, everything that was
broken and condemned as useless by everybody finds its last
resting-place here. Surely there can be no lower depth for the disabled.
[Sidenote: A MOTLEY MASS.]
As I gazed in wonder upon some of the articles I saw, and noticed how
little of the original article could be sold, I bethought myself of the
cooper who was brought a bung hole, with the request that he build a
barrel about it.
The street vendors of eatables formed no small portion of the traffic
that was going on incessantly. You can get a slice of roast beef with
greens (greens is what these people call cabbage, and, by the way, they
call a lemonade a "lemon squash"), for a penny, and you shall see it cut
from the joint, otherwise you wouldn't know what it was. True the plate
on which the satisfying food was placed had been merely dipped in cold
water, and true it was that the two hundred pound woman who served it
had never washed her hands since the day she was married, but that did
not matter. The dish was taken and devoured, the ceremony of paying
before getting it being religiously observed. There were shrimps, and
snails, and lettuce salads, and moldy fruit, and everything else that
the British public eats, all on the street, which is convenient, to say
the least.
Sharpers were not wanting to complete this variegated scene. The
thimble-rigger was there, his game being confined to a penny, so as to
harmonize with the general cheapness of the locality, and, to keep it in
perfect accord, his little portable table, and his thimbles were
second-hand. There were street acrobats, nigger minstrels, hand organs,
hurdy-gurdys, street singers, and the inevitable street brass band, made
up of four sad-looking men who appeared as though there was nothing in
life for them, and that they were playing in expiation of some great
crime, and were compelled to play on forever. How these people live I
never could make out. During the whole day I never saw a penny given
them, except one which one of our party threw them. They took it up with
an expression of the most intense surprise, as though it was an
astounding and unlooked-for occurrence, and immediately stopped playing,
and made for the nearest cook stand and invested the whole of it in a
plate of beef and greens, which was divided among the four. I was about
to throw them another penny, but was checked by our guide. He protested
against pampering them. I understood him. The American Indian will
consume a month's provisions in a single day's feast, and starve the
other twenty-nine. Had I given them another penny they would have had
another plate of beef on the spot, and then gone hungry a week. As we
intended to come again next Sunday, for their own good I reserved the
penny for that occasion.
Understand it is not Jews who are the purchasers of these wrecks of
goods, these reminiscences of furniture and the like; they are the
sellers. The purchasers are the British public proper, who come here for
bargains. They get them--perhaps.
The question is, where do all these things come from? If there are more
than one in the Jewish family, and whether there is or not depends upon
the age, for they marry very young, and have children as rapidly as
possible, all but one of them roam through the country incessantly,
buying, bartering for and picking up all the stuff, which, after bought
or picked up, is brought here and fixed as far as the skill and
ingenuity of the purchaser and the rottenness of the material will
permit. Then it is sold, at no matter what price. The motto in Petticoat
Lane is, "no reasonable offer refused."
It is not, however, only the second-hand that Petticoat Lane deals in.
You see moving among the crowd here and there quite another class of
Israelites from those who are vending dilapidated clothing and broken
furniture. They are well dressed men, with coats buttoned up very
closely. Their raven locks are surmounted with tall hats, and their
boots cleaned as carefully as any swell's in London. They are all
distinctively Hebrew, there being no exception to this rule.
[Sidenote: DIAMONDS.]
Across the way is a beer-shop, kept by a Hebrew, the bar-maids and all
being Hebrew. On the one side of the bar is a small dining room; back of
that a kitchen, and from the bar-room is a flight of stairs. Follow your
guide, who in this instance was an American Hebrew, and you find
yourself in a low room just the size of the bar below, and a curious
scene presents itself. These rooms, and there are scores of them in
Petticoat Lane, contain on an average any number of millions of pounds
that you choose to say. I could say that there were a hundred millions
of wealth in each one, and perhaps wouldn't be very much out of the way,
but as I desire to be accurate, I will not. If there is anything I
detest, it is exaggeration. I hope to distinguish myself by being the
first tourist who adhered strictly to the naked truth.
These rooms are diamond marts. In them all the diamonds that deck out
royalty and the wives of patent medicine men, gamblers, negro minstrels,
and other people who are not royal, are first handled. To these dingy
dens in the very heart of the worst quarter of the worst city in the
world, comes the diamond merchant, and here he meets the broker who
deals with the manufacturer in the city. Here all the diamonds of London
are first bought and sold.
One looks at it with amazement. Enter a young Jew with the
preternaturally sharp features that distinguish the race. All the
merchants, and there may be a dozen, each sitting at his little table,
hail him, and all in the language that the new comer speaks the best.
The Hebrew speaks all languages, and all of them well. (Facts crowd upon
me so fast that it is difficult to keep to my subject.) The young fellow
unbuttons his coat, and then the top buttons of his vest, and takes from
an inner pocket a long leather pocket-book, which he opens carefully.
There are disclosed a dozen papers folded like an apothecary's package,
and he opens them. Your eyes dance as you see the contents. Diamonds! I
never dreamed there were so many in the world. Each paper contains a
handful of all sizes and qualities, cut and uncut, of all colors and
shades known to the diamond, and the ancient Jews at the tables take
these papers and examine critically the different sparklers, going over
the lot as the Western farmer would his cattle. With a little steel
instrument he separates this one from his fellows and puts it under a
glass, and screws his eye into the stone, and then little tiny scales,
which would turn under the weight of a sunbeam, are brought into
requisition, and then would come more chaffering and bargaining than
would suffice to buy and sell an empire.
This young fellow does not own these precious stones. He is a broker.
The diamond is first brought to light in Brazil, India, or the Cape of
Good Hope. From the original producer it passes into the hands of the
resident buyer, who consigns it to the broker to sell, and he does it on
commission the same as the elevator men handle wheat. The buyer in
Petticoat Lane either cuts and sets it himself, or re-sells it to the
fashionable jeweler, as he can make the most profit. Trust them for
doing that. It is something the London Hebrew understands long before he
cuts his teeth.
But it is not alone diamonds you find in these rooms. On the various
tables may be seen jewelry of every possible description, and all sorts
of goods, from a tooth-pick up. You can buy a watch or a jack-knife, a
button-hook or a diamond bracelet. Especially is the variety of curious
old jewelry very extensive. You find there rings and brooches set with
all sorts of stones, of every period in the world's history, which makes
it the resort of the wealthy collectors of the ancient and curious. Here
is a brooch, said to have been worn by Queen Anne, and another by one of
the mistresses of Louis XVIII., of France. The seller says it was, and
if he happens to be mistaken, what difference does it make so that you
believe it? It is just as good to you as though the history was
accurate. One should not be particular in such matters, though I saw
enough brooches that were once the property of an English Queen to have
set up a very large jewelry store, and were they all genuine it explains
the high taxes in England, and justifies all the rebellions the country
has suffered. But it is all well enough. The goods are actually quaint
and beautiful. It is darkly hinted that these Jews have factories where
jewelry once worn by royalty is manufactured by the bushel, and I should
not wonder thereat. For, you see, a brooch of modern style, worth say
fifty pounds, is worth one hundred pounds if it were once Queen Anne's.
"Dose goots, ma tear sir, vat ish anshent, and hef historical
associations, are wort any money. At one hundred pounts it ish a
bargain."
As the price doubles because of historical features it pays very nicely
to manufacture the old styles, and tarnish the gold, and make antiques.
But possibly this is a weak invention of the Gentiles who do not deal in
antiques.
[Sidenote: THE CONFIDING ISRAELITE.]
One would suppose that it would be rather hazardous to carry about so
much wealth in a paper. What is to prevent the Jew at the table who has
a paper before him containing, say, two hundred diamonds, from secreting
one or two? The broker hands a paper to one, and another to another, and
divides his time between them, and to take a stone would be as easy as
lying.
Possibly it would be hazardous among Gentiles, but not so among these
Jews. There is an unwritten code among them which makes the property as
safe in their hands as though one diamond were shown at a time. There is
absolute honor among them, which was never yet known to be tarnished. It
is absolute and perfect.
[Illustration: "DAKE DOT RING."]
One venerable Jew was very anxious to sell me a ring, the price of which
he fixed at one hundred and twenty dollars, "and no abatement." (When a
Jew diamond merchant says "no abatement," that settles it. There is
none.)
"Dake dot ring, put him in your bocket, go to any scheweler in Rechent
street, and oof you can get him vor dwice de monish I will give him to
you."
"What!" was my reply, "do you say that I, a perfect stranger to you,
may carry off a ring worth forty pounds? Suppose I shouldn't come back
with it?"
"Ach, ma tear sir, Philip (my American friend) vouldn't pring nobody
here vot vould do such a ting. Dake der ring, ma tear sir, and see about
him. It ish a bargain."
Philip or any one of the guild would be allowed to carry away a king's
ransom.
Would, oh would, that the other people of the world were equally honest
and upright. Still, I wouldn't advise any one to depend upon their word
in a purchase. They have two kinds of morality. A trade with them is a
battle royal, in which each tries to get the better of the other, but
the word once passed is never broken.
The merchant sits all day at his table, his meals, always a cut of beef
and greens, with a pewter of bitter beer, being brought to him from the
kitchen below. He sits and eats, never permitting, however, his eating
and drinking to interfere with his business. He would put down his pot
of beer to continue a trade any time, something I know a great many
Americans would not do.
Petticoat Lane is one of the curiosities of London, and the day was well
spent. It is a world by itself--a foreign nation preserving its religion
and customs intact, injected into the very heart of London.
[Illustration: A LANE IN CAMBERWELL.]
[Illustration]