ODD FISH
LONDON streets have been cleared of their professional “odd fish” owing
to the parental solicitude of the police. The expensive operations of
the London County Council having swept away all the remnants of
Dickensland, the police have gathered up and carried away any Dickenesque
characters that survived the advent of the reforming Council. All things
considered, our ædiles have acted wisely in the interests of Londoners.
They have gained experience and confidence. Such early mistakes as the
architecture of Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road will never be
repeated. The progress of Kingsway and Aldwych prove _that_ at all
events. If we are to lose the ancient picturesqueness, we are to have in
return spacious roadways flanked by architectural dignity.
If, however, we rejoice in the erection of palaces on sites once occupied
by rookeries, we must surely sometimes experience a pang of regret over
the disappearance of the eccentric characters of the town—the quaint
Londoners who made a living out of their eccentricities or their
afflictions. Those of them who were not removed disappeared, no doubt,
owing to natural causes. But no successor was admitted to have a valid
claim to the vacant place. The streets are clear of mendicant freaks,
and even of those quaint itinerants who performed on the chance of a
public recognition of their exhibitions. Codlin and Short no longer—as
in the _Punch_ pictures of John Leech—set up their stage in West End
squares. The man in soiled tights who released himself from ropes coiled
and knotted by confederates in the crowd is never seen nowadays
attempting his performance in the mouth of a “no-thoroughfare.” His
dirty fleshings would scarcely be tolerated even on a race-course. On
second thoughts, I omit him from the odd street characters whom I miss
from the London thoroughfares.
But there should have been someone of his household to carry on the
tradition of the little cripple who used to sit on the pavement in front
of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, making weird noises on a
German concertina. Close by, in the mouth of Suffolk Street, Pall Mall
East, a most respectable young man exhibited a “happy family” in a large
cage. It was a most instructive lesson in natural history, and an
illustration of the power of man over cats, canaries, rats, mice, dogs,
and other specimens of what are popularly known as “the lower animals,”
and many a morning have I stood entranced as I watched a white mouse play
with the whiskers of a cat, or seen a fox-terrier invite the familiarity
of an exceedingly maleficent-looking rodent. There was some ethical
teaching to be picked up also, for no doubt the result achieved by the
showman was entirely the effect of moral suasion. “It is all done by
kindness,” as the showman of the circus used to say.
Then there was the old fellow who used to sweep the crossing at the top
of King Street, where it enters St. James’s Square. He was a rubicund
customer, whose whole person seemed to reek of much good ale. He was
dressed in the pink of the hunting-field, and wore the picturesque
hunting-cap of the shires. He could scarcely have been a M.F.H. fallen
on evil times, and haunting the clubland of the days of his vanity.
Perhaps he was a huntsman or a whipper-in grown too fat or too bibulous
for his work. He had certainly selected an eligible “pitch,” and must
have acquired a nice competence from the fogeys, old and middle-aged, who
used his crossing. His attractive livery should have descended—for I
deem the original wearer long since the victim of another sort of
crossing—to an emulous son. The world is growing too drab. And even an
æsthetic crossing-sweeper might do somewhat to improve its colour scheme.
Do you remember the accomplished harper who made gay with his music the
old flagged courts of the City? No one interfered with the performances
of that descendant of David. He was permitted to make music within the
sacred precincts of the courtyard in which stands Rothschild’s famous
house in St. Swithin’s Lane. It was to this gracious permission,
doubtless, that might be traced the rumour—repeated by the credulous sort
in the City—that this player on stringed instruments was a poor relation
of the financial princes of New Court. Since that musician was called
away, no successor has been permitted to waken the dulcet echoes of New
Court. Nor, indeed, are the efforts of strolling artists on sackbut or
psaltery encouraged in the obscure byways of the City, a circumstance
which is, I think, to be deplored.
Whenever I visited the City, a merchant who always fascinated me was one
who had a pitch in the opening of a passage at the eastern end of the
Poultry. Alas! the very passage itself is built over now, and the
merchant and his wares have not become even a part of tradition. I have
asked City men about him a score of times. I have never yet met one who
remembers ever having seen him—ever having heard of him. They are the
most expert forgetters in the world, are City men. And it is perhaps as
well. A large proportion of the day’s transactions there are best
forgotten. The vanished merchant of the vanished passage had set up a
stand on which he exhibited miniature articles in copper. The goods were
most exquisitely finished, and were perfect models—made to scale—of their
originals. Culinary articles were his chief stock-in-trade—kettles,
frying-pans, Dutch ovens, dish-covers, coffee-pots, saucepans—all
beautifully executed, and the largest of them not more than three inches
in diameter. At one time I had an entire _batterie de cuisine_ bought
from him. He, too, should have had a successor; but possibly a successor
might have found himself flattened out by the stores.
The sleight-of-hand performer has been gently pushed off the public
highways. Him also I regret, and offer what incense I may to his memory.
A smart-looking, precise, never-in-a-hurry young man, his expression was
invariably pensive, suspicions, contemptuous. He carried a little round
table with a faded red cloth fixed to it, like that of a card-table,
which indeed, in a way, it was. Ah those delightful tricks! Cinquevalli
and Charles Bertram have since worked their miracles for my behoof, but
they have failed to arouse the same sensations which the performers of
the West End street corners raised in my ingenuous mind.
Conjurers had sharp tongues, too, and their repartee was ready and
pungent. I was walking down Bedford Street, Strand, one forenoon with
the late Mr. J. L. Toole, the celebrated comedian. One of these roadside
jugglers had set up his stand near the corner of Maiden Lane. He was
performing some trick with a bottle and a piece of paper. Toole, who was
uncommonly fond of practical joking, pushed through the little crowd,
and, simulating the manner of a person in great pain and in a great
hurry, held out twopence to the magician.
“I’ll take a pennyworth of your pills and a pennyworth of your
pain-destroyer,” he groaned.
“Thank you, Mr. Toole,” coolly observed the other, who had at once
recognized the actor, “but I make it a rule never to take money from
brother professionals.”
His little audience laughed, now discovering the identity of the
practical joker. Toole exhibited every outward sign of delight at the
retort, tossed a florin to the victor, and whispered to me as we went
off: “That’s a dev’lish smart chap, don’t you know; but he took my money
all the same!” I do not think, however, that he relished the incident
any too well.
Barney Barnato commenced his financial career as a peripatetic conjurer,
his beats being in the East, and not in the West End of the town. And,
although I only knew him in the days of his prosperity, I did not find it
difficult to discover in the millionaire the traces of the ancient
calling. And, to do Barney justice, he was not in the least ashamed of
his humble beginnings. In this he differed considerably from certain
other South African magnates whom I have met. Who persuaded Barney to
build the pretentious, over-ornamented palace in Park Lane I do not know,
but I feel sure it was never undertaken on his own initiative.
There was one very odd fish who perambulated the Strand in the seventies.
The cut of his clothes—which were old but well brushed—was early
Victorian. His light-coloured hair was divided at the back most
mathematically, and a wisp of it was drawn over each ear after a fashion
set by costermongers and adopted by Lord Ranelagh. He wore his hat
cocked over one ear, and he sported a straw-coloured moustache to match
the hair of his head. His whole appearance was that of a dandy run to
seed. He might have been a forgotten ghost of the Regency. He carried a
Malacca cane with tassels, and behind him there followed a white poodle.
The man and the dog made one of the features of the Strand. The poodle
never left his master’s heels. Hundreds of times have I watched the pair
of them pass along the street. The dandy seemed to know nobody, nor did
anyone ever salute him; yet he was an intimate part of the show.
There came a day when he made his promenade—alone. And he was attired in
mourning. Whether he had donned sables out of respect for the memory of
his canine friend I cannot say, but the dog was dead and the man was in
mourning. Shortly after this the buck of the Regency himself
disappeared. Then inquiries were made. The dandy was dead. He had
lodged in Westminster. He was a half-pay Major, and, except that he
dressed oddly and clipped and groomed his poodle with his own hands, he
appears to have had few eccentricities. His landlady wept as she spoke
of him. “My dear gentleman” she called him, and she had a hundred and
one stories to relate of his kindly disposition, his practical
benevolence, and his racial pride. He was a Scotsman.
Of the same period as that of the Scots Major was Kitty, the old Irish
flower-seller. Kitty was about seventy years old when I first made her
acquaintance. She perambulated the north side of the Strand, her beat
being bounded by the old Gaiety Theatre on the east, and by the Adelphi
on the west. She was a “character.” She knew nearly all her customers
by name, though how she acquired the information the Lord only knows.
“Witty Kitty” she was called, and not without good reason. I was
standing one day on the step of the _Globe_ office, talking to Henri Van
Laun, the friend and translator of Taine. Kitty came up to us with her
basket of sweet-smelling wares. Van Laun, who hated an interruption
while in the act of unwinding one of his interminable yarns, motioned her
away with a cross word and an angry gesture. Van Laun was a Jew who had
the national characteristics very severely marked in nose and lips and
complexion. Kitty did not at once accept her dismissal.
“Ah, buy one for the love o’ God!” she persisted.
Van Laun turned on her. He was professedly an agnostic, and fond of
airing the fact.
“No, no! Who is zis Almighty zat I should buy for love of him? Hey?” he
queried fiercely.
“Och, sir,” said Kitty, in sad, reproachful accents, “an’ is it
pretendin’ not to know Him you are—an’ you wan of His _chosen_ people!”
The calculated accent on the “chosen” was delightful. From that day Van
Laun became one of “Witty Kitty’s” most profitable customers.
Human freaks are now steadily discouraged by the police. But in an
earlier time men and women were permitted to parade their afflictions or
deformities in the London thoroughfares. There was a horrible cripple
who used to propel himself about Trafalgar Square and its vicinity.
Apparently his motive power was confined to his arms. His progress along
the side-paths was like that of a seal. He was attired in a white
nautical suit; he had big round eyes which he rolled about in the most
curious way. Women were much frightened on beholding him for the first
time, and I suspect him of having been an arrant impostor. Then there
was the old lady who perambulated Whitehall, the top of her head pointing
to the pavement. She was bent literally double. I once saw Mr.
Gladstone (I mean, of course, the eminent man of that name) stop and
address her and give her a coin. The Grand Old Man had a great taste for
curios and antiquities. The one-armed sailor—he carries the other down
his side—and the one-legged mill hand have been relegated to the suburbs,
and even there they have become discredited, I think. And as to the
miserable wretches who used to exhibit their sores and open wounds, a
public that liberally supports hospitals won’t tolerate any more of that
sort around.
But while I have been recalling a few of the odd fish who frequented the
thoroughfares in the quarters of the town most affected by gentlemen of
the Press, I have been somehow conscious all the time that, however
interesting the recollections may be, they are scarcely of the particular
type of odd fish which I set out to describe. My intention was—and is—to
recall some of the eccentric persons on the Press, or those eccentrics
with whom the Press brought me into contact. To that task I now address
myself.
One of the queerest fish of my time was Mr. William Henry Bingham-Cox.
He was a tall, swarthy man—swarthy, indeed, is euphemistic, for the man
was as copper-coloured as a Hindu. He had big lips and a head of curly
black hair. The tar-brush had at some time played an important place in
his evolution. He had at one stage of his career been a clerk in the
Bank of England. On inheriting a certain legacy, he threw up his
appointment in Threadneedle Street, and bought a paper—then in very low
water—entitled _The Licensed Victuallers’ Gazette_. He seemed from the
first to be able to interest “the trade,” and greatly increased the
advertising income of his purchase. It was not, however, until he
conceived the happy idea of publishing bright and cleverly-written
accounts of old prize-fights that the _Gazette_ began to feel its feet
and to make big strides in the favour of the public.
Although Bingham-Cox was believed by many of his contemporaries to be as
mad as Bedlam, there was a certain method in his madness. He had the
_savvee_ to see that the new edition of the old fights must be of some
literary excellence, that the stories must be retold with a graphic force
and without a nauseating repetition of the worn-out _clichés_ which,
strangely enough, gave relish to the original accounts when, years
before, they appeared in the columns of _Bell’s Life_. His first
selection was a fortunate one. Sydney French was the chosen historian of
the “fancy.” He approached the subject with an open mind, for he had
never seen a fight and knew nothing of the prize-ring. But he was an
all-round journalist, and could produce a readable column of copy on
almost any given topic within the hour. “The Dean could write well about
a broomstick!” exclaimed Stella. That was the sort of journalist French
was. He could write well—that is to say, in an interesting way—about a
broomstick. He was not always what you might call _on_ his subject. But
he was always somewhere round about it. And he was never dull. He kept
on at the fights until his death. French was on the staff of the
_Dispatch_, and found the Cox engagement a very nice addition to his
income. The honorarium for the fight article ranged from seven to ten
guineas a week.
When French died, Bingham-Cox was in despair. Many men had a “try” at
the game. But it was not as easy as it looked. Man after man was found
wanting. Among others who took a hand at the task was Mr. T. P.
O’Connor, now M.P. for the Scotland Division of Liverpool. “Tay Pay” has
a fine roving style of his own, but was apparently unequal to the Homeric
strain essential in the epic of the Ring. Willmott Dixon was sent for,
and for many years he was not only the writer of the prize-fights, but
editor of the paper. French was bad to beat, but Dixon beat him, and
beat him easily. Dixon had a knowledge of the Ring; he could “put up his
dukes” himself, thoroughly enjoyed “a bit of a scrap,” and his Cambridge
experiences stood him in good stead. His memory, too, was rarely at
fault. I never met a journalist so independent of books of reference.
Bingham-Cox was a great theatre-goer. His widowed sister kept house for
him over the offices of the paper in Southampton Street, Strand. She
usually accompanied her brother on these outings, and, though his paper
had no recognized position in the theatrical world, “William Henry” used
to besiege the acting-managers for stalls and boxes. When he succeeded
in capturing a couple of free seats he was as pleased as Punch, although
they usually cost him three or four times their market price, for he
invariably indicated his appreciation of the manager’s civility by
sending him a box of cigars. As the cigars were generally “Flor de Cuba”
or “Cabañas” of a famous crop, one may imagine that acting-managers were
not unwilling to oblige him if they could. The strange man did not smoke
himself, and was horrified if anyone came smoking into his office.
Occasionally he contributed to his own columns. His contributions were
usually of a more or less libellous nature. He called me in on one
occasion to advise about the opening paragraph of a short dramatic notice
which he had written. The thing was in proof. It dealt with a play by
Sims and Buchanan called “The English Rose.” From the tone of the essay
I inferred that the eccentric proprietor had been unsuccessful in getting
free stalls at the Adelphi, where the play had been produced. The
paragraph about which he seemed particularly anxious was the opening one.
It ran in this way:
“This is the most extraordinary production we have ever been invited to
witness. It is an Irish melodrama. It is entitled ‘The English Rose.’
It is written by a Scotsman and a Jew, and it has been put on the stage
by two gentlemen of Swiss nationality.”
“What do you think of it?” he exclaimed, grinning and showing his
gleaming white teeth.
“I think you are wrong about your facts.”
He glared at me, exposed his teeth more than ever, stuck his thumbs in
the armholes of his waistcoat, and asked:
“What! what! Wrong in my facts! Nonsense, my friend, nonsense!”
“In the most material statement you are wrong,” I persisted; “for
Buchanan is not a Scotsman, and Sims is not a Jew.”
“Ah,” he cried, grinning more fiercely, “then it’s not a libel!”
“That’s as may be,” said I; “for to my mind the law of libel resolves
itself into this: Whether twelve men on their oaths consider that the
words published by A have injured B.”
He went to his desk, initialled the galley, rang the bell, and handed the
slip to the man answering the summons, with the intimation: “For the
printer.” Then, turning to me, he said defiantly: “I’ll let it go.”
Whether it ever _did_ go I never inquired. The reminiscence comes back
to me unbidden. It had clean vanished from my memory from that day to
this.
He was constantly—but, as I believe, quite unconsciously—giving offence
to all sorts and conditions of men. His black beard, curly hair,
gleaming teeth, and fierce grin, obtained for him an offensive sobriquet
thus bestowed: One of his contributors sent him a letter resigning his
position on the staff. He alleged but one reason for this course. It
was: “I can no longer put up with the antics of a Barbary ape.” The
eccentric recipient of the letter, instead of putting it into the fire
and forgetting all about it, assembled the members of the staff, and read
the document as though it proved the hopeless insanity of the writer.
Having read it, he ran round the room, pretending to scratch his arms
after the manner of a caged monkey, uttering the most comical squeals and
chattering his teeth no end.
He was drawn over the incident by Pottinger Stephens, who was running a
weekly called _The Topical Times_. In that smart little journal a
question was asked the following week in these words: “When did Mr.
Bingham-Cox receive the degree of B.A.?” The unfortunate man did not see
what lay under the inquiry. He wrote a letter on the note-paper of the
Junior Athenæum—the “Junior Prigs,” as it used to be called—explaining
that he had dispensed with the advantages of a University training, and
that he was not a B.A. The letter appeared in Pot’s paper in due course;
but with this heading: “_Mr. Bingham-Cox denies that he is a B.A._” The
person of the newspaper proprietor was less sacrosanct in the jocund days
than in these greyer times.
Bingham-Cox was a collector in his way. He was very keen on engravings,
and was by no means a bad judge. He started on his hobby long before the
“engraving craze” set in, and his collection became worth four or five
times the price he gave for it. The first-floor above the office was
full of his samples from floor to ceiling. One day when I was looking
over the gallery in his company, he invited me to select a couple of the
engravings. I chose two—by no means the least valuable in the
collection—and was about to ask when I might send for them, when he
whipped out a notebook, and saying, “I’ll leave them to you in my will,”
made an elaborate pretence of recording the incident. He was a collector
of musical instruments, and had a piano or an American organ on every
landing in the house. The most intolerable trials to which he subjected
his friends were his recitals on one or other of these instruments. As
he crashed out his Masses and fugues he rolled his head, showed his
teeth, and grinned awfully, as though he thoroughly enjoyed witnessing
the torture he inflicted.
The end of his story is a mingling of tragedy and comedy. He sold his
paper. During the years in which he had conducted it he always “lived
over the shop.” He could never have spent a fourth part of his net
profits, and the balance had been well and luckily invested. When he
received the purchase money for the _Gazette_ and left Southampton
Street, he was worth considerably over £100,000. When he crossed the
threshold of his old offices his astuteness and his luck seem to have
deserted him. He bought a brewery in St. Albans, where he had a house.
From the first this venture was foredoomed to failure. He became the
prospective Unionist candidate for the division. But Captain Middleton
and the Central Office would have nothing to do with him, and ran a
candidate of their own against him. Bingham-Cox persisted, and actually
went to the poll. At this period I became more intimately associated
with the eccentric man. I made some speeches for him, and even canvassed
the independent electors. More than once during the campaign I thought
it my duty to inform him that his methods, should he be elected, must
insure his being unseated on petition. He only bared his teeth at the
suggestion. He was quite sure of winning, and he was equally sure that
there would be no petition.
One of my trials in accompanying him was being obliged to drive about
with him in a little village cart, painted a vivid green, and drawn by a
big black donkey. The candidate, with his swarthy face, grizzly beard,
and fierce expression, might have been the _avant-courier_ of some
travelling show. The little villagers evidently accepted him as
something of the sort, and accompanied the strange vehicle and its
grinning occupant in and out of their hamlets with joyful “whoops.” He
was badly beaten at the polls. I don’t believe that even the well-bribed
employés in the brewery voted for him. Then the brewery itself went
smash, and Bingham-Cox returned to Southampton Street (the new owners of
the paper having found less expensive premises), and recommenced life as
a newspaper proprietor.
His new paper was called _The Rocket_. His idea was to give the public a
_Truth_ for a penny. The title was an ill-omened one. The paper went up
like the explosive after which it was named, and came down like the
stick. He sent for Clement Scott, and instructed him to write an article
dealing abusively with stage-players. Clemmy agreed provided his name
was kept a profound secret. Bingham-Cox promised. The worthy man had
probably suffered from some further slight at the hands of the managers.
“Cut ’em up! Slash ’em! Flay ’em alive!” he exclaimed to the
accommodating contributor. Scott, secure in his anonymity, proceeded to
cut up, slash, and flay, the unfortunate mummers in a strain of pious
indignation that was peculiarly his own. The article duly appeared with
Clement Scott’s name in large letters both at the top and bottom of it.
Scott never really got over the incident, and his reproaches had no
effect on his employer. “Breach of faith indeed! Why, you have broken
faith with a whole profession!” was the only satisfaction he could get
from his betrayer.
The _Rocket_ was a failure from the first. It stopped for want of funds.
For the unfortunate man had been drained dry. Even the engravings and
the musical instruments had gone. In a few short years his fortune had
melted. He was overdrawn at the bank; he had not a cent in the world.
One morning the word went round that he had been found dead in bed, and
there was no inquest.
Arthur T. Pask was a name with which the public became acquainted in the
eighties. He wrote in Christmas numbers, annuals, and story magazines.
He had established relations with the _Standard_, and used to write
“turn-overs” for that journal. His copy always appeared to me to be
devoid of merit, but personally he was a most interesting man. He was
engaged in the Affidavit Department of the Royal Courts of Justice. One
would have imagined that in that office he would come across plenty of
material for his fictions. He preferred, however, to evolve these from
his inner consciousness, and to this end he appeared to live in a set of
circumstances of his own invention. At one time he became subject to the
hallucination that he kept a yacht. He appeared in Fleet Street one day
in the most weird sort of nautical rig. With his yachting cap, white
shoes, and reefer jacket with brass buttons, he had the appearance of the
steward of a penny steamer. He breathed a sea-air. His conversation was
of the “Royal Squadron”; his similes were drawn from out the vasty deep.
He had acquired something of the roll of the mariner, and his
acquaintances humoured him in his delusion, and, if they laughed, Arthur
himself also was perfectly happy. One of his nautical impromptus uttered
by him during this phase has remained with me. We began discussing a
comet then due in the heavens, and were talking the customary foolishness
about the chances of that heavenly body striking the earth. Pask was
equal to the occasion and ready with an expedient. “By Jove!” he
exclaimed breezily, “we must throw out cork-fenders over our lee bow!”
A remarkable figure in those Fleet Street days was that of a man who was
known by two nicknames, and whose real name appeared to have been quite
forgotten. He was tall and thin, had a broken nose, a small stubbly
moustache, and had acquired the peculiarly disagreeable habit of
addressing every person with whom he had business as “Cocky.” This
curious person had originally been a baker in Fetter Lane. But while his
hands were busy in the bakehouse, his heart was in the race-course, and
when his batch of bread was out of the oven and in the baskets of the
distributors, the honest tradesman was off to the terminus to catch a
train to Newmarket or Doncaster or Epsom. He became as well known on the
race-course as Steele or the Duke of Westminster or John Porter. And the
nickname bestowed on him—it originated in the Ring, no doubt—was “the
Flying Baker.” There could, of course, be but one end to a sporting
career of the kind. As Dick Dunn once said to him, not unkindly, “You
should be bakin’ ’em, not backin’ ’em!” But no backer ever takes that
sort of advice; he has so much faith in his own good luck, coupled with
his sound knowledge of a handicap, that he keeps on to the end—the
invariably bitter end. The “Flying Baker” had hoped to break the Ring,
but the Ring broke the “Flying Baker.” The hungry creditors refused to
be satisfied by bread alone. The unfortunate victim went through the
Court, and Fleet Street and Fetter Lane knew him no more—for a time.
After a space of years he reappeared in his old haunts. He had obtained
a post on one of the sporting papers. Whether he was on the editorial
staff, or in the publishing department, or a mere messenger, I do not
know. He came round to chambers with a note for me one day.
“I want an answer to this, Cocky,” he observed.
“You’re a bit familiar, don’t you think?” I ventured to remark.
“What say, Cocky?” he inquired, with the most innocent air in the world.
I considered it unadvisable to pursue the conversation. I wrote my reply
to the note he had delivered, and handed it to him without a word.
“Well, so long, Cocky!” he said as he shambled off.
In this reincarnation of his he was known in Fleet Street as “Newman
Noggs.” His real name need not be recorded here, as it is borne to-day
by a son who has risen to considerable eminence in one of the artistic
professions.