Every morning at the uncomfortable hour of five a man in a peaked cap
rings a big bell in Billingsgate Market and the lights go up. Then
the haddocks and plaice, which you eat in due course, begin their
commercial career.
Shouting? Yes; most decidedly! The ozone which exudes from
prostrate cod seems to have a singular effect on the lungs of the
fish trade. In the old days, I am told, they used to shout definite
fishy slogans such as: "Had-had-had-haddock!" or
"Wink-wink-wink-winkles!" But only now and then, when some
enthusiast becomes filled with the spirit of the past do you hear
anything so interesting. It is mostly a swift, sharp, business-like
affair, with a little violent auctioneering over in the corner.
Lying in the Thames at the Wharf which is on one side of the market
is a Danish trawler with North Sea salt caked on her funnel. Men run
up and down the gangways carrying her cargo, while from every corner
of the compass railway carts converge on that tangle of narrow
streets which begins at the Monument. If you like statistics you
will be interested to know that on an average eight hundred tons of
fish pour into Billingsgate every day, and the majority comes by
train.
I wandered between lines of dead fish. Nothing on earth can look so
dead as a fish. It is, in a lavish place of this kind, difficult to
believe that fish have ever lived, have ever sported gallantly in the
sea, making romantic love and building homes, and generously seeing
to it that we shall go on having fish after soup.
Incredibly dead codfish and inconceivably defunct skate lay strewn in
rich profusion, herrings with red eyes and white-bellied plaice--all
the fruit of the ocean mixed up with ice! Queer, fascinating things
are apparently weeded out before they reach Billingsgate; there is
none of the strange, snarling fish you see at Boulogne or Dieppe,
none of the comic monstrosities with green whiskers which enchant you
in Marseilles. Billingsgate is essentially an edible dump.
Everything that comes into it is solemnly designed for the kitchen.
Between the flabby corpses walk men and women--fishmongers, hotel
buyers, and the like--prodding, examining, comparing, now and then
tasting a shrimp--at five a.m., too!--sometimes cracking an
experimental mussel!
Officials of the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers patrol the place.
They represent one of the few old guilds which are still actively
interested in the trades they represent. These inspectors have the
power to condemn anything unfit for sale.
* * *
And the smell!
How many cats sniff it at the Bank, I wonder! Smell is a marvellous
thing. It can awaken the most tender memories of love and passion,
of moments under a red moon, blowing roses, blue nights. Were I a
woman I would never allow the man I loved to go far without a bottle
of my favourite scent. A photograph is a dead thing; a smell is
alive. How strange, I thought, that Billingsgate should appeal to
the same sense that thrills to a laced handkerchief. Here you have
the harmony and discord of smell. Billingsgate in this musical
metaphor is like a cat walking across a piano--worse, it is a blare
of smell, an assault on the senses. I wondered if, with study, a
keen nose could in time learn to disentangle the various strains that
go to swell the mass effect, as a musician is able to deafen himself
to a symphony and follow the steady hum of an individual 'cello. I
was conscious, it is true, of the steady hum of haddock and a sharp
piccolo-like movement from the plaice, but, apart from perhaps the
steady drumming from the cod stalls, the finer, more subtle
emanations escaped me, such as mullet.
Remembering a handkerchief I once had, so long ago that I can write
of it as if it were a museum specimen, but in its time a marvellous
thing that held within its creased folds all the nightingales of
Monte Cattini, I asked myself this problem: Suppose a fishmonger had
a passionate love-affair in Billingsgate, would fish remind him or
would it not? At first I was inclined to say no, but on reflection I
thought yes. He would meet the girl every day for months among the
lobsters. He would see her come to him, so graceful and lissom, down
an avenue of oysters. He would whisper to her above the whiting, and
they would kiss among the crabs. Gradually turbot would come to have
a deeper meaning for this man. He would hesitate over the whitebait,
and--remember. When the first Danish herrings came in during
February he would have to pull himself together and be strong. Years
after, if he wished to sentimentalize, what simpler, or more
poignant, than a quick sniff at a kipper? But the agony of living in
this hall of memories! If you treasure a piece of scented cambric,
just think how harrowing it would be to live in the perfume
factory....
Such speculation is vain. Do not pity Billingsgate. I hardly like
to tell you because I fear you may not believe me,
but----Billingsgate smells nothing! No; not even the faintest odour
as of melons. Its nose is atrophied. I discovered this by the
merest chance.
"By jove," I said, "that's a pretty loud fish. What is it?"
"I don't smell anything," said the owner.
We discussed smell minutely, and I discovered that his life in
Billingsgate had made him immune from fishy smells. How wonderful
Nature is! Only when he returns from his holiday is he conscious of
a little something in the air.
Billingsgate is perhaps the most libelled spot in London. Fifty
years ago you had to wax your ears. The language was awful. To-day
the Billingsgate fish porters are as polite and charming as we all
are.
They are the backbone of Billingsgate, for this market is worked on
the most primitive system of hard transport. The Genoese galleys
which in the Middle Ages anchored near by were unloaded in exactly
the same way. So were Pharaoh's galleys, and Cæsar's. These men,
wearing queer-shaped leather helmets rather like stunted Burmese
pagodas, carry all the fish in crates on their heads. When a man's
neck "sets," as they call it, he can carry sixteen stone on his head.
They do it every day and all day.
"Mind your back, _please_!" say the fish porters of Billingsgate.
"Shove over the hammer--if you don't mind, Jack!" I heard one say.
"Certainly!" replied Jack.
So much for that.
* * *
Then I walked out on Billingsgate Wharf and had a real thrill. This
is where London began. It is probably the oldest wharf on the
Thames. Old Geoffrey of Monmouth, who would have made a fine
American reporter, says that it takes its name from Belin, King of
the Britons four hundred years before Christ. Stowe thinks that it
was once owned by a man called Biling. It is certain, however, that
the Romans landed their furs and their wines here, and at this spot
on the Thames the first imports of London were dumped, the first
merchants gathered.
To the left I saw the bluish shadow of Tower Bridge. The brown
Thames water licked the broad hull of a fish trawler. Crate after
crate of herrings caught so far away in the North Sea were unloaded
for London, and as I passed again through the ripe, rich tang of the
market a man was buying lobsters which I suppose a lovely girl will
enjoy as she makes eyes at someone over the rim of her champagne
glass.