LONDON SHOPS AND MARKETS
"The busy Mart of London."
"Gay shops, stately palaces, bustle and breeze,
The whirring of wheels, and the murmur of trees;
By night or by day, whether noisy or stilly,
Whatever my mood is, I love Piccadilly."--
_Locker-Lampson, London Lyrics._
I am confident that if a million of women of all classes could by any
possibility be placed in a Palace of Truth, and interrogated straitly
as to what they liked best in all London, the vast majority of them
would answer, "The Shops." Indeed, you may easily, and without any
undue inquisitiveness, find this out for yourself by simply taking
(in May for choice) a morning or afternoon walk down Oxford Street or
Regent Street. Every shop of note will have its quota of would-be
buyers, trembling on the brink of irrevocable purchase: its treble,
nay, quadruple row of admiring females, who appear to find this by far
the most attractive mode of getting through the day. I would go
further, and say that as regards the more persevering among them, it
is difficult to imagine that they ever have any other occupation at
all.
The shops of London have wonderfully improved in quite recent years;
not perhaps, so much in actual quality, as in arrangement and taste.
Labels with "dropsical figures" of shillings and perfectly invisible
pence have, as in Dickens's time, still their charm for us; but other
things have changed. Everything could, to those who "knew," always be
bought best in London; but everything was not always displayed to the
best advantage. To dress a shop-front well was in old days hardly
considered a British trait. But "nous avons change tout cela." Now,
even the Paris boulevard, that Paradise of good Americans, has, except
perhaps in the matter of trees and wide streets, little to teach us.
"The wealth of Ormus and of Ind" that the shops of Regent Street and
Bond Street display, their gold embroideries and wonderfully woven
silks, tending to make a kleptomaniac out of the very elect,--these it
would be hard indeed to beat. Not Solomon in all his glory was arrayed
like one of these.
Even the critical American cousin is now beginning to forsake Paris,
and to find out the real superiority of London shops. See how he--she,
I mean--helps, in her numbers, to swell the shop-gazing crowds in
Oxford Circus. Tramping from Bloomsbury boarding-houses,--or, more
aristocratic, from Northumberland Avenue hotels,--the Americans have
discovered, and are in a fair way to dominate, London; the London,
that is, of July and August.
"The English," said a celebrated Frenchman once unkindly, "are a
nation of shopkeepers." However that may be, it is certain that we are
nothing if not business-like. Evidently, the love of bargaining is
inherent in the soul of the average British female who comes up from
the suburbs for a day's shopping. She has a long, neatly-written list
of her wants and necessities, generally pinned to some part of her
person, a list with startling variations of subject, thus: "Baby's
food-warmer, Tom's cricket-bat, lay-figure for Sylvia, beetle-trap for
the kitchen, Effie's long Suede gloves, registry office for new cook,
dentist, evening wrap, chiffon boa, something neat in the blouse line
for Mamie, Aunt Maria's birthday." Poor woman! That "something neat in
the blouse line" takes her nearly forty minutes in the finding; and
"Aunt Maria's birthday" walks sadly into the hour for lunch, already
attenuated. Several shops, alas! have been ransacked vainly, and the
horrid "Sign 'ere, Miss!" that so cruelly stigmatizes, in certain
cheap shops, the recalcitrant buyer, has more than once mortified the
poor lady's sensitive ears. "Mamie," who is assisting at the
martyrdom, gets quite cross over Aunt Maria; she succeeds, however, in
detaching herself from her inconvenient parent, and appears, for her
part, to be preferring the claims of a protege of her own, a personage
who is very particular, apparently, about his special brand of ties.
Finally, Aunt Maria's natal day is checked off by the purchase of an
aggressive china pug, large as life, with staring eyes, which, for
some occult reason, is supposed to be "the very thing" for that lady.
What are the special qualities that constitute "a good shopper"? They
would appear to be as follows: endurance, patience, strength,
coolness, self-control, amiability, mental arithmetic, and, lastly, an
eye to a bargain. All these cardinal virtues are, for the average
shopper, considered as generally necessary to salvation: but yet there
are other qualifications. For instance, the intense delight that most
women (and a few men) feel in obtaining an article at 1_s._
11-3/4_d._, that has once been marked with the magic 3_s._ 6-1/2_d._,
is of distinct value in this connection. How many women have
delightedly bought a thing that is not of the slightest value to
themselves or to any one else, simply because it is thus reduced in
price! Hence the supreme advantage of sales--but that is another
story.
Caveat Emptor! It is the object of the seller merely to sell; and in
his behalf it may be urged, that there is no gauging the absurd
vagaries of the public taste. I may add, with reference to "Aunt
Maria's" china pug, that some shops (arguing, no doubt, from the oddly
imitative ways of shoppers and their docile, sheep-like way of
following one another's lead), have taken to the inauguration of
strange fashions. Lately a well-known West End emporium started that
blue cat with pink eyes, wearing a yellow riband, tied in an enormous
bow round its neck. It was an aesthetic, Burne-Jonesian cat; indeed, it
was hardly like a cat at all; but, nevertheless, it sat in rows in
that shop-window, and the line (I believe such things are called
"lines") "took," and forthwith no home was complete without a cat.
Then some enterprising Tottenham Court Road firm evolved the idea that
a life-sized negro, dressed in the latest fashion, and sprawling in a
cane chair with a cigarette, was the "very thing" for the vestibule.
Personally, I should have preferred the chair empty, so that one could
have sat in it one's self; the negro, however, enjoyed wide
popularity. Then a little, muzzled, foolish-looking china puppy became
the Regent Street rage, and was forthwith attached as an ornament to
every suburban house-door. Whose is the great mind who set these
fashions, before whom every householder bows? It would be interesting
to know.
There is great opportunity for the ever-interesting study of human
nature, in observing the ways of shops and shoppers. The really able
shopman or saleswoman can make you buy just anything he or she wishes;
it is a mere question of degree in artistic persuasion. Indeed I have
often almost wept with sheer pain to see some graceful, fairy-like
shop-damsel (chosen mainly, be it remarked, for her figure), throw
some elegant wrap on to her slim shoulders, and turning to a fat,
middle-aged matron, say smilingly, "_Just_ the very thing for you,
ma'am!" And the deluded matron will buy the wrap, not even suspecting
the pitiful ludicrousness of the situation. Truly, few people have a
sense of humour. A friend of mine, who delights in new experiences,
and enjoys seeing into the "highways and byways" of London life, once
prevailed on a fashionable West End milliner, with whom she was well
acquainted, to let her play the part of saleswoman for just one day.
The results were afflicting to all concerned. The poor postulant
nearly died of fatigue; every one's tempers were strained to the
utmost; and several excellent customers were turned away. It was Kate
Nickleby, Madam Mantalini, and Miss Knag, over again; especially Miss
Knag. I learnt that, even before the arrival of the customers, a good
day's work had to be "put in," in the decking and re-arranging of the
shop-window. Every single hat and bonnet had to be taken from the
stand, and carefully dusted, brushed, smartened up and replaced. And
woe to the saleswoman who failed to effect a sale, more especially if
that saleswoman happened to be unfortunate for two or three times in
succession! My friend, after her sad experience of customers' ways,
vowed ever to make it a point of religion to spend no more than ten
minutes in the choosing of a hat, _and always to end by buying it_.
Nevertheless, so far as the big, well-managed shops are concerned, the
employes are not really deserving of pity; they have good food and
lodging, with comparatively short hours, and the situations they fill
are, as a rule, much sought after. It is, rather, the owners of the
smaller establishments, in the poorer districts, who "sweat" their
unfortunate shop-girls. Here the poor white slaves are often kept hard
at work from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., and on Saturday nights till 12, with
short intervals for hurried and indifferent meals. Of course, it is
the working classes themselves who are the cause of this "sweating";
these do their shopping late, on Saturday nights especially late; and
shops, if they closed early in poor districts, would for this reason
lose the greater part of their custom.
The shop-girl in a really good West End establishment is in very
different case. She is often more or less gently bred, such breeding
being an important factor in her engagement. Very often, indeed, her
superior manners contrast, oddly enough, with the rudeness of the
"lady" whom she happens to be serving.
Shop-girls and shop-men are always popular elements of London life.
There was, quite lately, a comic opera written in the shop-girl's
honour. And, so far as shop-men are concerned, it is an eloquent fact
that in the recent revival of the Gilbert-and-Sullivan opera
_Patience_, the only noteworthy alterations in the text were the
substitution of the "Twopenny Tube young man" for the "Threepenny 'Bus
young man," and of the words "Tottenham House" for the departed
"Waterloo House." For a London audience must, above all things, be
kept up to date, and a small anachronism of the latter kind, a mistake
about the shops, would be noticed by them much sooner than a more
important one.
Everything can be got in London, if (and the "if" is a comprehensive
one) you know where to go for it. Old timber, for instance, can be
bought not only at the Westminster wharves, but also in the Euston
Road (where Messrs. Maple's vast timber-yards are in themselves an
insight into the "highways and byways" of London); old silver may be
had in the now spoiled Hanway Street, and Holborn; old furniture and
antiques in Wardour Street and its neighbourhood; new furniture in
Tottenham Court Road; livestock in and about Seven Dials; artists'
materials in Soho, and so on.... The best stationers' shops are in the
City: the City shops, however, make a "speciality" of solid worth
rather than of outside attractiveness, a quality in which the Regent
Street and Oxford Street marts bear the palm. It is not really of much
importance where you shop; it is, however, important to remember
that, unless your money happens to be more valuable than your time,
you had better not frequent cheap marts or crowded stores.
[Illustration: _The Dog Fancier!!!_]
Book-shops are very inadequate in London; so few are they indeed, that
one is tempted to wonder what the "five millions, in the richest city
in the world" read? In most foreign towns book-shops are to be found,
in twos and threes, in every important street; in English provincial
towns, if you want a book, you are usually directed to "a
stationer's"; and even in London, book-shops must diligently be sought
for, though, when found, they are, it must be confessed, usually very
good.
Second-hand book-shops are more plentiful than new book shops; and
these are mostly strangely dark, dingy, and rambling places, where the
depressed proprietor rarely seems to wish to part with any of his
dusty stock-in-trade, but sits apart in dusky recesses, moody and
abstracted like Eugene Aram, annotating a catalogue. He is the unique
tradesman who does not appear to want to sell his goods. After he has
got over his annoyance at being disturbed,--and if you do happen to
come to terms with him,--he will, as likely as not, heave a deep sigh
as he turns to search for some very second-hand sheets of brown paper
to enwrap the second-hand treasure. These old book-shops, with their
outlying "twopenny" and "fourpenny" boxes, are generally to be found
on busy city thoroughfares, as if by intent to entrap the unwary and
impecunious scholar on his way home from his office desk to his little
suburban home. In such spiders' webs of temptation he has been known
to spend, in one fatal half-hour, all the money destined for the
butcher's bill, or for the gas rate!
[Illustration: _In the Charing Cross Road._]
But, while impoverished scholars have a weakness for second-hand
literature, the big circulating libraries, on the other hand, are the
great weakness of their wives and daughters, cousins and aunts. About
these vast emporiums ladies of all ages flit all day like bees around
a hive. Ladies would appear but seldom to buy books; they always hire.
A morning spent at Smith's or Mudie's is curiously instructive as to
the methods pursued by them in the search for light literature. The
library counters then usually exhibit a double or treble row of women,
with a very faint sprinkling of elderly men, all waiting, in varying
degrees of patience, for their turn. Several of the ladies have
considerately brought pet dogs, which they hold by the chain, the dear
little animals being meanwhile thoughtfully engaged in entangling
themselves round all the other customers' legs.
"Have you some nice, new, _good_ novels?" asks a plaintive
materfamilias, with a stolid-faced bevy of half-grown up daughters
behind her, just out of the schoolroom. "Something, you know, that is
quite fit for young girls; no problems, or pasts, or anything of that
kind."
The young man looks nonplussed. "We have Miss Yonge's latest," he
suggests: "or Maeterlinck's _Life of the Bee_, just out--"
"Oh! Maeterlinck is so very Maeterlincky, you know. And do you think
that he's always quite _safe_?"
"I assure you, madam, you will find him so in this instance," urges
the young man.
"Well, bees are, of course, interesting; and very nice and proper too,
I'm sure; but I myself prefer the lives of celebrated people. Mr.
Gladstone's Life, for instance? Oh, it's not _written_ yet, is it?
What a bore! Well, I suppose it's no use our waiting.... And Miss
Yonge, no, thank you.... You see, she died last year, and then she's
so very Early-Victorian!"
The man, seeing that it is to be a long business, gives up the problem
for the moment, and moves in despair to the next customer.
Now it is the turn of a little old lady, with a deprecating manner: "I
want something nice, and not too clever," she murmured: "something I
can _knit_ over, you know, after breakfast. No, _not_ religious, I
somehow find that's too depressing. How would this do?" as she picked
up a volume that was flaunting itself on the counter, "_Sir Richard
Calmady_. I think I'd like that, if it's at all like _Sir George
Tressady_."
"No, madam, not at all the sort of thing for you," the young man
hastened to say with an air of authority. "Allow _me_: Try _this_;
this is a very safe book, Miss Edna Lyall's latest, _In Spite of
All_. This (confidentially) is an author we always recommend."
Now there bustled up a young-old lady with fuzzy hair and a sailor
hat: "I want all the most go-ahead novels you have," she cried:
"somethin' really startling, somethin' that'll keep you awake and
excited all through."
This lady being fortunately in a hurry, was quickly got rid of with a
judicious mixture of Hall Caine, Guy Boothby, and Marie Corelli, in
equal quantities.
Finally there came a nondescript, pudding-faced young woman, who said,
vaguely, as if fulfilling a painful duty: "I want a novel. What is
being read now?" She, however, proved very amenable, and went off
dutifully with _Elizabeth's Visits_, _The Love-letters of Anonyma_,
and the _Transvaal War_.
What vast knowledge of human nature must, one thinks, these young men
at the libraries possess! They seem to enact the part of general
literary adviser to the enormous feminine public. They know their
types well, too: they rarely mistake. They may almost be said to form
the minds of their customers; and they may, they possibly do, rule
over a large proportion of human opinion.
Ladies, as I said, seldom buy new books; they seem to prefer reading
novels that others have well thumbed. New book-shops, therefore, are
few and far between; they mostly congregate about St. Paul's, and in
the neighbourhood of what used to be Holywell Street; for trades in
London, as is well known, tend to have their own special districts. In
the poorer quarters, however, and in the near suburbs, everything is,
on the contrary, placed in the queerest juxtaposition; thus, you may
see a house labelled "Embalming done here," between two others
respectively inscribed: "Hot Dinners served here," and "Cheap Mangling
done;" while the big shopping palaces in Westbourne Grove and
elsewhere advertise themselves, modestly, to provide everything, from
a coffin to a hired guest. Some of our shops and ways must indeed
puzzle the unsophisticated foreigner. Mr. Samuel Butler has told an
amusing story of how a poor Ticinese peasant woman was one day found
on her knees in prayer before an elaborate dentist's "show case" in
Soho,--imagining it, doubtless, to contain the relics of a saint!
Shops, in some of the poor districts, afford remarkable insight into
cockney character. There is, for instance, the old plant-hawker who
sells you rotten roots with a sweet smile: there is the no less
charming bird-fancier who gets rid of a songless hen-canary at the
modest price of 10/-, assuring you, meanwhile, that "no better singer
ever lived"; there is the lady-greengrocer who lets you have plums at
a penny a pound dearer than the market-price--"though it's a robbin'
me and my poor innercent childern, that's what it is!"
It is not, however, always the shopman whose ways are most open to
criticism. For, not only in the poorer districts, customers exist
whose ideas of integrity are not of the finest. In Somers, Camden, or
Kentish Towns, where the trader must, of necessity and from custom,
spread out his goods in the street, to catch the eye, on projecting
booths, that articles should occasionally be missed is, perhaps,
hardly wonderful; and yet, curiously enough, it is rather in the big
West End emporiums that shop-lifting is most common. Sales especially
are most dangerous in this respect. Managers, notably of big drapery
emporiums, say that they expect to lose a certain percentage regularly
in this way: it is regarded as part of the business.
"Oh, no! we don't prosecute now," a pleasant shop-walker said in
answer to my inquiries on the subject: "It is too risky altogether;
the thing isn't worth it. And we lost L500, one year, by getting hold
of the wrong person ... it's so easy to mistake, in the crowd. No, we
just place detectives here and there, where the biggest crushes are
... they are dressed like ordinary customers, and carry parcels; so
that no one could discover their business.... Then, if a detective
happens to see a suspicious-looking individual, he marks her or
him--(it is generally her), and follows, from one counter to another,
to see if he is right. He doesn't speak until he is perfectly sure;
but, when he is, he just goes up to the person and says politely,
'Please, would you kindly follow me for a moment into the office?'
Once in the office, the shop-lifter is made very quietly to
disgorge.... It's nearly always a lady--very well connected some of
them are, too.... She's never one of our reg'lar customers--sale-folks
seem a kind of class by themselves, and we see nothing of them from
one sale-day to another. Some of them make hay then, and no
mistake.... Why, madam," said the shop-walker, warming to his
narrative, "why, I've seen ladies go into that office, quite stout
persons, and come out of it so thin, you'd hardly know 'em again....
They just wear cloaks with deep inside pockets all round."
"And don't they ever object, or make a commotion in the shop?" I
inquired.
"No, they go as quiet as lambs mostly ... and other customers don't
notice anything.... You see, they know there's no help for 'em, no use
for 'em to brazen it out, lined with silks, and laces and stuffs as
they are. Afterwards, we just warn 'em kindly, and let 'em go. They
rarely do it twice in the same shop."
"What sort of things do they generally take?" I asked.
"Why, lace, and bits o' ribbon, put up in odd lots for sale, things
lying about loose on the counter, like they are at sale times.
Well-dressed they are, too, you wouldn't think they could want 'em
badly. 'Oh, it must 'a got up my sleeve,' some of 'em say, looking
most innocent, with perhaps two or three yards of brocade or surah
hangin' out of their golf-capes.... They've got a kind of a fancy, as
well, for religious books: no knowing why, for religion," added the
shop-walker thoughtfully, "has evidently done them no good."
With which reflection I cordially agreed.
Sales, however tempting, should be avoided by the unwary shopper, for
they are dangerous as spiders' webs. They usually occur twice a year,
in January and July; in January, they relieve the tedium of the winter
fogs; in July, they are a very midsummer madness. The sales vary in
honesty. Some of them are really held in order to clear out, at a
sacrifice, the "old stock"; some, especially in the smaller shops, are
simply quick sales of "cheap lines," bought in on purpose, and strewn
about heterogeneously on the counters. Sale days are truly terrible
experiences to the uninitiated. If you happened, unwittingly, to go to
some familiar shop on one of these yearly occasions, the mass of
crowded, struggling, gasping humanity, nearly all pushing, and nearly
all fat, would lead you to imagine that life and death, at least, were
intimately concerned in the tussle, instead of merely the question of
securing the "first choice" of "Remnants."
The shopping, however, of the rich is one thing, and the shopping of
the very poor is quite another. Most interesting, to those who care to
study the book of human nature, are the "street-markets" of the
people, those rows of noisy booths and barrows which have stood from
time immemorial, by traditional right, in certain streets, and where
jets of brilliant, flaring naptha-lights display the kaleidoscopic
stock-in-trade. Among such streets are Goodge Street, Tottenham Court
Road; Leather Lane, Holborn; or, to descend to a yet lower social
depth, Brick Lane, Spitalfields. Booths and barrows are, as everybody
knows, not allowed to obstruct the majority of streets, being
generally limited to slums or wretched paved alleys; here, however,
the authorities evidently make exceptions in favour of certain ancient
vested rights. In Goodge Street fruit and vegetables are mainly sold;
in Leather Lane, tools, appliances, pedlars' wares, butchers' meat;
everything, in fact, in infinite variety; in Spitalfields, birds and
live-stock, together with old clothes, and second-hand articles
generally. In such street-markets, from eight to ten on Saturday night
is the gala time for business. M. Gabriel Mourey says:
"These streets of London, where the poor do their marketing,
are, on Saturday night, gay with light and thronged with
people. Because of the next day's rest, there is, until past
midnight, an open market, which invades the pavement with
costers' barrows heaped with fruit, butchers' stalls, booths
of incongruous articles, kitchen utensils, old tools, all
the bric-a-brac of the second-hand suburban shop; vehicular
traffic is suspended; all barriers are encroached upon;
everyone walks in the middle of the street. Dealers and
brokers offer shoes, clothing, hats, boots, plates and
dishes, all at ridiculous prices."
Curious, indeed, are the bits of life and character that are to be met
with on these London by-ways. Not changed one whit in essentials since
Dickens's time, they recall his wonderful insight, observation, and
inimitable cockney touches. There are small differences, of course;
the street matrons, for instance, have changed their former floppy
caps for battered sailor hats, or other articles of damaged head-gear;
the use of their nails, as an offensive weapon, for the more
formidable "hat-pin." The traditional dress of the self-respecting
feminine street-dealer is, however, still as sternly conventional in
its way as the Mayfair belle's. At the present day it consists,
usually, of a black cloth or plush jacket, a vividly red or blue
skirt, a large white apron, a black hat of either the "feather" or
"sailor" variety, slovenly boots down at heel, and,--most important
point of all--long and conspicuous gold earrings. Thus attired, the
lady street-vendor haggles and chaffers all day in a conscious
elegance and propriety. The ladies of the profession generally
monopolize the itinerant greengrocery trade; and among their customers
you may still see some Mrs. Prig, carefully selecting a juicy
"cowcumber" for the supper of her "friend and pardner, Sairey Gamp";
while yonder, perhaps, is some Mrs. Tibbs, or Mrs. Todgers, carefully
appraising the piece of steak destined for the dinner of her rapacious
boarders, and weighed down by all the distracting cares of paying
guests. Near by, perhaps Jo, that poor vagrant, finger in mouth, eyes
wistfully a juicy plateful of shellfish that the "winkle-barrow" man
has just got ready for a customer. Then, maybe, a hansom rattles by
with a jaded diner-out, yawning from a sense of the emptiness, not of
his stomach, but of society and life, and you recall almost
unconsciously Molloy's haunting words:
"Go thy way! Let me go mine,
I to starve, and thou to dine."
[Illustration: _Saturday Night Shopping._]
Let us, however, hope that those who really "starve" are few in
number. For the barrow-men, who pay small rates as compared to
shop-owners, give good value in return for their money, with much
homely wit and caustic joking thrown in; and poor, indeed, must be the
household that cannot enjoy, on Saturday night, their something "'ot
with innions," their portion of fried fish, or of sheeps' trotters. Of
course, when dealing with barrows, the buyer must have as many eyes as
possible. "Let the buyer beware" may be specially said of this class
of shopping. It were perhaps too much to expect, as Mr. Oliver Wendell
Holmes seems to suggest, that fruit, when you buy it, should "grow
bigger _downwards_ through the box"; yet, perhaps, when you see a pile
of luscious pears or apples heaped up temptingly in front of you, you
need not allow yourself to be fobbed off with a few rotten ones,
shovelled up carelessly from unseen depths behind. Much art is
necessary when dealing with a barrow-man, who, as often as not, really
respects the careful and fastidious shopper, and retorts to her
complaints with a good-natured joke. If a trifle less distant in
manner than his West-End brother, he is certainly more affectionate,
and dubs his customer "my dear." But, in the street markets, it is
usually the meat-huckster who is the greatest "character." His voice
may be heard above the general din: "Buy my pretty meat," he shouts
from his stall to the red-armed housewives; "now, lydies, don't go a
fingerin' it _too_ much, or it'll taste er kid gloves when you go to
eat it.... 'Ave that there sheep's 'ed, Miss? wy, certingly; that wuz
a _'appy_ sheep, that wuz! jest look at the smile 'e's got on 'im;
know'd you wuz a-goin' to buy 'im, 'e did.... There now, my dear! look
wot you've been and done, rolled that there bit 'o' shin in the mud,
it'll 'ave to go for _cats'_ meat now," &c. &c.
This kind of "patter," continued _ad libitum_, seems to be regarded as
the slum butcher's special _metier_.
In Brick Lane, Spitalfields,--not the Jewish "Ghetto," but the purely
English quarter,--there is, moreover, a Sunday morning "poor man's
market." It is usually, in more select London highways, more or less
difficult to make purchases, be they never so necessary, on Sunday
morning. I remember, indeed, a despairing search for food on such an
occasion (food necessitated by the arrival of unexpected visitors),
which ended in the obtaining, almost by force, of a couple of boiled
chickens from a small Italian restaurant, with the added injunction to
"keep them well hidden" from the eye of the law on the homeward
journey. In the East End, however, it is very different. Brick Lane,
an unsavoury region, described by the late Mr. Montagu Williams as "a
land of beer and blood," presents on Sunday morning a strange sight to
the uninitiated. Here is its picture by an eye-witness:
"In Brick Lane ... scenes are to be witnessed on Sunday
mornings which afford a companion picture to those in
Whitechapel. The East End English have also, like the Jews,
their 'poor man's market,' and where Shoreditch, Bethnal
Green and Spitalfields meet at the northern part of Brick
Lane, which is in Spitalfields, the poorest and meanest of
them are to be found. In the early part of Sunday morning,
for a couple of hours or so, there is a woman's market where
cast-off clothes, tawdry finery, and the newest things in
hats and feathers are bartered. Heterogeneous heaps of
clothing, boots and shoes included, lie spread over the
ground, and some amusing scenes are to be witnessed. Pass
along Sclater Street and new scenes meet the eye. The women
are left behind, and men and boys are met with. Instead of
old clothes one sees and hears twittering birds. Here come
the pigeon fanciers from all parts of Bethnal Green and
Spitalfields; birds of all kinds are to be bought, and the
noise and bustle are in striking contrast to the subdued,
sorrow-stricken tone of the women's market. It does not
require any long acquaintance with these scenes to discover
that the men are fonder of their birds than of their wives.
Nowhere is bird-fancying and pigeon-breeding more general
than in the crowded East End. Where one would think there
was not house-room enough or food enough for human
occupants, prize birds of great value are reared--most
probably with money that should have gone to feed and clothe
the children."
The special markets where the poor buy and sell are not, however,
exactly tempting to the well-to-do, unless in search of "copy" or
other experience. For those London visitors who do not appreciate the
slums, yet whose olfactory organs are not too fastidious, the big
London markets, Covent Garden, Smithfield, Billingsgate, will perhaps
afford a sufficient experience in that line. Billingsgate is the most
perilous excursion of the three. Its aroma is strong and lasting, and
the stranger in its diverging courts and alleys runs considerable
danger of having winkle-barrels or fish crates descend on his devoted
head, as they are lowered from the wharves on to their respective
carts. Yes, a little of Billingsgate will undoubtedly go a very long
way; yet it is an interesting place to have seen, and the strange,
sudden appearance of ancient churches,--St. Dunstan's, St. Magnus, St.
Mary-at-Hill,--incongruously calm amid the wild turmoil all round
them,--gives a momentary peace even "amid the City's jar." The
language of Billingsgate fish-wives and porters is proverbial, yet it
is perhaps hardly worse than in many other less fishy quarters of
London. The Coal Exchange, opposite Billingsgate, has, with its broad
flight of steps, on which people sit, itself a kind of ecclesiastical
look. The fish market opens at five in the morning.
All this quarter of London is a vast hive of industry. The stranger
should walk along the busy thoroughfare of Upper and Lower Thames
Street all the way from the Tower to St. Paul's; tall, blackened,
ever-devouring warehouses line the street, which is a very inferno of
bustle and labour. Though the street is muddy and noisy, and its
perambulation may not impossibly render the pedestrian more than a
little cross, he will, at any rate, gain from it some insight into
London life. Mr. Hare describes the scene well:
"Thames Street," he says, "is the very centre of turmoil.
From the huge warehouses along the sides, with their
chasm-like windows and the enormous cranes which are so
great a feature of this part of the City, the rattling of
the chains and the creaking of the cords, by which enormous
packages are constantly ascending and descending, mingle
with uproar from the roadway beneath. Here the hugest
waggons, drawn by Titanic dray horses, and attended by
waggoners in smock-frocks, are always lading or discharging
their enormous burthens of boxes, barrels, crates, timber,
iron, or cork."
But, though a visit to Billingsgate is only faintly suggested, and the
delights of the great central meat-market of Smithfield are, it is
fair to say, only capable of thorough appreciation by farmers and
connoisseurs, every visitor to London ought to be enjoined to go and
see Covent Garden Market, and preferably in the early hours of the
spring morning, the time of its highest activity. Not only interesting
at the present day as a special focus of London life, Covent Garden
has, also, the classic charm of history. For as early as the
thirteenth century this was the "convent garden" of Westminster,
supplying its monks with fruit and vegetables. That the course of
centuries and the habit of cockneys has dropped the sacred "n," and
changed the name into "Covent Garden" is easily understood. Covent
Garden is still faithful to its fruit and vegetables, though these,
alas! are no longer to be seen _growing_ there, but are transported
thither from the rich gardens of England, as well as from colonies and
nations overseas. Here, within this small enclosure, can be got, it is
said, all that skill can grow, care can transport, and money can buy.
Here can be obtained, at any time, and at short notice, the roses of a
Heliodorus, or the orchids of a Vanderbilt; together with priceless
fruits in mid-winter, new vegetables in February frosts, and tropical
produce all the year round. The middle avenue of Covent Garden is
expensive, but it can produce anything wished for in the fruit and
flower line. Riches in such places are as the magic wand of an
Aladdin. The central avenue of the market is refined and polite;
outside its limits, however, the manners of the locality are original
and peculiar, a kind of "law unto themselves." The Covent Garden
porters and market-women are rough diamonds; the men, especially, full
of good-natured horse-play, seem alarming on a first introduction, but
harmless when you are used to them. Yet I have known timid ladies who
have shrunk from a walk through "the Garden," imagining its denizens
to be robbers and cut-throats, or, at least, revolutionary citizens of
a supposed "Reign of Terror!"
Covent Garden is at its highest glory on certain May mornings, from
about six to eight,--on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays,--which are
special "market days." On these occasions the din and bustle is
indescribable; and "Mud-Salad Market," justifying its title, becomes a
green sea of spring vegetables, interspersed with still greener
islands of laden, tottering market carts. The show of cut flowers is a
wonderful sight, and street hawkers, flower-girls, itinerant
flower-vendors and plant-sellers, are one and all busy making their
special "bargains." The flower-girls, untidy, shawled and befeathered,
sit about on doorsteps or on upturned market baskets making their
"button-holes" for the day, and scanning anxiously the weather;--so
much of their profit depends on that! They are all a cheery, though
somewhat rowdy, folk, who mean no harm by their very outspoken
witticisms. Even their rowdiness is an historic legacy; for, in past
days, this neighbourhood used to be ravaged by the redoubted street
bullies called "Mohocks" or "Scourers," pests of an older time. There
is a well-known print of Covent Garden Market, from Hogarth's picture,
_Morning_; the print shows the red, barn-like Church of St. Paul
dominating, as it still does, the market, and the old taverns near to
it. The taverns and inns of Covent Garden used to be famous, but have
now mostly decayed, like its "Piazza," or Italian colonnade, little of
which is now left standing, but which was once the glory of the town.
Thackeray, who used to stay at the "Bedford," thus describes the place
in his day:
"The two great national theatres on one side, a churchyard
full of mouldy but undying celebrities on the other; a
fringe of houses studded in every part with anecdote or
history; an arcade, often more gloomy and deserted than a
cathedral aisle; a rich cluster of brown old taverns, one of
them filled with the counterfeit presentments of many actors
long since silent, who scowl and smile once more from the
canvas upon the grandsons of their dead admirers; a
something in the air which breathes of old books, old
painters, and old authors; a place beyond all other places
one would choose in which to hear the chimes at midnight, a
crystal palace--the representative of the present--which
presses in timidly from a corner upon many things of the
past; a withered bank that has been sucked dry by a
felonious clerk, a squat building with a hundred columns,
and chapel-looking fronts, which always stands knee-deep in
baskets, flowers, and scattered vegetables; a common centre
into which Nature showers her choicest gifts, and where the
kindly fruits of the earth often nearly choke the narrow
thoroughfares; a population that never seems to sleep, and
that does all in its power to prevent others sleeping; a
place where the very latest suppers and the earliest
breakfasts jostle each other over the footways."
Fielding, the novelist, devotes in _Humphry Clinker_ a page or two to
Covent Garden market, which he supposes to be described by an old
country gentleman. The writer complains of its dearness and dirt:
"It must be owned," (he says), "that Covent Garden affords
some good fruit; which, however, is always engrossed by a
few individuals of overgrown fortune, at an exorbitant
price; so that little else than the refuse of the market
falls to the share of the community; and that is distributed
by such filthy hands, as I cannot look at without loathing."
The old gentleman also goes on to complain of the nightly terrors of
the London "watchman, bawling the hour through every street and
thundering at every door." This custom, fortunately for us, is now in
abeyance; also the street cries of London (at least in its more polite
circles) are likewise much diminished in intensity. Even the muffin
man's bell, so welcome in the winter afternoon's gloom, seems now more
seldom heard. "Sweet Lavender," however, still has a familiar autumn
sound, and the flower-hawkers of spring are still discordant. Yet
one's ears are no longer so generally deafened, and the reason for
this is not far to seek. For London is now so gay with advertisements
that in every direction our eyes meet strange, gaily-coloured hoarding
and sky signs; and the manifold attractions of various articles,
instead of being cried in the streets, now cry at us from the walls,
or shout discordantly at us from out of the blue of heaven, from ugly
black wires and glaring brazen letters. We cannot go out of doors
without being asked a hundred times, in varying type, such silly
questions as "Why does a Woman Look Old Sooner than a Man?" "Why Let
Your Baby Die?" "Why Pay House Rent?" or other such idiotic queries.
Why, who _would_ pay house rent, especially in London, if he or she
could help it? In shops, or on railways, it is the same. For at least
several miles out of London you travel in the constant company of
"Pears's Soap," and "Colman's Mustard;" and outside eating-shops you
see in large letters the cunning legend, "Everything as Nice as Mother
Makes it." The Art of Advertisement is everywhere paramount. You
cannot even travel in the humble omnibus without being implored "not
to let your wife worry over the house-cleaning," and being asked "why
your nose gets red after eating"; together with suggested remedies for
both these sad states of things. These are really, when one comes to
think of it, impertinent personalities. This mania for posters has, of
course, largely resulted from the modern spread of education: for of
what use to ask such questions in old days, when few could have
succeeded in reading them? The fashion of advertisements is still
growing, the Americans are encouraging it to preposterous proportions;
and we shall soon, indeed, live in a mere criss-cross of lettered
wires, not unlike Mr. Wells's idea of a future Utopia.
Yet far away be that time still! Although the threatening wires
already faintly line the blue here and there above our city gardens,
although telephones and electric connections necessitate the continual
dragging up of our streets, London has its charm still, and sweet is
yet the London summer when the square lilacs and acacias blossom, and
when, to quote Mr. Andrew Lang, "fans for a penny are sold in the
Strand!"
"When strawberry pottles are common and cheap,
Ere elms be black, or limes be sere,
When midnight dances are murdering sleep,
Then comes in the sweet o' the year!"
(Though I fear me that Mr. Andrew Lang did not mean it altogether in
that sense!)
The London children love flowers. "Give me a flower, lydy," some of
the ragged street waifs will say, as you come back, laden with your
store, from Covent Garden. And the child will take the flower
lovingly, and stick it forthwith into her ragged bodice, smiling like
a conscious princess.
[Illustration: _An Aerated Bread Shop._]
The subject of shops and markets would lead us naturally to that of
restaurants. These, at the present day, are many and excellent. While
the more ancient taverns of Covent Garden and of the City have
largely lost their fashionable vogue, the general improvement in
restaurants and modern hotels has been rapid. In the last twenty
years, revolutions have been worked in this respect. Twenty years ago,
to begin with small things, a cup of tea at a confectioner's cost at
least sixpence, and was not always easy to get; now, it is obtainable
for two or three pence anywhere, and for a penny at cheap shops.
Everything else in the commissariat has improved and cheapened in
proportion. Elegant little dinners may be had now at all prices; from
the famous "Savoy" dinner at a guinea, to the cheap and dainty repast
"in the Italian style" at 2_s._ 6_d._ Of this latter class is the
"Comedy" Restaurant, Panton Street, in a small and hidden by-way,
where little dinners, comprising smart waiters, separate tables,
candle-shades, and table decorations, are provided for the modest
price of half-a-crown per head. Or at the Holborn Restaurant Dinner,
at 3_s._ 6_d._, you may, if so inclined, enjoy the strains of a band,
while entertaining your pre-theatre party. Or, if you be rich, the big
hall of the new and expensive "Carlton" is now the most modish place
for after-theatre supper parties. Here the parting guest is politely
"sped," if he linger, by lamps discreetly and suggestively lowered at
intervals.... Ah, what a delightful city London is for the rich to
live in! Everything may be had and enjoyed!
The Art, then, even the Poetry, of Dining, may be thoroughly studied
in London at the present day. Every passing mood may be consulted,
every gastronomic fancy indulged. You may choose your company as you
choose your _menu_; you may make a free selection from the quality of
either. You have but to know exactly beforehand what you want. If the
lady whom you honour be frivolous by nature, you can take her to the
smart restaurant of the Hotel Bristol, and to a comedy adapted "from
the French"; if she be serious, to the "Grand Hotel," and then to
Shakespeare; if crude, to Frascati's and to melodrama. But, whether
you choose expensive dining places or cheap ones, and in whatever
manner you may elect to spend your long London day, one thing is
certain, that at its close you will generally find yourself to have
spent a considerable sum. For, howe'er improved and reformed, in
essentials the city is yet not much changed since the days of John
Lydgate, who found, he says, to his cost, and even so early as the
fifteenth century that:
"lacking mony I mighte not spede."