FRUIT AND VEGETABLES.
One of these sat up behind a pile of empty baskets, and I saw that his trousers had rotted away at the bottom from long use and dirt. His face was that of a prematurely aged young man, and his torn shirt and worn features bespoke real misery. He was deaf and dumb it seemed, and the manner in which he solicited alms was by pointing to the following sentence, written on the flag-stone before him with a piece of chalk:
I am Starving. Help me.
A rental of about £26,000 a year is derived from Covent Garden Market by its proprietor, the Duke of Bedford, and the shops and stalls rent at from two to four hundred pounds a year. In the immediate neighborhood is Covent Garden Theatre, and all the little old rookeries of chop houses in this quarter have the smell of the greenroom and the rehearsal lingering about them. Here was, formerly, the garden of the Convent of Westminster.
Before the construction of the present market this was one of the most dangerous places in London with its tumble-down and crazy old structures, where abounded people of both sexes herded together like pigs. The Convent has become a play-house, and the monks and nuns have been transposed into actors and actresses. Where the salad was cut for the Lady Abbess in past times, drunkards now brawl and attack each other, and the flowers that would have been in the olden time plucked to adorn the statues of the Virgin or St. Peter, are now chosen to grace the marble mantel of some proud dame of Belgravia, or some gaudy and painted courtezan of Pimlico. The foreign fruit trade of Covent Garden is very extensive in pine apples, melons, cherries, apples, and plums. Pine apples were first cried in the London streets at "a penny a slice," twenty-five years ago. To supply this market with vegetables alone, 25,000 acres are required to be cultivated, and about 10,000 acres of trees are necessary to supply its annual demand for fruit. The trade in water-cresses is immense and they are chiefly hawked about the markets by little girls, although, of course, every stall has its own stock of cresses. They supply the same want as a relish for the Londoners' table that the small red radishes do to an American's appetite.
A man, curious in such things, has estimated as follows the yearly sales of this appetizing little green relish:
Covent Garden Market, 2,000,000 bunches, Farringdon Market, 15,000,000 bunches, Borough Market, (Southwark), 1,000,000 bunches, Spitalfield's Market, 500,000 bunches, Portman Market, 260,000 bunches, and Oxford Market, 200,000 bunches. It will be seen that Cockneys relish greens very much.
A little of everything can be procured at Covent Garden. Here are peddlers of account books, lead pencils, watch chains, dog-collars, whips, chains, curry-combs, pastry, money-bags, tissue-paper for the tops of strawberry-pottles, and horse-chestnut leaves for garnishing fruit-stalls; coffee-stalls, and stalls of pea-soup and pickled eels; basket-makers; women making up nosegays; and girls splitting huge bundles of water-cresses into little bunches.
Here are fruits and vegetables from all parts of the world; peas, and asparagus, and new potatoes, from the south of France, Belgium, Holland, Portugal, and the Bermudas, are brought in steam-vessels. Besides Deptford onions, Battersea cabbages, Mortlake asparagus, Chelsea celery, and Charlton peas, immense quantities are brought by railway from Cornwall and Devonshire, the Isle of Man, Guernsey and Jersey, the Kentish and Essex banks of the Thames, the banks of the Humber, the Mersey, the Orwell, the Trent, and the Ouse.