"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!)