I watched a man buy three dentist's door plates for three and sixpence, and the dealer generously threw in a bowler hat that looked like the hero of a hundred brawls.
Then, here and there among the dense, moving crowds of women in search of cheap saucepans, and those odd lengths of cloth which women of all classes accumulate, I saw the dealers from the more fashionable districts looking for something for five shillings to sell later in the West End for five pounds. There were also numbers of treasure-seekers, men and women—smart, well dressed—collectors of antiques, nosing round like setters for Chippendale chairs, Japanese prints, Chinese jade, and Queen Anne silver.
Half the collectors in London make it a point to visit this place every Friday in search of loot; and they walk round like pirate Kings ready to pounce on the instant.
Most curious and sad to look upon were the old shoes, poor down-at-heel, crinkly-toed things, standing dressed by the right on their last parade, some with a remote Jermyn Street look about them, others all that remains of someone's ancient corn-ridden aunt. Among a pile of boots which looked as though they had walked every yard of the road to ruin, I saw, tall and upright, a pair of women's riding boots, proud still in their decline. I also saw a pair of gold dance-slippers, somehow naked and ashamed.
A large woman was turning this way and that a slim little bride's dress with the faded orange blossom still sewn on it. A white veil went with it, gashed and torn. The fat woman moved on, lured by a decayed washstand, and onward still to flirt a moment with an old brass bedstead. I saw other hands—big coarse hands—pulling this forgotten little bride's dress about, pawing it. What a pity it could not melt away and save itself from this supreme insult!
* * *
In a corner lying on a sack I saw an Egyptian antiquity. I pounced!
"How much?"
A young man answered me with an Oxford accent.
"Fifteen shillings, sir."