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.