Bohemian Days in Fleet Street

by William Mackay

Do you remember the accomplished harper who made gay with his music the old flagged courts of the City? No one interfered with the performances of that descendant of David. He was permitted to make music within the sacred precincts of the courtyard in which stands Rothschild’s famous house in St. Swithin’s Lane. It was to this gracious permission, doubtless, that might be traced the rumour—repeated by the credulous sort in the City—that this player on stringed instruments was a poor relation of the financial princes of New Court. Since that musician was called away, no successor has been permitted to waken the dulcet echoes of New Court. Nor, indeed, are the efforts of strolling artists on sackbut or psaltery encouraged in the obscure byways of the City, a circumstance which is, I think, to be deplored.

Whenever I visited the City, a merchant who always fascinated me was one who had a pitch in the opening of a passage at the eastern end of the Poultry. Alas! the very passage itself is built over now, and the merchant and his wares have not become even a part of tradition. I have asked City men about him a score of times. I have never yet met one who remembers ever having seen him—ever having heard of him. They are the most expert forgetters in the world, are City men. And it is perhaps as well. A large proportion of the day’s transactions there are best forgotten. The vanished merchant of the vanished passage had set up a stand on which he exhibited miniature articles in copper. The goods were most exquisitely finished, and were perfect models—made to scale—of their originals. Culinary articles were his chief stock-in-trade—kettles, frying-pans, Dutch ovens, dish-covers, coffee-pots, saucepans—all beautifully executed, and the largest of them not more than three inches in diameter. At one time I had an entire batterie de cuisine bought from him. He, too, should have had a successor; but possibly a successor might have found himself flattened out by the stores.

The sleight-of-hand performer has been gently pushed off the public highways. Him also I regret, and offer what incense I may to his memory. A smart-looking, precise, never-in-a-hurry young man, his expression was invariably pensive, suspicions, contemptuous. He carried a little round table with a faded red cloth fixed to it, like that of a card-table, which indeed, in a way, it was. Ah those delightful tricks! Cinquevalli and Charles Bertram have since worked their miracles for my behoof, but they have failed to arouse the same sensations which the performers of the West End street corners raised in my ingenuous mind.

Conjurers had sharp tongues, too, and their repartee was ready and pungent. I was walking down Bedford Street, Strand, one forenoon with the late Mr. J. L. Toole, the celebrated comedian. One of these roadside jugglers had set up his stand near the corner of Maiden Lane. He was performing some trick with a bottle and a piece of paper. Toole, who was uncommonly fond of practical joking, pushed through the little crowd, and, simulating the manner of a person in great pain and in a great hurry, held out twopence to the magician.

“I’ll take a pennyworth of your pills and a pennyworth of your pain-destroyer,” he groaned.

“Thank you, Mr. Toole,” coolly observed the other, who had at once recognized the actor, “but I make it a rule never to take money from brother professionals.”

His little audience laughed, now discovering the identity of the practical joker. Toole exhibited every outward sign of delight at the retort, tossed a florin to the victor, and whispered to me as we went off: “That’s a dev’lish smart chap, don’t you know; but he took my money all the same!” I do not think, however, that he relished the incident any too well.

Barney Barnato commenced his financial career as a peripatetic conjurer, his beats being in the East, and not in the West End of the town. And, although I only knew him in the days of his prosperity, I did not find it difficult to discover in the millionaire the traces of the ancient calling. And, to do Barney justice, he was not in the least ashamed of his humble beginnings. In this he differed considerably from certain other South African magnates whom I have met. Who persuaded Barney to build the pretentious, over-ornamented palace in Park Lane I do not know, but I feel sure it was never undertaken on his own initiative.

There was one very odd fish who perambulated the Strand in the seventies. The cut of his clothes—which were old but well brushed—was early Victorian. His light-coloured hair was divided at the back most mathematically, and a wisp of it was drawn over each ear after a fashion set by costermongers and adopted by Lord Ranelagh. He wore his hat cocked over one ear, and he sported a straw-coloured moustache to match the hair of his head. His whole appearance was that of a dandy run to seed. He might have been a forgotten ghost of the Regency. He carried a Malacca cane with tassels, and behind him there followed a white poodle. The man and the dog made one of the features of the Strand. The poodle never left his master’s heels. Hundreds of times have I watched the pair of them pass along the street. The dandy seemed to know nobody, nor did anyone ever salute him; yet he was an intimate part of the show.

There came a day when he made his promenade—alone. And he was attired in mourning. Whether he had donned sables out of respect for the memory of his canine friend I cannot say, but the dog was dead and the man was in mourning. Shortly after this the buck of the Regency himself disappeared. Then inquiries were made. The dandy was dead. He had lodged in Westminster. He was a half-pay Major, and, except that he dressed oddly and clipped and groomed his poodle with his own hands, he appears to have had few eccentricities. His landlady wept as she spoke of him. “My dear gentleman” she called him, and she had a hundred and one stories to relate of his kindly disposition, his practical benevolence, and his racial pride. He was a Scotsman.