Bohemian Days in Fleet Street

by William Mackay

Of the same period as that of the Scots Major was Kitty, the old Irish flower-seller. Kitty was about seventy years old when I first made her acquaintance. She perambulated the north side of the Strand, her beat being bounded by the old Gaiety Theatre on the east, and by the Adelphi on the west. She was a “character.” She knew nearly all her customers by name, though how she acquired the information the Lord only knows. “Witty Kitty” she was called, and not without good reason. I was standing one day on the step of the Globe office, talking to Henri Van Laun, the friend and translator of Taine. Kitty came up to us with her basket of sweet-smelling wares. Van Laun, who hated an interruption while in the act of unwinding one of his interminable yarns, motioned her away with a cross word and an angry gesture. Van Laun was a Jew who had the national characteristics very severely marked in nose and lips and complexion. Kitty did not at once accept her dismissal.

“Ah, buy one for the love o’ God!” she persisted.

Van Laun turned on her. He was professedly an agnostic, and fond of airing the fact.

“No, no! Who is zis Almighty zat I should buy for love of him? Hey?” he queried fiercely.

“Och, sir,” said Kitty, in sad, reproachful accents, “an’ is it pretendin’ not to know Him you are—an’ you wan of His chosen people!”

The calculated accent on the “chosen” was delightful. From that day Van Laun became one of “Witty Kitty’s” most profitable customers.

Human freaks are now steadily discouraged by the police. But in an earlier time men and women were permitted to parade their afflictions or deformities in the London thoroughfares. There was a horrible cripple who used to propel himself about Trafalgar Square and its vicinity. Apparently his motive power was confined to his arms. His progress along the side-paths was like that of a seal. He was attired in a white nautical suit; he had big round eyes which he rolled about in the most curious way. Women were much frightened on beholding him for the first time, and I suspect him of having been an arrant impostor. Then there was the old lady who perambulated Whitehall, the top of her head pointing to the pavement. She was bent literally double. I once saw Mr. Gladstone (I mean, of course, the eminent man of that name) stop and address her and give her a coin. The Grand Old Man had a great taste for curios and antiquities. The one-armed sailor—he carries the other down his side—and the one-legged mill hand have been relegated to the suburbs, and even there they have become discredited, I think. And as to the miserable wretches who used to exhibit their sores and open wounds, a public that liberally supports hospitals won’t tolerate any more of that sort around.

But while I have been recalling a few of the odd fish who frequented the thoroughfares in the quarters of the town most affected by gentlemen of the Press, I have been somehow conscious all the time that, however interesting the recollections may be, they are scarcely of the particular type of odd fish which I set out to describe. My intention was—and is—to recall some of the eccentric persons on the Press, or those eccentrics with whom the Press brought me into contact. To that task I now address myself.

One of the queerest fish of my time was Mr. William Henry Bingham-Cox. He was a tall, swarthy man—swarthy, indeed, is euphemistic, for the man was as copper-coloured as a Hindu. He had big lips and a head of curly black hair. The tar-brush had at some time played an important place in his evolution. He had at one stage of his career been a clerk in the Bank of England. On inheriting a certain legacy, he threw up his appointment in Threadneedle Street, and bought a paper—then in very low water—entitled The Licensed Victuallers’ Gazette. He seemed from the first to be able to interest “the trade,” and greatly increased the advertising income of his purchase. It was not, however, until he conceived the happy idea of publishing bright and cleverly-written accounts of old prize-fights that the Gazette began to feel its feet and to make big strides in the favour of the public.

Although Bingham-Cox was believed by many of his contemporaries to be as mad as Bedlam, there was a certain method in his madness. He had the savvee to see that the new edition of the old fights must be of some literary excellence, that the stories must be retold with a graphic force and without a nauseating repetition of the worn-out clichés which, strangely enough, gave relish to the original accounts when, years before, they appeared in the columns of Bell’s Life. His first selection was a fortunate one. Sydney French was the chosen historian of the “fancy.” He approached the subject with an open mind, for he had never seen a fight and knew nothing of the prize-ring. But he was an all-round journalist, and could produce a readable column of copy on almost any given topic within the hour. “The Dean could write well about a broomstick!” exclaimed Stella. That was the sort of journalist French was. He could write well—that is to say, in an interesting way—about a broomstick. He was not always what you might call on his subject. But he was always somewhere round about it. And he was never dull. He kept on at the fights until his death. French was on the staff of the Dispatch, and found the Cox engagement a very nice addition to his income. The honorarium for the fight article ranged from seven to ten guineas a week.