Curiosities of Civilization Part 13

294,571 1,518,040 36,791 29,593 1,893,888

But this is far from giving a true idea of the whole amount brought into London. Much stock arrives in the capital which never enters the great mart. For example, Mr. Slater, who kills per week, on the average, 200 sheep and from 20 to 25 oxen, says, in his evidence before the Smithfield Commission, that he buys a great deal of his stock from the graziers in Norfolk and Ess.e.x. Again, "town" pigs are slaughtered and sent direct to the meat market, while many sheep are bought from the parks, where they have been temporarily placed till they find a purchaser. A much more correct estimate of the flocks and herds which are annually consumed in London may be gathered from a report of the numbers transmitted by the different lines of railway, compiled from official sources by Mr. Ormandy, the cattle-traffic manager of the North-Western Railway. From this able pamphlet we extract the following table:--

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ Oxen. Sheep. Calves. Pigs. Total for 1853. ------- --------- ------- ------- --------- By Eastern Counties 81,744 277,735 3,492 23,427 386,398 " L. & N. Western 70,435 248,445 5,113 24,287 348,280 " Great Northern 15,439 120,333 563 8,973 145,308 " Great Western 6,813 104,607 2,320 2,909 116,649 " L. & S. Western 4,885 100,960 1,781 516 108,142 " South Eastern 875 58,320 114 142 59,451 " L. & B. & S. Coast 863 13,690 117 54 14,724 " Sea from North of England and Scotland 14,662 11,141 421 3,672 29,896 " Sea from Ireland 2,311 3,472 21 5,476 11,280 Imported from the Continent 55,065 229,918 25,720 10,131 320,834 Driven in by road, and from the neighbourhood of the 69,096 462,172 62,114 48,295 641,647 metropolis (obtained from the toll-gate lessees) ------- --------- ------- ------- --------- Total 322,188 1,630,793 101,776 127,852 2,182,609 +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

These numbers show at a glance what a part the railway plays in supplying animal food to the metropolis, and how trifling in comparison is the amount that travels up on foot. The Eastern Counties lines, penetrating and monopolizing the rich breeding and fattening districts of Norfolk and Ess.e.x, bring up the largest share. Many of the little black cattle, that tourists see in Scotland climbing the hills like cats, come directly from these counties, having some months before been sent thither from their native north to clothe their bones with English substance. By the same line we receive a fair portion of that great foreign contribution to our larders, the mere shadow of which so frightened our graziers some years ago, princ.i.p.ally Danish stock, which finds its way from Tonning to Lowestoff, a route newly opened up by the North of Europe Steam-s.h.i.+p Company. The North-Western is next in rank as a carrier of live stock.

This line takes in the contributions from the Midland Counties, and, by way of Liverpool, abundance of Irish and Scotch cattle. The Great Northern is perhaps destined to surpa.s.s both in the quant.i.ties of food it will eventually pour into London, running as it does through the northern breeding districts, and receiving at its extremity the herds which come from Aberdeen and its neighbourhood.

The foreign supply last year of cattle, sheep, pigs, and calves, was more than a seventh of the entire number sent to London. The daily bills of entries at the Custom House furnishes us with a valuable indication of the fields from which we have already received, and may in future expect to receive still further additions of what Englishmen greatly covet--good beef and mutton at a moderate price. The arrivals by steam in the port of London in 1853 were as follows:--

+----------------------------------------------------------------+ _From_ _Oxen._ _Sheep._ _Calves._ _Pigs._ _Total._ ----------------- ------- ---------- ---------- ------- -------- Holland 40,538 172,730 24,280 9,370 246,918 Denmark 9,487 7,515 60 .. 17,062 Hanseatic Towns 4,366 37,443 1 632 42,442 Belgium 449 12,006 1,244 .. 13,699 France 105 224 135 129 593 Portugal 100 .. .. .. 100 Spain 17 .. .. .. 17 Russia 3 .. .. .. 3 ------- ---------- ---------- ------- -------- Total 55,065 229,918 25,720 10,131 320,834 -----------------------------------------------------------------+

Holland, Denmark, and the Hanseatic Towns, it will be seen, were the princ.i.p.al contributors. A more striking example of the influence of the legislation of one country in modifying the occupations of the people of another could not be cited, than the manner in which Sir Robert Peel's tariff revolutionized the character of Danish and Dutch farming. Before 1844 the pastures of the two countries, more especially the rich marshes of Holland, were almost exclusively devoted to dairy purposes: the abolition of the duty on live stock in that year quickly introduced a new state of things. The farmers began to breed stock, and consequently turnips and mangel-wurzel have been creeping over fields, where once the dairy-maid carried the milking-pail, as gradually as one landscape succeeds another in the Polytechnic dissolving views. We get now from both countries excellent beef, especially from Jutland, whose lowing herds used formerly to go to Hamburg--and who has not heard of the famous Hambro'

beef? We may expect in time to receive still finer meat from this quarter, for the Danes have been sedulously improving their breed, and agriculturists, who saw the beasts which were sent over to the last Baker-street show, admitted that they were in every respect equal to our own short-horns. It is gratifying to note how ready the world is to follow our lead in the matter of stock-breeding. Bulls are bought up at fabulous prices by foreigners, and especially by our cousins on the other side of the Atlantic, for the purpose of raising the indigenous cattle to the British standard. An American, for instance, purchased, for 1,000_l._, a celebrated bull bred by Earl Ducie, though unfortunately the animal broke his neck on his pa.s.sage out. Another n.o.ble specimen was secured, we have heard, for the same quarter, for 600_l._

The supply of sheep and lambs has, during the last twenty years, stood nearly still; for in 1828 there were brought to market 1,412,032, and in 1849 but 1,417,000, or only an extra 4,000 for the 500,000 mouths which have been added to the metropolis between these two periods. That London has of late years abjured mutton, as our immediate ancestors appear to have done pork, the evidence of our senses denies. How, then, are we to explain this stagnation in the Smithfield returns? By the fact that a new channel has been found in the rapid rise of Newgate market, the great receptacle of country-killed meat brought up to town by the railways.

Those who remember the place forty years ago state that there were not then twenty salesmen, and now there are two hundred. This enormous development is due to steam, which bids fair to give Newgate, in the cold season at least, the lead over Smithfield. The new agent has more than quadrupled the area from which London draws its meat. Twenty years ago eighty miles was the farthest distance from which carcases ever came; now the Great Northern and North-Western railways, during the winter months, bring hundreds of tons from as far north as Aberdeen, whilst some are fetched from Hamburgh and Ostend. Country slaughtering will in time, we have little doubt, deliver the capital from the nuisances which grow out of this horrible trade. Aberdeen is in fact becoming little else than a London _abattoir_. The style in which the butchers of that place dress and pack the carcases leaves nothing to be desired, and in the course of the year mountains of beef, mutton, pork, and veal arrive the night after it is slaughtered in perfect condition. According to returns obligingly forwarded to us by the different railway companies, we find that the following was the weight of country-killed meat by the undermentioned lines:--

Tons.

Eastern Counties 10,398 North-Western 4,602 Great Western 5,200 Great Northern 13,152[23]

South-Eastern 1,035 South-Western 2,000 Brighton and South Coast 100 ------ 36,487

Thus no less than 36,487 tons of meat are annually "pitched" at Newgate and Leadenhall markets. As the Scotch boats convey about 700 tons more, we have at least 37,187 tons of country-killed meat brought into London by steam, and these immense contributions are totally independent of the amount slaughtered at Smithfield, which is estimated to average weekly 1,000 oxen, 3,000 sheep and lambs, and 400 calves and pigs. We have given the average supply; but on some occasions the quant.i.ty is enormously increased. The Eastern Counties line during one Christmas week deposited at Newgate about 1,000 tons of meat; and the weight sent by other companies on the same day would be proportionately large. No less than forty waggons were waiting on one occasion to discharge their beef and mutton into the market. And what does our reader imagine may be the area in which nine-tenths of this ma.s.s of meat are sold? Just 2 roods 45 perches, having one carriage entrance, which varies from 14 to 18 feet in width, and four foot entrances, the widest of which is only 16 feet 6 inches, and the narrowest 5 feet 8 inches. No wonder that, as we are informed by more than one of the witnesses before the Smithfield Inquiry Commission, there is often not sufficient s.p.a.ce to expose the meat for sale, and it becomes putrid in consequence. Though we have acquired the fame of being a practical people, it must be confessed that we conduct many of our every-day transactions in a blundering manner, when we cannot provide commodious markets for perishable commodities, or even turn out an omnibus that can be mounted without an effort of agility and daring.

Mr. Giblett, the noted butcher, late of Bond Street, calculates that the amount of meat brought by the railways into Newgate is three times that supplied by the London carcase butchers, who annually send 52,000 oxen, 156,000 sheep, 10,400 calves, and 10,400 pigs. Taking this estimate, and applying it also to the Leadenhall market, we shall have at

+-------------------------------------------------------------------+ _Beasts._ _Sheep._ _Calves._ _Pigs._ ---------------------------- --------- --------- --------- -------- Newgate, meat 156,000 468,000 31,200 31,200 Leadenhall, ditto 5,200 41,600 .. .. --------- --------- --------- -------- 161,200 509,600 31,200 31,200 Live stock brought to London 322,188 1,630,793 101,776 127,852 --------- --------- --------- -------- Total supply of live stock } and meat to London } 483,388 2,140,393 132,976 159,052 +-------------------------------------------------------------------+

This we are convinced is still below the truth, for we have not included the country-killed meat sold at Farringdon and Whitechapel markets.[24]

The total value of this enormous supply of flesh cannot be much less than fourteen millions annually.

These figures demonstrate that the falling off of sheep sent to London is solely because they now come to town in the form of mutton. It is sent to a much greater extent than beef, in consequence of its arriving in finer condition, being more easily carried, and better worth the cost of conveyance on account of the larger proportion of prime joints. Indeed, the entire carcase of the oxen never comes, since the coa.r.s.e boiling-pieces would have to pay the same carriage as the picked "roastings." Newgate, be it remembered, is eminently a West End market, and fully two-thirds of its meat find its way to that quarter of the town.

Accordingly, most of the beef "pitched" here consists of sirloins and ribs; and, in addition to whole carcases of sheep, there are numerous separate legs and saddles of mutton. This accounts for a fact that has puzzled many, namely, how London manages to get such myriads of chops. Go into any part of the metropolis, and look into the windows of the thousand eating-houses and coffee-shops in the great thoroughfares, and in every one of them there is the invariable blue dish with half a dozen juicy, well-trimmed chops, crowned with a sprig of parsley. To justify such a number, either fourfold the supply of sheep must come to London that we have any account of, or in lieu of the ordinary number of vertebrae they must possess as many as the great boa. When the prodigious store of saddles which the country spares the town have once been seen the wonder ceases. "Sometimes I cut 100 saddles into mutton-chops to supply the eating-houses," says Mr. Banister, of Threadneedle Street.

The weather preserves a most delicate balance between Newgate and Smithfield. Winter is the busy time at the former market, when meat can be carried any distance without fear of taint. As soon as summer sets in, Smithfield takes its turn; for butchers then prefer to purchase live stock, in order that they may kill them the exact moment they are required. Sometimes as many as 1,200 beasts and from 12,000 to 15,000 sheep are slaughtered in hot weather on a Friday night, in the neighbourhood of Smithfield, for Sat.u.r.day's market. Every precaution is taken on the railways to keep the meat sweet. The Eastern Counties Company provide "peds," or cloths cut to the shape of the carcase or joint, for the use of their customers, and sometimes it is conveyed from the north in boxes. When, in spite of care, it turns out to be tainted, the salesman to whom it is consigned calls the officer of the market, by whom it is forthwith sent to Cow Cross, and there burnt in the nacker's yard.

According, however, to a competent witness--Mr. Harper--bad meat in any quant.i.ty can be disposed of in the metropolis to butchers living in low neighbourhoods, who impose it upon the poor at night. "There is one shop, I believe," he says, "doing 500_l._ per week in diseased meat. This firm has a large foreign trade. The trade in diseased meat is very alarming, and anything in the shape of flesh can be sold at about 1_d._ per pound or 8_d._ per stone."

If the reader is not already surfeited with the mountains of meat we have piled before his eyes, let us beg his attention for a few minutes to game and poultry, which we bring on in their proper course. Leadenhall and Newgate, as all the world knows, are the great metropolitan depots for this cla.s.s of food, especially the former, which receives perhaps two-thirds of the entire supply. The quant.i.ties of game and wild birds consigned to some of the large salesmen almost exceeds belief. After a few successful battues in the Highlands, it is not at all unusual for one firm to receive 5,000 head of game, and as many as 20,000 to 30,000 larks are often sent up to market together. All other kinds of the feathered tribe which are reputed good for food are received in proportionate abundance.

If it were not for the great salesmen, many a merry dinner would be marred, for the retail poulterers would be totally incapable of executing the constant and sudden orders for the banquets which are always proceeding. The good people at the Crystal Palace have already learned to consume, besides unnumbered other items, 600 chickens daily; and from this we may guess how vast the wants of the entire metropolis. The sources from which game and poultry are derived are fewer than might be imagined. The Highlands and Yorks.h.i.+re send up nearly all the grouse; and scores of n.o.blemen, members of Parliament, and other wealthy or enthusiastic sportsmen, who are at this present moment beating over the moors, and walking for their pleasure twenty-five miles a day, a.s.sist to furnish this delicacy to the London public at a moderate rate.

Pheasants and partridges mainly come from Norfolk and Suffolk; snipes from the marshy lowlands of Holland, which also provides our entire supply of teal, widgeon, and other kinds of wild fowl, with the exception of those caught in the "decoys" of Cambridges.h.i.+re and Lincolns.h.i.+re. From Ostend there are annually transmitted to London 600,000 tame rabbits, which are reared for the purpose on the neighbouring sand dunes. We are indebted to Ireland for flocks of plovers, and quails are brought from Egypt and the south of Europe. In most of our poulterers' windows may be seen the long wooden boxes, with a narrow slit, in which these latter birds are kept until required for the spit. Not long since upwards of 17,000 came to London _via_ Liverpool, whither they had been brought from the Campagna, near Rome. Of the 2,000,000 of fowls that every year find a resting-place _vis-a-vis_ to boiled tongues on our London tables, by far the greatest quant.i.ty are drawn from the counties of Surrey and Suss.e.x, where the Dorking breed is in favour. Ireland also sends much poultry. No less than 1,400 tons of chickens, geese, and ducks are brought to town annually by the Great Western Railway, most of which are from the neighbourhood of Cork and Waterford, whence they are s.h.i.+pped to Bristol. Londoners are accustomed to see shops of late years which profess to sell "West of England produce," such as young pork, poultry, b.u.t.ter, and clouted cream.

All these delicacies are brought by the Great Western Railway, and are princ.i.p.ally the contributions of Somersets.h.i.+re and Devons.h.i.+re. The bulk of the geese, ducks, and turkeys, however, come from Norfolk, Cambridge, Ess.e.x, and Suffolk--four fat counties, which do much to supply the London commissariat, the Eastern Counties Railway alone having brought thence last year 22,462 tons of fish, flesh, fowl, and good red herrings.

For pigeons we are indebted to "our fair enemy France," as Sir Philip Sydney calls her, but now we trust our fast friend. They proceed princ.i.p.ally from the interior, and are s.h.i.+pped for our market from Boulogne and Calais. How many eggs we get from across the Channel we scarcely like to say. Mr. M'Culloch considers that the capital receives from 70,000,000 to 75,000,000--a number which we think must be much below the mark, seeing that the Brighton and South Coast line brings annually 2,600 tons, the produce of Belgium and France. At Bastoign, in the latter country, there is a farm of 200 acres entirely devoted to the rearing of poultry and the production of eggs for the supply of London.

No perfectly accurate account can be given of the number per annum of poultry, game, and wild birds which enter Leadenhall and Newgate markets; but the following estimate was handed to us by a dealer who turns over 100,000_l._ a year in this trade. As the list takes no account of the quant.i.ty which goes direct to the retailer, nor of the thousands sent as presents, it must fall short of the actual consumption:--

Grouse 100,000 Partridges 125,000 Pheasants 70,000 Snipes 80,000 Wild Birds (mostly small) 150,000 Plovers 150,000 Quails 30,000 Larks 400,000 Widgeon 70,000 Teal 30,000 Wild Ducks 200,000 Pigeons 400,000 Domestic Fowls 2,000,000 Geese 100,000 Ducks 350,000 Turkeys 104,000 Hares 100,000 Rabbits 1,300,000 --------- Total 5,759,000

In addition to its dead game and wild fowl, Leadenhall market is quite a Noah's ark of live animals. Geese, ducks, swans, pigeons, and c.o.c.ks, bewilder you with their noise. Intermingled with these birds of a feather are hawks, ferrets, dogs and cats, moving about in their wicker cages, and almost aggravated to madness by the proximity of their prey. The major portion of the live stock is designed either for sporting purposes or for "petting" and breeding, and do not belong to the commissariat department.

Of the dead game and poultry, the seven railways bring to London about 7,871 tons weight in the course of the year.

In taking leave of the poultry-yard we are reminded of the dairy, and of the large establishments required to fill the milk-jugs of London. There are at the present moment, as near as we can learn, 20,000 cows in the metropolitan and suburban dairies, some of which number 500 cows apiece.

Even these gigantic establishments have been occasionally exceeded, and one individual, several years ago, possessed 1,500 milkers--a fact fatal to the popular superst.i.tion, that notwithstanding many attempts, no dairyman could ever muster more than 999. The terrible ravages of pleuro-pneumonia, which many believe to be a contagious disease, have cured the pa.s.sion for such extensive herds. The larger dairies of the metropolis are on the whole admirably managed, and the cows luxuriate in airy outhouses, but the smaller owners are often confined for s.p.a.ce, and the animals are sometimes cooped in sheds, placed in tiers one above another. The country dairymaid laughs at the ignorance which the Londoner betrays of rural matters when on a visit to her master, but she would be perplexed in her turn if told that in the capital they fed the cows chiefly upon brewers' grains, and milked them on the _second story_? A few years since Mr. Rugg appalled the town, which had forgotten Matthew Bramble, Esq., and the "New Bath Guide," by detailing a nauseous process which he affirmed was in use among cunning milkmen for the adulteration of their milk. There was, however, a great deal of exaggeration in the account, and Dr. Ha.s.sell, whose a.n.a.lysis of various articles of food in the _Lancet_ are widely known, states that the "iron-tailed cow" is the main agent employed in the fraud, and that the only colouring matter he has been enabled to discover is annatto. Nearly all the cream goes to the West-End; and one dairyman living at Islington informed us that he made 1,200_l._ a year by the trade he carried on in that single article with the fas.h.i.+onable part of the town. It must be evident, upon the least consideration, that the London and suburban dairies alone could not supply the metropolis. If each of the 20,000 cows give on the average twelve quarts a day, the sum total would only be 240,000 quarts. If we suppose this quant.i.ty to be increased by the exhaustless "iron-tailed cow," of which Dr. Ha.s.sell speaks, to 300,000 quarts, the allowance to each individual of the two millions and a quarter of population would be little more than a quarter of a pint. This is clearly below the exigencies of the tea-table, the nursery, and the kitchen, and we do not think we shall make an overestimate if we a.s.sume that half as much again is daily consumed.

Here again the railway, which in some cases brings milk from as far as eighty miles, makes up the deficiency. The Eastern Counties line conveyed in 1853 to London, 3,174,179 quarts, the North-Western 144,000 quarts, the Great Western 23,400 quarts, the Brighton and South Coast 100 tons, and the Great Northern as much perhaps as the North-Western. The milk is collected from the farmers by agents in the country, who sell it to the milkmen, of whom there are 1,347, to distribute it over the town. In course of time it is possible that town dairies may entirely disappear.

Cowsheds, often narrow and low, in thickly-populated localities, cannot be as healthy for the animals as a purer atmosphere; and though experiment has shown that they thrive admirably when stalled, the food they get in these urban prisons can hardly be as wholesome as that provided by the verdant pastures of the farm. The milk which comes by railway has, however, this disadvantage, that it will not keep nearly so long as the indigenous produce of the metropolitan dairies. The different companies have constructed waggons lightly hung on springs, but the churning effect of sudden joltings cannot be altogether got rid of.

Of the vegetables and fruit that are brought into the various markets of the capital, but especially to Covent Garden, a very large quant.i.ty is grown in the immediate neighbourhood. From whatever quarter the railway traveller approaches London, he perceives that the cultivation of the land gradually heightens, until he arrives at those suburban residences which form the advanced guards of the metropolis. The fields give place to hedgeless gardens, in which, to use a phrase of Was.h.i.+ngton Irving, "the furrows seem finished rather with the pencil than the plough." Acre after acre flashes with hand-gla.s.ses, streaks of verdure are ruled in close parallel lines across the soil with mathematical precision, interspersed here and there with patches as sharp cut at the edges as though they were pieces of green baize--these are the far-famed market-gardens. They are princ.i.p.ally situated in the long level tracts of land that must once have been overflowed by the Thames--such as the flat alluvial soil known as the Jerusalem Level, extending between London Bridge and Greenwich--and the grounds about Fulham, Battersea, Chelsea, Putney, and Brentford. Mr.

Cuthill, who is perhaps the best authority on this subject, estimates that there are 12,000 acres under cultivation for the supply of vegetables and 5,000 for fruit-trees. This seems an insufficient area for the supply of so many mouths, but manure and active spade husbandry compensate for lack of s.p.a.ce. By these agencies four and sometimes five crops are extracted from the land in the course of the year. The old-fas.h.i.+oned farmer, accustomed to the restrictions of old-fas.h.i.+oned leases, would stare at such a statement, and ask how long it would last. But his surprise would be still greater at being told that after every clearance the ground is deeply trenched, and its powers restored with a load of manure to every thirty square feet of ground. This is the secret of the splendid return, and it could be effected nowhere but in the neighbourhood of such cities as London, where the produce of the fertilizer is sufficiently great to keep down its price. And here we have a striking example of town and country reciprocation. The same waggon that in the morning brings a load of cabbages, is seen returning a few hours later filled with dung. An exact balance as far as it goes is thus kept up, and the manure, instead of remaining to fester among human beings, is carted away to make vegetables. What a pity we cannot extend the system, and turn the whole sewerage by drain-pipes entirely into the rural districts, to feed the land, instead of allowing it, as we do, to run into the Thames and pollute the water to be used in our dwellings.

The care and attention bestowed by the market-gardeners is incredible to those who have not witnessed it; every inch of ground is taken advantage of--cultivation runs between the fruit-trees; storming-parties of cabbages and cauliflowers swarm up to the very trunks of apple-trees; raspberry-bushes are surrounded and cut off by young seedlings. If you see an acre of celery growing in ridges, be sure that, on a narrow inspection, you will find long files of young peas picking their way along the furrows. Everything flourishes here except weeds, and you may go over a 150-acre piece of ground without discovering a single one. Quality, even more than quant.i.ty, is attended to by the best growers; and they nurse their plants as they would children. The visitor will sometimes see "the heads" of an acre of cauliflowers one by one folded up in their own leaves as carefully as an anxious wife wraps up an asthmatic husband on a November night; and if rain should fall, attendants run to cover them up, as quickly as they cover up the zoological specimens at the Crystal Palace when the watering-pots are set to work.

Insects and blight are also banished as strictly as from the court of Oberon. To such a pitch is vigilance carried, that, according to a writer in _Household Words_, blight and fungi are searched after with a microscope, woodlice exterminated by bantems dressed in socks to prevent too much scratching, and other destructive insects despatched by the aid of batches of toads, purchased at the rate of six s.h.i.+llings a dozen!

The continual extension of London is, however, rapidly encroaching upon all the old market-gardens, and they are obliged to move farther a-field: thus high cultivation, like a green fairy-ring, is gradually widening and enlarging its circle round the metropolis. The coa.r.s.er kinds of vegetables are but sparingly grown in these valuable grounds, but come up in large quant.i.ties from all parts of the country; and some of the choice kinds are now reared far away in Devons.h.i.+re and Cornwall, where they are favoured by the climate. It would be interesting to get an authentic statement of the acreage dedicated to fruit and vegetables for the London market, but we find the information unattainable. Mr. Cuthill calculates that there are 200 acres employed around the metropolis in the growth of strawberries, and 5 acres planted as mushroom-beds. Cuc.u.mbers were once very largely cultivated. He has seen as many as 14 acres under hand-gla.s.ses in a single domain, and has known 200,000 gherkins cut in a morning for the pickle-merchants. Strangely enough, they have refused to grow well around London ever since the outbreak of the potato disease. The disastrous epidemic of 1849, we have little doubt, had much to do with the diminished supply, for the cholera soon brought about the result desired by Mrs.

Gamp, "when cowc.u.mbers is three for twopence," prices quite explanatory of the indisposition of the land to produce them. The very high state of cultivation in the metropolitan market-gardens necessitates the employment of a large amount of labour; and it is supposed that no less than 35,000 persons are engaged in the service of filling the vegetable and dessert-dishes of the metropolis. This estimate leaves out those in the provinces and on the Continent, which would, we doubt not, nearly double the calculation, and show a troop of men and women as large as the entire British army. There are five marts in London devoted to the sale of fruit--Covent Garden, Spitalfields, the Borough, Farringdon, and Portman-markets,--besides a vast number of street offsets, such as Clare-market, in which hawkers generally stand with their barrows. Covent Garden is not only their type, but it does nearly as much business as all of them put together, and for that reason we shall dwell upon it to the exclusion of the others.

At the first dawn of morning in the midst of squalid London, sweet country odours greet the early-riser, and cool orchards and green strawberry slopes seem ever present to the mind.

If those who seek pleasure in gaiety have never visited the market in its prime, let them journey thither some summer morning, and note how fresh will seem the air, and how full of life the people, after the languid waltz in Grosvenor Square. The central alley of the "Garden," as it is called by the costermongers, is one of the prettiest lounges in town; and, whether by chance or design, it exhibits, in its arrangement from east to west, a complete march of the seasons. At the western entrance the visitor is greeted with the breath of flowers; and there they show in smiling banks piled upon the stalls, or sorted with frilled edges into ladies'

bouquets. As he proceeds, he comes upon the more delicate spring vegetables--pink shafts of the oriental-looking rhubarb, delicate cos lettuce, &c.; still further along the arcade, the plate-gla.s.s windows on either side display delicate fruits, done up in dainty boxes, and set off with tinted paper shreds. Behind these windows also might be seen those rarities which it is the pride of London market-gardeners to provide, and in producing which they all struggle to steal the longest march upon time--a sieve-full of early potatoes, each as small and costly as the egg of a Cochin-China fowl--a basin-full of peas, at a guinea a pint--a cuc.u.mber marked 5_s._, and strawberries 18_s._ the ounce.

The market-gardeners of Penzance are beginning to send up many of these early vegetables, the mildness of the south-western extremity of Cornwall giving them a wonderful advantage over every other part of the kingdom.

Gentlemen's gardeners also contribute somewhat, by sending to the salesmen such of the produce of their glazed houses as is not consumed in the family, and receive articles in return of which they happen to have an insufficient quant.i.ty themselves. These forced vegetables give way, it is true, as the season advances; but when in, they are always most to be found at that end of the walk nearest the rising sun. As the year proceeds, the l.u.s.tier and more natural fruits are displayed--peaches that have ripened with blus.h.i.+ng cheek to the wind, gigantic strawberries, raspberries, nectarines, or blooming plums. Feathery pines add their mellow hue; and when these fail, the colour deepens into amber piles of oranges, umber filberts, and the rich brown of Spanish chestnuts, the produce of the waning year.

To leave, however, our fancied procession of the seasons, and to return to the actual business of the market. As early as two o'clock in the morning, a person looking down the dip of Piccadilly will perceive the first influx of the daily supply of vegetables and fruit to Covent Garden market: waggons of cabbages, built up and regularly faced, with the art rather of the mason than the market-gardener; light spring-vans fragrant with strawberries; and milk-white loads of turnips which slowly roll along the great-western road, and bring the produce of the fertile alluvial sh.o.r.es of the Thames to the great west-end mart. The pedestrian proceeding along the southern and eastern roads sees the like stream of vegetable food quietly converging to the same spot. From this hour, especially upon a Sat.u.r.day morning, until nine o'clock, the scene at the market itself is of the most exciting description.

Without some organization it would be impossible to receive and display to the advantage of the buyer and seller the varied products that in the grey of the morning pours into so limited a s.p.a.ce. Accordingly, different portions of it are dedicated to distinct cla.s.ses of vegetables and fruits.

The finest of the delicate soft fruit, such as strawberries, peaches, &c., are lodged, as we have mentioned, in the central alley of the market--the inmost leaf of the rose. On the large covered s.p.a.ce to the north of this central alley is the wholesale fruit-station, fragrant with apples, pears, greengages, or whatever is in season. The southern open s.p.a.ce is dedicated to cabbages and other vegetables; and the extreme south front is wholly occupied by potato-salesmen. Around the whole quadrangle, during a busy morning, there is a party-coloured fringe of waggons backed in towards the central s.p.a.ce, in which the light green of cabbages forms the prevailing colour, interrupted here and there with the white of turnips, or the deep orange of digit-like carrots; and as the spectator watches, the whole ma.s.s is gradually absorbed into the centre of the market.

Meanwhile the s.p.a.ce dedicated to wholesale fruit sales is all alive.

Columns of empty baskets twelve feet high seem progressing through the crowd "of their own motion." The vans have arrived from the railways, and rural England, side by side with the Continent, pours in its supplies from many a sheltered mossy nook. It is very easy to discover by a glance which are the home-grown, which the foreign contributions. There stand the English baskets and sieves, solid and stout as Harry the Eighth, amidst little hampers, as delicate as French ladies, and seemingly as incapable of withstanding hard usage. Yet some of these have come from Algiers, others from the south of France with greengages, and the majority from Normandy. France is beginning to send large quant.i.ties of peaches and nectarines, carefully packed with paper-shavings in small boxes; and even strawberries this summer have found their way here from the same quarter.

The frosts which sometimes occur in the early part of the year, destroy nearly all the fruit-crops in the neighbourhood of London; and were it not for the bountiful stores which are brought from abroad, Covent Garden would be little better than a desert.

The repeal of the high duty upon foreign fruit has so far widened the field of supply that it can no longer be destroyed by an unusual fall of the mercury. By means of the telegraph, the steamboat, and the railroad, we annul the effects of frost, obliterate the sea, and command, at a few hours' notice, the produce of the Continent. When there is a dearth in this country the fact is immediately noticed by the great fruit-dealers in the City: the telegraph forthwith conveys the information to Holland, France, and Belgium; and within forty hours steamers from one or other of these countries will be seen making towards the Downs and adjoining coasts, and in another six their cargoes, fresh plucked from the neighbourhoods of old Norman abbeys and quaint Flemish stadthouses, are blooming in Covent Garden. Fruit that will bear delay comes up the Thames by boat, and is discharged at the wharfs near London Bridge, but the major part eventually finds its way to the "Garden." The South-Western and South-Eastern are the two princ.i.p.al lines for foreign fruit: the former brings large quant.i.ties of Spanish and Portuguese produce--such as oranges, grapes, melons, nuts, &c.; the latter conveys apples, pears, strawberries, peaches, nectarines, &c., from Dover, to which place they are brought by steamers. To show how enormous is the supply from abroad, we give, on the authority of the goods-manager of the South-Eastern line, the amount brought by them in one night:--

100 tons of green peas from France.

50 " of fruit from Kent.

10 " of filberts from Kent.

25 " of plums from France.

10 " of black currants from France.

In all 195 tons; out of which 135 were from across the water. The Brighton and South Coast transmit the produce of Jersey and Dieppe--apples, pears, and plums--to the extent last year of about 300 tons. Of vegetables the Great Northern is the princ.i.p.al carrier; last year they brought to town the enormous quant.i.ty of 45,819 tons of potatoes, besides 1,940 tons of other vegetables. The potatoes mainly proceed from the fen country.

Walnuts generally come by the Antwerp boats, which sometimes carry cargoes of between 400 and 500 tons. Everybody who has travelled in the Low Countries remembers the magnificent walnut-trees which grow along the sides of the ca.n.a.ls as commonly as elms in our own country. These eke out our scantier native stores, and help to make cosier the after-dinner chat over the gla.s.s of port. During two mornings that we visited Covent Garden we saw 613 bushel-baskets of strawberries that had just come from Honfleur, and upwards of 1,000 baskets of greengages arrived from the same neighbourhood during the week. As we gazed, on one of these occasions upon the solid walls of baskets extending down the market, crowned with parapets of peach and nectarine boxes, we wondered in our own minds whether it would ever be all sold, and the wonder increased as waggon after waggon arrived, piled up as high as the second-floor windows of the piazza. Venturing to express this doubt to a lazy-looking man who was plaiting the strands of a whip, "Blessee, sir," he replied without looking up from his work, "the main part on 'em will be at Brummagem by dinner-time." True enough, while we had been guessing and wondering, a nimble fellow had run to the telegraph and inquired of Birmingham and a few distant towns whether they were in want of certain fruits that morning. The answer being in the affirmative, the vans turned round, rattled off to the North-Western station, and in another hour the superfluity of Covent Garden was rus.h.i.+ng on its way to fill up the deficiency of the midland counties. Thus the wire and steam, both at home and abroad, cause the supply to respond instantly to the demand, however wide apart the two principles may be working.

The strawberry trade of Covent Garden is not likely, however, at present to fall into the hands of foreigners. The London market-gardeners have long looked with justice upon this fruit as particularly their own. By the skill they have bestowed upon its culture it has advanced enormously, both in flavour and size, from the old standard "hautboy" of our fathers, and which foreigners mainly cultivate to the present day. Mr. Miatt, of Deptford, is the great grower; by judicious grafting he has produced from the old stock half-a-dozen different kinds, the most celebrated being the "British Queen," which attains a prodigious size. Large quant.i.ties of strawberries are sent to the market in light spring-vans. They are placed in 1 lb. punnets or round willow baskets, or they are carefully piled in pottles, and the process of "topping-up," as it is called, is considered quite an art in the trade. The rarest and ripest fruit, which goes direct to the pastrycooks, is still more deftly treated. Lest it should be injured by jolting, horse is exchanged for human carriage. A procession of eight or ten stout women, carrying baskets full of strawberry-pottles upon their heads, may often be seen streaming in hot haste up Piccadilly, preceded by a man, like so many sheep by a bell-wether. It is probable that they have trudged all the way from Isleworth with the fruit, and, as they frequently make two journeys in the day, the distance traversed is not less than twenty-six miles.

After strawberries, perhaps peas are the most important article produced by the market-gardeners. Dealers, in order to consult the convenience of hotel-keepers and such as require suddenly a large supply for the table, keep them ready for the saucepan; and not the least curious feature of Covent Garden, about midday, is to see a dense ma.s.s of women--generally old--seated in rows at the corner of the market, engaged in sh.e.l.ling them.

One salesman often employs as many as 400 persons in this occupation. The major part of these auxiliaries belong to the poor-houses around; they obtain permission to go out for this purpose, and the s.h.i.+lling or eighteen pence a-day earned by some of the more expert is gladly exchanged for the monotonous rations of the parish. In the autumn, again, there will be a row of poor creatures, extending along the whole north side of the square, sh.e.l.ling walnuts, each person having two baskets, one for the nuts, another for the sh.e.l.ls, which are bought by the catsup-makers. The poor flock from all parts of the town directly a job of the kind is to be had.

If a fog happens in November, thousands of link-boys and men spring up with ready-made torches; if a frost occurs, hundreds of men are to be found on the Serpentine and other park waters, to sweep the ice or to put on your skates: there are, in the busy part of the town half-a-dozen fellows ready of a wet day to rush simultaneously to call a cab "for your honour;" and every crossing when it grows muddy almost instantly has its man and broom. A sad comment this upon the large floating population of starving labour always to be found in the streets of London.