In Covent Garden.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVIII, Issue 17, 23 October 1912, Page 36

In Covent Garden.

A LONDON SCENE MORE SOUGHT THAN ANY OTHER BY EXPLORERS OF THE BYWAYS.

Covent Garden is not a garden, but a market; a market, however, which depends upon a garden. And it was a garden once, but a “convent” instead of a “covent” garden. For in the bygone

centuries that spacious and busy square which is London’s chief mart for the flowers and fruits of the earth was the garden of the Abbey of Westminster. It was distant from the abbey about a mile as the crow 7 flies, with the quaint village of Charing lying between, but that was no drawback in the leisurely days of old. Here, then, was once a veritable garden, encompassed by thickset hedges, umbrageous with lusty trees, rich in verdant lawns, and not innocent of more utilitarian beds from whence the old monks replenished their refectory table. Hence the name of Convent Garden, from which, with characteristic London slovenness, the “n” has been dropped, thus giving the “Covent” which is neither flesh, fowl, nor good red herring so far as etymology goes.

h rom a garden it became a square, in effect though not in name. That was after the much-married Henry dissolved the monasteries and the land passed into the hands of the Bedford family, whose town house was built on the south side. Behind the garden wall of my lord Bedford’s house in 1G56 a few purveyors of vegetables were allowed to vend their wares. They were the founders of Covent Garden market. By Hogarth’s days, as his picture of “Morning’’ shows, the salesmen of garden produce had spread all over the square. And now there is no sight in all London more sought out by explorers of the byways of metropolitan life. Not that they are a numerous band; the fact that the Covent Garden day begins in the summer months soon after sunrise is suilicient to make them few and select. And. truth to tell, there is no room for many idlers. Long before the morning sun glints the roof of St. Paul’s Church, all the by-streets as well as the open space of the market are lined with vehicles and alive with sellers and buyers. Here are solid phalanxes of costermongers’ barrows, farmers’ wains, railway vans, and greengrocers’ hooded waggons. Some are loaded sky-high, others empty. For this is the clearing house for London’s daily supply of vegetables, fruits, and flowers. For the low ly cabbage of the table of the artisan and the choice asparagus of an earl’” banquet, for the cheapest of oranges and costliest of grapes, for a penny bunch of

violets or the rarest of hot-house blooms, this is the chief mart of all London. Time was when the area drawn upon by Covent Garden was I'imitedl to a small radius. Chelsea sent celery, Charlton provided peas, Mortlake supplied asparagus, Battersea contributed cabbages, and the Bedfordshire sands were responsible for onions. Burke used to grow carrots at Beaconsfield and bemoan the low prices he received. But even Beaconsfield was not far afield. Before the steel road was laid, in short, the stores of Covent Garden were restricted to such as could reach London by horse traction. Now, however, the iron horse hurries in the produce of the entire British isles, swift, steamers bring the harvests of the Channel Isl'ands and France, and ocean greyhounds bear to this centre, the fruits of the ends of the earth. Railway vans jostle each other with baskets and crates packed with the produce of California and Australian orchards, and for their companions there are farmers’ wains overflowing with vegetables that have travelled fewer yards than the fruits have miles. Little did those long-dead venders of 1656 dream when unto their modest merchandise would grow. Gone are the stalwart Irishwomen who used to handle bales of cabbages or baskets of potatoes with the ease of amazons; in their place is an army of husky porters whose first duty is the unloading of railway vans and farmer’s wains. On their beads, hardened by usage, they •carry towering piles of crates or boxes or baskets to the stands of the various salesmen, and soon the business of the day is in full swing. First in evidence are the retail dealers from the best shops of all London; they can pay the highest prices and generally get the pick of everything. To them succeed the smaller shopkeepers or the most prosperous itinerant venders; and last in the procession of buyers come the costermongers of mean streets. Of the latter there are several grades, ranging from the capitalist who owns several barrows and a team of donkeys, to the hard-pressed East-ender who has had much ado to scrape together the fourpence for his barrow hire and an odd shilling or so to invest in stock-in-trade. The costermonger doesn't always get the leavings. He is an astute

oargainer and understands the trust game to a limited extent. Rings are not unknown among those streel ven tiers; they often pool their funds and buy in sufficiently large quantities to get the better of their rivals. So the 1 .-aiders are plentiful, the auction brisk, and by the time London is beginning to stir from its sleep its day’s supply of fuits, vegetables, and How ers is streaming from Covent (warden to all points of the i mi pass. Even w hen the nirdi of the early hours is over the market is not destitute of attractions. Sufficient store of crated fruit is left to exhale the heavy odour of apples which Schiller loved so much that it was his chief inspiration in penning prose or verse; blending with that fragrance the nostrils can detect the more exotic pungency of pine-apples or bananas; while the arcade reserved for plants in pots and cut Howers emits a wealth of mingled scents and dazzles the eyes with a kaleidoscope of bewildering colour.

But the market is not all the interest of Covent Garden. The informed imagination grows busy in sweeping away the salesmen’s stalls, the fruiterers’ avenues, the mounds of cabbages and cauliflowers, the pyramids of baskets and crates, and fills the vacant space with figures of long-past ages. This was a favourite duelling-ground in the days of old London : the private letters and public records of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries tell of many an “affair of honour’’ carried to fatal issue here; and yonder, where the opera-house stands, are the ghostly figures of Martha Ray and James Hackman, chief actors in the tragedy which robbed the Earl of Sandwich of his beautiful mistress and provided the town with a thrilling sensation. All around, too, are the shades of famous coffee-houses, the Bedford, and King’s, and Tom's, The first stood under the Piazza, and could count among its .patrons Fielding. Pope. Sheridan. Churchill, Garrick. Foote, Quinn, and Horace Walpole; the second, little more than a humble shed, stood beneath the portico of St. PauFs Church, which yet stands on the west side of the market, and can be easily repictured from Hogarth’s “Morning.” Will’s and Button’s coffee-houses were close at

land, the former immortalized for all time by Macaulay’s glowing picture of the sparks ami wits gathered in its smoke-laden room; the latter the haunt >f Addison and Steele. Although the original St. Paul’s C hurch, save for the portico, was demolished by tire more than a century ago, the present building is an exact replica of the structure designed by Ingigo Jones. •*! don’t want it much better than a barn.” said the Earl of Bedford to Jones, who rejoined. “You shall have the handsomest barn in England.” The building is nothing more than that, but the vaults beneath hold the dust of the parents of Turner and of the veteran Macklin, while in the churchyard, under nameless stones, repose the vitriolic Peter Pinder, the gay Wycherley, the nimble-witted Samuel Butler of “lludibras” fame, the tuneful Dr. Arne, who gave England the music of “Rule Britannia,” and the courtly Peter Lely, who perpetuated the frail beauties of th? merry monarch's court. Round the corner is Henrietta Street, the one-time

abo<le of Kitty ( live. Sir Robert Strange the illustrous engraver ami Jane Austen when on her rare visits to town. But to-day the New World has invaded that famous thoroughfare, for where Pepys ome took his strolls and Samuel Cooper painted his miniatures are the London establishments of the Duckworths and the Lippincotts.