Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
hoods, and drew attention to their wares with the cry 'All-a-blowing, all-a-growing'. It is
an interesting fact that a few of these vendors of pot plants still carry on the trade, usually
from a pretty little painted cart, drawn by a pony. In shape the cart is somewhat similar
to the coster's barrow, but with the addition of an
H
-shaped frame at the front; the reins
pass over the centre bar. And I have got much pleasure from the man who sells plants
from an ordinary hand barrow in and about the Strand. In addition to the usual green mat-
ting, favoured by costers and undertakers, he has a display of religious pictures and texts
pinned to the sides of the barrow and propped up among the boxes of pansies and other
bedding-out stuff, a perambulating sermon as it were. Street photographers are worth look-
ing out for, not the smooth operators with miniature cameras stationed at various strategic
points, but the old-fashioned ones with a large camera on a tripod, direct descendants of
the Victorian street photographers. These photographs, produced on the spot, are supplied
in a paper frame, and have a distinct tendency to fade. Pavement musicians are too well
known to be included here, as are the vendors of popular art in the form of London souven-
irs and postcards, but there are other curious entertainments occasionally seen which be-
long to a bygone London, such as the one-man band I once followed in Bloomsbury. A
large drum was fastened to his back and below that a kettle drum, both being worked by an
elaborate system of string. Cymbals were fixed to the man's legs and a perfect orchestra
of wind instruments hung about the neck and were used in rapid succession - pan pipes,
cornet, mouth organ, and so on. At the time I saw him he played a flageolet, accompa-
nying himself with drums and cymbals. Another curiosity is the man of Tower Hill who
amuses the lunch-time strollers by extricating himself out of chains and a straitjacket. Beg-
ging, pure and simple, seems to have almost disappeared from the London streets, even
the most impoverished making an attempt to offer some trifle in exchange for a coin. May-
hew's book on the London poor is one of several topics necessary for a study of the city's
pavement life, of which now only fragments remain. Victorian London was full of such
harrowing sights as the man I saw years ago, legless and armless, selling ballads, or the
festering bundle of rags covering the remains of a woman I saw more recently on the Em-
bankment - a bundle of rags, however, that did not lack vocal abilities. On my starting to
draw her, she cursed in language which would have given even a bargee the shudders, and
so I pushed off.
Of popular street art, the pavement artists must be included here, although they are not
among the unknown or little-known aspects of London, but their brightly coloured, oddly
naive drawings chalked on the flagstones are always worth seeing. I think perhaps the most
attractive ensemble of popular art is Queenie and her owner and cart, who are found in and
about St John's Wood High Street. Queenie is a large, grey, well-tempered bitch, who sits
on a covered box with a bowl for pennies in front of her. She wears a Union Jack waist-
coat, well padded, with the words 'Good Luck Queenie' written on it. Her owner, also
