The Fauna and Flora of Covent Garden Market
THIRTY years ago, C. J. Cornish, writing in the Spectator on " The Cat About Town," quoted a statement made by some unofficial cat-census authority, in which it was estimated that the cat-population of London numbered 400,000, of which half were unattached. This meant that in 1898 there were 200,000 cats living in London entirely outside the bounds of human jurisdiction—a formidable regiment. Such cats were, and are, pigeon-hunters, rat-hunters, sparrow- hunters, living an almost completely nocturnal life and bringing up their families behind barrels in warehouses, in the dark crevices of disused Thames barges, and in the obscurest corners of great markets where mice abound and straw is easily obtainable. One of their favourite nesting-places is the roofed- in portion of Covent Garden fruit and flower market ; here you will see the first crops of smoky-blue and soot-black kittens of the season, nestling among faded narcissus blooms, or curled up in a form of dusty cabbage leaves. So far as I am aware, these kittens do not suffer the usual fate of the unwanted, because they are necessary as vermin-catching machines. In the Thames Street warehouses, cats have practically attained the status of sacred animals, and the more sturdy kittens a mother-cat can produce the greater her value. In Covent Garden cats do not perhaps sit upon quite so lofty a pedestal ; but they are nevertheless reverenced. They have their recog- nized day-dormitories—there is one melancholy white tom which, I believe, will sleep nowhere but on a crate of orange pippins—and nobody ever thinks of disturbing them. In their own eyes they are " the Garden's " most important occupants, and it is because I have a good deal of respect for the opinions of cats that I have written of them first. Here is one of the chief cradles of a city which must contain well over half-a- million independent cats. It is a subduing thought. But nobody should attempt even the lightest appreciation of the Covent Garden area without first recognizing, at least, the existence of its self-appointed guardians.
* * * * The other animals which unmistakably belong to the Market and nowhere else are its " flower-mokes." These little creatures, one or two of which are usually patiently standing alongside the kerb in. York Street, between the shafts of a cart fluttering with daffodils from the Scilly Isles or loaded with boxes of Parma violets, are no ordinary donkeys. Long acquaintance with their Cockney masters has sharpened their already sharp wits and made them, perhaps, the wisest beasts that man has ever subdued to his will. I have never under- stood the jibes at donkeys ; even the least intelligent of the species seeming to me to make the most delightful companions imaginable. The Covent Garden donkeys know English, as you find out when you speak to one, or drive his flower and vegetable cart for a few days. I used to know one—Jinny by name—who trotted down from Holloway every morning to take in a cargo of beetroots, potatoes, and carrots. Her mother was one of the little asbestos-grey asses of Connemara. She was as round as a barrel, with a liquid amber eye and long velvet ears that missed nothing. When her master said, " We'll be late to-night, Jinny," she would utter a loud wailing neigh and stamp her foot. But when he said, " Shan't be long now, old girl," she would prick up her ears and almost dance on the cobbles for excitement. Covent Garden is the last refuge of the London " mokes," little blinkered fellows who trail clouds of petals through the grey streets. May they long be found there. But I wish that their masters, and all London rosters who go about with donkeys, could be put back into working-rigs of pearlies again, instead of merely blossoming out into their shining suits on ceremonial occasions.
* * * * Though the cats do not think so and the donkeys remain wisely non-committal, Covent Garden Market was built for the distribution of flowers and fruit throughout London and England, and it is for this purpose that it exists to-day. With the possible exception of West Street Market, New York—the Americans are a good way ahead of us in their insistence on the necessity of flowers and fruit to town dwellers —Covent Garden handles more of the produce of the world's fields, orchards, and gardens than any other spot on earth. Here in spring, is Arcady packed into some hundred thousand boxes. And in the Market, spring begins in November of the previous year, with violets, pheasant's eye narcissus, lily of the valley, mimosa, myrtle, from the south of France ; then comes the Scilly Isles season, tulips and lilac from Holland ; and finally the April surge of English flowers from all the southern and western counties. Practically every big nursery or market garden in this country now sends its produce to Covent Garden, with the result that a grower may—and often does—find the flowers he sent up to London being sold locally a day or two later by a small retailer. It pays best to go to Covent Garden, whether the goods are sent from Middlesex or South Africa. A shipload of South African fruit is just in, at the moment of writing. One sees it advertised—and very tastefully advertised—in the newspapers this week, but if you had read The Fruit-Grower, one of the weeklies current in the Market, last week, you might have come across this little note : "`Arundel Castle' from Cape Town on December 80th is due at Southampton on Monday next, January 16th, with the following boxes of fresh fruit : peaches, 17,918 ; plums, 21,170 ; apricots, 965 ; nectarines, 480 ; grapes, 501 ; litchies, 699 ; pears, 88 ; prunes, 1 ; melons, 50 ; granadillas, 48 ; in all, 41,930 boxes. This season Cape shipments include a comparatively new peach, Inkoo, as well as such varieties as Alexander, Vainqueur, and Duke of York. Methley, Santa Rosa, and Beauty are prominent among plums. Pack- ing is up to the usual high standard, and it is a growing opinion in the Market that ' if it is South African it is safe.' " That list of the ' Arundel Castle's' cargo is not merely fine confused reading, it is sumptuous reading. And if them is any meaning in the word " romance " to-day, there you have it. * * * * There are other little things that make The Fruit-Grower well worth reading, even to those not engaged in the Market's business. It is pleasant for instance, to know, that early olive- shaped scarlet radishes may be had at half-a-crown a pound, even though one cannot afford them ; and that the con- sumption of grape-fruit in Great Britain increased tenfold between the years 1921 and 1926, which brings us a little nearer to the ideal of six grape-fruits a head—the present annual consumption in America. These items, with the fluctuating price of yellow marguerites or mushrooms, are of high interest in the Market ; as they are to anyone who knows it merely as a wanderer among its - odorous sheds in the morning light. The London guide-books, excellent as many of them are, advise 4 9..M. on a June day as the time to see Covent Garden at its best. I disagree with them. In June, the trade is mostly English, one knows exactly what to expect : masses of roses, and towards the end of summer, sheds full of chry- santhemums and Canadian apples. But in January and February, the spring blooms are there before one had any right to expect them. If you are in situ at dawn, you may see a lorry-load of southern-grown carnations arriving. And the bananas, which are coming in well now, are always worth watching : two years ago—I think—a hitherto unknown species of poisonous green snake was found in the crates and transferred to the Zoo. Hairy spiders and other insects are also discovered amongst the foreign shiploads, but these can scarcely be classed with the indigenous fauna of the neighbourhood. One is tempted to add, finally, a human species found here and nowhere else : the higgler. The higgler is frequently a very delightful old lady, with a basket on her arm, who comes into the market as early as possible to buy up all the flowers she can lay hands on that are likely to rise considerably in price later in the day.
HAMISH MACLAREN.
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