Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/78

70 along the thoroughfares; while the parents are busy at the shop doors, or behind the raised, sashes, in front of which their wares are exposed. Tripe Yard is devoted to picture-frames; Artillery Passage to auctioneers and vendors of quack medicine, of which latter individuals, more anon.

At not a few of the shops there are dealings in gold and silver. In Petticoat Lane you may buy a watch for five shillings, or embark in “a gold lever” worth thirty pounds. At very miserable- looking shops transactions in diamonds are not unknown. And here, as in the silk-handkerchief department, old friends may occasionally be recognised. Not so easily, however; for the watch-case trade is different from the trade in what watchmakers call “movements.” Trays full of “movements” are exposed at different doors. These are the bones, sinews, and intestines of watches. Nor is the crucible idle in this region on the Christian Sabbath. In front of “a marine stores” in one of the alleys, we observed two men busily and silently employed, apart from the multitude. One was seated behind a pan resting on three 56-lb. weights. In the pan was burning charcoal, into which one of the individuals referred to was dropping old epaulettes, stars, buttons, &c., which were poured out of a sack by his assistant. From the pan, the portions which did not fall through the grated bottom to the ground were passed to a large tray. The contrivances resorted to by the owners of wares, to drown contending voices, are not a little amusing. In one class of soft goods there is an immense competition. The passers-by are besieged by those who deal in it; but a German Jewess has adopted an extraordinary expedient for attracting a more than ordinary share of attention. Her voice is of marvellous shrillness. She pitches it to its highest key, and uses gestures as frantic as any that characterised the Sybil when under influence of the divine afflatus.

The ice, penny cigars, and halfpenny lemonade-men have good lungs, but their united tones are as a penny whistle to the stentorian strains of the sarsaparilla men. Yes, “sarsaparilla!” This is the beverage of the season in Petticoat Lane. It is there in barrels—three or four barrels before one shop—the price, a penny a tumbler; and such is the force of eloquence that this bitter is guzzled as fast as the assistant quacks can draw it. The Gentiles share this trade equally with the Jews. In one case the proprietor is an Irishman, and his partner, or assistant, a man of colour. The latter mounts a costermonger’s go-cart, and with a box of pills in one hand and a bottle of the so-called sarsaparilla in the other, delivers a medical lecture. To hear and see him is as good as a visit to Robson. He informs the auditory that one of the ingredients in the pills is the root discovered by Christopher Columbus, when “that individual found out the great continent of America.” With this is mixed “the congenial gentian that was in great repute amongst the Israelites at the time of their captivity in Egypt. These two act as a ‘stomatic,’ and the sarsaparilla has its salutary effects on the sanguineous system.” To dispute this, he challenges “any member of the pharmaceutical, medical, or Materia Medica department of the profession.”

Whether the rage for sarsaparilla, at a penny a-tumbler, is a Petticoat Lane epidemic, time will tell; but no other teetotal beverage is in anything like the same estimation there just now. When the public-houses open at one o’clock, there is, of course a slight diversion of the liquor traffic. Pickles are in great demand all day long. Whole cucumbers, and cucumbers cut in two, lie in briney tubs; and huge pickled onions are displayed on plates at numerous shops. Cakes of various kinds are hawked by seedy-looking Israelites; and juveniles call out “eggs all hot!” supplying the purchaser with salt and spoon.

The great mass of the traders in Petticoat Lane are of the Jewish persuasion. All the dealers in watches and jewellery are. There is one branch, however, in which their long-standing monopoly has been attacked with considerable success.

In the clothes trade, the Hibernian has entered the lists with the Hebrew; and Celtic accents are familiar in “rag-fair.” Neither English nor Scotch are in any force in this quarter, as employers or employed; but English Christians of the lower classes much frequent it to make purchases. “Weekly payments” are taken; and shops abound, in which tradesmen’s tools, of every description, and of all qualities, are displayed for selection. Some of the traders unite the business of money-lender, with their more ostensible occupations. A small board suspended from the door-post informs the public that “loans from 2l. to 50l. are made immediately.” A number of Jew butchers have stalls in Middlesex Street. The meat is not at all inviting.

Bustle unequalled, noise indescribable, masses of people enormous even for London, are the main characteristics of Petticoat Lane on Sunday. Most of the Jews there are exceedingly dirty. They are “made up” for the occasion, perhaps; for many of them turn out in expensive wardrobes on their own Sabbath. Occasionally, however, a really picturesque scene presents itself. We observed in one of the jewellers’ shops a group composed of a venerable Hebrew, holding a beam and scales, and watching with earnest gaze the weight which made “even beam” with the precious metal offered him for sale: on each side of him a daughter, handsome enough to represent the maidens of Judea ere the prophecy was fulfilled and Jerusalem had ceased to be. Rembrandt would have made a master-piece of this trio.

One may visit Petticoat Lane without the fear of any more personal injury than he may chance to sustain from a crushing. But the visitor had better leave his watch and appendages, his pocket-handkerchief and his purse at home. There are “roughs” innumerable here. Some of the police are of opinion that this Sunday mart is a convenience to the poorer tradesmen. It may be so; but it is abhorrent to all our notions of the way in which Sunday ought to be observed, to have the shouts of buyers and sellers contending against the melodious call of church-bells, and to find trade in successful competition with religion on that day which Christians are commanded to keep holy. 2em