London streets have been cleared of their professional “odd fish” owing to the parental solicitude of the police. The expensive operations of the London County Council having swept away all the remnants of Dickensland, the police have gathered up and carried away any Dickenesque characters that survived the advent of the reforming Council. All things considered, our Ædiles have acted wisely in the interests of Londoners. They have gained experience and confidence. Such early mistakes as the architecture of Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road will never be repeated. The progress of Kingsway and Aldwych prove that at all events. If we are to lose the ancient picturesqueness, we are to have in return spacious roadways flanked by architectural dignity.

If, however, we rejoice in the erection of palaces on sites once occupied by rookeries, we must surely sometimes experience a pang of regret over the disappearance of the eccentric characters of the town—the quaint Londoners who made a living out of their eccentricities or their afflictions. Those of them who were not removed disappeared, no doubt, owing to natural causes. But no successor was admitted to have a valid claim to the vacant place. The streets are clear of mendicant freaks, and even of those quaint itinerants who performed on the chance of a public recognition of their exhibitions. Codlin and Short no longer—as in the Punch pictures of John Leech—set up their stage in West End squares. The man in soiled tights who released himself from ropes coiled and knotted by confederates in the crowd is never seen nowadays attempting his performance in the mouth of a “no-thoroughfare.” His dirty fleshings would scarcely be tolerated even on a race-course. On second thoughts, I omit him from the odd street characters whom I miss from the London thoroughfares.

But there should have been someone of his household to carry on the tradition of the little cripple who used to sit on the pavement in front of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, making weird noises on a German concertina. Close by, in the mouth of Suffolk Street, Pall Mall East, a most respectable young man exhibited a “happy family” in a large cage. It was a most instructive lesson in natural history, and an illustration of the power of man over cats, canaries, rats, mice, dogs, and other specimens of what are popularly known as “the lower animals,” and many a morning have I stood entranced as I watched a white mouse play with the whiskers of a cat, or seen a fox-terrier invite the familiarity of an exceedingly maleficent-looking rodent. There was some ethical teaching to be picked up also, for no doubt the result achieved by the showman was entirely the effect of moral suasion. “It is all done by kindness,” as the showman of the circus used to say.

Then there was the old fellow who used to sweep the crossing at the top of King Street, where it enters St. James’s Square. He was a rubicund customer, whose whole person seemed to reek of much good ale. He was dressed in the pink of the hunting-field, and wore the picturesque hunting-cap of the shires. He could scarcely have been a M.F.H. fallen on evil times, and haunting the clubland of the days of his vanity. Perhaps he was a huntsman or a whipper-in grown too fat or too bibulous for his work. He had certainly selected an eligible “pitch,” and must have acquired a nice competence from the fogeys, old and middle-aged, who used his crossing. His attractive livery should have descended—for I deem the original wearer long since the victim of another sort of crossing—to an emulous son. The world is growing too drab. And even an Æsthetic crossing-sweeper might do somewhat to improve its colour scheme.

Do you remember the accomplished harper who made gay with his music the old flagged courts of the City? No one interfered with the performances of that descendant of David. He was permitted to make music within the sacred precincts of the courtyard in which stands Rothschild’s famous house in St. Swithin’s Lane. It was to this gracious permission, doubtless, that might be traced the rumour—repeated by the credulous sort in the City—that this player on stringed instruments was a poor relation of the financial princes of New Court. Since that musician was called away, no successor has been permitted to waken the dulcet echoes of New Court. Nor, indeed, are the efforts of strolling artists on sackbut or psaltery encouraged in the obscure byways of the City, a circumstance which is, I think, to be deplored.

Whenever I visited the City, a merchant who always fascinated me was one who had a pitch in the opening of a passage at the eastern end of the Poultry. Alas! the very passage itself is built over now, and the merchant and his wares have not become even a part of tradition. I have asked City men about him a score of times. I have never yet met one who remembers ever having seen him—ever having heard of him. They are the most expert forgetters in the world, are City men. And it is perhaps as well. A large proportion of the day’s transactions there are best forgotten. The vanished merchant of the vanished passage had set up a stand on which he exhibited miniature articles in copper. The goods were most exquisitely finished, and were perfect models—made to scale—of their originals. Culinary articles were his chief stock-in-trade—kettles, frying-pans, Dutch ovens, dish-covers, coffee-pots, saucepans—all beautifully executed, and the largest of them not more than three inches in diameter. At one time I had an entire batterie de cuisine bought from him. He, too, should have had a successor; but possibly a successor might have found himself flattened out by the stores.

The sleight-of-hand performer has been gently pushed off the public highways. Him also I regret, and offer what incense I may to his memory. A smart-looking, precise, never-in-a-hurry young man, his expression was invariably pensive, suspicions, contemptuous. He carried a little round table with a faded red cloth fixed to it, like that of a card-table, which indeed, in a way, it was. Ah those delightful tricks! Cinquevalli and Charles Bertram have since worked their miracles for my behoof, but they have failed to arouse the same sensations which the performers of the West End street corners raised in my ingenuous mind.

Conjurers had sharp tongues, too, and their repartee was ready and pungent. I was walking down Bedford Street, Strand, one forenoon with the late Mr. J. L. Toole, the celebrated comedian. One of these roadside jugglers had set up his stand near the corner of Maiden Lane. He was performing some trick with a bottle and a piece of paper. Toole, who was uncommonly fond of practical joking, pushed through the little crowd, and, simulating the manner of a person in great pain and in a great hurry, held out twopence to the magician.

“I’ll take a pennyworth of your pills and a pennyworth of your pain-destroyer,” he groaned.

“Thank you, Mr. Toole,” coolly observed the other, who had at once recognized the actor, “but I make it a rule never to take money from brother professionals.”

His little audience laughed, now discovering the identity of the practical joker. Toole exhibited every outward sign of delight at the retort, tossed a florin to the victor, and whispered to me as we went off: “That’s a dev’lish smart chap, don’t you know; but he took my money all the same!” I do not think, however, that he relished the incident any too well.

Barney Barnato commenced his financial career as a peripatetic conjurer, his beats being in the East, and not in the West End of the town. And, although I only knew him in the days of his prosperity, I did not find it difficult to discover in the millionaire the traces of the ancient calling. And, to do Barney justice, he was not in the least ashamed of his humble beginnings. In this he differed considerably from certain other South African magnates whom I have met. Who persuaded Barney to build the pretentious, over-ornamented palace in Park Lane I do not know, but I feel sure it was never undertaken on his own initiative.There was one very odd fish who perambulated the Strand in the seventies. The cut of his clothes—which were old but well brushed—was early Victorian. His light-coloured hair was divided at the back most mathematically, and a wisp of it was drawn over each ear after a fashion set by costermongers and adopted by Lord Ranelagh. He wore his hat cocked over one ear, and he sported a straw-coloured moustache to match the hair of his head. His whole appearance was that of a dandy run to seed. He might have been a forgotten ghost of the Regency. He carried a Malacca cane with tassels, and behind him there followed a white poodle. The man and the dog made one of the features of the Strand. The poodle never left his master’s heels. Hundreds of times have I watched the pair of them pass along the street. The dandy seemed to know nobody, nor did anyone ever salute him; yet he was an intimate part of the show.

There came a day when he made his promenade—alone. And he was attired in mourning. Whether he had donned sables out of respect for the memory of his canine friend I cannot say, but the dog was dead and the man was in mourning. Shortly after this the buck of the Regency himself disappeared. Then inquiries were made. The dandy was dead. He had lodged in Westminster. He was a half-pay Major, and, except that he dressed oddly and clipped and groomed his poodle with his own hands, he appears to have had few eccentricities. His landlady wept as she spoke of him. “My dear gentleman” she called him, and she had a hundred and one stories to relate of his kindly disposition, his practical benevolence, and his racial pride. He was a Scotsman.

Of the same period as that of the Scots Major was Kitty, the old Irish flower-seller. Kitty was about seventy years old when I first made her acquaintance. She perambulated the north side of the Strand, her beat being bounded by the old Gaiety Theatre on the east, and by the Adelphi on the west. She was a “character.” She knew nearly all her customers by name, though how she acquired the information the Lord only knows. “Witty Kitty” she was called, and not without good reason. I was standing one day on the step of the Globe office, talking to Henri Van Laun, the friend and translator of Taine. Kitty came up to us with her basket of sweet-smelling wares. Van Laun, who hated an interruption while in the act of unwinding one of his interminable yarns, motioned her away with a cross word and an angry gesture. Van Laun was a Jew who had the national characteristics very severely marked in nose and lips and complexion. Kitty did not at once accept her dismissal.

“Ah, buy one for the love o’ God!” she persisted.

Van Laun turned on her. He was professedly an agnostic, and fond of airing the fact.

“No, no! Who is zis Almighty zat I should buy for love of him? Hey?” he queried fiercely.

“Och, sir,” said Kitty, in sad, reproachful accents, “an’ is it pretendin’ not to know Him you are—an’ you wan of His chosen people!”

The calculated accent on the “chosen” was delightful. From that day Van Laun became one of “Witty Kitty’s” most profitable customers.

Human freaks are now steadily discouraged by the police. But in an earlier time men and women were permitted to parade their afflictions or deformities in the London thoroughfares. There was a horrible cripple who used to propel himself about Trafalgar Square and its vicinity. Apparently his motive power was confined to his arms. His progress along the side-paths was like that of a seal. He was attired in a white nautical suit; he had big round eyes which he rolled about in the most curious way. Women were much frightened on beholding him for the first time, and I suspect him of having been an arrant impostor. Then there was the old lady who perambulated Whitehall, the top of her head pointing to the pavement. She was bent literally double. I once saw Mr. Gladstone (I mean, of course, the eminent man of that name) stop and address her and give her a coin. The Grand Old Man had a great taste for curios and antiquities. The one-armed sailor—he carries the other down his side—and the one-legged mill hand have been relegated to the suburbs, and even there they have become discredited, I think. And as to the miserable wretches who used to exhibit their sores and open wounds, a public that liberally supports hospitals won’t tolerate any more of that sort around.

But while I have been recalling a few of the odd fish who frequented the thoroughfares in the quarters of the town most affected by gentlemen of the Press, I have been somehow conscious all the time that, however interesting the recollections may be, they are scarcely of the particular type of odd fish which I set out to describe. My intention was—and is—to recall some of the eccentric persons on the Press, or those eccentrics with whom the Press brought me into contact. To that task I now address myself.

One of the queerest fish of my time was Mr. William Henry Bingham-Cox. He was a tall, swarthy man—swarthy, indeed, is euphemistic, for the man was as copper-coloured as a Hindu. He had big lips and a head of curly black hair. The tar-brush had at some time played an important place in his evolution. He had at one stage of his career been a clerk in the Bank of England. On inheriting a certain legacy, he threw up his appointment in Threadneedle Street, and bought a paper—then in very low water—entitled The Licensed Victuallers’ Gazette. He seemed from the first to be able to interest “the trade,” and greatly increased the advertising income of his purchase. It was not, however, until he conceived the happy idea of publishing bright and cleverly-written accounts of old prize-fights that the Gazette began to feel its feet and to make big strides in the favour of the public.

Although Bingham-Cox was believed by many of his contemporaries to be as mad as Bedlam, there was a certain method in his madness. He had the savvee to see that the new edition of the old fights must be of some literary excellence, that the stories must be retold with a graphic force and without a nauseating repetition of the worn-out clichÉs which, strangely enough, gave relish to the original accounts when, years before, they appeared in the columns of Bell’s Life. His first selection was a fortunate one. Sydney French was the chosen historian of the “fancy.” He approached the subject with an open mind, for he had never seen a fight and knew nothing of the prize-ring. But he was an all-round journalist, and could produce a readable column of copy on almost any given topic within the hour. “The Dean could write well about a broomstick!” exclaimed Stella. That was the sort of journalist French was. He could write well—that is to say, in an interesting way—about a broomstick. He was not always what you might call on his subject. But he was always somewhere round about it. And he was never dull. He kept on at the fights until his death. French was on the staff of the Dispatch, and found the Cox engagement a very nice addition to his income. The honorarium for the fight article ranged from seven to ten guineas a week.

When French died, Bingham-Cox was in despair. Many men had a “try” at the game. But it was not as easy as it looked. Man after man was found wanting. Among others who took a hand at the task was Mr. T. P. O’Connor, now M.P. for the Scotland Division of Liverpool. “Tay Pay” has a fine roving style of his own, but was apparently unequal to the Homeric strain essential in the epic of the Ring. Willmott Dixon was sent for, and for many years he was not only the writer of the prize-fights, but editor of the paper. French was bad to beat, but Dixon beat him, and beat him easily. Dixon had a knowledge of the Ring; he could “put up his dukes” himself, thoroughly enjoyed “a bit of a scrap,” and his Cambridge experiences stood him in good stead. His memory, too, was rarely at fault. I never met a journalist so independent of books of reference.

Bingham-Cox was a great theatre-goer. His widowed sister kept house for him over the offices of the paper in Southampton Street, Strand. She usually accompanied her brother on these outings, and, though his paper had no recognized position in the theatrical world, “William Henry” used to besiege the acting-managers for stalls and boxes. When he succeeded in capturing a couple of free seats he was as pleased as Punch, although they usually cost him three or four times their market price, for he invariably indicated his appreciation of the manager’s civility by sending him a box of cigars. As the cigars were generally “Flor de Cuba” or “CabaÑas” of a famous crop, one may imagine that acting-managers were not unwilling to oblige him if they could. The strange man did not smoke himself, and was horrified if anyone came smoking into his office.

Occasionally he contributed to his own columns. His contributions were usually of a more or less libellous nature. He called me in on one occasion to advise about the opening paragraph of a short dramatic notice which he had written. The thing was in proof. It dealt with a play by Sims and Buchanan called “The English Rose.” From the tone of the essay I inferred that the eccentric proprietor had been unsuccessful in getting free stalls at the Adelphi, where the play had been produced. The paragraph about which he seemed particularly anxious was the opening one. It ran in this way:

“This is the most extraordinary production we have ever been invited to witness. It is an Irish melodrama. It is entitled ‘The English Rose.’ It is written by a Scotsman and a Jew, and it has been put on the stage by two gentlemen of Swiss nationality.”

“What do you think of it?” he exclaimed, grinning and showing his gleaming white teeth.

“I think you are wrong about your facts.”

He glared at me, exposed his teeth more than ever, stuck his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, and asked:

“What! what! Wrong in my facts! Nonsense, my friend, nonsense!”

“In the most material statement you are wrong,” I persisted; “for Buchanan is not a Scotsman, and Sims is not a Jew.”

“Ah,” he cried, grinning more fiercely, “then it’s not a libel!”

“That’s as may be,” said I; “for to my mind the law of libel resolves itself into this: Whether twelve men on their oaths consider that the words published by A have injured B.”

He went to his desk, initialled the galley, rang the bell, and handed the slip to the man answering the summons, with the intimation: “For the printer.” Then, turning to me, he said defiantly: “I’ll let it go.”

Whether it ever did go I never inquired. The reminiscence comes back to me unbidden. It had clean vanished from my memory from that day to this.

He was constantly—but, as I believe, quite unconsciously—giving offence to all sorts and conditions of men. His black beard, curly hair, gleaming teeth, and fierce grin, obtained for him an offensive sobriquet thus bestowed: One of his contributors sent him a letter resigning his position on the staff. He alleged but one reason for this course. It was: “I can no longer put up with the antics of a Barbary ape.” The eccentric recipient of the letter, instead of putting it into the fire and forgetting all about it, assembled the members of the staff, and read the document as though it proved the hopeless insanity of the writer. Having read it, he ran round the room, pretending to scratch his arms after the manner of a caged monkey, uttering the most comical squeals and chattering his teeth no end.

He was drawn over the incident by Pottinger Stephens, who was running a weekly called The Topical Times. In that smart little journal a question was asked the following week in these words: “When did Mr. Bingham-Cox receive the degree of B.A.?” The unfortunate man did not see what lay under the inquiry. He wrote a letter on the note-paper of the Junior AthenÆum—the “Junior Prigs,” as it used to be called—explaining that he had dispensed with the advantages of a University training, and that he was not a B.A. The letter appeared in Pot’s paper in due course; but with this heading: “Mr. Bingham-Cox denies that he is a B.A.” The person of the newspaper proprietor was less sacrosanct in the jocund days than in these greyer times.

Bingham-Cox was a collector in his way. He was very keen on engravings, and was by no means a bad judge. He started on his hobby long before the “engraving craze” set in, and his collection became worth four or five times the price he gave for it. The first-floor above the office was full of his samples from floor to ceiling. One day when I was looking over the gallery in his company, he invited me to select a couple of the engravings. I chose two—by no means the least valuable in the collection—and was about to ask when I might send for them, when he whipped out a notebook, and saying, “I’ll leave them to you in my will,” made an elaborate pretence of recording the incident. He was a collector of musical instruments, and had a piano or an American organ on every landing in the house. The most intolerable trials to which he subjected his friends were his recitals on one or other of these instruments. As he crashed out his Masses and fugues he rolled his head, showed his teeth, and grinned awfully, as though he thoroughly enjoyed witnessing the torture he inflicted.

The end of his story is a mingling of tragedy and comedy. He sold his paper. During the years in which he had conducted it he always “lived over the shop.” He could never have spent a fourth part of his net profits, and the balance had been well and luckily invested. When he received the purchase money for the Gazette and left Southampton Street, he was worth considerably over £100,000. When he crossed the threshold of his old offices his astuteness and his luck seem to have deserted him. He bought a brewery in St. Albans, where he had a house. From the first this venture was foredoomed to failure. He became the prospective Unionist candidate for the division. But Captain Middleton and the Central Office would have nothing to do with him, and ran a candidate of their own against him. Bingham-Cox persisted, and actually went to the poll. At this period I became more intimately associated with the eccentric man. I made some speeches for him, and even canvassed the independent electors. More than once during the campaign I thought it my duty to inform him that his methods, should he be elected, must insure his being unseated on petition. He only bared his teeth at the suggestion. He was quite sure of winning, and he was equally sure that there would be no petition.

One of my trials in accompanying him was being obliged to drive about with him in a little village cart, painted a vivid green, and drawn by a big black donkey. The candidate, with his swarthy face, grizzly beard, and fierce expression, might have been the avant-courier of some travelling show. The little villagers evidently accepted him as something of the sort, and accompanied the strange vehicle and its grinning occupant in and out of their hamlets with joyful “whoops.” He was badly beaten at the polls. I don’t believe that even the well-bribed employÉs in the brewery voted for him. Then the brewery itself went smash, and Bingham-Cox returned to Southampton Street (the new owners of the paper having found less expensive premises), and recommenced life as a newspaper proprietor.

His new paper was called The Rocket. His idea was to give the public a Truth for a penny. The title was an ill-omened one. The paper went up like the explosive after which it was named, and came down like the stick. He sent for Clement Scott, and instructed him to write an article dealing abusively with stage-players. Clemmy agreed provided his name was kept a profound secret. Bingham-Cox promised. The worthy man had probably suffered from some further slight at the hands of the managers. “Cut ’em up! Slash ’em! Flay ’em alive!” he exclaimed to the accommodating contributor. Scott, secure in his anonymity, proceeded to cut up, slash, and flay, the unfortunate mummers in a strain of pious indignation that was peculiarly his own. The article duly appeared with Clement Scott’s name in large letters both at the top and bottom of it. Scott never really got over the incident, and his reproaches had no effect on his employer. “Breach of faith indeed! Why, you have broken faith with a whole profession!” was the only satisfaction he could get from his betrayer.

The Rocket was a failure from the first. It stopped for want of funds. For the unfortunate man had been drained dry. Even the engravings and the musical instruments had gone. In a few short years his fortune had melted. He was overdrawn at the bank; he had not a cent in the world. One morning the word went round that he had been found dead in bed, and there was no inquest.

Arthur T. Pask was a name with which the public became acquainted in the eighties. He wrote in Christmas numbers, annuals, and story magazines. He had established relations with the Standard, and used to write “turn-overs” for that journal. His copy always appeared to me to be devoid of merit, but personally he was a most interesting man. He was engaged in the Affidavit Department of the Royal Courts of Justice. One would have imagined that in that office he would come across plenty of material for his fictions. He preferred, however, to evolve these from his inner consciousness, and to this end he appeared to live in a set of circumstances of his own invention. At one time he became subject to the hallucination that he kept a yacht. He appeared in Fleet Street one day in the most weird sort of nautical rig. With his yachting cap, white shoes, and reefer jacket with brass buttons, he had the appearance of the steward of a penny steamer. He breathed a sea-air. His conversation was of the “Royal Squadron”; his similes were drawn from out the vasty deep. He had acquired something of the roll of the mariner, and his acquaintances humoured him in his delusion, and, if they laughed, Arthur himself also was perfectly happy. One of his nautical impromptus uttered by him during this phase has remained with me. We began discussing a comet then due in the heavens, and were talking the customary foolishness about the chances of that heavenly body striking the earth. Pask was equal to the occasion and ready with an expedient. “By Jove!” he exclaimed breezily, “we must throw out cork-fenders over our lee bow!”

A remarkable figure in those Fleet Street days was that of a man who was known by two nicknames, and whose real name appeared to have been quite forgotten. He was tall and thin, had a broken nose, a small stubbly moustache, and had acquired the peculiarly disagreeable habit of addressing every person with whom he had business as “Cocky.” This curious person had originally been a baker in Fetter Lane. But while his hands were busy in the bakehouse, his heart was in the race-course, and when his batch of bread was out of the oven and in the baskets of the distributors, the honest tradesman was off to the terminus to catch a train to Newmarket or Doncaster or Epsom. He became as well known on the race-course as Steele or the Duke of Westminster or John Porter. And the nickname bestowed on him—it originated in the Ring, no doubt—was “the Flying Baker.” There could, of course, be but one end to a sporting career of the kind. As Dick Dunn once said to him, not unkindly, “You should be bakin’ ’em, not backin’ ’em!” But no backer ever takes that sort of advice; he has so much faith in his own good luck, coupled with his sound knowledge of a handicap, that he keeps on to the end—the invariably bitter end. The “Flying Baker” had hoped to break the Ring, but the Ring broke the “Flying Baker.” The hungry creditors refused to be satisfied by bread alone. The unfortunate victim went through the Court, and Fleet Street and Fetter Lane knew him no more—for a time.

After a space of years he reappeared in his old haunts. He had obtained a post on one of the sporting papers. Whether he was on the editorial staff, or in the publishing department, or a mere messenger, I do not know. He came round to chambers with a note for me one day.

“I want an answer to this, Cocky,” he observed.

“You’re a bit familiar, don’t you think?” I ventured to remark.

“What say, Cocky?” he inquired, with the most innocent air in the world.

I considered it unadvisable to pursue the conversation. I wrote my reply to the note he had delivered, and handed it to him without a word.

“Well, so long, Cocky!” he said as he shambled off.

In this reincarnation of his he was known in Fleet Street as “Newman Noggs.” His real name need not be recorded here, as it is borne to-day by a son who has risen to considerable eminence in one of the artistic professions.