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[-319-]
THE ONION FAIR.
You may
smell them long before you reach the Bull Ring, which is the place where the
fair is held. They give a pungency to the air, and you can taste them on the
lips, as salt of the sea may be tasted before the watery waste is yet in sight.
But this mild foretaste by no means prepares you for the spectacle that greets
the visual organs, when from the High Street you look down the hill at the foot
of which is St Martin's Church. There is a square paved space as large, say, as
Clerkenwell Green, piled, heaped, stacked in blocks of onions, large as
four-roomed houses. Onions in enormous crates, such as crokery arrives in from
the Potteries, onions in hogsheads, onions in sacks, in bags like hop-pockets,
in ropes or "reeves," loose in waggons that three horses draw ; onions
of all sizes and all qualities - "brown shells," "crimsons,"
"whites," "big 'uns," and "picklers." Onions block
the roadway and brim over on the pavement, and hang in bulky festoons about the
railings that surround the statue of Lord Nelson, who is so exposed to the
mounds and shoals that one might almost imagine the sourness of his iron visage
was due to his dislike for the odour of the chief ingredient of goose-stuffing,
and that he would be thankful could he but raise a handkerchief to his heroic
nose and shut out the fragrance.
Not so with Birmingham's teeming population. The term
"Onion Fair" is no empty name to them. From [-320-]
all parts they come flocking, as eager as though onions were the staple of their
lives and they had sliced up their last one a week ago. Why it should be so is a
mystery. Why should Birmingham, of all places in England, exhibit such affection
for the onion as to find it necessary to hold an annual sale of the coveted
vegetable ? What is there peculiar in the nature of the inhabitants of the town
of locks and guns, that the pungent esculent should be so highly prized by them?
Is it eaten raw, or is it cooked? Are steaks and onions a favourite dish in
Birmingham ? Is roast pork, with appropriate stuffing? There are three-four pork
shops in the Bull Ring; the proud proprietor of one of them exhibiting in his
window the silver medals that have been conferred on him because of his prowess
in venturing to buy the fattest pigs at succeeding annual shows.
Who can tell how much this enterprising tradesman has been
influenced in his purchases by the confidence, annually renewed, that every
Birmingham housewife will have a store of onions, and that the onion suggests
stuffing for pork? Onions are eaten with tripe, and tripe is an esteemed article
of food in Birmingham. Tripe-shops - not shops for the sale of raw tripe, but
establishments where it may be obtained all hot and well done - are as common as
penny pie shops are in London. In Digbeth there are several tripe shops, each
one claiming to be the "real original;" and of evenings such fragrance
of onions issues from the kitchen gratings as is enough to make the eyes if not
the mouth water. In these various ways may the enormous demand for "brown
shells" and "big 'uns," be to some extent accounted for; but as
one contemplates men, women, and children busy among the
[-321-] heaps as ants on an ant-hill, and bearing off, with satisfaction
beaming in their faces, onions enough to garnish stake or tripe through all the
days of the year, one cannot help thinking that the explanation is weak and
insufficient.
It is not, however, to onions alone that the fair held
annually in the Bull Ring, at Birmingham, owes its high popularity. It is not
altogether the craving to secure the pungent vegetable in ropes and bushels that
tempts people to start at an unseasonable hour on a September morning, on a
journey of a hundred miles, or that induces railway companies to advertise
through the length and breadth of London that, on a certain day, a cheap and
gigantic excursion train will leave Paddington and Euston Stations for
Birmingham re turning the same evening, The secret lies in the fact that the
onions are, to strangers at least, only a seasoning to something much more
attractive - a real old fashioned pleasure fair. None of your modern semi
scientific and strictly proper entertainments, that may be attended in
dress-shoes and kid gloves, but the dear and almost bygone rough-and-tumble,
sawdusty, naphtha-flaring carnival that our fathers recollect, with a merry
crowd elbowing its way through long avenues of gingerbread booths, or responding
loyally to the bewildering invitation to "Walk up, walk up,"
accompanied by the clash of cymbals and the bang of gongs.
Bartlemy is not dead. Frightened out of London it has fled to
Birmingham, and taken settled quarters in the Bull Ring there. It may be
recollected that hot sausages were a much admired and prominent feature of the
fair that was held in old Smithfield - well here they are, fizzing in a dozen
different spots; and you may buy one and a slice of bread, by way of a plate, [-322-]
for one penny. Oysters used to figure creditably at Bartlemy. They were
cheap then. You might buy them as large as saucers at the rate of sixpence the
dozen, and a dozen was a substantial feed for a family. But oysters are oysters
now-or rather, speaking of the Bull Ring fair, they are not oysters now -
they are mussels. I would willingly conceal the fact if I might, and for the
town's sake; but, alas for human nature! Brummagem is Brummagem even to
its oyster stalls. It is a masterpiece of counterfeit. In the distance, nay,
when you have closely approached them, they look quite the genuine article; and
you rejoice at the sight of the tempting, fat, little oysters at a penny a row
of six; twopence a dozen! But it is a delusion. What you see so delicately
reposing on the pearly shell are nothing but innocent little mussles, compelled
to act the part of impostors. The supply of pearly shells is limited, and in
constant demand. As fast as a customer licks a mussel off one, another is popped
on it for the benefit of the next customer.
I am glad to have got the above-mentioned grievance off my
mind, because all that remains to be narrated is unexceptionably pleasant and
satisfactory. It is a most extensive fair. The Bull Ring itself could not
contain half the shows that are there - no, nor a tenth part. There are all
manner of shows. The drama, horse-riding, the menagerie, and waxworks. The drama
may be always seen at home, and the horse-riding, but not the menagerie. To be
sure, there is something of the sort in Regent's Park; but the directors of the
Zoological Gardens permit no Daniel in their den of lions. At the Onion Fair
there was a den of lions, and a Daniel as well. Not the original Daniel. With an
honest candour that did the proprietor credit he ad-[-323-]mitted
that. The modern Daniel was named Day as well, and he was described as the
"most infantile lion-tamer that ever appeared in public."
He was produced at the door of the show wiping his hands on
the anterior of his little tunic, and covertly sucking sweetstuff; and certainly
for a child of his tender years, who was "just about to begin," he
looked as undaunted a little hero as could he imagined. I paid my threepence and
went in, and shortly afterwards saw him "begin," and still more
shortly afterwards wished that he'd leave off. Not on account of the frightful
peril he was in. A less eatable-looking boy cannot be conceived. He was arrayed
in blue, and covered with indigestible-looking spangles, as though they had been
poured over him. But the lions even though they thought their teeth equal to the
task, had no desire to eat him. They didn't want to be bothered with him at all.
There was a jolly coke fire in a great brazier not far from their cage, and it
was evident that the meat-man had been already round, and peaceful as a pair of
old donkeys they were resting their mangy muzzles on their paws, and blinking
and winking at the comforting glow. When the young lad stepped into their lair
one of the monarchs of the African forest lazily looked round, and, discovering
that it was only Daniel, betook himself to blinking at the fire again, while the
other yawned frightfully, and, raising itself languidly to it's feet, resigned
itself to be tamed with a docility that must have been re-assuring to the female
part of the auditory who, a moment before, had drawn horrible conclusions from
the lion's gaping jaws. Lion-taming, like every other difficulty in life, may be
accomplished by perseverance; and really there is very little in it - certainly
not threepen'orth when the tamer and the [-324-]
to-be-tamed are in the habit of repeating the performance about fifteen times a
day.
The waxworks were much more exciting - more bloodstirring;
for there were effigies of departed monarchs that had sat on the English throne,
quite as lifelike as the weak-kneed old lions; and there was a chamber of
horrors-three chambers in fact, any one of which might be backed to give a
visitor the "creeps" in half the time anything Madame Tussaud has as
yet produced. They certainly do go in for everything strong at the Onion Fair.
Signor Picketo's waxwork collection was not housed in a vulgar booth, but in a
brick-built shop - a tenement that, by good luck, happened to be to let in the
very heart of the fair. I am decidedly of opinion that the exhibition, being in
a private house, was a great advantage, especially as regards the chamber of
horrors. Perhaps, on the other hand, the limited accommodation was somewhat
against Signor Picketo's "Kings, Queens, Statesmen, and Warriors," and
accounted for nine Kings and Queens holding a levee in the kitchen, and
for Garibaldi and Mr Gladstone and Pope Pius IX., and about twelve other persons
of eminence, elbowing each other in the shop-parlour, and staring in blank
dismay at the shameful lack of accommodation. Likewise if Signor Picketo had
been master of the situation, it is likely that he would not have bestowed the
Grecian Daughter administering infantile nourishment to her aged parent in a
cupboard that still smelt strongly of cheese. But, as before remarked, I
believe, these little disadvantages were fully compensated by the manner in
which the various rooms of the house enabled the Signor to lay out his horrors -
to lay them out literally.
The principal part of the exhibition was on the first
[-325-] floor, which consisted of three rooms, as dingy and gloomy as
rooms of a house long uninhabited invariably are. The front room was in
possession of the present royal family and King Solomon, and the apartment
adjoining was tenanted by modern murderers - an awful assemblage, so closely
packed that they jostled each other's descriptive card askew. But the crowning
horror was in the further room. As you approached the half-open door you could
see a bedstead foot; that was in no way startling. From the position of the
chamber it would naturally be used for sleeping in. You put your head in at the
door, and then you saw a sight that was almost enough to make you scream out
"Police!" There was a bedstead by the wall just where a bedstead
usually stands, and with a bed on it - a made bed with sheets and bolster and
pillows, exposing six children, each one with its throat cut in a manner so
horrible that the shocked feelings of the beholder were immediately comforted by
the reflection that their death must have been instantaneous. Gore on the little
waxen faces, gore on the sheets, and on the hands that had been thrown up to
protect their tender lives; and there was the murderess - she had left the razor
in the windpipe of her last victim - with her throat cut as well, standing
upright in her sprinkled nightdress, to welcome you, with a label round her neck
that provided the edifying information that "this woman was nurse to his
Royal Highness the Prince of Wales." It is difficult to describe how
appallingly real it all looked. Had the representation been on view at a public
show-room it would have been only grimly ridiculous and disgusting; but being in
that small room, to which just such a family of youngsters in so poor a house
might have retired to rest, it was, from a [-326-] dramatic
and sensational point of view, a perfect success. The women and the young men
and their sweethearts crowded round the bedstead, and gauged the depth of every
gash with their sorrowful eyes, which in many cases were watery and red. Perhaps
this last-mentioned fact was due to their recent explorations among the onion
groves.
But those and similar horrors which need not be enumerated
were not all the curiosities offered for public exhibition by Signor Picketo, at
his shop in the Bull Ring. He was possessed of a curiosity, that was not of wax,
but that was flesh and blood, and human and alive - a something that, according
to the placard in the shop window, "would speak and shake hands with any
party as wish to talk with her." It was a terrible sight indeed - a lady
who was in part a lioness, and who was regarded as so choice a novelty that she
was kept quite apart from the rest of the show, and lodged at the top of the
house. An extra penny was charged to see the lioness lady, and a young man
guarded the foot of the rickety stairway. Ushered into the back attic, bare and
empty, save for a form on which the company was to sit, one saw that the open
door disclosed a passage, at the end of which was another door, the bright
streak at the bottom of which betrayed that there was a light within; and,
moreover, there came from that room the civilised sound of the clinking of
teaspoons against teacups.
When six visitors had assembled, the young man knocked for
the lady-lioness. She came immediately, emerging from the chamber where the
tea-things were, hastily wiping her lips as she came. Her appearance, as she
came and stood before us, was startling. Comely of shape, and attired in white
muslin, and with her [-327-] magnificent hair
streaming over her shoulders, she seemed not so awful. But then her face. There
was the lioness. Her broad forehead ~vas covered with a tawny-coloured horny
skin, and it was wrinkled like that of the lion; her eyebrows were shaggy, and
one side of her nose was just as is the lion's nose, the other nostril being
white, and small and delicate. Both her cheeks were covered with coarse straight
hair. It would not have been in the least surprising if she had roared her
displeasure at being interrupted while at her tea; but, on the contrary, after
having, in a mild and gentle voice, bid us "good evening," she civilly
proceeded to inform us that she was born in Graham's Town, in Southern Africa,
in the year 1846; that her father was a soldier in the 86th Regiment, and that
during the Kaffir war, and before she was born, her mother was taken prisoner;
and that the kraal in which she was lodged was attacked by a lion, which nearly
succeeded in carrying her off. Thus she accounted for her leonine appearance,
further assuring us that she was very happy under Signor Picketo's protection,
and that he permitted her to sell little books of her history, which were one
penny each. After this the lioness lady gracefully curtsied, and I have no doubt
sought once more the social teapot.