Brick Lane Market 7
It is my pleasure to publish this lively account by James Greenwood of the legendary market in birds and animals which once extended from Club Row along Sclater St and filled Cheshire St (formerly known as Hare St) – illustrated by Alfred Concanen, it is one of several closely observed descriptions of East End life and culture that Greenwood wrote at this time, collected together in “The Wilds of London ” in 1874.
At the rear of Shoreditch Church and extending a distance of at least half a mile, is a long narrow thoroughfare, part of which is Hare St, and in that insalubrious locality the reader’s dutiful servant found himself when the bells were ringing on a Sunday morning. One of the churches from which the inviting sound proceeded was in the middle of Hare St and, chiming in with the shouting from the leathern throats of, “Who’ll buy a cock?” – “Who sees three pieball mice for a tanner?” – “Who’ll give three hog (shillings) for a ‘pegging finch?” – the effect was produced was somewhat peculiar.
The pavement being much too narrow to accommodate the pressing throng, the muddy road was crowded as well. It would be more difficult to specify what you might not buy in the way of live stock that morning in Hare St, than to enumerate what was offered for sale.
If you wanted chickens, there they were in baskets, in bags, and held up by the legs, and swinging in feathered bunches from the dirty fists of the vendors. If you wanted Cochin China fowl, there was a prime chance for you, for ploughing through the mire came a gaunt bird of that species struggling with all the pluck of his breed against a boy who had him by the tail, and came splashing after him. Did you want a goat? There were three, “agoin’ for the piece of dawg’s meat,” as the person charged with their disposal declared. Were you desirous of possessing a donkey? There was one, together with a commodious barrow and four “tater sieves” – the lot for two pun’ fifteen! Ferrets, dormice, white mice, black mice, rats for the pits, fancy rats, white with red eyes and ginger-coloured rats, with tremendous teeth and whiskers, hedgehogs for the destuction of black beetles, guinea pigs and tortoises – Is your heart set upon any of these? If so, rejoice that you are in Hare St on a Sunday morning.
But, before all, Hare St is strongest in singing birds. Not so much for sale seemingly, as brought out for an airing. There they were, not here and there one, but by dozens and hundreds – goldfinches and chaffinches chiefly. The cages that contained them were tied in handkerchiefs, silk and cotton, and carried swinging in the hand, and jostling against the rude mob, as though they were of no more account than parcels of the most ordinary merchandise. But the most amazing part of the business was, that not only did the imprisoned and much-hustled finches continue to exist under such circumstances, but they retained their perches and their equanimity in the most perfect manner, and sang as they were carried. To what amount and to what sort of training these poor little birds had been subjected to it is hard to guess. There they were, however, all in the dark, with no purer air to breathe than the ordinary Hare St air, further poisoned by the presence of the foul mob, hung dangling at arm’s length, and jostled, and shook, and spun about, yet raising their tiny pipes as though nothing at all was the matter, and they were as much at ease as their grimy-faced, short-pipe puffing gentry that carried them.
I walked the length of the fair through and through, but as it was now one o’clock and the public house doors were opened, I joined the thirsty throng waiting for admittance at the Tinker’s Arms. It was a hazardous experiment, as the beer of Brick Lane, though strong is peculiar as to its flavour and for anyone not accustomed to it, a little goes a long way. It was not so however with my brother bibers. There were a good many performers before the bar and the conversation was strictly birdy. One was bragging of his “slamming” goldfinch, while another individual button-holed a friend and told him all about his “greypates,” and a third was learned on the subject of linnets, reciting that able bird’s sixty-four distinct notes. But as the man had a very gruff voice and gave the recitation with a strong nasal twang, my idea of the linnet’s song was not exalted by the lesson, and since by now my measure of Brick Lane beer was considerably reduced, I was almost as much in the dark as ever…
The famed Club Row bird market lasted until very recently, but nowadays the only individuals crying out on behalf of animals in this location on Sundays are the anti-fur protesters in Cheshire St, yet anyone desirous of seeing live animals in Spitalfields today need only take a short stroll over the Pedley St railway bridge to the Spitalfields City Farm and they will not be disappointed.
The Sunday morning bird fair at Club Row, Shoreditch, in the nineteenth century. (This building which still stands at the corner of Sclater St and Brick Lane was the original pie and mash shop opened by Robert Cooke in 1862, the great-grandfather of the current Robert Cooke whose family establishment opened in Broadway Marker in 1900. In recent years this building was renovated by Jim Howett.)
From Brick Lane, looking East down Hare St, (now called Cheshire St).
From Brick Lane, looking West down Sclater St.
In Club Row.
Selling puppies in the nineteen twenties at Club Row market.
Images copyright © Bishopsgate Institute
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Dog Days at Club Row Market by Ronald Searle and Kaye Webb
The Labour and Wait Brush Museum
When connoisseurs of traditional hardware, Simon Watkins and Rachel Wythe-Moran, opened Labour and Wait in Spitalfields ten years ago, the very first item of stock to arrive in their shop was a wooden handbrush, but – as you can see from the picture above – there have been developments over the intervening decade. “Rachel’s been obsessed with brushes for years,” revealed Simon with a candid smile, “So one day I said, ‘Why don’t we start collecting them and have a Brush Museum?”
The notion was a brush with genius, and today when you visit their shop in the former Dolphin Pub in Redchurch St you can see a selection of fine specimens from the Labour and Wait Brush Museum occupying a space above the staircase – guaranteed to have any brush lover bristling with delight.
Just like Sir William Hamilton’s small collection of Greek vases that became the origin of the British Museum, these modest artifacts speak eloquently of their culture and society. Already the Brush Museum has won a cult following in Tokyo where Simon and Rachel displayed their collection as part of a Labour and Wait pop-up shop which also included demonstrations of the English Tea Ceremony, complete with mugs of builders’ tea with milk, served with Tunnock’s Tea Cakes. Seeking new acquisitions for the museum, Simon and Rachel visited a master brush maker in Osaka. “His workshop was pitch black, he had no storefront and the place stank of tar and woodsmoke – every surface was blackened – and in the middle sat this little man wrapping wire around cane to make his brushes.” enthused Simon in affectionate reminiscence as he cradled one of the brushes in question.
Simultaneously mundane and surreal, brushes are objects of universal fascination, indicative of a vast range of human activity and evolved into diverse shapes, sizes and materials according to their purpose. They are extensions of the hand with bristles in place of fingers, and their intriguing anthropomorphism reflects this function as substitute limbs. Our intimate relationship with brushes has imbued them with rich ambiguous poetry – from the loneliness of the sole toothbrush and the mystery of the witch’s broom, to the sensuous eroticism of bristles and the cheeky comedy of the tickling stick.
Over the last ten years, Simon and Rachel have sought out the last traditional makers around Europe to supply the extraordinary selection of new handmade brushes for sale in their shop, which are complimented by the growing museum display, creating a veritable temple of delight filled with treasures to delight the brush fancier.
A nineteenth century clothes brush by Jacob’s of Liverpool – from the museum.
A Japanese Plasterer’s Brush that can work in either direction – from the shop.
A clothes brush with the enigmatic letters T A H in different coloured bristles – from the museum.
A pocket clothes brush produced by the Co-operative Society – from the museum.
A nineteenth century barber’s brush with soft bristles – from the museum.
A body brush, can be used wet or dry – from the shop.
London & North Eastern Railway issue 1946, expressive of austerity and utility – from the museum.
A travel coat hanger and clothes brush in one – from the museum.
Swedish Scrubbing Brushes – from the shop.
A brush by the master in Kyoto, for cleaning inside barrels and getting at odd angles – from the museum.
A Computer Brush with a soft side for the screen and a narrow side for between the keys – from the shop.
A soft Cobweb Brush with bristles of Skunk – from the museum.
This massive Scrubbing Brush is curved to allow grip with both hands – from the museum.
Japanese Vegetable Brush from Tawashi – from the shop.
Nineteen-fifties Crumb Sweeper, “the Crab” – from the museum.
A Swedish soft Mushroom Brush for removing the dirt without hurting the fungi – from the shop.
Two nineteenth century clothes brushes with decorative bristle patterns – from the museum.
A sturdy German toilet brush – from the shop.
The Genie with its stiff wire bristles could easily do a lot of damage to your upholstery – from the museum.
Sailors’ Whisk Brush made in Ipswich – from the shop.
A Dish Brush by the Kyoto master – from the museum.
A Portuguese Toilet Brush, also ideal to accompany your dolly’s witch outfit – from the shop.
A Hat Brush by Titterton, curved for ease of use – from the museum.
A Flowerpot Brush, essential to prevent cross-contamination between your pots – from the shop.
A stiff Cobweb Brush by Bettaware – from the museum.
A Bannister Brush – from the shop.
The Labour & Wait Brush Museum on tour in Japan.
Simon and Rachel in a group photo outside the Labour & Wait pop-up shop in Tokyo.
Bethnal Green’s previous top brush shop, A.L.R.Marks Ltd – specialising in Skunk Dusters.
John Moyr Smith’s Tiles 2
Back in January, I showed you the first of the nineteenth century Minton tiles designed by John Moyr Smith that I am collecting to line my fireplace, prior to the installation of a stove, and now it is my delight to show you the next twelve which are the result of the last three months’ searching around. I will need forty-five by the Autumn to complete the fireplace so that I can light my stove to keep me warm next Winter – thus far I have around half as many as I require.
As well as being an accomplished designer and draughtsman, John Moyr Smith was an instinctive dramatist – each of his tiles illustrates a the dramatic climax of a story, whether from Shakespeare, the Bible, Fairy Tales, the Idylls of the King, Nursery Rhymes or English History – and unfailingly he found the psychological moment when the drama turned.
I am especially happy with this broken tile at the top, illustrating the heart-stopping moment described by Alfred Tennyson in the “Idylls of the King,” when the hero Pelleas discovers his beloved Ettare sleeping in Gawain’s arms. Pelleas lays his sword across their throats and sneaks away by moonlight, for them to wake and realise that he might have killed them if he chose. The high drama of it all with the morbidly jealous Pelleas leaving on tip-toe, while Gawain and Ettare doze in their post-coital swoon is captured with gratifying precision upon this cracked tile of a hundred and forty years old that I bought for £1.99.
No-one else wants broken tiles but me, because these overwrought designs are out of fashion and serious collectors desire undamaged specimens. But I am thankful to buy cracked tiles cheaper and know that I am providing a safe harbour for them in my fireplace – where they can be preserved safely and appreciated for their merits while their flaws are forgiven. Next Winter, these tiles will serve as a substitute for the flames of the open fire to inspire imaginative reverie at the hearth on dark nights.
Although I have no doubt Moyr Smith intended his tiles to be used in matching sets, I have chosen to mix them up – reflecting both their limited availability, and my own enjoyment in unlikely juxtapositions of different characters such Humpty Dumpty next to King Canute, or Jesus beside Bluebeard.
As my collection grows, I am beginning to appreciate the different imaginative modes of John Moyr Smith’s imagination. Most seductive is the mythic medievalism of Shakespeare and the Idylls of the King, in which everyone wears clingy clothing to outline their athletic limbs and torsos, assuming languorous postures that are never less than graceful, while extending their gestures to draw the eye into the drama unfolding. And the Celtic world is especially sexy with lots of sensuous pattern, louche drapery and exotic furniture in the shape of animals.
By contrast, the pair of Nursery Rhymes evoke a world closer to that of the late nineteenth century, in which Miss Muffet wears a corset and a little girl carries an aesthetic movement peacock fan, while their male companions – the boy, the creepy old man with the snuff box and Humpty Dumpty himself – are dressed in theatrical versions of eighteenth century garb. The presiding influence here is Kate Greenaway.
Yet all this variety of content and style is unified by the circular frames within each design and the limited colour scheme of browns, with touches of blue and soft grey, upon beige and biscuit tiles, creating a pleasant unity when they are arranged side by side. Every one of my tiles has already been around in other fireplaces for over a century. How many rooms and lives they have witnessed. How many babes have fallen asleep in their cots watching Nursery Rhyme figures dancing in the flickering firelight in the Nursery fireplace. How many old dears have drifted off in their fireside armchairs, glancing at the familiar Biblical scenes for the last time, before sleeping never to wake again, in the hope that their Christian souls are saved.
When I sit beside my stove next Winter I shall think not just of the characters in the miscellany of stories in my fireplace, but also of all those other unknown people before me who have wiled away long nights at the hearth, their dreams enlivened by the presence of these wonderful tiles by John Moyr Smith.
Humpty Dumpty from Moyr Smith’s Nursery Rhyme series – tile has broken edge.
Henry IV Part One. Young Hal & Falstaff at the Boar’s Head in Cheapside, from Moyr Smith’s Shakespeare series.
Twelfth Night – the drunken carousing of Andrew Aguecheek, Feste and Sir Toby Belch – this tile was the kind gift of Rodney Archer.
The Welsh hero Geraint rescues his beloved Enid from the attentions of Doorm, the robber chief – from Moyr Smith’s “Idyll’s of the King” series.
Deceived by a forged love letter, Malvolio comes dressed before Olivia in yellow cross garters, while her maid Maria – the perpetrator – watches in amusement
Little Miss Muffet with the spider and another predatory admirer – tile cracked in three and glued back together again.
Kind Canute steps up onto his thrown to avoid the waves while his sycophantic courtier retreats in horror – from Moyr Smith’s Early English History series.
The Tempest. Trinculino the drunken butler and Stefano the fool meet Caliban gathering wood on Prospero’s magic island.
Troubled Enid and mistrustful Geraint, a tense marriage – tile cracked in two and stuck together again.
Macbeth drops his cup upon seeing Banquo’s ghost at the feast, pointing the finger of guilt for King Duncan’s murder.
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At the Wyvern Bindery
“We’re inspired by William Morris and by Eric Gill,” explained Mark Winstanley, self-styled “gentleman bookbinder” of the busy Wyvern Bindery in the Clerkenwell Rd – “Morris articulated the three crucial elements you need to run a successful bindery. You need a clientele with an appetite for hand made bindings. You need a skilled labour force to do the binding, And you need a nice rich city like London.”
Fortunately Mark has all three, and is ideally placed to bring the first two together in Clerkenwell, once the historic centre of London’s print trade and now the preserve of media and design companies. “Gill’s idea of a workshop was that everyone should own their personal set of tools,” he continued, recognising the need for individual autonomy within the workplace – a principle evidenced by the diverse group of young bookbinders working on different projects at the Wyvern Bindery, assisting each other and coming regularly to consult Mark whilst we were in conversation.
“There’s always been a bookbinding trade, but without Morris life for a bookbinder would be much more difficult today,” Mark conceded with an affectionate nod, “Hannah More, Rosie Gray and I started the Wyvern Bindery in 1990 in the Clerkenwell workshops. We got it going from nothing and we turned over thirty-five thousand pounds in the first year, with a little bit of luck and some hard work. And after five years, we took this shop at five thousand pounds a year.”
If you pause on the Clerkenwell Rd and look through the window of the Wyvern Bindery, you can witness the entire process of bookbinding enacted before your eyes. Among presses and plan chests, surrounded by racks of multi-coloured rolls of buckram and leather, and shelves of type and tools, the bookbinders work, absorbed at tables and benches, trimming pages and card for covers at guillotines, sewing and gluing and pressing and tooling, working with richly subtly hued canvas and leather, and finally embossing them with type for titles. In a restricted space, they pursue individual tasks while also engaging in an elaborate collective endeavour, sharing equipment and bench space as their projects require different areas of the shared workshop – all within a constant dynamic harmony.
“In the seventies when I started, the trade was opening up and it was easier to get into it without an apprenticeship.” recalled Mark, “I was one of the students on the very first full-time year’s course in craft book binding at the London College of Printing in 1976. My teacher was Art Johnson and he taught me to make books that lasted and were well made, with honesty.”A principle apparent today in the unpretentious work produced at the Wyvern Bindery, creating bindings that do not draw attention to themselves – avoiding ostentation in favour of work that is neat and well finished. “People ring up and say, ‘This is what we want it to look like. Can you work it out in twenty-four hours and we’ll fly off on Monday morning to do a pitch to Coca-Cola with it,’ -not a fancy leather binding that takes six weeks.” admitted Mark, revealing how his ancient trade thrives amongst the new media that surround him “We apply craft skills to a commercial proposition. It might not be art but it’s clean and neat and it’s done on time.” he said plainly.
If you think Mark’s pragmatism is not entirely convincing, your suspicion will be confirmed when he admits to the irresistibly seductive melancholy of damaged old books that demand restoration. A magnetism that led him to Ethiopia recently, where he was invited to restore a sixth century testament, the Abba Garima Gospels written around 560, the oldest illuminated church manuscript in Africa.“Written in one day – because God stopped the sun for three weeks – it is still a living document,” he assured me, his eyes sparkling with passion, “A seriously holy book that people pay to have read to them, believing that it can cure the sick, this is one of the greatest church documents in the world.”And then Mark showed me snaps of fragments of the beloved book, explaining how he painstakingly unpicked the stitches that were causing tears to the pages and reattached them all to the spine with Japanese tissue.
Bookbinding emphasises a sense of time and mortality for the binder, because alongside the bindings that Mark creates to preserve the content of new books, old damaged tomes are coming in for repair, illustrating the fate of his predecessors’ works, a fate that will also come to his own in turn. “When you see the work of the great book binders, like Riviere, Morrells and Bumpus – all dead and gone now – they jump at you, the quality of the leather and gold tooling, the attention to detail, the hand-sewn headbands and good quality card.” Mark declared to me, confiding his sense of personal connection. And I understood that the care he puts into these repairs honours those who came before him, expressing a latent hope that his work will be similarly respected by generations yet to come.
The first printing in London was done in Clerkenwell, while in the nineteenth century it became a place of booksellers and now Mark Winstanley has found an elegant way to make the artisan skills of the bookbinder serve the current inhabitants. The Wyvern Bindery with its hand tools and glue pots may appear the anachronism in Clerkenwell today, yet the truth is it carries the living spirit of the culture that has defined this corner of London for more than five hundred years.
Wyvern Bindery, 56/8 Clerkenwell Road.
Pages from the Abba Garima Gospels dating from before 560.
The Gospels restored with pages mounted on Japanese tissue by Mark Winstanley.
Mark Winstanley at the Clerkenwell Workshops in 1990.
Photographs of the bindery copyright © Nicola Boccaccini
Leila’s Shop Report 2
Leila’s Shop
In spite of these warm bright days of April sunshine, in the early hours of Monday night Leila and I were shivering at the Covent Garden Market – where I had accompanied her on the weekly trip to buy fresh produce for her shop. Yet the passage of just a month since my last report and the advance in the weather has delivered such a wealth of seasonal fruit and vegetables into the market that it warmed our spirits to discover some magnificent new arrivals, still fresh from the fields.
But it was no straightforward matter to seek out these prizes because the market is a labyrinth without signs. You arrive in a dark car park, as if you were on the periphery of a large airport or an industrial estate. Then you enter through any of the myriad doors to find yourself inside a warren of interconnected premises belonging to the different wholesalers, all stacked with produce. And each one of these backs onto the car park and also faces in the other direction onto the narrow market aisles, where the traders display their wares beneath harsh halogens.
Several times, I asked Leila, “Were we here before?” as she lead me on an elaborate journey, weaving and criss-crossing through the market she has come to know intimately over twelve years buying at Covent Garden. In and out of gloomy warehouses where vast towers of vegetables loomed over us in the half-light, into chilled white rooms where small batches of choice crops awaited, and out to the car park again to probe newly arrived pallets, Leila followed her instinct, gently checking the consistency of the vegetables, expertly shelling peas in one hand and swallowing them, absent-mindedly chewing scraps of asparagus, tasting tarragon, and all done with the preoccupied expression of one on a quest.
Amongst the profusion of bland industrially farmed fruit and vegetables dominating the market, grown to achieve consistency of size, shape, colour and flavour, and be available all year round, Leila is seeking produce from traditional or small growers that may come in limited quantities for just a few weeks when the crop is in season –“I am looking for things that come from somewhere and taste of something,” as she puts it, with succinct and delicate irony.
Leila’s van was the lone small vehicle in a line of large white trucks in the car park, and Leila was the only female customer in a market that is staffed by men, yet Leila herself is not intimidated by this enclave of querulous masculinity. “They don’t make any allowances,” she granted with a weary smile, “but they know their stuff and they work really hard. And though I am an insignificant customer in terms of quantity, they do respect that I come down myself each week and pick what’s good.”
“I bought some lovely radishes here last week and they were joking because they were muddy and they said, ‘We knew you’d buy these.'” Leila revealed to me with a cheeky grin as we approached a counter, before turning to the trader and asking with a complete lack of self-consciousness, “Got any dirty potatoes?”
Muddy vegetables are at a scarcity because clean ones sell better, when the truth is that mud keeps vegetables fresher longer by protecting them from sunlight and drying out – especially true of root vegetables that are less likely to turn green and sprout if they are covered in mud. Yet mud is the enemy of the clean refrigerators where many shops store their vegetables, and the benign dark earth which is the source of these plants is commonly perceived as mere dirt. “Washed vegetables need more refrigeration but we don’t have that,” explained Leila, “we rely upon the natural cooling of the shop due to the brilliance of the Victorian design and its venting system.”And she was lucky that night, because we carried away a sack of beautiful muddy Maris Piper potatoes, grown in England, in triumph.
There are half a dozen wholesalers where Leila gets the majority of her stock but she always takes an eagle-eyed sweep around the market too. “After years and years, I have come to recognise the growers – “the mark” as they call it at the market. And I write to them if I like what they grow.” she admitted, “I am always on the lookout for interesting new producers whose crop I can buy through the market.”
Early on Tuesday, Leila drives her new stock back along the river and up to Arnold Circus, where, first thing, you will see the weekly spectacle of the vegetable boxes being made up upon the pavement in Calvert Avenue, ready for distribution with some of the freshest vegetables in London, while the handsome displays which characterise Leila’s Shop are renewed with the latest arrivals from the market. Any other shop with Leila’s small turnover would purchase their stock indirectly, through a distributor, but Leila McAlister chooses to give up one night every week and search the market personally, applying her experience and critical faculties to get the fruit and vegetables herself, because it is her pleasure and her passion.
Superceding the forced rhubarb of March, the first outdoor-grown English rhubarb is now ready.
“Among the early carrots, these bushed Italian carrots are good and fresh and tasty.”
“Of the many varieties of artichokes in season now, this French variety is good for braising.”
“Delicious Corsican blushed grapefruit.”
The first broad beans from Italy – “so sweet you can eat them raw with a shaving of Pecorino cheese.”
Lovely red Spring onions for salad.
Organic Italian new potatoes – “I had them last week and they were so delicious, I couldn’t resist getting them again.”
The first Italian peas – “tiny and sweet, and definitely to be eaten from the pod.”
Large red Spring onions – “sweet and good for cooking or slicing into salads.”
Rougette lettuces – “lovely French lettuces, crisp and tasty and also very pretty.”
Fresh bunched beetroots -“the leaves are delicious blanched in boiling salt water for a minute, and then tossed in olive oil with salt and pepper.”
The first English cucumbers, grown under glass in Worcestershire.
2:00 am, buying rhubarb…
3:00 am packing the van…
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Harry Landis, Actor
“I was born and brought up in the East End, then I went away for fifty years and came back eight years ago – but I returned to a very different East End from the one I left,” admitted Harry Landis, as we stood together outside the former Jewish Soup Kitchen in Brune St.
“When I was four years old, I came here with my mother holding me in one hand and a saucepan in the other, to get a dollop of soup and a loaf of bread.” Harry confided to me, “When I returned, the soup kitchen had been converted into flats, and I thought it would be great to buy a flat as a reminder – but the one for sale was on the top floor with too many stairs, so I didn’t buy it. Yet I’d have loved that, living in the soup kitchen where I went as a child.”
“I don’t feel any sense of loss about poverty and the bad old days and people suffering.” Harry declared with a caustic grin, as we ambled onward down Brune St. And when Harry revealed that growing up in Stepney in the nineteen thirties, he remembers taking refuge in his mother’s lap at the age of ten when a brick came smashing through their window – thrown by fascists chanting, “Get rid of the Yids! Get rid of the Yids!” – I could understand why he might be unsentimental about the past.
We walked round into Middlesex St to the building which is now the Shooting Star, that was once the Jewish Board of Guardians where Harry’s mother came to plead her case to get a chit for soup at the kitchen. “I hate those fucking jumped up Jews from Hendon who blame poor Jews for letting down the race,” Harry exclaimed to me, in a sudden flash of emotion as we crossed the road, where he accompanied his mother at four years old to face the Board of Guardians sitting behind a long table dressed in bow ties and dinner jackets.
When she told the Board she had two children – even though she only had Harry – in hope of getting more of the meagre rations, the Guardians unexpectedly challenged Harry, requiring evidence of his mother’s claim. With remarkable presence of mind for a four year old, he nodded in confirmation when asked if he had a sister. But then the Guardians enquired his sister’s name, and – in an extraordinary moment of improvisation – Harry answered, “Rosie,” and the Board was persuaded. “She used to break her loaf of bread and give half to the poor Christians waiting outside the soup kitchen,” he told me later, in affectionate recognition of his mother’s magnanimous spirit, even in her own state of poverty.
Yet the significance of Harry’s action reverberated far beyond that moment, because it revealed he had a natural talent for acting. It was a gift that took him on a journey out of the East End, gave him a successful career as an actor and director, and delivered him to the Royal Court Theatre where he originated the leading role in one of the most important post-war British plays, Arnold Wesker’s masterpiece “The Kitchen.” Although, ironically, at Stepney Jewish School where Harry was educated, the enlightened headmistress, Miss Rose, made the girls do woodwork and the boys learn cooking – and when Harry left at fourteen he wanted to become a chef in a kitchen, but discovered apprenticeships were only available to those of sixteen.
“They sent me to work in a cafe pouring tea but I didn’t last very long there, I did several jobs, window cleaner and milkman. And I used to go to the Hackney Empire every week, first house on a Monday because that was the cheapest – the company had just arrived, rehearsed with the band once and they were on at six, but the band weren’t sure what they were doing, so I enjoyed watching it all go wrong.
Being a cheeky little sod, I used to perform the show I’d seen on the Monday night next day at the factory where I worked – Max Miller’s jokes, the impersonators and Syd Walker who did a Rag & Bone act. 95% of them nobody knows now. The shop steward, who was my mentor said, “You ought to be on the stage.” I’d never seen a play. I said, “Where do I go to see a play?” He said, “If you go the West End, the play will be about the tribulations of the upper classes, the problems of posh people. But there is one theatre in Kings Cross called the Unity Theatre, the theatre of the Labour & Trade Union Movement that does plays about ordinary people. I’m going there next Sunday night with my wife, if you’d like to come.” And I went. And at the Unity Theatre, that’s where my life changed.
It knocked me out because the people on the stage could have been living in my street and the language they spoke was the language we all spoke down the East End. The shop steward said, “You should be here, I’ll get you an audition.” I did my audition and I showed them my acting of bits I’d seen at the Hackney Empire, and they put me in the variety group. We performed shows in air raid shelters and parks. But then they transferred me to the straight acting section because I was fifteen and there was a shortage of men since they were all away at war. I was playing above my years but learning to act.
After two or three years of this and doing my military service, I returned to the Unity Theatre and the headmaster of a South London school saw me and said, “You should be professional, why don’t you apply for a grant from the London County Council to go to drama school?” I was twenty. He got me the form and we filled it out, and I was given a grant and money to live on. How times have changed! I did three years at Central School of Speech & Drama. You learnt RP (Received Pronunciation) but you never lost your own speech. I was considered a working class actor.
I got cast in a wonderful play at the Royal Court Theatre, run by George Devine where they did the plays of John Osborne. It was “The Kitchen” by Arnold Wesker, and I played the part of Paul, the pastry cook – which is the Arnold Wesker character – that’s what he did when he worked in a kitchen. It was about himself. Arnold wrote without any knowledge of theatre, which is to say a play with twenty-five actors in it which only lasts seventy-five minutes. People said they could see the food we were cooking but it was all mimed…”
So Harry fulfilled his childhood ambition to become a chef – on stage – through his work as an actor in the theatre. To this day, he gratefully acknowledges his debt to the Unity Theatre and those two individuals who saw his potential – “I was going to be an amateur but I was pushed to the next stage,” he accepts. Harry enjoyed success as one of a whole generation of talented working class actors that came to prominence in the post-war years bringing a new energy and authenticity to British drama. Now Harry Landis has returned to his childhood streets and laid the ghosts of his own past, he is happy to embrace the changes here today, although he does not choose to forget the East End he once knew.
“It’s a different East End. The bombs got rid of a lot and it’s all been rebuilt. The Spitalfields Market is full of chains and it’s been gentrified, and you’ve got your Gilbert & Georges and your Tracey Emins, and the place is full of art studios and it’s become the centre of the world. It’s the new Chelsea. I sold my house in Hammersmith where I lived for forty years (that I bought for £2,000 with 100% mortgage from the LCC) and I came back and bought a flat here in Spitalfields with the proceeds. And the rest I put in the bank for when I am that constant thing – an out of work actor!”
Outside the soup kitchen in Brune St where Harry came with his mother at the age of four.
At the former Jewish Board of Guardians in Middlesex St.
Harry as Private Rabin in “A Hill in Korea,” 1956.
Harry Landis
At the Tweed Cycle Run
On a day when the light was as you thought only existed in landscapes by Gainsborough, five hundred dapper gallants on bicycles, dressed up to the nines in tweeds and other fancy gear, set out from St Paul’s Cathedral at midday to flaunt their finery in the face of the metropolis’ populace. And to see this vast current of stylish cyclists go forth from the great cathedral – launching themselves with a cheer down Ludgate Hill on flawless Spring day – was a joyous spectacle, guaranteed to melt the heart of any foolish misanthropist in a flash.
I never saw so much tweed gathered together in one place, as I saw that morning beneath the gleaming dome towering overhead. There were so many plus-fours and suits and jackets and trews and caps and waistcoats and ties, that I thought my vision was going awry for all the herring-bone pattern crossing my retina. Yet everyone wore tweed differently and everyone had dressed to look their very best, expressive of their relish at being among the first five hundred who managed to snaffle up one of the coveted tickets. The gentlemen had waxed their moustaches and the ladies had primped their perms. Groomed and shining, all were raring to leap astride their mounts and take the city by storm, riding vintage bicycles, penny-farthings and tricycles and tandems and boneshakers. There was even a piano-bicycle with a pianist who kept on pedalling even as he played the keys.
Just in its third year, no wonder the magnificent Tweed Run is already a global sensation. Beginning with one hundred and sixty cyclists arrayed in tweed for a turn around London in January 2009, it has now inspired copycat events in sixteen other cities across the world including New York, Paris, Sydney and Tokyo. Elegant in its simplicity, the notion of enthusiasts for traditional cycling attire banding together for a beano, enjoying a high old time, lifting the spirits of a city and raising money for bikes for Africa, the Tweed Run is one of the things we can be proud of giving to the world.
The traffic ground to a halt – horns honked and five hundred cycle bells tinkled – and drivers leaned from their windows to gawp in awestruck delight as, like salmon coursing through a great river, the playful cyclists of the Tweed Run teemed through the city streets spreading innocent amazement, causing pedestrians to stop in wonder and break into laughter at the bizarre poetry of this unique event.
Across Westminster Bridge they pedalled, over to the Palace then down the Mall, around Trafalgar Square and up Regent St – where Saturday shoppers broke into cheers and applause – before veering East to arrive at Lincoln’s Inn Fields at two for tea. Remarkably for such an unseasonably warm day and the ubiquity of tweed, there were few who displayed visible perspiration or reddening of the face, although the queue for a cuppa stretched halfway to the Old Cheshire Cheese and the lawn was littered with those grateful to recline upon the soft green grass in the shade of the heavy blossom and freshly unfurled leaves overhead. Music from the bandstand drifted gently among the trees as photographers took advantage of this colourful fête champêtre, while the tweedy cyclists, having become a tribe now, turned enthusiastically gregarious, and since they no longer required any introduction to one to another, a spontaneous sense of communal goodwill and excitement arose which overflowed the park.
From here, as the afternoon shadows lengthened, it was a straight home run Eastward down the Clerkenwell Rd to arrive at the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Social Club, completing the day’s modest ten mile jaunt. There was singing and tap dancing, and a lively trade in pints at the bar as parched cyclists quenched their thirsts, and the party soon spilled out onto the green where new friends were swapping contacts as the time for farewells drew near. Lingering late and reluctantly leaving, it was a day of beautiful hullaballoo, already containing the anticipation of fond memories to come.
Later, I realised how rare it was to see so many people relaxed and happy in public, and inhabiting the city streets as if they owned them – which we all do. The day was a celebration of our great city which offers an unsurpassed backdrop to life, and the day was a celebration of British idiosyncrasy and our culture that delights in imaginative individuality of all kinds, and the day was a celebration of dressing up and having fun, and the day was a celebration of moustaches, and the day was a celebration of cycling, and, naturally, the day was a celebration of tweed – because, in case you did not know it, tweed is sexy again.
