GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT, 
 
 ome 
 
 es u 
 
 GHEOKGE AUGUSTUS SALA, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "A JOURNEY DUE NORTH," "TWICE ROUND THE CLOCK,' 
 " THE BADDINGTON PEERAGE," ETC. 
 
 LONDON: 
 CHAPMAN & HALL, 193 PICCADILLY. 
 
 1859. 
 
STACK 
 
 LONDON : PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. . PAGR 
 
 I. THE KEY OF THE STREET ... 1 
 
 II. GETTING UP A PANTOMIME . . 16 
 
 I/ III. DOWN WHITECHAPEL, FAR AWAY . . 32 
 
 IV. JACK ALIVE IN LONDON . . . 41 
 
 V. THINGS DEPARTED . . . .56 
 
 VI. PHASES OF 'PUBLIC' LIFE. I. . . 66 
 
 VII. PHASES OF 'PUBLIC' LIFE. II. . . 80 
 
 VIII. PHASES OF ' PUBLIC ' LIFE. III. . . 92 
 
 IX. POWDER DICK AND HIS TRAIN . . 102 
 
 X. MY SWAN .... 114 
 
 XI. THE BOTTLE OF HAY .... 122 
 
 XII. CITY SPECTRES . . . . . 135 
 
 XIH. HOUSELESS AND HUNGRY . . .145 
 
 XIV. THE SECRETS OF THE GAS . 156 
 
 XV. PERFIDIOUS PATMOS . . .163 
 
 XVI. LEICESTER SQUARE . ' . . 173 
 
 XVII. DAYBREAK . . . . .184 
 
 XVIII. ARCADIA . . . . 192 
 
 XIX. TRAVELS IN CAWDOR STREET . . . 206 
 
 XX. HOUSES TO LET . _ ,^ . . . 216 
 
 XXI. TATTYBOYS RENTS . . . .231 
 
 479 
 
IV CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 XXII. TATTYBOYS RENTERS . . . 245 
 
 XXIII. DOWN WHITECHAPEL WAY . . . 256 
 
 XXIV. THE MUSICAL WORLD . . . 269 
 XXV. MUSIC IN PAVING-STONES . . . 283 
 
 XXVI. A LITTLE MORE HARMONY . . 297 
 
 XXVII. GIBBET STREET . . . . 307 
 
 XXVIII. STROLLERS AT DUMBLEDOWNDEARY . . 315 
 
 XXIX. CHEERILY, CHEERILY! . . . 330 
 
 S XXX. HOW I WENT TO SEA . . . 345 
 
 XXXI. FASHION ..... 360 
 
 XXXII. YELLOWKNIGHTS . . . . 367 
 
 f XXXIII. THE SPORTING WORLD . . . 374 
 
 XXXIV. WHERE ARE THEY? . 390 
 
GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 i. 
 
 THE KEY OF THE STREET. 
 / 
 
 IT is commonly asserted, and as commonly believed, that there 
 are seventy thousand persons in London who rise every morn- 
 ing without the slightest knowledge as to where they shall 
 lay their heads at night. However the number may be over 
 or understated, it is very certain that a vast quantity of people 
 are daily in the above-mentioned uncertainty regarding sleep- 
 ing accommodation, and that when night approaches, a great 
 majority solve the problem in a somewhat (to themselves) 
 disagreeable manner, by not going to bed at all. 
 
 People who stop up, or out all night, may be divided into 
 three classes : First, editors, bakers, market-gardeners, and 
 all those who are kept out of their beds by business. Secondly, 
 gentlemen and 'gents/ anxious to cultivate a knowledge of 
 the ' lark' species, or intent on the navigation of the ' spree.' 
 Thirdly, and lastly, those ladies and gentlemen who do not go 
 to bed, for the very simple reason that they have no beds to 
 goto. 
 
 The members of this last class a very numerous one are 
 said, facetiously, to possess ' the key of the street/ And a 
 remarkably disagreeable key it is. It will unlock for you all 
 manner of caskets you would fain know nothing about. It is 
 the ' open sesame ' to dens you never saw before, and would 
 much rather never see again, a key to knowledge which 
 should surely make the learner a sadder man, if it make him 
 not a wiser one. 
 
 Come with me, luxuriant tenant of heavy-draped four-poster 
 basker on feather-bed, and nestler in lawn sheets. Come 
 
 B 
 
2 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 with, me, comfortable civic bolster-presser snug woollen- 
 nightcap-wearer. Come with me, even workman, labourer, 
 peasant sleeper on narrow pallet though your mattress be 
 hard, and your rug coarse. Leave your bed bad as it may 
 be and gaze on those who have no beds at all. Follow with me 
 the veins and arteries of this huge giant that lies a-sleeping. 
 Listen while with ' the key of the street ' I unlock the stony 
 coffer, and bring forth the book, and from the macadamised 
 page read forth the lore of midnight London Life. 
 
 I have no bed to-night. Why, it matters not. Perhaps 
 I have lost my latch-key, perhaps I never had one ; yet am 
 fearful of knocking up my landlady after midnight. Perhaps 
 I have a caprice a fancy for stopping up all night. At 
 all events, I have no bed ; and, saving ninepence (sixpence 
 in silver and threepence in coppers), no money. I must walk 
 the streets all night ; for I cannot, look you, get anything in 
 the shape of a .bed for less than a shilling. Coffee-houses, 
 into which seduced by their cheap appearance I have 
 entered, and where I have humbly sought a lodging, laugh 
 my ninepence to scorn. They demand impossible eighteen- 
 pences unattainable shillings. There is clearly no bed for 
 me. 
 
 It is midnight so the clanging tongue of St. Dunstan's 
 tells me as I stand thus, bedless, at Temple Bar. I have 
 walked a good deal during the day, and have an uncomfort- 
 able sensation in my feet, suggesting the idea that the soles of 
 my boots are made of roasted brick-bats. I am thirsty, too 
 (it is July, and sultry), and, just as the last chime of St. 
 Dunstan's is heard, I have half a pint of porter and a ninth 
 part of my ninepence is gone from me for ever. The public- 
 house where I have it (or rather the beer-shop, for it is an 
 establishment of the ' glass of ale and sandwich ' description) 
 is an early-closing one ; and the proprietor, as he serves me, 
 yawningly orders the pot-boy to put up the shutters, for he is 
 ' off to bed.' Happy proprietor ! There is a bristly-bearded 
 tailor, too, very beery, having his last pint, who utters a 
 similar somniferous intention. He calls it ' Bedfordshire/ 
 Thrice happy tailor ! 
 
 I envy him fiercely, as he goes out, though, God wot, his 
 bedchamber may be but a squalid attic, and his bed a tattered 
 hop-sack, with a slop great-coat from the emporium of Messrs. 
 Melchisedech and Son, and which he has been working at all 
 day for a coverlid. I envy his children (I am sure he has a 
 
THE KEY OF THE STREET, 3 
 
 callow, ragged brood of them), for they have at least some- 
 where to sleep, I havn't. 
 
 I watch, with a species of lazy curiosity, the whole process 
 of closing the ' Original Burton Ale House,' from the sudden 
 shooting up of the shutters, through the area grating, like 
 gigantic Jacks-in-a-box, to the final adjustment of screws and 
 iron nuts. Then I bend my steps westward, and at the corner 
 of Wellington Street stop to contemplate a cab-stand. 
 
 Cudgel thyself, weary Brain, exhaust thyself, Invention, 
 torture thyself, Ingenuity all, and in vain, for the miserable 
 acquisition of six feet of mattress and a blanket ! 
 
 Had I the delightful impudence, now the calm audacity 
 of my friend, Bolt, I should not be five minutes without a bed. 
 Bolt,, I verily believe, would not have the slightest hesitation 
 in walking into the grandest hotel in Albernarle Street or 
 Jermyn Street, asking for supper and a bootjack, having his 
 bed warmed, and would trust to Providence and his happy 
 knack of falling, like a cat, on all-fours, for deliverance in the 
 morning. I could as soon imitate Bolt as I could dance on the 
 tight-rope. Spunge again, that stern Jeremy Diddler, who 
 always bullies you when you relieve him, and whose 'request 
 for the loan of half a crown is more like a threat than a peti- 
 tion Spunge, I say, would make a violent irruption into .a 
 friend's room ; and, if he did not turn him out of his bed, 
 would at least take possession of his sofa and his great-coats 
 for the night, and impetuously demand breakfast in the morn- 
 ing. If 1 were only Spunge, now ! 
 
 What am I to do ? It is just a quarter past twelve ; how 
 am I to walk about till noon to-morrow ? Suppose I walk 
 three miles an hour, am I to walk thirty-five miles in these 
 fearful London streets ? Suppose it rains, can I stand under 
 an archway for twelve hours ? 
 
 I have heard of the dark arches of the Adelphi, and of 
 houseless vagrants crouching there by night. But, then, I 
 have read that police constables are nightly enjoined by their 
 inspectors to route out these vagrants, and drive them from 
 their squalid refuge. Then there are the dry arches of 
 Waterloo Bridge, and the railway arches ; but I abandon the 
 idea of seeking refuge there, for I am naturally timorous, and I 
 can't help thinking of chloroform and life-preservers in con- 
 nexion with them. Though I have little to be robbed of, 
 Heaven knows ! 
 
 I have heard, too, of tramps' lodging-houses, and of the 
 
 B 2 
 
4 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 1 twopenny rope.' I am not prepared to state that I would 
 not avail myself of that species of accommodation, for I am 
 getting terribly tired and foot-sore. But I don't know where 
 to seek for it, and I am ashamed to ask. 
 
 I would give something to lie down, too. I wonder whether 
 that cabman would think it beneath his dignity to accept a pot 
 of porter, and allow me to repose in his vehicle till he got a 
 fare ? I know some cabmen never obtain one during the night, 
 and I could snooze comfortably in hackney-carriage two thou- 
 sand and twenty-two. But I cannot form a favourable opinion 
 of the driver, who is discussing beer and democratic politics 
 with the waterman ; and neither he nor any of his brother 
 Jehus, indeed, seem at all the persons to ask a favour of. 
 
 It is Opera night, as I learn from the accidentally-heard 
 remark of a passing policeman. To watch the departing 
 equipages will, surely, help to pass the time on bravely, and 
 with something almost like hope, I stroll to Covent Garden 
 Theatre. 
 
 I am in the thick of it at once. Such a scrambling, push- 
 ing, jostling, and shouting ! Such pawing of spirited horses, 
 and objurgations of excited policemen ! Now, Mrs. Fitz- 
 somebody's carriage stops the way ; and now, Mr. Smith, of 
 the Stock Exchange, with two ladies on each arm, stands 
 bewildered in a chaos of carriages, helplessly ejaculating 
 * Cab.' Now, is there a playful episode in the shape of a 
 policeman dodging a pickpocket among horses' heads, and 
 under wheels ; and now, a pitiable one, in the person of an 
 elderly maiden lady, who has lost her party in the crush, and 
 her shoe in the mud, and is hopping about the piazza like an 
 agonised sparrow. It is all over soon, however. The car- 
 riages rattle, and the cabs lumber away. The great city 
 people, lords of Lombard Street, and kaisers of Cornhill, depart 
 in gorgeous chariots, emblazoned in front and at the back. 
 The dukes and marquises, and people of that sort, glide away 
 in tiny broughams, and infinitesimal clarences. The highest 
 personage of the land drives off in a plain chariot, with two 
 servants in plain black, more like a doctor (as I hear a gentle- 
 man from the country near me indignantly exclaim) than a 
 Queen. Mr. Smith has found his party, and the sparrow-like 
 lady her shoe, by this time. Nearly everybody is gone. Stay, 
 the gentleman who thinks it a ' genteel ' thing to go to the 
 Opera, appears on the threshold carefully adjusting his white 
 neckcloth with the huge bow, and donning a garment some- 
 
THE KEY OF THE STREET. 5 
 
 thing between a smockfrock and a horsecloth, which is called, 
 I believe, the ' Opera envelope.' Pie will walk homo to 
 Camberwell with his lorgnette case in his hand, and in white 
 kid gloves, to let everybody know where he has been. The 
 policemen and the night wanderers will be edified, no doubt. 
 Following him comes the habitue, who is a lover of music, I 
 am sure. He puts his gloves, neatly folded, into his breast- 
 pocket, stows away his opera-glass, and buttons his coat. 
 Then he goes quietly over to the Albion, where I watch him 
 gravely disposing of a pint of stout at the bar. He is ten to 
 one a gentleman : and I am sure he is a sensible man. And 
 now all, horse and foot, are departed ; the heavy portals are 
 closed, and the Eoyal Italian Opera is left to the fireman, to 
 darkness, and to me. 
 
 The bed question has enjoyed a temporary respite while 
 these proceedings are taking place. Its discussion is postponed 
 still further by the amusement and instruction I derive from 
 watching the performances in the ham and beef shop at the 
 corner of Bow Street. Here are crowds of customers, hot and 
 hungry from the Lyceum or Drury Lane, and clamorous for 
 sandwiches. Ham sandwiches, beef sandwiches, German 
 sausage sandwiches legions of sandwiches are cut and con- 
 sumed. The cry is { mustard,' and anon the coppers rattle, 
 and payment is tendered and change given. Then come the 
 people who carry home half a pound of ' cold round ' or three- 
 pennyworth of ' brisket ;' I scrutinise them, their purchases, 
 and their money. I watch the scale with rapt attention, and 
 wait with trembling eagerness the terrific combat between that 
 last piece of fat and the half ounce weight. The half ounce 
 has it ; and the beef merchant gives the meat a satisfied slap 
 with the back of his knife, and rattles the price triumphantly. 
 I have been so intent on all this, that I have taken no heed of 
 time as yet ; so, when custom begins to flag, glancing at the 
 clock, I am agreeably surprised to find it is ten minutes past one. 
 
 A weary waste of hours yet to traverse the silence of the 
 night season yet to endure. There are many abroad still ; 
 but the reputable wayfarers drop off gradually, and the disre- 
 putable ones increase with alarming rapidity. The great- 
 coated policeman, the shivering Irish prowlers, and some 
 fleeting shadows that seem to be of women, have taken undis- 
 puted possession of Bow Street and Long Acre ; and but for a 
 sprinkling of young thieves, and a few tipsy bricklayers, they 
 would have it all their own way in Drury Lane. 
 
6 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 I have wandered into this last-named unsavoury thorough- 
 fare, and stand disconsolately surveying its aspect. And it 
 strikes me now, that it is eminently distinguished for its street- 
 corners. There is scarcely a soul to be seen in the street 
 itself, but all the corners have posts, and nearly all the posts 
 are garnished with leaning figures now two stalwart police- 
 men holding municipal converse -now two women, God help 
 them ! now a knot of lads with pale faces, long greasy hair, 
 and short pipes. Thieves, my friend (if I had a jfriend) 
 unmistakeable thieves. 
 
 There are no professional beggars about what on earth is 
 there for them to be out for ! The leggees are gone home to 
 their suppers and their beds, and the beggars are gone, home 
 to their suppers and their beds. They have all got beds, 
 bless you ! 
 
 Some of the doorways have heaps of something huddled up 
 within them ; and ever and anon a policeman will come and 
 stir the something up with his truncheon, or more probably 
 with his boot. Then you will see a chaotic movement of legs 
 and arms, and hear a fretful crooning with an Irish accent. 
 Should the guardian of the night insist in the enforcement of 
 his ' move on ' decree the legs and arms will stagger a few 
 paces onward, and as soon as the policeman's back is turned, 
 slink into another doorway to be routed out perchance 
 again in another quarter of an hour by another truncheon, or 
 another boot. 
 
 Half-past one by the clock of St. Mary-le -Strand, and I am 
 in Charles Street, Drury Lane. It is a very dirty little street 
 this full worthy, I take it, to challenge competition with 
 Church Lane or Buckeridge Street. A feeling, however, 
 indefinable, but strong, prompts me to pursue its foul and 
 devious course for some score of yards. Then I stop. 
 
 ' Lodgings for single men at fourpence per night.' This 
 agreeable distich greets me, pictured on the panes of a 
 window, behind which a light is burning. I step into the 
 road to have a good look at the establishment that proffers the 
 invitation. It is a villanous ramshackle house a horrible 
 cut-throat-looking den, to be sure : but then the fourpence ! 
 Think of that, Master Brooke ! There is a profusion of hand- 
 bills plastered on the door-jambs, which I can read by the 
 light of a gas-lamp a few paces off. I decipher a flattering 
 legend of separate beds, every convenience for cooking, and 
 hot water always ready. I am informed that this is the real 
 
THE KEY OF THE STEEET. 7 
 
 model lodging-house; and I read, moreover, some derisive 
 couplets relative to the Great Spitalfields Lodging-House, 
 which is styled a ' Bastile F I begin fingering, involuntarily, 
 the eightpence in my pocket. Heaven knows what uncouth 
 company I may fall into ; but then, fourpence ! and my feet 
 are so tired. Jacta est alea, I will have fourpenn'orth. 
 
 You have heard ere now what the ' deputy ' of a tramps' 
 lodging-house is like. I am received by the deputy a short- 
 haired low-browed stunted lout, sometimes, it is said, not over 
 courteous to inquisitive strangers. As, however, I come to 
 sleep, and not to inspect, I am not abused, but merely 
 inspected and admitted. I am informed that, with the addi- 
 tion my company will make, the establishment is full. I pay 
 my fourpence, without the performance of which ceremony I 
 do not get beyond the filthy entrance passage. Then, the 
 4 deputy' bars the door, and, brandishing an iron candlestick 
 as though it were an antique mace, bids me follow him. 
 
 What makes me, when we have ascended the rotten stair- 
 case, when I have entered my bedchamber when the 
 * deputy ' has even bid me a wolfish good-night what makes 
 me rush down stairs, and, bursting through the passage, beg 
 him to let me out for Heaven's sake ? What makes me, when 
 the ' deputy ' has unbarred the door, and bade me go out, and 
 be something'd, and has not given me back my fourpence, 
 stand sick and stupified in the street, till I wake up to a 
 disgusted consciousness in being nearly knocked down by a 
 group of staggering roysterers, howling out a drunken chorus ? 
 
 It was not the hang-dog look of the ' deputy/ or the cut- 
 throat appearance of the house. It was not even the aspect 
 of the score or more ragged wretches who were to be my 
 sleeping companions. It was, in plain English, the smell of 
 the bugs. Ugh! the place was alive with them. They 
 crawled on the floor they dropped from the ceiling they 
 ran mad races on the walls ! Give me the key of the street, 
 and let me wander forth again. 
 
 I have not got further than Broad Street, St. Giles's, before 
 I begin to think that I have been slightly hasty. I feel so 
 tired, so worn, so full of sleep now, that I can't help the 
 thought that I might have fallen off into heavy sleep yonder 
 and that the havoc committed by the bugs on my carcase 
 might have been borne unfelt. It is too late now. The 
 fourpence are departed, and I dare not face the deputy 
 again. 
 
8 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 Two in the morning, and still black, thick, impervious- 
 night, as I turn into Oxford Street, by Meux's Brewery. The 
 flitting shadows that seemed to be of women, have grown 
 scarcer. A quarter past two, and I have gained the Eegent 
 Circus, and can take my choice, either for a stroll in the 
 neighbourhood of the Kegent's Park, or a quiet lounge in the 
 district of the Clubs. Quite an epicure ! I choose the Clubs,, 
 and shamble down Eegent Street, towards Piccadilly. 
 
 I feel myself slowly, but surely, becoming more of a regular 
 night skulker a houseless, hopeless, vagrant, every moment* 
 I feel my feet shuffle, my shoulders rise towards my ears ; 
 my head goes on one side ; I hold my hands in a crouching 
 position before me ; I no longer walk, I prowl. Though it is 
 July, I shiver. As I stand at the corner of Conduit Street 
 (all night skulkers affect corners), a passing figure, in satin 
 and black lace, flings me a penny. How does the phantom 
 know that I have the key of the streets ? I am not in rags, 
 and yet my plight must be evident. So I take the penny. 
 
 Where are the policemen, I wonder ? I am walking in the 
 centre of the road, yet, from end to end of the magnificent 
 street, I cannot see a single soul. Stay, here is one. A little 
 fair-headed ruffian leaps from the shadow of Archbishop 
 Tenison's Chapel. He has on a ragged pair of trousers, and 
 nothing else to speak of. He vehemently demands to be 
 allowed to turn head over heels three times for a penny. I 
 give him the penny the phantom gave me (cheap charity!), 
 and intimate that I can dispense with the tumbling. But he 
 is too honest for that, and, putting the penny in his mouth, 
 disappears in a series of summersaults. Then, the gas-lamps 
 and I have it all to ourselves. 
 
 Safe at the corner (corners again you see !) of what was once 
 the Quadrant, where a mongrel dog joins company. I know 
 he is a dog without a bed, like I am, for he has not that grave 
 trot, so full of purpose, which the dog on business has. This- 
 dog wanders irresolutely, and makes feigned turnings up by- 
 streets returning to the main thoroughfare in a slouching 
 manner ; he ruminates over cigar-stumps and cabbage-stalks, 
 which no homeward-bound dog would do. But even that dog is 
 happier than I am, for he can lie down on any doorstep, and 1 
 take his rest, and no policeman shall say him nay ; but the 
 New Police Act won't let me do so, and says sternly that I 
 must ' move on.' 
 
 Hallo ! a rattle in the distance nearer nearer louder and 
 
THE KEY OF THE STREET. 9 
 
 louder ! Now it bursts upon my sight. A fire-engine at full 
 speed ; and the street is crowded in a moment ! 
 
 Where the people come from / don't pretend to say but 
 there they are hundreds of them all wakeful and noisy, and 
 clamorous. On goes the engine, with people hallooing, and 
 following, and mingling with the night wind the dreadful cry 
 of FIRE. 
 
 I follow of course. An engine at top speed is as potent a 
 spell to a night prowler, as a pack of hounds in full cry is to 
 a Leicestershire yeoman. Its influence is contagious too, and 
 the crowd swells at every yard of distance traversed. The 
 fire is in a narrow street of Soho, at a pickle-shop. It is a fierce 
 one, at which I think the crowd is pleased ; but then nobody 
 lives in the house, at which I imagine they are slightly cha- 
 grined ; for excitement, you see, at a fire is everything. En 
 revanche there are no less than three families of small children 
 next door, and the crowd are hugely delighted when they are 
 expeditiously brought out in their night-dresses, by the Fire- 
 brigade. 
 
 More excitement ! The house on the other side has caught 
 fire. The mob are in ecstasies, and the pickpockets make a 
 simultaneous onslaught on all the likely pockets near them, 
 I am not pleased, but interested highly interested. I would 
 pump, but I am not strong in the arms. Those who pump, I 
 observe, receive beer. 
 
 I have been watching the blazing pile so long basking, as 
 it were, in the noise and shouting and confusion ; the hoarse 
 clank of the engines the cheering of the crowd the dull 
 roar of the fire, that the bed question has been quite in abey- 
 ance, and I have forgotten all about it and the time. But 
 when the fire is quenched, or at least brought under, as it is 
 at last ; when the sheets of flame and sparks are succeeded by 
 columns of smoke and steam ; when, as a natural consequence, 
 the excitement begins to flag a little, and the pressure of the 
 crowd diminishes ; then, turning away from the charred and 
 gutted pickle-shop, I hear the clock of St. Anne's, Soho, strike 
 four, and find that it is broad daylight. 
 
 Four dreary hours yet to wander before a London day com- 
 mences ; four weary, dismal revolutions on the clock-face, 
 before the milkman makes his rounds, and I can obtain access 
 to my penates, with the matutinal supply of milk ! 
 
 To add to my discomfort and to the utter heart- weariness 
 and listless misery which is creeping over me, it begins to 
 
10 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 rain. Not a sharp pelting shower, but a slow, monotonous, 
 ill-conditioned drizzle ; damping without wetting now delud- 
 ing you into the idea that it is going to hold up, and now with 
 a sudden spirt in your face, mockingly informing you that it 
 has no intention of the kind. Yery wretchedly indeed I 
 thread the narrow little streets a~bout Soho, meeting no one 
 but a tom-cat returning from his club, and a misanthropic- 
 looking policeman, who is feeling shutter-bolts and tugging 
 at door-handles with a vicious aspect, as though he were dis- 
 appointed that some unwary householder had not left a slight 
 temptation for a sharp housebreaker. 
 
 I meet another policeman in Golden Square, who looks 
 dull ; missing, probably, the society of the functionary who 
 guards the fire-escape situated in that fashionable locality, 
 and who hasn't come back from the burnt pickle-shop yet. 
 He honours me with a long stare as I pass him. 
 
 ' Good morning,' he says. 
 
 I return the compliment. 
 
 * Going home to bed ?' he asks. * 
 
 ' Y-e-es,' I answer. 
 
 He turns on his heels and says no more ; but, bless you ! I 
 can see irony in his bull's-eye contemptuous incredulity in 
 his oil-skin cape ! It needs not the long low whistle in which 
 he indulges, to tell me that he knows very well I have no bed 
 to go home to. 
 
 I sneak quietly down Sherrard Street into the Quadrant. 
 I don't know why, but I begin to be afraid of policemen. I 
 never transgressed the law yet I avoid the 4 force.' The 
 sound of their heavy boot-heels disquiets me. One of them 
 stands at the door of Messrs. Swan and Edgar's, and to 
 avoid him I actually abandon a resolution I had formed of 
 walking up Eegent Street, and. turn down the Haymarket 
 instead. 
 
 There are three choice spirits who evidently have got beds 
 to go to, though they are somewhat tardy in seeking them. I 
 can tell that they have latch-keys, by their determined air 
 their bold and confident speech. They have just turned, or 
 have been turned out from an oyster-room. They are all 
 three very drunk, have on each other's hats, and one of them 
 has a quantity of dressed lobster in his cravat. 
 
 These promising gentlemen are ' out on the spree.' The 
 doors of the flash public-houses and oyster-rooms are letting 
 out similar detachments of choice spirits all down the Hay- 
 
THE KEY OF THE STREET. 11 
 
 market ; some of a most patrician sort, with most fierce mou- 
 stachios and whiskers ; whom I think I have seen before, and 
 whom I may very probably see again, in jackboots and golden 
 aiguillettes, prancing on huge black horses by the side of Her 
 Majesty's carriage, going to open Parliament. The gentlemen 
 or rather gents on the ' spree ' call this ' life.' They will 
 probably sleep in the station-house this morning, and will be 
 fined various sums for riotous conduct. They will get drunk, 
 I dare say, three hundred times in the course of a year, for 
 about three years. In the last-mentioned space of time they 
 will bonnet many dozen policemen, break some hundreds of 
 gas-lamps, have some hundreds of 'larks,' and scores of 
 'rows.' They will go to Epsom by the rail, and create dis 
 turbances on the course, and among the ' sticks,' and ' Aunt 
 Sallies.' They will frequent the Adelphi at half-price, and 
 haunt night-houses afterwards. They will spend their salaries 
 in debauchery, and obtain fresh supplies of money from bill- 
 discounters, and be swindled out of it by the proprietors of 
 gambling-houses. Some day, when their health and their 
 money are gone when they are sued on all their bills, and by 
 all the tradesmen they have plundered they will be dis- 
 charged from their situations, or be discarded by their friends. 
 Then they will subside into Whitecross Street and the Insol- 
 vent Debtors' Court and then, God knows ! they will die 
 miserably, I suppose : of delirium tremens, maybe. 
 
 I have taken a fancy to have a stroll save the mark ! in 
 St. James's Park, and am about to descend the huge flight of 
 stone steps leading to the Mall, when I encounter a martial 
 band, consisting of a grenadier in a great-coat, and holding a 
 lighted lantern (it is light as noon-day), an officer in a cloak, 
 and four or five more grenadiers in great-coats, looking remark- 
 ably ridiculous in those hideous grey garments. As to the 
 officer, he appears to regard everything with an air of unmiti- 
 gated disgust, and to look at the duty upon which he is en- 
 gaged as a special bore. I regard it rather in the light of a 
 farce. Yet, if I mistake not, these are ' Grand Bounds,' or 
 something of the sort. When the officer gets within a few 
 yards of the sentinel at the Duke of York's Column he shouts 
 out some unintelligible question, to which the bearer of Brown 
 Bess gives a responsive, but as unintelligible howl. Then the 
 foremost grenadier plays in an imbecile manner with his 
 lantern, like King Lear with his straw, and the officer flourishes 
 his sword ; and ' Grand Rounds ' are over, so far as the Duke 
 
12 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 of York is concerned, I suppose ; for the whole party trot 
 gravely down Pall Mall, towards the Duchess of Kent's. 
 
 I leave them, to their devices, and saunter moodily into the 
 Mall. It is but a quarter to five, now ; and I am so jaded 
 and tired that I can scarcely drag one foot after another. The 
 rain has ceased ; but the morning air is raw and cold ; and the 
 rawness clings, as it were, to the marrow of my bones. My 
 hair is wet, and falls in draggled hanks on my cheeks. My feet 
 seem to have grown preposterously large, and my boots so pre- 
 posterously small. I wish I were a dog or a dormouse ! I long 
 for a haystack, or a heap of sacks, or anything. I even think I 
 could find repose on one of those terrible inclined planes which 
 you see tilted towards you through the window of the Morgue at 
 Paris. I have a good mind to smash a lamp, and be taken to 
 the station-house. I have a good mind to throw myself over 
 Westminster Bridge. Isupposel am afraid ; for I don't do either. 
 
 Seeing a bench under a tree, I fling myself thereon ; and, 
 hard and full of knots and bumps as the seat is, roll myself 
 into a species of ball, and strive to go to sleep. But oh, vain 
 delusion ! I am horribly, excruciatingly wakeful, To make 
 the matter worse, I rise, and take a turn or two then I feel as 
 though I could sleep standing ; but availing myself of what I 
 consider a favourably drowsy moment, I cast myself on the 
 bench again, and find myself as wakeful as before ! 
 
 There is a young vagrant a tramp of some eighteen sum- 
 mers sitting beside me fast asleep, and snoring with pro- 
 voking pertinacity. He is half naked, and has neither shoes 
 nor stockings. Yet he sleeps, and very soundly too, to all ap- 
 pearance. As the loud-sounding Horse-Guards clock strikes 
 five, he wakes, eyes me for a moment, and muttering ' hard 
 lines, mate/ turns to sleep again. In the mysterious free- 
 masonry of misery, he calls me * mate.' I suppose, eventually 
 that I catch from him some portion of his vagrant acquire- 
 ment of somnolence under difficulties, for, after writhing and 
 turning on the comfortless wooden seat till every bone and 
 muscle are sore, I fall into a deep, deep sleep so deep it seems- 
 like death. 
 
 So deep that I don't hear the quarters striking of that nui- 
 sance to Park-sleepers, the Horse-Guards clock and rise only, 
 suddenly en sursaut, as six o'clock strikes. My vagrant friend 
 has departed, and being apprehensive myself of cross examina- 
 tion from an approaching policeman (not knowing, in fact, what 
 hideous crime sleeping in -St. James's Park might be) I also 
 
THE KEY OF THE STREET. 13 
 
 withdrew, feeling very fagged and footsore yet slightly 
 refreshed by the hour's nap I have had. I pass the stands 
 where the cows are milked, and curds and whey dispensed, on 
 summer evenings ; and enter Charing Cross by the long Spring- 
 Garden passage. 
 
 I have been apprised several times during the night that 
 this was a market-morning in Covent Garden. I have seen 
 waggons, surmounted by enormous mountains of vegetable- 
 baskets, wending their way through the silent streets. I have 
 been met by the early costermongers in their donkey-carts, 
 and chaffed by the costerboys on my forlorn appearance. But 
 I have reserved Covent Garden as a bonne louche a wind-up to 
 my pilgrimage ; for I have heard and read how fertile is the 
 market in question in subjects of amusement and contempla- 
 tion. 
 
 I confess that I am disappointed. Covent Garden seems to 
 me to be but one great accumulation of cabbages. I am 
 pelted with these vegetables as they are thrown fro*m the lofty 
 summits of piled waggons to costermongers standing at the 
 base. I stumble among them as I walk ; in short, above, 
 below, on either side, cabbages preponderate. 
 
 I dare say, had I patience, that I should see a great deal 
 more ; but I am dazed with cabbages, and jostled to and fro, 
 and ' danged ' dreadfully by rude market-gardeners so I 
 eschew the market, and creep round the piazza. 
 
 I meet my vagrant friend of the Park here, who is having a 
 cheap and nutritious breakfast at a coffee-stall. The stall 
 itself is a nondescript species of edifice something between 
 a gipsy's tent and a watchman's box ; while, to carry out the 
 comparison, as it were, the lady who serves out the coffee very 
 much resembles a gipsy in person, and is clad in a decided 
 watchman's coat. The aromatic beverage (if I may be allowed 
 to give that name to the compound of burnt beans, roasted 
 horse-liver, and refuse chicory, of which the ' coffee ' is com- 
 posed) is poured, boiling hot, from a very cabalistic-looking 
 cauldron into a whole regiment of cups and saucers standing 
 near ; while, for more solid refection, the cups are flanked by 
 plates bearing massive piles of thick bread and butter, and an 
 equivocal substance, called c cake.' Besides my friend the 
 vagrant, two coster-lads are partaking of the hospitalities of 
 the cafe ; and a huge gardener, straddling over a pile of 
 potato-sacks, hard by, has provided himself with bread and 
 butter and coffee, from the same establishment, and is con- 
 
14 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 them with such avidity that the tears start from his 
 eyes at every gulp. 
 
 I have, meanwhile, remembered the existence of a certain 
 fourpenny-piece in my pocket, and have been twice or thrice 
 tempted to expend it. Yet, on reflection, I deem it better to 
 purchase with it a regular breakfast, and to repair to a legiti- 
 mate coffee-shop. The day is by this time getting rapidly on, 
 and something of the roar of London begins to be heard in 
 earnest. The dull murmur of wheels has never ceased, indeed, 
 the whole night through ; but now, laden cabs come tearing 
 past on their way to the railway station. The night policemen 
 gradually disappear, and sleepy potboys now gradually 
 appear, yawning at the doors of public-houses sleepy wait- 
 resses at the doors of coffee-houses and reading-rooms. There 
 have been both public-houses and coffee-shops open, however, 
 the whole night. The 'Mohawks' Arms' in the market never 
 closes. Young Lord Stultus, with Captain Asinus of the 
 Heavies, endeavoured to turn on all the taps there at four 
 o'clock this morning, but at the earnest desire of Frume, the 
 landlord, desisted ; and subsequently subsided into a chivalrous 
 offer of standing glasses of ' Old Tom ' all round, which was as 
 chivalrously accepted. As the ' all round ' comprised some 
 thirty ladies and gentlemen, Frume made a very good thing 
 of it ; and, like a prudent tradesman as he is, he still further 
 acted on the golden opportunity, by giving all those members 
 of the company (about three-fourths) who were drunk, glasses 
 of water instead of gin ; which operation contributed to dis- 
 courage intemperance, and improve his own exchequer in a 
 very signal and efficacious manner. As with the ' Mohawks' 
 Arms,' so with the 'Turpin's Head,' the great market- 
 gardeners' house, and the ' Pipe and Horse Collar,' frequented 
 by the night cabmen to say nothing of that remarkably snug 
 little house near Drury Lane, ' The Blue Bludgeon,' which is 
 well known to be the rendezvous of the famous Tom Thug 
 and his gang, whose achievements in the strangling line, by 
 means of a silk handkerchief and a life-preserver, used 
 tourniquet fashion, were so generally admired by the consistent 
 advocates of the ticket-of-leave system. I peep into some of 
 these noted hostelries as I saunter about. They begin to 
 grow rather quiet and demure as the day advances, and will 
 be till midnight, indeed, very dull and drowsy pothouses, as 
 times go. They don't light up to life, and jollity, and robbery, 
 and violence, before the small hours. 
 
THE KEY OF THE STEEET. 15 
 
 So with, the coffee-shops. The one I enter, to invest my 
 fourpence in a breakfast of coffee and bread and butter, has 
 been open all night likewise ; but the sole occupants now are 
 a dirty waiter, in a pitiable state of drowsiness, and half a 
 dozen homeless wretches who have earned the privilege of 
 sitting down at the filthy tables by the purchase of a cup of 
 coffee, and, with their heads on their hands, are snatching 
 furtive naps, cut short too short, alas! by the pokes and 
 * Wake up, there !' of the waiter. It is apparently his consigne 
 to allow no sleeping. 
 
 I sit down here, and endeavour to keep myself awake over 
 the columns of the ' Sun ' newspaper of last Tuesday week 
 unsuccessfully, however. I am so jaded and weary, so dog- 
 tired and utterly worn out, that I fall off again to sleep ; and 
 whether it is that the waiter has gone to sleep too, or that 
 the expenditure of fourpence secures exemption for me, I am 
 allowed to slumber. 
 
 I dream this time. A dreadful vision it is, of bugs, and 
 cabbages, and tramping soldiers, and anon of the fire at the 
 pickle-shop. As I wake, and find, to my great joy, that it is 
 ten minutes past eight o'clock, a ragged little news-boy brings 
 in a damp copy of the ' Times,' and I see half a column in 
 that journal headed ' Dreadful Conflagration in Soho.' 
 
 Were I not so tired, I should moralize over this, no doubt ; 
 but there are now but two things in my mind two things in 
 the world for me HOME and BED. Eight o'clock restores these 
 both to me so cruelly deprived of them for so long a time. 
 So, just as London work- away, steady-going London begins 
 to bestir itself, I hurry across the Strand, cross the shadow of 
 the first omnibus going towards the Bank ; and, as I sink be- 
 tween the sheets of MY BED, resign the key of the street into 
 the hands of its proper custodian, whoever he may be and, 
 whoever he may be, I don't envy him. 
 
16 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT 
 
 GETTING UP A PANTOMIME. 
 
 CHRISTMAS is coming. Cold weather, snow in the streets, 
 mince-pies, and our little boys and girls home for the holidays. 
 Kind-hearted people's donations for the poor-boxes. Turkeys 
 from the country ; Goose Clubs in town ; plums and candied 
 citron in the windows of the grocers' shops ; hot elder wine ; 
 snap-dragon ; hunt the slipper ; and the butchers' and bakers' 
 quarterly bills. The great Anniversary of Humanity gives 
 signs of its approach, and with it the joyfulness, and unbend- 
 ing, and unstarching of white neckcloths, and unaffected 
 charity, and genial hand-shaking and good fellowship, which, 
 once a year at least, dispel the fog of caste and prejudice in 
 this land of England. Christmas is coming, and, in his jovial 
 train, come also the Pantomimes. 
 
 Goodness ! though we know their stories all by heart, how 
 we love those same Pantomimes still ! Though we have seen 
 the same Clowns steal the same sausages, and have been asked 
 by the Pantaloon ' how we were to-morrow ?' for years and 
 years, how we delight in the same Clown, and Pantaloon still ! 
 There can't be anything aesthetic in a pantomime it must be 
 deficient in the ' unities ;' it has no ' epopoea,' or anything 
 in the shape of dramatic property, connected with it : yet it 
 must have something good about it to make us roar at the old, 
 old jokes, and wonder at the old tricks, and be delighted with 
 the old spangled fairies, and coloured fires. Perhaps there 
 may be something in the festive season, something contagious 
 in the wintry jollity of the year, that causes us, churchwardens, 
 householders, hard men of business, that we may be, to forget 
 parochial squabbles, taxes and water-rates, discount and agio- 
 tage, for hours, and enter, heart and soul, into participation 
 and appreciation of the mysteries of ' Harlequin Fee-fo-fum ; 
 or the Enchanted Fairy of the Island of Abracadabra.' Pos- 
 sibly there may be something in the shrill laughter, the 
 ecstatic hand-clapping, the shouts of triumphant laughter of 
 the little children, yonder. It may be, after all, that the 
 sausages and the spangles, the tricks and coloured fires of 
 Harlequin Fee-fo-fum may strike some long-forgotten chords ; 
 rummage up long-hidden sympathies ; wake up kindly feel- 
 
GETTING UP A PANTOMIME. 17 
 
 ings and remembrances of things that were, ere parochial 
 squabbles, water-rates, and discount had being ; when we too 
 were little children; when our jackets buttoned over our 
 trousers, and we wore frills round our necks, and long blue 
 sashes round our waists. Else why should something like a 
 wateriness in the eye, and a huskiness in the throat (not sor- 
 rowful, though) come over us, amid the most excruciatingly 
 comic portion of the ' comic business ?' Else why should the 
 lights, and the music, the children's laughter, and the spangled 
 fairies conjure up that mind-picture, half dim and half distinct, 
 of our Christmasses years ago ; of ' Magnall's Questions/ and 
 emancipation from the cane of grandmamma, who always kept 
 sweetstuff in her pockets ; of Uncle William, who was never 
 without a store of half-crowns wherewith to ' tip' us ; of poor 
 Sister Gussey, who died ; of the childish joys and griefs, the 
 hopes and fears of Christmas, in the year eighteen hundred 
 
 and ; never mind how many. 
 
 Hip, hip, hip ! for the Pantomime, however ! Exultingly 
 watch the Clown through his nefarious career ; roar at Jack- 
 pudding tumbling ; admire the paint on his face ; marvel at 
 the ' halls of splendour ' and ' glittering coral caves of the 
 Genius of the Sea/ till midnight comes, and the green baize 
 curtain rolls slowly down, and brown holland draperies cover 
 the ormolu decorations of the boxes. Then, if you can spare 
 half an hour, send the little children home to Brompton with 
 the best of governesses, and tarry awhile with me while I dis- 
 course of what goes on behind that same green curtain, of what 
 has gone on, before the Clown could steal his sausages, or the 
 spangled Fairy change an oak into a magic temple, or the 
 coloured fires light up the * Home of Beauty in the Lake of 
 the Silver Swans.' Let me, as briefly and succinctly as I can, 
 endeavour to give you an idea of the immense labour, and 
 industry, and perseverance of the nice ingenuity, and patient 
 mechanical skill of the various knowledge, necessary, nay, 
 indispensable ere Harlequin Fee-fo-fum can be put upon the 
 stage ; ere the green baize can rise, disclosing the coral caves 
 of the Genius of the Sea. Let us put on the cap of Fortunio, 
 and the stilts of Asmodeus ; let us go back to when the pan- 
 tomime was but an embryo of comicality, and, in its progress 
 towards the glory of full-blown ^pantomime-hood, watch the 
 labours of the Ants behind the Baize ants, without exaggera- 
 tion ; for, if ever there was a human ant-hill, the working 
 department of a theatre is something of that sort. 
 
18 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 And mere amusement your mere enlightenment on a sub- 
 ject, of which my readers may possibly be ignorant, are not 
 the sole objects I have in view. I do honestly think that the 
 theatrical profession and its professors are somewhat calum- 
 niated ; that people are rather too apt to call theatres sinks of 
 iniquity and dens of depravity, and to set down all actors as a 
 species of diverting vagabonds, who have acquired a know- 
 ledge of their calling without study, and exercise it without 
 labour. I imagine, that if a little more were known of how 
 hard-working, industrious, and persevering theatricals, as a 
 body, generally are, of what has to be done behind the 
 scenes of a theatre, and how it is done for our amusement, 
 we should look upon the drama with a more favourable 
 eye, and look upon even poor Jack-pudding (when he has 
 washed the paint off his face) with a little more charity and 
 forbearance. 
 
 Fortunio-capped, then, we stand in the green-room of the 
 Theatre Eoyal, Hatton Garden, one dark November morning, 
 while the stage-manager reads the manuscript of the opening 
 to the new grand pantomime of Harlequin Fee-fo-fum. The 
 dramatic performers the pantomimists are not present at this 
 reading, the lecture being preliminary, and intended for the 
 sole behoof of the working ants of the theatrical ant-hill the 
 fighting ants will have another reading to themselves. This 
 morning are assembled the scene-painter, an individual be- 
 spattered from head to foot with splashes of various colours, 
 attired in a painted, ragged blouse, a battered cap, and slip- 
 shod slippers. You would be rather surprised to see him turn 
 out, when his work is over, dressed like a gentleman (as he 
 is, and an accomplished gentleman to boot). Near him is the 
 property-man, also painted and bespattered, and strongly per- 
 fumed with a mingled odour of glue and turpentine. Then 
 there is the carpenter, who twirls a wide-awake hat between 
 his fingers, and whose attire generally betrays an embroidery 
 of shavings. The leader of the band is present. On the edge 
 of a chair sits the author not necessarily a seedy man, with 
 long hair and a manuscript peeping out of his coat pocket, 
 but a well-to-do looking gentleman, probably ; w r ith rather a 
 nervous air just now, and wincing somewhat, as the droning 
 voice of the stage-manager gives utterance to his comic com- 
 binations, and his creamiest jokes are met with immovable 
 stolidity from the persons present. Catch them laughing ! 
 The scene-painter is thinking of ' heavy sets ' and i cut 
 
GETTING UP A PANTOMIME. 19 
 
 ^cloths,' instead of quips and conundrums. The carpenter 
 cogitates on ' sinks ' and ' slides,' ' strikes ' and i pulls.' 
 The property-man ponders ruefully on the immense number 
 of comic masks to model, and coral branches to paint ; while 
 the master and mistress of the wardrobe, whom we have 
 hitherto omitted to mention, mentally cast up the number of 
 ^ells of glazed calico, silk, satin, and velvet required. Lastly, 
 enthroned in awful magnificence in some dim corner, sits the 
 management a portly, port-wine-voiced management, may 
 "be, with a white hat, and a double eye-glass with a broad 
 ribbon. This incarnation of theatrical power throws in an 
 occasional ' Good !' at which the author colours, and sings a 
 mental poean, varied by an ejaculation of ' Can't be done !' 
 at which the dramatist winces dreadfully. 
 
 The reading over, a short, desultory conversation follows. 
 It would be better, Mr. Brush, the painter, suggests, to make 
 the first scene a ' close in,' and not a ' sink.' Mr. Tacks, the 
 carpenter machinist, we mean intimates in a somewhat 
 threatening manner, that he shall want a ' power of nails and 
 screws ;' while the master of the wardrobe repudiates, with 
 respectful indignation, an economical suggestion of the manage- 
 ment touching the renovation of some old ballet dresses by 
 means of new spangles, and the propriety of cutting up an old 
 crimson velvet curtain, used some years before, into costumes 
 for the supernumeraries. As to the leader of the band, he is 
 slowly humming over a very ' Little Warbler ' of popular 
 airs, which he thinks he can introduce; while the stage- 
 manager, pencil in hand, fights amicably with the author as 
 to the cuts necessary to make the pantomime read with greater 
 smartness. All, however, agree that it will do ; and to each 
 working ant is delivered a ' plot ' of what he or she has to 
 manufacture by a given time (generally a month or six weeks 
 from the day of reading). Mr. Brush has a ' plot ' of so many 
 pairs of flats and wings, so many ' borders ' and set pieces, so 
 many cloths and backings. Mr. Tacks has a similar one, as 
 it is his department to prepare the canvasses and machinery 
 on which Mr. Brush subsequently paints. Mr. Tagg, the 
 wardrobe keeper, is provided with a list of the fairies', 
 demons,' kings,' guards,' and slaves' costumes he is required 
 to confectionner ; and Mr. Eosin, the leader, is presented with 
 a complete copy of the pantomime itself, in order that he may 
 study its principal points, and arrange characteristic music 
 for it. As for poor Mr. Gorget, the property-man, he departs 
 
 c 2 . 
 
20 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 in a state of pitiable bewilderment, holding in his hand a por- 
 tentous list of properties required, from regal crowns to red- 
 hot pokers. He impetuously demands how it's all to be 
 done in a month. Done, it will be, notwithstanding. The 
 stage-manager departs in a hurry (in which stage-managers 
 generally are, twenty hours out of the twenty -four), and, en-- 
 trapping the Clown in the passage (who is an eccentric cha- 
 racter of immense comic abilities, and distinguished for train- 
 ing all sorts of animals, from the goose which follows him like 
 a clog, to a jackass-foal which resides in his sitting-room), 
 enters into an animated pantomimic conversation with him, 
 discoursing especially of the immense number of ' bits of fat ? 
 for him (Clown) in the pantomime. 
 
 The author's name we need not mention ; it will appear in 
 the bill, as it has appeared in (and across) many bills, stamped 
 and unstamped, before. When the officials have retired, he 
 remains awhile with the management the subject of con- 
 versation mainly relating to a piece of grey paper, addressed 
 to Messrs. Coutts, Drummonds, or Childs. 
 
 For the next few days, though work has not actually 
 commenced in all its vigour, great preparations are made. 
 Forests of timber, so to speak, are brought in at the stage 
 door. Also, bales of canvas, huge quantities of stuffs for the 
 wardrobe ; foil-paper, spangles and Dutch metal, generally. 
 Firkins of size, and barrels of whiting, arrive for Mr. Brush ; 
 hundred- weights of glue and gold-leaf for Mr. Gorget, not for- 
 getting the ' power of nails and screws ' for Mr. Tacks. 
 Another day, and the ants are all at work behind the baize 
 for Harlequin Fee-fo-fum. 
 
 Fortunio's cap will stand us in good stead again, and wo 
 had better attach ourselves to the skirts of the stage-manager, 
 who is here, there, and everywhere, to see that the work is 
 being properly proceeded with. The carpenters have been at 
 work since six o'clock this nice wintry morning ; let us see 
 how they are getting on after breakfast. 
 
 We crojss the darkened stage, and, ascending a very narrow 
 staircase at the back thereof, mount into the lower range of 
 ' flies.' A mixture this of the between-decks of a ship, a 
 rope-walk, and the old wood-work of the Chain-pier at 
 Brighton. Here are windlasses, capstans, ropes, cables, 
 chains, pulleys innumerable. Take care ! or you will stumble 
 across the species of winnowing-machine, used to imitate the 
 noise of wind, and which is close to the large sheet of copper 
 
GETTING UP A PANTOMIME. 21 
 
 which makes the thunder. The tin cylinder, filled with peas, 
 used for rain and hail, is down stairs ; but you may see the 
 wires, or 4 travellers,' used by ' flying fairies,' and the huge 
 counterweights and lines which work the curtain and act- 
 drop. Up then, again, by a ladder, into range of flies, No. 2, 
 where there are more pulleys, windlasses, and counterweights, 
 with bridges crossing the stage, and lines working the 
 borders, and gas-pipes, with coloured screens, called 
 
 * mediums,' which are used to throw a lurid light of a 
 moonlight on scenes of battles or conflagrations, where the 
 employment of coloured fires is not desirable. Another ladder 
 (a rope one this time) has still to be climbed : and now we 
 find ourselves close to the roof of the theatre, and in the 
 Carpenters' Shop. 
 
 Such a noise of sawing and chopping, hammering and 
 chiselling ! The shop is a large one, its size corresponding to 
 the area of the stage beneath. Twenty or thirty men are at 
 work, putting together the framework of ' flats,' and covering 
 the framework itself with canvas. Some are constructing the 
 long cylinders, or rollers, used for ' drops,' or ' cloths ;' while 
 others, on their knees, are busily following with a hand-saw 
 the outline of a rock, or tree, marked in red lead by the scene- 
 painter or profile (thin wood) required for a set piece. Mr. 
 Tacks is in his glory, with his ' power "of nails and screws ' 
 around him. He pounces on the official immediately. He 
 must have ' more nails,' more ' hands ;' spreading out his own 
 emphatically. Give him ' hands ! ' The stage-manager 
 pacifies and promises. Stand by, there, while four brawny 
 carpenters rush from another portion of the ' shop ' with the 
 
 * Pagoda of Arabian Delights,' dimly looming through canvas 
 and whitewash ! 
 
 A curious race of men these theatrical carpenters. Some 
 of them growl scraps of Italian operas, or melodramatic 
 music, as they work. They are full of traditional lore anent 
 the ' Lane ' and the * Garden ' in days of yore. Probably their 
 fathers and grandfathers were theatrical before them ; for it 
 is rare to find a carpenter of ordinary life at stage work, or 
 vice vsrsd. Malignant members of the ordinary trade whisper 
 even that their work never lasts, and is only fit for the ideal 
 carpentry of a theatre. There is a legend, also, that a stage- 
 carpenter being employed once to make a coffin, constructed 
 it after the Hamlet manner, and ornamented it with scroll- 
 work. They preserve admirable discipline, and k obey the 
 
22 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 master carpenter implicity ; but, work once over, and out of 
 the theatre, he is no more than one of themselves, and take.s 
 beer with Tom or Bill, and the chair at their committee and 
 sick-club reunions, in a perfectly republican and fraternal 
 manner. These men labour from six in the morning until 
 six in the evening ; and, probably, as Fee-fo-fum is a ' heavy 
 pantomime,' from seven until the close of the performances. 
 At night, when the gas battens below the flies are all lighted, 
 the heat is somewhat oppressive : and, if you lie on your face 
 on the floor, and gaze through the chinks of the planking, you 
 will hear the music in the orchestra, and catch an occasional 
 glimpse of the performers on the stage beneath, marvellously 
 foreshortened, and microscopically diminished. The morning 
 we pay our visit, a rehearsal is going on below, and a hoarse 
 command is wafted from the stage to ' stop that hammering ' 
 while Marc Antony is pronouncing his oration over the dead 
 body of Csesar. The stage-manager, of course, is now wanted 
 down stairs, and departs, with an oft-iterated injunction to 
 ' get on.' We, too, must ' get on ' without him. 
 
 We enter another carpenters' shop, smaller, but on the 
 same level, and occupying a space above the horse-shoe ceil- 
 ing of the audience part of the theatre. A sort of martello of 
 wood occupies the centre of this apartment, its summit going 
 through the roof. This is at once the ventilator, and the 
 * chandelier house ' of the theatre. If we open a small door, 
 we can descry, as our eyes become accustomed to the semi- 
 darkness, that it is floored with iron, in ornamented scroll- 
 work, and opening with a hinged trap. We can also see the 
 ropes and pulleys, to which are suspended the great centre 
 chandelier, and by which it is hauled up every Monday 
 morning to be cleaned. More carpenters are busily at work, 
 at bench and trestles, sawing, gluing, hammering. Hark ! 
 we hear a noise like an eight- day clock on a gigantic scale 
 running down. They are letting down a pair of flats in the 
 painting-room. Let us see what they are about in the paint- 
 ing-room itself. 
 
 Pushing aside a door, for ever on the swing, we enter an 
 apartment, somewhat narrow, its length considered, but very 
 lofty. Half the roof, at least, is skylight. A longitudinal 
 aperture in the flooring traverses the room close to the wall. 
 This is the ' cut,' or groove, half a foot wide, and seventy feet 
 in depth, perhaps, in which hangs a screen of wood-work, 
 called a ' frame.' On this frame the scene to be painted is 
 
GETTING UP A PANTOMIME. 23 
 
 placed ; aud, by means of a counterweight and a windlass, is 
 worked up and down the cut, as the painter may require ; 
 the sky being thus as convenient to his hand, as the lowest 
 stone or bit of foliage in the foreground. When the scene is 
 finished, a signal is given to ' stand clear ' below, and a bar in 
 the windlass being removed, the frame slides with immense 
 celerity down the cut to the level of the stage. Here the 
 carpenters remove the flats, or wings, or whatever else may 
 have been painted, and the empty frame is wound up again 
 into the painting-room. Sometimes, instead of a cut, a 
 4 bridge ' is used. In this case the scene itself remains sta- 
 tionary, and the painter stands on a platform, which is wound 
 up and down by a windlass as he may require it a ladder 
 being placed against the bridge if he wishes to descend with- 
 out shifting the position of his platform. When the scene is 
 finished, a trap is opened in the floor, and the scene slung by 
 ropes to the bottom. The ' cut ' and frame are, it is needless 
 to say, most convenient, the artist being always able to con- 
 template the full effect of his work, and to provide himself 
 with what colours, or sketches, he may need, without the 
 trouble of ascending and descending the ladder. 
 
 Mr. Brush, more bespattered than ever, with a ' double 
 tie ' brush in his hand, is knocking the colour about, bravely. 
 Five or six good men and true, his assistants, are also em- 
 ployed on the scene he is painting the fairy palace of 
 Fee-fo-fum, perchance. One is seated at a table, with some- 
 thing very like the toy theatres of our younger days, on 
 which we used to enact that wonderful ' Miller and his Men/ 
 with the famous characters (always in one fierce attitude of 
 triumphant defiance, we remember) of Mr. Park before him. 
 It is, in reality, a model of the stage itself; and the little bits 
 of pasteboard he is cutting out and pasting together form 
 portions of a scene he is modelling ' to scale ' for the future 
 guidance of the carpenter. Another is fluting columns with 
 a thin brush called a ' quill tool/ and a long ruler, or 
 ' straight-edge/ Different portions of the scene are allotted 
 to different artists, according to their competence, from Mr. 
 Brush, who finishes and touches up everything, down to the 
 fustian-jacketed whitewasher, who is 'priming' or giving a 
 preparatory coat of whiting and size to a pair of wings. 
 
 Are you at all curious to know how the brilliant scenes 
 you see at night are painted; you may watch the whole pro- 
 cess of a pair of flats growing into a beautiful picture, under 
 
24 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 Mr. Brush's experienced hands. First, the scene, well primed, 
 and looking like a gigantic sheet of coarse cartridge-paper on 
 a stretcher, is placed on the frame ; then, with a long pole, 
 cleft at the end, and in which is stuck a piece of charcoal, 
 Mr. Brush hastily scrawls (as it seems) the outline of the 
 scene he is about to paint. Then, he and his assistants ' draw 
 in ' a finished outline with a small brush and common ink, 
 which, darkening as it dries, allows the outline to shine 
 through the first layers of colour. Then, the whitewasher, 
 4 labourer,' as he is technically called, is summoned to ' lay 
 in ' the great masses of colour sky, wall, foreground, &c., 
 which he does with huge brushes. Then, the shadows are 
 ' picked in ' by assistants, to whom enters speedily Mr. 
 Brush, with a sketch in one hand, and brushes in the other, 
 and he finishes finishes, too. with a delicacy of manipulation 
 and nicety of touch which will rather surprise you pre- 
 viously impressed as you may have been with an idea that 
 scenes are painted with mops, and that scenic artists are a 
 superior class of house-painters. Stay, here is the straight 
 line of a cornice to be ruled from one part of the scene to the 
 other, a space fifty feet wide, perhaps. Two labourers, one 
 at either end, hold a string tightly across where the desired 
 line is to be. The string has been well rubbed with pow- 
 dered charcoal, and, being held up in some part, for a mo- 
 ment, between the thumb and finger, and then smartly 
 vibrated on to the canvas, again leaves a mark of black char- 
 coal along the whole length of the line, which being followed 
 by the brush and ink, serves for the guide line of the cornice. 
 Again, the wall of that magnificent saloon has to be covered 
 with an elaborate scroll-work pattern. Is all this outlined by 
 the hand, think you ? No ; a sheet of brown paper, per- 
 forated with pin-holes with a portion of the desired pattern, 
 is laid against the scene ; the whole is then gently beaten with 
 a worsted bag full of powdered charcoal, which, penetrating 
 through the pin-holes, leaves a dotted outline, capable of 
 repetition ad infinitum by shifting the pattern. This is called 
 6 pouncing.' Then some of the outlines of decoration are 
 ' stencilled ;' but for foliage and rocks, flowers and water, 
 I need not tell you, my artistical friend, that the hand of 
 Mr. Brush is the only pouncer and stenciller. For so grand 
 a pantomime as ' Fee-fo-fum,' a scene will, probably, after 
 artistic completion, be enriched with foil paper and Dutch 
 metal. Admire the celerity with which these processes are 
 
GETTING UP A PANTOMIME. 25 
 
 effected. First, an assistant cuts the foil in narrow strips 
 with a penknife; another catches them up like magic, and 
 glues them ; another claps them on the canvas, and the scene 
 is foiled. Then Mr. Brush advances with a pot, having a 
 lamp beneath, filled with a composition of Burgundy pitch, 
 rosin, glne, and bees-wax, called ' mordant.' "With this and 
 a camel-hair brush, he delicately outlines the parts he wishes 
 gilt. Half a dozen assistants rush forward with books of 
 Dutch metal, and three-fourths of the scene are covered, in 
 a trice, with squares of glittering dross. The superfluous 
 particles are rubbed off with a dry brush, and, amid a very 
 Danaean shower of golden particles, the outlines of mordant, 
 to which the metal has adhered, become gradually apparent 
 in a glittering net-work. 
 
 Around this chamber of the arts are hung pounces and 
 stencils, like the brown-paper patterns in a tailor's shop. 
 There is a ledge running along one side of the room, on which 
 is placed a long row of pots filled with the colours used, which 
 are ground in water, and subsequently tempered with size, a 
 huge cauldron of which is now simmering over the roomy 
 fire-place. The colour-grinder himself stands before a table, 
 supporting an ample stone slab, on which, with a marble 
 muller, he is grinding Dutch pink lustily. The painter's 
 palette is not the oval one used by picture painters, but a 
 downright four-legged table, the edges of which are divided 
 into compartments, each holding its separate dab of colour, 
 while the centre serves as a space whereon to mix and gra- 
 duate the tints. The j whitewashed walls are scrawled over 
 with rough sketches and memoranda, in charcoal or red lead, 
 while a choice engraving, here and there, a [ box of water- 
 colours, some delicate flowers in a glass, some velvet drapery 
 pinned against the wall, hint that in this timber-roofed, un- 
 papered, uncarpeted, size-and-white wash-smelling workshop, 
 there is Art as well as Industry. 
 
 Though it is only of late years, mind you, that scene- 
 painters have been recognised as Artists at all. They were 
 called ' daubers,' * white washers,' ' paper-hangers,' by that 
 class of artists to whom the velvet cap, the turn-down collars, 
 and the ormolu frame, were as the air they breathed. These 
 last were the gentlemen who thought it beneath the dignity 
 of Art to make designs for wood-engravers, to paint porcelain, 
 to draw patterns for silk manufacturers. Gradually they 
 found out that the scene-painters made better architects, land 
 
26 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 scape painters, professors of perspective, than they themselves 
 did. Gradually they remembered that in days gone by, such 
 men as Salvator Eosa, Inigo Jones, Canaletto, and Philip de 
 Loutherbourg were scene-painters; and that, in our own 
 times, one Stanfield had not disdained size and whitewash, 
 nor a certain Eoberts thought it derogatory to wield the 
 ' double tie ' brush. Scene-painting thenceforward looked up ; 
 and even the heavy portals of the Academy moved creakingly 
 on their hinges for the admittance of distinguished professors 
 of scenic art. 
 
 We have been hindering Mr. Brush quite long enough, I 
 think, even though we are invisible ; so let us descend this 
 crazy ladder, which leads from the painting-room down 
 another flight of stairs. So : keep your hands out before you, 
 and tread cautiously, for the management is chary of gas, and 
 the place is pitch dark. Now, as I open this door, shade your 
 eyes with your hand a moment, lest the sudden glare of light 
 dazzle you. 
 
 This is the ' property-room.' In this vast, long, low room, 
 are manufactured the * properties ' all the stage furniture and 
 paraphernalia required during the performance of a play. 
 Look around you and wonder. The walls and ceiling are 
 hung, the floor and tables cumbered with properties : 
 Shy lock's knife and scales, Ophelia's coffin, Paul Pry's um- 
 brella, Macbeth's truncheon, the caldron of the Witches, Har- 
 lequin's bat, the sickle of Norma, Mambrino's helmet, swords, 
 lanterns, banners, belts, hats, daggers, wooden sirloins of beef, 
 Louis Quatorze chairs, papier-mache goblets, pantomime- 
 masks, stage money, whips, spears, lutes, flasks of ' rich bur- 
 gundy,' fruit, rattles, fish, plaster images, drums, cocked hats, 
 spurs, and bugle-horns, are strewn about, without the slightest 
 attempt at arrangement or classification. Tilted against the 
 wall, on one end, is a four-legged banqueting table, very 
 grand indeed, white marble top and golden legs. At this 
 table will noble knights and ladies feast richly off wooden 
 fowls and brown-paper pies, quaffing, meanwhile, deep pota- 
 tions of toast-and- water sherry, or, haply, golden goblets full 
 of nothing at all. Some of the goblets, together with elaborate 
 flasks of exhilarating emptiness, and dishes of rich fruit, more 
 deceptive than Dead Sea apples (for they have not even got 
 ashes inside them), are nailed to the festive board itself. On 
 very great occasions the bowl is wreathed with cotton wool, 
 and the viands smoke with a cloud of powdered lime. Dread- 
 
GETTING UP A PANTOMIME. 27 
 
 fully deceptive are these stage banquets and stage purses. 
 The haughty Hospodar of Hungary drinks confusion to the 
 Bold Bandit of Bulgaria in a liquorless cup, vainly thirsting; 
 meanwhile, for a pint of mild porter from the adjacent 
 hostelry. Deep are his retainers in the enjoyment of Warden 
 pies and lusty capons, while their too often empty interiors cry 
 dolorously for three penn'orth of cold boiled beef. Liberal is 
 he also of broad florins, and purses of moidores, accidentally 
 drawing, perchance, at the same time, a Lombardian deben- 
 ture for his boots from the breast of his doublets. The meat 
 is a sham, and the wine a sham, and the money a sham ; but 
 are there no other shams, oh, brothers and sisters! besides 
 those of the footlights? Have I not dined with my legs 
 under sham mahogany, illuminated by sham wax-lights? 
 Has not a sham hostess helped me to sham boiled turkey ? 
 Has not my sham health been drunk by sham friends ? Do I 
 know no haughty Hospodar of Hungary myself? 
 
 There is one piece, and one piece only, on the stage, in 
 which a real banquet a genuine spread is provided. That 
 piece is ' No Song, No Supper.' However small may be the 
 theatre however low the state of the finances the imme- 
 morial tradition is respected, and a real leg of mutton graces the 
 board. Once, the chronicle goes, there was a heartless 
 monster, in property-man shape, who substituted a dish of 
 mutton chops for the historical gigot. Execration, abhorrence, 
 expulsion followed his iniquitous fraud, and he was, from that 
 day, a property-man accursed. Curiously enough, while the 
 leg of mutton in * No Song, No Supper/ is always real, the 
 cake, introduced in the same piece, is as invariably a counter- 
 feit the old stock wooden cake of the theatre. When it shall 
 be known why waiters wear white neckcloths, and dustmen 
 shorts and ankle jacks, the proximate cause of this discrepancy 
 will, perhaps, be pointed out. 
 
 To return to the property-room of the Theatre Eoyal, 
 Hatton Garden. Mr. Gorget, the property ' master,' as he is 
 called, is working with almost delirious industry. He has 
 an imperial crown on his head (recentty gilt the crown, not 
 the head and placed there to dry), while on the table before 
 him lies a mass of modelling clay, on which his nimble fingers 
 are shaping out the matrix of a monstrous human face, for a 
 pantomimic mask. How quickly, and with what facility he 
 moulds the hideous physiognomy into shape squeezing the 
 eyelids, flattening the nose, elongating the mouth, furrowing 
 
28 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 the cheeks ! When this clay model is finished, it will be well 
 oiled, and a cast taken from it in plaster of Paris. Into this 
 cast (oiled again) strips of brown paper, well glued and sized, 
 will be pasted, till a proper thickness is obtained. When dry, 
 the cast is removed, and the hardened paper mask ready for 
 colouring. At this latter process, an assistant, whose nose and 
 cheeks are plentifully enriched with Dutch metal and splashes 
 of glue, is at work. He is very liberal with rose pink to the 
 noses, black to the eyebrows, and white r to the eye. Then 
 Mrs. Gorget, a mild little woman, who has been assiduously 
 spangling a demon's helmet, proceeds to ornament the masks 
 with huge masses of oakum and horsehair, red, brown, and 
 black, which are destined to serve as their coiffure. Busily 
 other assistants are painting tables, gilding goblets, and 
 manufacturing the multifarious and bewildering miscellaneous 
 articles required in the ' comic business * of a pantomime ; the 
 sausages which the Clown purloins, the bustle he takes from 
 the young lady, the fish, eggs, poultry, warming-pans, babies, 
 pint pots, butchers' trays, and legs of mutton, incidental to 
 his chequered career. 
 
 Others besides adults are useful in the property-room. A 
 bright-eyed little girl, Mr. Gorget's youngest, is gravely 
 speckling a plum-pudding ; while her brother, a stalwart 
 rogue of eleven, sits on a stool with a pot full of yellow ochre 
 in one hand, and a brush in the other, with which he is 
 giving a plentiful coat of bright yellow colour to a row con- 
 taining a dozen pairs of hunting-boots. These articles of 
 costume will gleam to-night on the legs and feet of the hunts- 
 men of his highness the Hospodar, with whom you are already 
 acquainted. Their wearers will stamp their soles on the merry 
 green sward ha, ha ! waving above their heads the tin 
 porringers, supposed to contain Rhine wine or Baerische beer. 
 
 Mr. Gorget will have no easy task for the next three weeks. 
 He will have to be up early and late until ' Fee-fo-fum ' is 
 produced. The nightly performances have, meanwhile, to be 
 attended to, and any new properties wanted must be made, 
 and any old ones spoilt must be replaced, in addition to what 
 is required for the pantomime. And something more than 
 common abilities must have abiding place in a property-man, 
 although he does not receive uncommonly liberal remunera- 
 tion. He must be a decent upholsterer, a carpenter, a wig- 
 maker, a painter, a decorator, accurate as regards historical 
 property, a skilful modeller, a facile carver, a tasteful em- 
 
GETTING UP A PANTOMIME. 29 
 
 broiderer, a general handy man and jack-of- all-trades. He 
 must know something of pyrotechnics, a good deal of carving 
 and gilding, and a little of mechanics. By the exercise of all 
 these arts he earns, perhaps, fifty shillings a week. 
 
 Come away from the property-room, just a glance into that 
 grim, cavernous, coal-holey place on the left, where all the 
 broken-up, used-out, properties are thrown, and is a sort of 
 limbo of departed pantomimes ; and peeping curiously also 
 into the room, where, on racks and on hooks, are arranged the 
 cuirasses, muskets, swords, spears, and defunct yeomanry 
 helmets, of the pattern worn when George the Third was king, 
 which form the armoury of the theatre. Time presses, and 
 we must have a look at the proceedings in the wardrobe. 
 
 Mr. Barter is busily stitching, with many other stitchers 
 (females), sedent, and not squatting Jagod-like, all of a row. 
 His place of work is anything but large, and movement is 
 rendered somewhat inconvenient, moreover, by a number of 
 heavy presses, crammed to repletion with the costumes of the 
 establishment. Mr. Baster has been overhauling his stock, to 
 see what he can conveniently use again, and what must indis- 
 pensably be new. He has passed in review the crimson 
 velvet nobleman, the green-serge retainers, the spangled 
 courtiers, the glazed-calico slaves, the ' shirts,' ' shapes,' 
 ' Romaldis,' and ' strips ' of other days. He has held up to 
 the light last year's Clown's dress, and shakes his head 
 ruefully, when he contemplates the rents and livings, the 
 rags and tatters, to which that once brilliant costume is 
 reduced. Clown must, evidently, be new all over. Mr. 
 Baster's forewoman is busy spangling Harlequin's patch-work 
 dress ; while, in the hands of his assistants, sprites and genii, 
 slaves and evil spirits, are in various stages of completion. 
 So, in the ladies' wardrobe, where Miss de Loggie and her 
 assistants are stitching for dear life, at Sea-nymphs', and 
 Sirens', and Elfins' costume ; and where Miss Mezzanine, who 
 is to play Columbine, is agonizingly inquisitive as to the fit of 
 her skirt and spangles. 
 
 Work, work, work, everywhere ; in the dull bleak morn- 
 ing, when play-goers of the previous night have scarcely 
 finished their first sleep ; at night, to the music of the 
 orchestra below, and amid the hot glare of the gas. Mr. 
 Tacks carries screws in his waistcoat pockets, and screws in 
 his mouth. Mr. Gorget grows absolutely rigid with glue, 
 while his assistants' heads and hands are unpleasantly en- 
 
SO GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 riclied with Dutch metal and foil-paper ; and the main stair- 
 case of the theatre is blocked up with frantic waiters from 
 adjoining hostelries laden with chops and stout for Mr. Brush 
 and his assistants. The Management smiles approvingly, 
 lout winces uneasily, occasionally, as Boxing-day draws 
 near ; the stage-director is unceasing in his ' get ons.' All 
 day long the private door of the Management is assailed by 
 emissaries from Mr. Tacks for more nails, from Mr. Brush for 
 more Venetian red and burnt sienna, from Mr. Baster for 
 more velvet, from Mr. Gorget for more glue. The Manage- 
 ment moves uneasily in its chair. ' Great expense,' it says. 
 4 If it should fail ?' ' Give us more nails, " hands," Venetian 
 red, velvet, and glue, and we'll not fail,' chorus the ants 
 behind the baize. 
 
 Nor must you suppose that the pantomimists Clown, 
 Harlequin, Pantaloon, and Columbine nor the actors playing 
 In the opening, nor the fairies who fly, nor the demons who 
 howl, nor the sprites who tumble, are idle. Every day the 
 opening and comic scenes are rehearsed. Every day a melan- 
 choly man, called the repetiteur, takes his station on the stage, 
 which is illumined by one solitary gas jet ; and, to the dolour- 
 music he conjures from his fiddle, the pantomimists, in over- 
 suits of coarse linen, tumble, dance, jump, and perform other 
 gymnastic exercises in the gloom, until their bones ache, and 
 the perspiration streams from their limbs. 
 
 Work, work, work, and Christmas-eve is here. Nails, 
 hammers, paint-brushes, needles, muscles and limbs going in 
 every direction. Mr. Brush has not had his boots cleaned for 
 a week, and might have forgotten what sheets and counter- 
 panes mean. Mr. Brush's lady in Camden Villa is, of course, 
 pleased at the artistic fame her lord will gain in the columns 
 of the newspapers, the day after the production of the panto- 
 mimes, but she can't help thinking sometimes that Brush is 
 < working himself to death.' No man works himself to death, 
 my dear Mrs. B. } Tis among the idlers, the turners of the 
 heavy head, and the folders of the hands to rest, that death 
 reaps his richest harvest. No snap-dragon for Mr. Tacks, no 
 hunt-the-slipper for Mr. Gorget. Pleasant Christmas greet- 
 ings and good wishes, though, and general surmises that the 
 pantomime will be a ' stunning ' one. Christmas-day, and, 
 alas and alack ! no Christmas beef and pudding, save that 
 from the cook-shop, and perchance the spare repast in the 
 covered basin which little Polly Bruggs brings stalwart Bill 
 
GETTING UP A PANTOMIME. 31 
 
 Bruggs, the carpenter, who is popularly supposed to be able 
 to carry a pair of wings beneath each arm. Incessant fiddling 
 from the repetiteur. ' Trip,' 4 rally/ and ' jump,' for the pan- 
 tomimists. Work on the stage, which is covered with canvas, 
 and stooping painters, working with brushes stuck in bamboo 
 walking-sticks. Work in the flies, and work underneath the 
 stage, on the umbrageous mezzonine floor, where the cellar- 
 men are busily slinging ' sinks ' and ' rises/ and greasing 
 traps. An overflow of properties deluges the green-room ; 
 huge masks leer at you in narrow passages ; pantomimic 
 wheelbarrows and barrel-organs beset you at every step. So 
 all Christmas-night. 
 
 Hurrah for Boxing-day ! The ' compliments of the season/ 
 and the 'original dustman.' Tommy and Billy (suffering 
 slightly from indigestion) stand with their noses glued against 
 the window-panes at home, watching anxiously the rain in 
 the puddles, or the accumulating snow on the house-tops. 
 Little Mary's mind is filled with radiant visions of the re- 
 splendent sashes she is to wear, and the gorgeous fairies she 
 is to see. John, the footman, is to escort the housemaid into 
 the pit ; even Joe Barrikin, of the New Cut, who sells us our 
 cauliflowers, will treat his c missus ' to a seat in the gallery 
 for the first performance of Harlequin Fee-fo-fum. 
 
 There the last clink of the hammer is heard, the last 
 stroke of the brush, and the last stitch of the needle. The 
 Management glances with anxious approval at the elaborately 
 funny bill prepared with the assistance of almost every adult 
 employed in the establishment, who is supposed to have a 
 * funny ' notion about him, subject, of course, to the editorial 
 supervision of the author, if he be in town, and the Manage- 
 ment can catch him or he catch the Management of the even- 
 ing's entertainment. It is six o'clock in the 'evening. The 
 Clown (Signer Brownarini, of the Theatres Koyal) has a jug 
 of barley-water made, his only beverage during his tumbling, 
 and anxiously assures himself that there is a red-hot poker 
 introduced into the comic business ; ' else/ says he, ' the pan- 
 tomime is sure to fail/ Strange, the close connection between 
 the success of a pantomime and that red-hot poker. A pan- 
 tomime was produced at a London Theatre the old Adelphi, 
 I think without (perhaps through inadvertence) a red-hot 
 poker. The pantomime failed lamentably the first night. 
 Seven o'clock, and one last frantic push to get everything 
 ready. Tommy, Billy, Mary, Papa and Mamma, arrive in 
 
32 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 flies, broughams, or cabs. The footman and housemaid are 
 smiling in the pit ; and Joe Barrikin is amazingly jolly and 
 thirsty, with his ' missus ' in the gallery. Now then, ' Music P 
 ' Play up !' ' Order, order !' and, ' Throw him over !" ' George 
 Barn well,' or ' Jane Shore/ inaudible of course, and then i Har- 
 lequin Fee-fo-fum, or the Enchanted Fairy of the Island of 
 Abracadabra.' Fun, frolic, and gaiety; splendour, beauty, 
 and blue-fire ; hey for fun ! ' How are you to-morrow ?' and I 
 hope success and crowded houses till the middle of February, 
 both for the sake of the author, the Management, and the 
 Theatre Eoyal, Hatton Garden, generally. 
 
 The ants behind the baize have worked well, but they have 
 their reward in the ' glorious success ' of the pantomime they 
 have laboured so hard at. They may wash their faces, and 
 have their boots cleaned now ; and who shall say that they 
 do not deserve their beer to-night, and their poor salaries next 
 Saturday ? 
 
 Eeader, as Christmas time comes on, pause a little ere you 
 utterly condemn these poor play-acting people as utter profli- 
 gates, as irreclaimable rogues and vagabonds. Consider how 
 hard they work, how precarious is their employment, how 
 honestly they endeavour to earn their living, and to do then- 
 duty in the state of life to which it has pleased Heaven to call 
 them. Admit that there is some skill, some industry, some 
 perseverance, in all this, not misdirected if promoting harm- 
 less fancy and innocent mirth. 
 
 in. 
 
 DOWN WHITECHAPEL, FAR AWAY. 
 
 IT is natural that a metropolis so gigantic as the Empress-city 
 of Britain should set the fashion to its provincial kinsfolk. 
 It is, I believe, a fact not very much controverted, that 
 London habits, London manners and modes, London notions 
 and London names are extensively copied, followed, and 
 emulated in the provinces. There is scarcely a village, not 
 to say a town in Great Britain where some worthy tradesman 
 has not baptized his place of business London House, or the 
 London Eepository, where he pretends to sell London porter, 
 London hosiery, or London cutlery. There are few towns 
 that do not number among their streets several whose appella- 
 
DOWN WHITECHAPEL, FAR AWAY. 33 
 
 tions are drawn from the street-lists of the London Post-Office 
 Directory. Regent Streets, Bond Streets, St. James's Streets, 
 Pall Malls, Drury Lanes, Strands, Fleet Streets, Ludgate 
 Hills, Covent Gardens, Cheapsides, and Waterloo Places 
 abound in great profusion throughout the whole of the United 
 Kingdom. There is sometimes a ludicrous incongruity 
 between the appearance, class, and species of street familiar in 
 London, and the synonymous street presented in a country 
 town. A man, for instance, is apt to be puzzled when he 
 finds a little greasy cube of ill-favoured houses, resembling a 
 bar of soap just marked for cutting into squares figured down 
 as Belgrave Place or Wilton Crescent. He will not be 
 quite prepared to recognise Cheapside in a series of basket- 
 makers' cottages with small kitchen- gardens ; nor will a 
 dirty thoroughfare, principally occupied by old clothes- 
 vendors and marine-store-dealers, quite come up to his ideas 
 of Bond Street or Regent Street. Islington composed of a 
 long avenue of merchants' warehouses, each rejoicing in a 
 plurality of stories, with gaping doors where there should be 
 windows, and huge cranes from which perpetually balance 
 sacks of meal or hogsheads of sugar after the manner of 
 Mahomet's coffin creates in the mind of the London-bred 
 Islingtonian a curious dissociation of ideas. And when he 
 comes upon a Grosvenor Street, in the guise of a blind alley, 
 or upon a Holborn fringed with pretty suburban villas, or a 
 Piccadilly next to a range of pigsties, or a Fleet Street 
 planted with flowering shrubs, he cannot fail to doubt 
 whether a street is still a street * for a' that.' 
 
 These topographical incongruities have lately been brought 
 under my notice in the great commercial port of Liverpool. 
 In Liverpool, which can show its suburbs and dependencies 
 included a population not much under four hundred thou- 
 sand souls, I found Pall Malls, Fleet Streets, Covent Gardens, 
 Drury Lanes, Houndsditches, Islingtons, and other places, all 
 with London names, and all with a most opinionated want of 
 resemblance to their London sponsors. Islington I found to 
 be not a district, but a single street, the site of several public- 
 houses, one or two pawnbrokers', and numerous chandlers' 
 shops. Fleet Street is without bustle, Drury Lane without 
 dirt, and Covent Garden without an apple or an orange. 
 Park Lane the very sound of which is suggestive of curly- 
 wiggecl coachmen, high-stepping carriage-horses (jobbed 
 mostly ; but such is life), silver-studded harness, luxurious 
 
 D 
 
34 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 carriages hung on feathery springs, ostrich feathers, diamonds, 
 Danish dogs, blue ribbons, the ladies' mile, the Grenadier 
 Guards, and the Duke of Somerset's coronet-tipped gas-lamps, 
 the whole pomp, pride, and circumstance of our glorious 
 aristocracy Park Lane I found to be filled with shops, pave- 
 ment, and population ; and devoted to the vending of marine- 
 stores, the purveying of fiery gin, the receipt of miscellaneous 
 articles in pledge, and the boarding, lodging, and fleecing 
 with a little hocussing, crimping, and kidnapping included 
 of those who go down to the fcea in ships : in short, a West 
 Coast Wapping. 
 
 There is, however, no rule without an exception ; and I 
 came ultimately upon a street, which, albeit possessing certain 
 originalities of aspect and existence not to be found else- 
 where, did nevertheless offer in its general character some- 
 thing approaching a resemblance to the London highway from 
 which it has drawn its name. Whoever built this street was 
 evidently a man impressed with a sufficient idea of the 
 general fitness of things. He must have been a travelled, or, 
 at least, a well-read man ; and he evidently had a keen 
 remembrance of that great London artery which stretches 
 from Aldgate Pump to Mile End Gate, London, when he 
 called that Liverpool street, Whitechapel. 
 
 I am thankful to him for having done so ; for had the 
 Liverpool Whitechapel not resembled in some measure the 
 London Whitechapel, and thereby become exceptional, I 
 should having walked Down Whitechapel Way, in London, 
 one Saturday night in eighteen hundred and fifty-one not 
 have walked down this Whitechapel Way (two hundred and 
 twenty miles away) one Saturday night in eighteen hundred 
 and fifty -three. 
 
 Whitechapel in Lancashire is so far like Whitechapel in 
 Middlesex, that it is passably dirty, moderately thronged by 
 day, and inconveniently crowded by night ; is resorted to by 
 a variety of persons of a suspicious nature, and by a consider- 
 able number about whom there can be no suspicion at all : 
 that, moreover, it has a kerb-stone market for the negotiation 
 of fruit and small ware : that it is scoured by flying 
 tribes of Bedouins, in the guise of peripatetic street vendors : 
 that it is sprinkled with cheap tailoring establishments, cheap 
 eating and coffee-houses, cheap places of public amusement, 
 and finally, that it is glutted with gin-palaces, whisky-shops, 
 taverns, and public-houses of every description. 
 
DOWN WHITECHAPEL, FAR AWAY. 35 
 
 Thus far the two streets run in concert, but they soon 
 diverge. The Liverpool Whitechapel is intensely maritime 
 (or what I may call 4 Dockish '), intensely Hibernian in its 
 offshoots or side-streets almost wholly so intensely com- 
 mercial, and during the daytime, not wholly unaristocratic ; 
 for it is intersected in one part by Church Street, the Eden of 
 the haberdashers' shops and the pet promenade of the beauty 
 and fashion of the City of the Liver. Lord Street the proud 
 branches off from it, full of grand shops, and the pavement of 
 which is daily trodden by those interesting specimens of 
 humanity, * hundred thousand pound men :' humble-minded 
 millionnaires who disdain carriages in business hours, and in 
 the humility of their wealth, condescend to pop at stray times 
 into quaint little taverns, where they joke with the landlady, 
 and ask for the l Mail ' or the ' Mercury ' after you have done 
 with it, as though they were nothing more than wharfingers 
 or entering clerks. Nor are these all the high connections 
 Whitechapel in Liverpool can claim. At the upper end 
 branches off a short thoroughfare, leading into Dale Street, 
 likewise patronised by the magnates of Liverpool. At its 
 extreme end, again, is the confluence of streets abutting on 
 the stately London and North- Western Terminus in Lime 
 Street, and on the great open space, where stands that really 
 magnificent building, St. George's Hall. The consequence of 
 all this is that there is a constant cross-stream of fashionables 
 mingling with the rushing river of the profanum vulgus. 
 
 It is half-past ten o'clock ; for the early-closing system 
 on Saturdays, at least is not prevalent in Liverpool; and 
 thousands have yet their purchases to make on Sunday morn- 
 ing. Before we enter Whitechapel, glowing with gas flowing 
 from enormous jets, we are attracted by an extra blaze of 
 light, by a concourse of people, and by a confusion of tongues, 
 over which one strident and resonant 'voice dominates ; all 
 being gathered round the booth of Messrs. Misture and Fitt, 
 to which booth we must turn aside for a moment. 
 
 In the left hand centre of a piece of waste land, these gentle- 
 men have boldly pitched among the potsherds, the dead cats, 
 and broken bottles a monster marquee, gaily decorated with 
 pink and white stripes and variegated flags. Here Messrs. 
 Misture and Fitt have gone into the quack line of business, in 
 a Bohemian or travelling manner. They are herb doctors, 
 chiropodists, universal medicine vendors, veterinary prescri- 
 
 D 2 
 
36 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 "berg, and much more besides. A mob of men, women, and 
 children are talking, screaming, laughing, and jesting around 
 the temporary laboratory of these medical sages, before a long 
 counter which creaks beneath a bountiful spread of nasty- 
 looking preparations, pills, pots of ointment, bottles of sarsa- 
 parilla, cases of herbs, blisters, plaisters, and boluses. The 
 whole affair has the appearance of the stock in trade of half a 
 dozen unsuccessful chemists and druggists, who had been 
 burnt out or emigrated to the backwoods, or set up business 
 in Canvas Town, and here clubbed the remainder of their 
 goods as a last effort to sell off under prime cost. There are 
 several gaily-decorated placards eulogistic of Misture's Epi- 
 leptic Pills, and Fitt's Concentrated Essence of Peppermint. 
 Fitt is haranguing his select auditory as we draw near. 
 His style of eloquence is something beyond the old hocus- 
 pocus diatribes of the old medical mountebanks. He is not 
 so broad as Cheap Jack, not so lofty as Dulcamara, not so 
 scientifically unintelligible as the quacks you see in the 
 Champs Elysees or the Boulevard du Temple, in Paris. But 
 he is astonishingly rapid ; and mingles with a little bit of 
 sporting a snack of slang, and a few genteel anecdotes of the 
 nobility and gentry. He has so fluent a delivery, such tick- 
 ling jokes for the men and such sly leers for the ladies, that 
 the former slap their legs and break forth into enthusiastic 
 encomiums in the dialect of Tim Bobbin. The latter simper 
 and blush delightfully. Some of his jokes apply forcibly to 
 the personal appearance of a select few of his auditory, and 
 provoke roars of laughter. A happy allusion to the neigh- 
 bouring church-yard, being close to a doctor's shop, tells 
 immensely. At the upper end of the drug-heaped counter 
 the other partner, Misture hard-featured with a fox's face ; 
 one of those men who will wear black clothes and white 
 neckcloths, and who never can look respectable in them is 
 silently but busily engaged in handing over divers packets of 
 the medicines his partner has been praising to eager and nu- 
 merous purchasers. I see through Misture and Fitt in a 
 moment. Fitt is the volatile partner, the fine arts professor. 
 Misture is the sound practical man of business. Misture is 
 the careful builder, who lays the foundation and gets up the 
 scaffolding : Fitt does the ornamental work and puts on the 
 fancy touches. Do you not remember when Geoffrey Crayon 
 and Buckthorne went to the bookseller's dinner, that the 
 
DOWN WHITECHAPEL, FAB AWAY. 37 
 
 latter pointed out the partner who attended to the carving, 
 and the partner who attended to the jokes ? They are proto- 
 types of Misture and Fitt. 
 
 The busy throng tends Whitechapel way, and down White- 
 chapel we must go. So great is the number of orange-sellers 
 and oranges in Whitechapel, that it would seem as if the 
 whole of one year's produce of St. Michael's and the Azores 
 had been disgorged into the narrow street this Saturday night. 
 The poor creatures who sell this fruit desperately ragged 
 and destitute were formerly much harried and beset by the 
 police, who in their over-zeal made descents and razzias upon 
 them, put them to horrid rout and confusion, and made so 
 many of them captives to their bows and spears (or batons), 
 that the miserable creatures scarcely dared to venture into the 
 light for grievous fear and trembling. They offered oranges 
 in bye-places and secret corners, as if they had been smuggled 
 merchandise, prohibited under annihilating penalties. Lat- 
 terly, however, some benevolent persons took their case in 
 hand ; and, demonstrating to the authorities that to obstruct a 
 thoroughfare was not quite high treason, nor to offer an orange 
 for sale was not quite sufficient to warrant a human creature 
 being hunted like a wild beast, the dread taboo was taken off, 
 and some small immunities were conceded to the army of 
 orange-vendors. 
 
 My Uncle's counting-houses, which abound here in White- 
 ohapel, are all thronged to-night. As per flourishing gold 
 letters on his door-jamb, he proposes to lend money on plate, 
 jewellery, and valuables ; but he is not much troubled with 
 plate, jewellery, or valuables on a Saturday night. If you 
 enter one of these pawnshops they are called so plainly, 
 without reticence or diffidence, hereabout and elbow your 
 way through Yallambrosian thickets of wearing apparel and 
 miscellaneous articles, you will observe these peculiarities in 
 the internal economy of the avuncular life, at variance with 
 London practice ; that the duplicates are not of card-board, 
 but of paper having an appearance something between Dock- 
 warrants and Twelfth-cake lottery-tickets, and that the front 
 of each compartment of the counter is crossed by a stout 
 wooden barrier ; whether for the convenience of the pledger 
 to rest his elbows on while transacting business, or to restrain 
 the said pledger from violently wresting from My Uncle's 
 hands any article before he has legally redeemed it, I am un- 
 able to say. Furthermore, it will be not without emotion that 
 
38 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 you will become sensible that in very many of the pawnbrok- 
 ing warehouses my Uncle is for the nonce transformed into 
 my Aunt not simply figuratively, in the French sense but 
 substantially. The person who unties your package, names 
 the extent of the investment therein by way of loan, fills up 
 the duplicate and hands you the cash is a Young Lady ; 
 sharp-eyed, quick-witted, and not to be done by any means. 
 
 I have said that my Uncle is troubled with few articles of 
 any considerable value on Saturday nights. This is ordinarily 
 the case ; but not unfrequently a young lady of an inflamed 
 complexion bears down on my Uncle, laden with the spoils 
 of some galleon from the Spanish Main; the watch, chain, 
 trinkets, and clothes of some unfortunate sailor fresh from 
 abroad, whom she has plundered. Sometimes this tight craft 
 disposes successfully of her booty, and sheers off with all her 
 prize-money, and with flying colours ; but occasionally, sus- 
 picions being awakened and signals made to the Preventive, 
 she is compelled to heave-to, and to tack, and to change her 
 course, and even to proceed under convoy to a roadstead known 
 as Bridewell ; the harbour-dues of which are so considerable, 
 that an overhauling before a stipendiary magistrate, and 
 a lengthened sojourn in a graving dock near Kirkdale gaol 
 are absolutely necessary before she can get to sea again. 
 Sometimes, again, a drunken sailor (they are every whit as 
 apt to rob themselves as to be robbed) will drop in with a 
 watch, or a gold thumb ring, or even the entire suit of clothes 
 off his back to pawn. One offered a five-pound note in pledge 
 on a Saturday night; upon which my Uncle considerately lent 
 him (he was very far gone) five shillings taking care to 
 ascertain to what ship he belonged and the next morning, 
 to Jack's great joy and astonishment, returned him four pounds 
 fifteen shillings. 
 
 Here is a ' vault :' it has nothing to do with pallid death, 
 It is, indeed, a chosen. rendezvous for 'life,' in Whitechapel 
 such life as is comprised in spirituous jollity, and the convi- 
 viality that is so nearly allied to delirium tremens. The vault 
 is large enough to be the presence-chamber of a London gin- 
 palace ; but lacks the gilding, plate-glass, and French polish, 
 which are so handsomely thrown in with a London penny- 
 worth of gin. The walls are soberly coloured ; the only mural 
 decorations being certain and sundry oleaginous frescoes, due, 
 perhaps, to the elbows and heads of customers reclining there- 
 against. The bar-counter is very high, and there are no 
 
DOWN WHITECHAPEL, FAK AWAY. 39 
 
 enclosed bars or snuggeries ; but there is one unbroken line 
 of shop-board. The vault is very full to-night. A party of 
 American sailors in red flannel shirts, and bushy whiskers, 
 and ear-rings, are liberally treating a select party of ladies 
 and gentlemen ; hosts and guests being already much the 
 worse for liquor. One mariner, to my personal knowledge, 
 had been regaling for the last ten minutes on a series of 
 ' glasses to follow,' of almost every exciseable fluid, taken 
 without any relation to their chemical affinities or proper 
 order of succession. lie is now reduced to that happy frame 
 of mind, common, I am told, in some stages of Bacchic emotion, 
 which leads him to believe, and to state (indistinctly), that 
 though he has spent his last sixpence, it is ' awright ;' and 
 that things generally must come round and be as satisfactory 
 (in a rectified point of view) as a trivet. Next to the sailors 
 and their guests are a knot of Irish labourers, gesticulating, 
 quarrelling, and all but fighting, in their native manner, and 
 according to the custom of their country. Next are ragged 
 women, and mechanics, who have already spent, prospec- 
 tively, up to the Friday of the next week's earnings. Next, 
 and next, and next, are sailors, and Irish, and women, and 
 mechanics, over and over again. 
 
 We are arrested at the door by an episode of a domestic 
 nature, which merits tarrying an instant to witness. A very 
 broad Lancastrian chandler's-shop-keeper, speaking broad 
 Lancashire, and of mature years, has been drinking in an ad- 
 joining apartment with a Sergeant and a couple of recruits 
 of one of Her Majesty's regiments of militia. Arrived at that 
 happy state in which the celebrated Willie may reasonably be 
 supposed to have been when he had finished brewing the peck 
 of malt, it has occurred to this eccentric tradesman to slip on 
 one of the recruit's scarlet jackets, and to represent to the 
 partner of his joys (who, according to the Hymeneal Statute 
 in that case made and provided, has * fetched ' him) that he 
 has ' listed ;' at which she sheds abundant floods of tears, and 
 beseeches him to ' cast t' red rag oif and coom awa.' ' Coom 
 awa, Bobert, coom awa,' she passionately says, 4 yans nowt 
 but jack-shappers (hangmen), yans nowt but " shepstering 
 rads " (whatever can they be ?) coom awa ! The'll crop 'te pow, 
 lad. They'll mak thee shouther arms, lad. Dunnago wi' 'em, 
 Eobert.' But her adjurations are vain. Her husband who, 
 however far gone he may be in liquor, is a long way too far 
 North to 'list in reality maintains the impossibility of vio- 
 
40 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 lating the engagement lie has recently entered into with Her 
 Majesty the Queen. ' I'se geatten byounty, lass,' he repre- 
 sents, 'an I mun go wi Seargent !' At length, deeming 
 further expostulation useless, she abandons the cause ; ' Go 
 thy ways, thou fool/ she exclaims ; ' Go thy ways and be 
 hanged, thou Plump Mack /' with which last transcendant 
 figure of rhetoric she sweeps into the street. Whether the 
 appellation of ' Plump-Muck ' (pronounced ' ploomp-mook ') 
 has touched some hidden chord in her husband's bosom, or 
 whether the bent of his inebriety takes suddenly another di- 
 rection, I could not discover, but he presently falls into a fit 
 of grievous weeping, and to use his own words. ' whips oif 
 t' skycarlet rag ' and follows his spouse into Whitechapel, into 
 which we emerge likewise. 
 
 More gas, more music, and more crowds. Wax-work shows 
 where Monsieur Kossuth, Queen Elizabeth, and Gleeson 
 Wilson the murderer, may be seen for the small charge of one 
 penny. Baffles for fancy articles on the Sea-side bazaar plan, 
 with results nearly as profitable. Panoramas of Versailles, 
 the Himalaya Mountains, and the City of Canton. Shooting 
 Galleries (down cellar-steps), Dissolving Views, Dancing and 
 Singing Saloons. These, with shops for the sale of chandlery, 
 slop-clothing, hosiery, grocery, seamen's bedding, ships' 
 stores, and cheap literature (among which, I grieve to say it, 
 the blood-and-thunder school preponderates), makeup the rest 
 of \Vhitechapel. It is the same in the continuation thereof : 
 Paradise Street, which, however, boasts in addition a gigantic 
 building known as the Colosseum : once used as a chapel, and 
 with much of its original ecclesiastical appearance remaining ; 
 but now a Singing Saloon, or a Tavern Concert, crowded to 
 the ceiling. 
 
 As we wander up and down the crowded, steaming thorough- 
 fare, we catch strange glimpses occasionally of narrow streets. 
 Some occupied by lofty frowning warehouses ; others tenanted 
 by whole colonies of Irish ; ragged, barefooted, destitute ; 
 who lurk in garrets and swelter in back rooms, and crouch in 
 those hideous, crowded, filthy, underground cellars, which are 
 the marvel and the shame of Liverpool warehouses and 
 cellars, cellars and warehouses without end wealth, the 
 result of great commercial intelligence, rising up proudly 
 amidst misery, hunger, and soul-killing ignorance. 
 
 If I may be allowed to make a parting remark concerning the 
 Lancashire Whitechapel, it is with reference to its elasticity. 
 
JACK ALIVE IN LONDON. 41 
 
 All the rags and wretchedness, all the huckstering merchan- 
 dise, seem to possess a facility for expanding into gigantic com- 
 merce and boundless wealth. Not a cobbler's stall, a petty 
 chandler's shop, but seems ready to undertake anything in the 
 wholesale way at a moment's notice, and to contract for the 
 supply of the Militia with boots and shoes, or the British navy 
 with salt beef and tobacco immediately. Hucksters change 
 with wonderful rapidity into provision dealers, brokers into 
 salesmen, small shopkeepers into proprietors of monster em- 
 poriums. The very destitute Irish in this city of all cities of 
 commerce, (the Great Liverpool runs even London hard in 
 matter of fast trading !) after a preliminary apprenticeship to 
 the begging and hawking business, become speculators and 
 contractors on a surprising scale. 
 
 So may Whitechapel flourish all the year round, I say : may 
 its dirt, when I next see it, be changed to gold, and its rags 
 to fine linen, and its adjoining cellars to palaces. Although, 
 to be sure, the one disastrous thing likely is, that, when the 
 work of transmutation is completed, other rags, and cellars, 
 and dirt, will take the place of what has been changed to fine 
 linen, palaces, and gold. The ball must roll, and something 
 must be undermost. 
 
 IV. 
 
 JACK ALIVE IN LONDON. 
 
 COMING from Greenwich or Blackwall, radiant with 'Bad- 
 minton,' or ' Cider cup ;' or, perchance, coming home very 
 satiated and sea-sick from foreign parts, tired, jaded, used-up, 
 as a man is apt to be under such circumstances, the Pool 
 always pleases, enlivens, interests me. I pull out the trumpet- 
 stop of my organ of veneration ; my form dilates with the tall 
 spars around me ; I lose all count of the wonders of the lands 
 I have seen, of the coming cares and troubles the worrying 
 and bickering awaiting me, perhaps, in that remorseless, 
 inevitable London yonder. I forget them all in the Pool. If 
 I have a foreigner with me, so much the better. ' Not in 
 crimson- trousered soldiery,' I cry, ' oh ! Louis or Alphonse 
 not in the constant shouldering of arms, and the drumming 
 that never ceases, not in orders of the day, or vexatious pass- 
 ports, are the glories of Britain inscribed. See them in that 
 
42 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 interminable forest of masts, the red sun lighting up the cupolas 
 of Greenwich, the tarry hulls, the patched sails, the laden 
 hay-boats, the trim wherries, the inky waters of the Pool. 
 Bead them in the cobweb rigging ; watch them curling from 
 the short pipes of red-capped mariners lounging on the bul- 
 warks of timber ships ! Ships upon ships, masts everywhere, 
 even in the far-off country, among trees and churches ; the 
 commerce of the world jammed up between these cumbered 
 wharves, and overflowing into these narrow creeks !' 
 
 I propose to treat, as shortly as I can consistently with ac- 
 curacy, of maritime London, and of 'Jack' (alluding, under 
 that cognomen, to the general ' seafaring ' class) alive in 
 London. 
 
 ' Jack ' is * alive,' to my knowledge and experience, in East 
 Smithneld, and in and about all the Docks ; in Poplar, Lime- 
 house, Eotherhithe, Shad well, Wapping, Bermondsey, and the 
 Island of Dogs. He is feebly alive in Fenchurch Street and 
 the Minories ; but he shows special and vigorous symptoms of 
 vitality in Katcliffe Highway. If it interest you at all to see 
 him alive, and to see how he lives, we will explore, for some 
 half-hour or so, this very muddy, tarry, salt-water-smelling 
 portion of the metropolis. 
 
 You can get to RatclifFe Highway through the Minories : you 
 may attain it by a devious route through \Vhitechapel and Mile 
 End New Town ; but the way / go, is from London Bridge, 
 down Thames Street, and through the Tower, in order to come 
 gradually upon Jack alive, and to pick up specimens of his 
 saline existence bit by bit. 
 
 London Bridge is densely crowded, as it has been, is, and 
 always will be, I suppose. The wheels of the heavy waggons, 
 laden with bales and barrels, creak and moan piteously ; while 
 the passengers, who are always certain of being too late (and 
 never are) for a train on the South-Eastern Kail way, goad cab- 
 men into performing frantic pas de deux with their bewildered 
 horses. The sportive bullocks, too, the gigs, knackers' carts, 
 sheep, pigs, Barclay's drays, and cohorts of foot-passengers, 
 enliven the crowded scene. 
 
 Comfortably corn-crushed, jostled, and dust-blinded, I 
 descend the flight of stairs on the right of the King William 
 Street side of the bridge. I have but to follow my nose along 
 Thames Street to Batcliffe ; and I follow it. I elbow my way 
 through a compact mass of labourers, porters, sailors, fish- 
 women, and spruce clerks, with their bill books secured by a 
 
JACK ALIVE IN LONDON. lo 
 
 leather-covered chain round their waists. Room there, for a 
 hot sugar-broker tearing by, towards the Exchange, bursting 
 with a recent bargain ! Eoom for a spruce captain (he had 
 his boots cleaned by one of the ' brigade ' opposite Billingsgate 
 Market) in an irreproachable state of clean-shirtedriess, navy- 
 blue-broadclothedness and chinmey-pot-hattedness ! He sets 
 his big silver watch at every church, and dusts his boots with 
 an undoubted bandanna. He has an appointment, doubtless, 
 at Garraway's or^the Jerusalem Coffee House, with his owner 
 or broker. 
 
 A gush of fish, stale and fresh, stretches across Thames 
 Street, as I near Billingsgate Market. I turn aside for a 
 moment, and enter the market. Business is over ; and the 
 male and female purveyors of the treasures of the deep solace 
 themselves with pipes and jovial converse. 
 
 Jack is getting more lively all through Thames Street and 
 Tower Street, and is alarmingly vital when I emerge on Tower 
 Hill. A row of foreign mariners pass me, seven abreast: 
 swarthy, ear-ringed, black-bearded varlets in red shirts, light- 
 blue trousers, and with sashes round their waists. Part of the 
 crew of a Sardinian brig, probably. They have all their arms 
 round each other's necks ; yet I cannot help thinking that 
 they look somewhat ' knifey,' ' stilettoey.' I hope I may be 
 mistaken, but I am afraid that it would be odds were you to 
 put an indefinite quantity of rum into them, they would put a 
 few inches of steel into you. 
 
 But I enter the Tower postern, and am in another London 
 the military metropolis at once. Yery curious and 
 wonderful are these old gray towers, these crumbling walls, 
 these rotting portcullises, so close to the business-like brick- 
 and-mortar of St. Katherine's Dock House hard by. What 
 has the ' Devilin Tower,' the Scavenger's Daughter,' the 
 * Stone Kitchen,' to do with wholesale grocers, ship-chandlers, 
 and outfitting warehouses ? Is there not something jarring, 
 discordant, in that grim, four-turreted old fortalice, frowning 
 011 the quiet corn and coal-carrying vessels in the pool ? What 
 do the ' thousand years of war ' so close to the ' thousand years 
 of peace ?' Is not the whole sombre, lowering old pile, a huge 
 anachronism? Julius Caesar, William the Third, and the 
 Docks ! Wharves covered with tubs of peaceful palm-oil, 
 and dusky soldiers sauntering on narrow platforms, from 
 whence the black mouths of honeycombed old guns grin 
 (toothless, haply) into peaceful dwelling-houses. The dried- 
 
44 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 up moat, the "old rooms, wall-inscribed with the overflowings 
 of weary hearts ; the weazen-faced old warders, with their 
 strange, gone-by costume ; the dinted armour, and rusted 
 headman's axe ; all tell with the vacant space on the Green, 
 where the four posts of the scaffold stood, and the shabby 
 little church, where lie Derwentwater and Lovat, Anne Boleyn 
 and Northumberland, the innocent and the guilty, the dupers 
 and the duped of things that ham been, thank God ! 
 
 I pass a lane where the soldiers live (why should their 
 wives necessarily be slatterns, their children dirty, and they 
 themselves alternately in a state of shirt-sleeves, beer and 
 tobacco, or one of pipe-clay, red blanketing, and mechanical 
 stolidity, I wonder ?) and ask an artilleryman on guard where 
 a door of egress is to be found. He ' dwoan't know :' of 
 course not. Soldiers never do know. It isn't in the articles 
 of war, or the Queen's regulations. Still, I think my friend 
 in the blue coat, and with the shaving-brush stuck at the top 
 of his shako, would be rather more useful in guarding a 
 fortress, if he knew the way into and the way out of it- 
 Patience, ' trying back,' and the expenditure of five minutes, 
 at last bring me out by another postern, leading on to Tower 
 Hill the less, East Smithfield, St. Katherine's Docks, and the 
 Mint ; very nearly opposite is a narrow street, where a four- 
 oared cutter, in the middle of the pavement, in progress of 
 receiving an outer coat of tar and an inner one of green paint, 
 suggests to me that Jack is decidedly alive in this vicinity ; 
 while, closely adjacent, a monster ' union jack,' sloping from 
 the first-floor window of an unpretending little house, 
 announces the whereabouts of the ' Royal Naval Rendezvous.' 
 You have perhaps heard of it more frequently as the house of 
 reception for the ' Tower Tender.' The Rendezvous, and the 
 Tender too, had a jovial season of it in the war-time, when the 
 press was hot, and civilians were converted into ' volunteers ' 
 for the naval service, by rough compulsion. The neighbour- 
 hood swarmed with little ' publics,' embellished with cartoons 
 of the beatified state of Jack, when alive in the navy. Jack 
 was continually drinking grog with the port-admiral, or 
 executing hornpipes with the first-lieutenant. The only 
 labour imposed on him (pictorially) was the slaying half a 
 dozen Frenchmen occasionally before breakfast ; for which a 
 grateful country rewarded him with hecatombs of dollars. At 
 home, he was represented frying gold watches, and lighting 
 pipes with five pound notes. Love, liquor, and glory ! King 
 
JACK ALIVE IN LONDON. 45 
 
 and country! Magnificent bounty, &c., &c., &c. But the 
 picture has two sides ; for Jack hung back sometimes, prefer- 
 ring to fry watches in the merchant service. A grateful country 
 pressed him. He ran away from captivity ; a grateful country 
 flogged him. He mutinied ; a grateful country hanged him. 
 Whether it was the flogging, or the hanging, or the scurvy, or 
 the French bullets, or the prisons at Verdun and Brest, I 
 won't be certain ; but Jack became at last quite a scarce 
 article. So the Eoyal Naval Eendezvous, and the Tower 
 Tender were obliged to content themselves with the sweepings 
 of the prisons thieves, forgers, murderers, and the like. 
 These even grew scarce ; and a grateful country pressed every- 
 body she could lay her hands on. * Food for powder ' was 
 wanted 'mortal men' good enough to 'fill a pit,' must be 
 had. Quiet citizens, cripples, old men were pressed. Appren- 
 tices showed their indentures, citizens their freedom, in vain. 
 Britannia must have men. People would come home from 
 China or Honolulu, and fall into the clutches of the press- 
 gang five minutes after they had set foot on land. Bags of 
 money would be found on posts on Tower Hill, left there by 
 persons who had been pressed unawares. People would leave 
 public-house parlours to see what sort of a night it was, and 
 never be seen or heard of again. I remember, even, hearing 
 from my nurse, during childhood, a ghostly legend of how the 
 Lord Chancellor, going over Tower Hill one night with the 
 great seal in a carpet-bag, and ' disguised in liquor ' after a 
 dinner at Guildhall, was kidnapped by a press-gang, sent on 
 board the Tower Tender, and not released until three months 
 afterwards, when he was discovered on board the ' Catspaw ' 
 frigate, in the Toulon fleet, scraping the mizen-mast, under 
 the cat of a boatswain's mate. Of course I won't be answer- 
 able for the veracity of the story ; but we scarcely need its 
 confirmation to find plenty of reasons to bless those glorious 
 good old times when George the Third was king. 
 
 Times are changed with the Eendezvous now. Sailors it 
 still craves; but good ones A. B.'s ; not raffish gaol-birds 
 and useless landsmen. The A. B.'s are not so plentiful, 
 though the times are so peaceful. The A. B.'s have heard of 
 the ' cat ;' and they know what ' holystoning ' and ' black- 
 listing' means. There is a stalwart A. B., I watch, reading 
 a placard in the window of the Eendezvous, stating that the 
 ' Burster,' one hundred and twenty guns, fitting at Plymouth, 
 wants some able-bodied seamen. ' Catch a weasel asleep,' 
 
46 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 $ays the A. B., walking on. He belongs to the ' Chutnagore,' 
 A 1, tinder engagement to sail for Madras, and would rather 
 not have anything to do with the ' Burster.' 
 
 A weather-beaten old quarter-master stands on the steps of 
 the Eendezvous, and eyes the A. B. wistfully. The A. B. is 
 the sort of man Britannia wants just now. So are those 
 three black-whiskered fellows, swaggering along with [& 
 Yankee skipper, with whom they have just signed articles 
 for a voyage to Boston, in the ' Peleg Whittle ;' Coon, master. 
 Poor old quarter-master ! give him but his ' four-and-twenty 
 stout young fellows,' his beloved press-gang ; and the ' Chut- 
 nagore ' would go one A. B. short to sea ; while Captain 
 Coon would vainly lament the loss of three of the crew of the 
 * Peleg Whittle.' The ' Burster ' is very short of hands ; but 
 he has bagged very few A. B.'s yet. See, a recruit offers ; a 
 lanky lad in a torn jacket, with an air of something like 
 ragged respectability about him ! He wants to ' go to sea.' 
 The quarter-master laughs at him repulses him. The boy 
 has, ten to one, run away from school or from home, with 
 that vague indefinite idea of ' going to sea ' in his mind. To 
 sea, indeed ! He has prowled about the docks, vainly impor- 
 tuned captains, owners, seamen, anybody, with his request. 
 Nobody will have anything to do with him. The greatest 
 luck in store for him would be the offer of a cabin-boy's 
 berth on board a collier, where the captain would regale him 
 with the convivial crowbar and the festive ropes-end, when- 
 ever the caprice seized him. Going to sea ! Ah, my young 
 friend ! trudge home to Dr. Broomback's seminary never 
 mind the thrashing explain to your young friends, impressed 
 as you have been with a mania for ' running away and going 
 to sea,' that it is one thing to talk about doing a thing, and 
 another to do it ; that a ragged little landsman is worse than 
 useless aboard ship ; and that there are ten chances to one 
 even against his ever being allowed to put his foot on ship- 
 board. 
 
 I leave the Eoyal Naval Eendezvous just as a dissolute 
 Norwegian stops to read the c Burster ' placard. Now, I turn 
 past the Mint, and past the soldiers on guard there, and 
 pursue the course of a narrow little street leading towards 
 the Docks. 
 
 Here, Jack leaps into great life. Ship-chandlers, ship- 
 grocers, biscuit-bakers, sail-makers, outfitting warehouses, 
 occupy the shops on either side. Up a little court is a nau- 
 
JACK ALIVE IN LONDON. 47 
 
 tical day-school for teaching navigation. There is a book- 
 stall, 011 which lie the ' Seaman's Manual,' the 6 Shipmaster's 
 Assistant,' and Hamilton Moore's * Navigation.' There is a 
 nautical instrument maker's, where chronometers, quadrants, 
 and sextants are kept, and blank log-books are sold. The 
 stationers display forms for manifests, bills of lading, and 
 charter-parties. Every article vended has some connection 
 with those who go down to the sea in ships. 
 
 When we enter St. George's Street, where there are shops 
 on one side of the way, and St. Katherine's Dock warehouses 
 on the other, Jack becomes tremendously alive on the pave- 
 ment. Jack from India and China, very sunburnt, and 
 smoking Trichinopoly cheroots thin cigars with a reed 
 passed through them, and nearly a foot long. American 
 Jack, in a red worsted shirt, and chewing indefatigably. 
 Swedish Jack, smelling of tallow and turpentine, but 
 amazingly good-natured, and unaffectedly polite. Italian 
 Jack, shivering. German Jack, with a light-blue jacket and 
 yellow trousers, stolid and smoky ; Greek Jack, voluble in 
 petticoats, and long boots. Grimy seamen from colliers ; 
 smart, taut men, from Green's or Wigram's splendid East 
 India ships ; mates in spruce jackets, and gold-laced caps, 
 puffing prime Havannahs. Lastly, the real unadulterated 
 English Jack, with the inimitable roll, the unapproachable 
 hitch, the unsurpassable flowers of language. The pancake 
 hat stuck at the back of the head, the neckerchief passed 
 through a wedding-ring, the flaring yellow silk handkerchief; 
 the whole unmistakeable costume and demeanour so unlike 
 the stage sailor, so unlike the pictorial sailor so like only 
 what it really is. 
 
 This is the busiest portion of the day, and the Highway is 
 crowded. Enthusiasts would perhaps be disappointed at the 
 woful lack of nautical vernacular prevalent with Jack. He 
 is not continually shivering his timbers ; neither is he always 
 requesting you to stand by and belay; to dowse the lee- 
 scuppers, or to splice the main-brace. 
 
 The doors of the public-houses disgorge great crowds of 
 mariners ; nor are there wanting taverns and eating-houses, 
 where the sailors of different nations may be accommodated. 
 Here is a ' Deutsches Gasthaus,' a Prussian ' Bierhalle' a real 
 * Norwegian House.' Stay! Here we are at the Central 
 Dock gates, and, among a crowd of sailors, hurrying in and 
 out, swarm forth hordes of Dock labourers to their dinner. 
 
48 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 A very queer company, indeed ; ' navvies,' seafaring men, 
 and individuals of equivocal dress and looks, who have 
 probably taken to the ' two shillings ' or half-crown a day 
 awarded for Dock toil, as a last refuge from inevitable starva- 
 tion. Discharged policemen, ruined medical students, clerks 
 who have lost their characters, Polish and German refugees, 
 might be found, I opine, in those squalid ranks. It is all 
 equality now, however. The college-bred youth, the educated 
 man, must toil in common with the navvy and the tramp. 
 They seem contented enough, eating their poor meals, and 
 puffing at the never-failing pipe with great gusto. Poor and 
 almost destitute as these men are, they can yet obtain a species 
 of delusive credit a credit by which they are ultimately 
 defrauded. Crafty victuallers will advance them beer and 
 food on the security of their daily wage, which they them- 
 selves secure from the foremen. They exact, of course, an 
 enormous interest. It is, after all, the old abuse, the old 
 Tommy-shop nuisance the 'infamous truck system' the 
 iniquitous custom of paying the labourers at the public- 
 house, and the mechanic late on the Saturday night. 
 
 I have not time to enter the Docks just now ; and plunge 
 further into the Babel of Batcliffe Highway. Jack is. alive 
 everywhere by this time. A class of persons remarkably 
 lively in connection with him, are the Jews. For Jack are 
 these grand Jewish outfitting warehouses alone intended. 
 For his sole use and benefit are the swinging lamps, the 
 hammocks and bedding, the code of signal pocket-hand- 
 kerchiefs, the dreadnought coats, sou-wester hats, telescopes, 
 checked shirts, pilot jackets, case bottles, and multifarious 
 odds and ends required by the mariner. For Jack does 
 Meshech manufacture the delusive jewellery ; while Shadrach 
 vaunts the watch that has no works ; and Abednego con- 
 fidentially proposes advances of cash on wages-notes. Jewry 
 is alive, as well as Jack, in Eatcliffe Highway. You may 
 call that dingy little cabin of a shop, small ; but, bless you ! 
 they would fit out a seventy-four in ten minutes, with every- 
 thing wanted, from a spanker boom to a bottle of Harvey's 
 Sauce. For purposes marine, they sell everything ; biscuits 
 by sacksfull, bales of dreadnoughts, miles of rope, infinities 
 of fishing-tackle, shaving-tackle, running-tackle, spars, sex- 
 tants, sea-chests, and hundreds of other articles. Jewry will 
 even supply you with sailors ; will man vessels for you, from 
 a cock-boat to an Indiamaii. Jewry has a capital black cook 
 
JACK ALIVE IN LONDON. 11) 
 
 inside. A third mate at two minutes' notice. A steward in 
 the twinkling- of a handspike. Topmast men in any quant itv, 
 and at immediate call. 
 
 A strange sound half human, half ornithological br< 
 on the ear above the turmoil of the crowded street. I follow 
 a swarthy mariner, who holds a cage, muffled in a hand- 
 kerchief in his hand, a few yards, until he enters a large and 
 handsome shop, kept also by a child of Israel, and which 
 literally swarms with parrots, cockatoos, and macaws. Here 
 they are, in every variety of gorgeous plumage and curvature 
 of beak : with their wicked-looking, bead-like eyes and crested 
 heads ; screaming, croaking, yelling, swearing, laughing, sing- 
 ing, drawing corks, and winding up clocks, with frantic 
 energy ! Most of these birds come from South America and 
 the coast of Africa. Jack generally brings home one or two 
 as his own private venture, selling it in London for a sum 
 varying from thirty to forty shillings. I am sorry to have to 
 record that a parrot which can swear well, is more remunera- 
 tive to Jack than a non-juring bird. A parrot which is 
 accomplished enough to rap out half a dozen round oaths in a 
 breath, will fetch you fifty shillings, perhaps. In this shop, 
 also, are stuffed humming-birds, ivory chessmen, strange 
 shells, and a miscellaneous collection of those foreign odds 
 and ends, called ' curiosities.' Jack is very lively here with 
 the rabbinical ornithologist. He has just come from the 
 Gold Coast in a man-of-war, the captain of which, in con- 
 sideration of the good conduct of the crew while on the 
 station, had permitted each man before the mast to bring as 
 many parrots home with him as he liked. And they did 
 bring a great many, Jack says so many, that the vessel be- 
 came at last like a ship full of women; the birds creating 
 such an astonishing variety of discordant noises, that the men 
 were, in self defence, obliged to let some two or three hundred 
 of them (they didn't keep count of fifty or so) loose. Hundreds, 
 however, came safe home ; and Jack has two or three to dis- 
 pose of. They whistle hornpipes beautifully. I leave him 
 still haggling with the ornithologist, and triumphantly elicit- 
 ing a miniature ' Joe Bee's Vocabulary of Slang ' from the 
 largest of his birds. 
 
 You are not to suppose, gentle reader, that the population 
 of Eatcliffe is destitute of an admixture of the fairer portion 
 of the creation. Jack has his Jill in St. George's Street, 
 Cable Street, Back Lane, and the Commercial Road. Jill is 
 
50 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 inclined to corpulence ; if it were not libellous, I could hint a 
 suspicion that Jill is not unaddicted to the use of spirituous 
 liquors. Jill wears a silk handkerchief round her neck, as 
 Jack does ; like him, too, she rolls, occasionally ; I believe, 
 smokes, frequently ; I am afraid, swears, occasionally. Jack 
 is a cosmopolite here to-day, gone to-morrow; but Jill is 
 peculiar to maritime London. She nails her colours to the 
 mast of Katcliffe. Jill has her good points, though she does 
 scold a little, and fight a little, and drink a little. She is just 
 what Mr. Thomas Dibdin has depicted her, and nothing more 
 or less. She takes care of Jack's tobacco-box ; his trousers 
 she washes, and his grog, too, she makes ; and if he enacts 
 occasionally the part of a maritime Giovanni, promising to 
 walk in the Mall with Susan of Deptford, and likewise with 
 Sal, she only upbraids him with a tear. I wish the words of 
 all songs had as much sense and as much truth in them as 
 Mr. Dibdiii's have. 
 
 A hackney-coach (the very last hackney-coach, I verily 
 believe, in London, and the one, moreover, which my Irish 
 maid-of-all-work always manages to fetch me when I send 
 her for a cab) a hackney-coach, I say, jolts by, filled inside 
 and out ! Jack is going to be married. I don't think I am 
 mis-stating or exaggerating the case, when I say that the 
 whole party bride, bridegroom, bridesmaids, bridesmen, 
 coachman and all are considerably the worse for liquor. Is 
 this as it should be ? Ah, poor Jack ! 
 
 And I have occasion to say 'Poor Jack!' a good many 
 times in the course of my perambulations. It is my personal 
 opinion that Jack is robbed that he is seduced into extra- 
 vagance, hoodwinked into spendthrift and dissolute habits. 
 There is no earthly reason why Jack should not save money 
 out of his wages ; why he should never have a watch without 
 frying it, nor a five-pound note without lighting his pipe 
 with it. It cannot be indispensable that he should be con- 
 tinually kept * alive ' with gin ; that he should have no com- 
 panions save profligate women, no amusements save low 
 dancing-saloons and roaring taverns. The sailor has a strong 
 religious and moral bias. He scorns and loathes deceit, 
 dishonesty, and injustice, innately. He is often a profligate, 
 and a drunkard, and a swearer (I will not say blasphemer), 
 because abominable and vicious customs make him so ; 
 because, ill-cared for on board ship, he no sooner lands than 
 he becomes the prey of the infamous harpies who infest 
 
JACK ALIVE IN LONDON. f)l 
 
 maritime London. He is robbed by outfitters (I particnl 
 neither Jew nor Gentile, for there are six of one and half a 
 dozen of the other) ; he is robbed by the tavern-keepers, the 
 crimps, and the boarding-masters. lie is robbed by his 
 associates, robbed in business, robbed in amusement. * Jack ' 
 is fair game to everybody. 
 
 The conductors of that admirable institution, the Sailors' 
 Home, I understand, are doing their best to alleviate the 
 evils I have lightly, but very lightly, touched upon. Jack 
 is alive, but not with an unwholesome galvanic vitality, in 
 the Home. He is well fed, well treated, and well cared 
 for, generally ; moreover, he is not wronged. The tailor 
 who makes his clothes, and the landlord who sells him his 
 beer, and the association that board him, do not con- 
 spire to rob him. The only shoal the managers of the 
 Sailors' Home have to steer clear of, is the danger, of in- 
 culcating the idea among sailors, that the institution has 
 anything of a gratuitous or eleemosynary element in its 
 construction. Sailors are high-spirited and eminently inde- 
 pendent in feeling. 
 
 I have come by this time to the end of the straggling series 
 of broad and narrow thoroughfares, which, under the names 
 of East Smithfield, St. George's Street, Upper Shadwell Street, 
 and Cock Hill, all form part, in the aggregate, of Eatcliffe 
 Highway. I stand on the threshold of the mysterious region 
 comprising, in its limits, Shadwell, Poplar, and Limehouse. 
 To my left, some two miles distant, is Stepney, to which 
 parish all children born at sea are, traditionally, said to be 
 chargeable. No longer are there continued streets ' blocks,' 
 as the Americans call them of houses. There are swampy 
 fields and quaggy lanes, and queer little public-houses like 
 ship- cuddies, transplanted bodily from East Indiamen, and 
 which have taken root here. The * Cat and Fiddle ' is a 
 waterman's house 'jolly young watermen,' I am afraid, no 
 more. At the ' Bear and Harp ' so the placard informs me 
 is held the 'Master Mariners' Club.' Shipbuilders' yards 
 start suddenly upon me ships in full sail bear down on me 
 through quiet lanes ; lofty masts loom spectrally among the 
 quiet graves in the churchyard. In the church yonder, where 
 the union-jack flies at the steeple, there are slabs com- 
 memorating the bequests of charitable master- mariners, dead 
 years ago ; of an admiral's widow, who built an organ ; of the 
 six poor women, who are to be yearly relieved as a thank- 
 
 E 2 
 
52 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 offering for the release of some dead and gone Levant trader 
 ' from captyvitie among the Tnrkes in Algeeres.' In the grave- 
 yards, scores of bygone sea-captains, their wives and children, 
 shipwrights, ropemakers, of the olden time, dead pursers, 
 and ship-chandlers, sleep quietly. They have compasses and 
 sextants, and ships in full sail, sculptured on their moss- 
 grown tombs. The wind howls no more, nor the waves roar 
 now for them. Gone aloft, I hope, most of them ! though 
 Seth Slipcheese, the great ship-contractor, who sold terribly 
 weevilly biscuit, and salted horse for beef, sleeps under that 
 substantial brick tomb yonder : while beneath the square 
 stone slab with the sculptured skull and hour-glass, old 
 Martin Flibuster may have his resting-place. He was called 
 ' captain,' nobody knew why ; he swore terribly ; he had 
 strange foreign trinkets and gold doubloons hanging to his 
 watch-chain, and told wild stories of parboiled Indians, and 
 Spanish Dons, with their ears and noses slit. What matters 
 it now if he did sail with Captain Kidd, and scuttle the ' Ellen 
 and Mary/ with all hands aboard? He died in his bed, and 
 who shall say, impenitent ? 
 
 The old sea-captains and traders connected with the [sea 
 have still their abiding places in quiet, cosy little cottages 
 about here, mostly tenements, with green doors and bow- 
 windows, and with a summer-house perched a-top, where 
 they can twist a flag on festive occasions, and enjoy their 
 grog and tobacco on quiet summer evenings. The wild 
 mania for building the lath-and-plaster, stucco-palace, Cock- 
 ney-Corinthian frenzy, has not yet extended to Limehouse, 
 and the old ' salts ' have elbow-room. 
 
 I must turn back here, however; for it is nearly four 
 o'clock, and I shall be too late else for a peep into the Docks. 
 The Docks ! What a flood of recollections bursts through 
 the sluice-gates of my mind, as I gaze on the huge range of 
 warehouses, the swarms of labourers, the crowd of ships ! 
 Little as many of us know of maritime London, and of the 
 habits of Jack alive, we have all been to the Docks, once in 
 our lives at least. Was it to see that wonderful seafaring 
 relation of ours who was always going out to the Cape with a 
 magnificent outfit, and who always returned, Yanderdecken- 
 like, without having doubled it being also minus shoes and 
 stockings, and bringing home, as a species of atonement- 
 offering, the backbone of a shark ? Was it to dine on board 
 the ' Abercrombie, Jenkinson, 3 of I don't know how many 
 
JACK ALIVE IN LONDON. r 53 
 
 hundred tons burden, which went out to Sydney with emi- 
 grants, and foundered in Algoa Bay? \Vas it with that 
 never-to-be-forgotten tasting-order for twelve pipes, sixteen 
 hogsheads, twelve barrels, of rare ports and sherries, when 
 coopers rushed about with candles in cleft sticks, running 
 gimlets into casks, and pouring out rich wines into sawdust 
 like water ? When we ate biscuits, and rinsed our mouths 
 scientifically, and reproached our companions with being up- 
 roarious ; but coming out (perfectly sober, of course), could 
 not be prevented from addressing the populace on general 
 subjects, and repeatedly volunteering the declaration (with 
 our hat on the back of our head and the tie of our cravat like 
 a bag -wig) that we were ' All Eight !' 
 
 I remember, as a child, always asking myself how the ships 
 got into dock ; a question rapidly followed by alarming incerti- 
 tude as to how they got out. I don't think I know much more 
 about the matter now, though I listen attentively to a pilot- 
 coat and scarred face, who tells me all about it. Pilot-coat 
 points to the warehouses, dilates on the enormous wells those 
 gigantic brick-work shells contain ; shows me sugar-bags, 
 coifee-bags, tea-chests, rice-bags, tubs of tallow, casks of palm- 
 oil. Pilot-coat has been everywhere, and every voyage has 
 added a fresh scar to his face. He has been to sea since he 
 was no higher than ' that ' pointing to a stump. Went out 
 in a convict-ship ; wrecked off St. Helena. Went out to Val- 
 paraiso ; had a fever. Went out to Alexandria ; had the 
 plague. Went out to Mobile ; wrecked. Went out to Ja- 
 maica ; fell down the hatchway, and broke his collar-bone. 
 Deserted into an American liner; thence into an Australian 
 emigrant ship ; ran away at Sydney ; drove bullocks in the 
 bush ; entered for Bombay ; entered the Indian navy ; was 
 wrecked off the coast of Coromandel ; was nearly killed with 
 a Malay creese. Been in a South-sea whaler, a Greenland 
 whaler, a South Shields collier, and a Shoreham mackerel 
 boat. Who could refuse the ' drop of summut ' to an ancient 
 mariner, who has such a tale to tell, were it only to curtail 
 the exuberance of his narration ? And it is, and always has 
 been, my private opinion, that if the ' wedding guest ' had 
 given the real ' ancient mariner ' sixpence for a , * drop of 
 summut,' he would have had the pith of his story out of him 
 in no time, whereby, though we should have lost an exqui- 
 site poem, the ' wedding guest ' would not have been so 
 unsufferably bored as he undoubtedly was, and some of 
 
54 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 us would have known better, perhaps, what the story was 
 about. 
 
 You have your choice of Docks in this wonderful maritime 
 London. The St. Katherine's Docks, the London, the West 
 India Docks lie close together ; while, if you follow the Com- 
 mercial Eoad, the East India Docks lie close before you, as 
 the Commercial Docks do after going through the Thames 
 Tunnel. There are numerous inlets, moreover, and basins, 
 and diy docks : go where you will, the view begins or ends 
 with the inevitable ships. 
 
 Tarry with me for a moment in the Isle of Dogs, and step 
 on board this huge East Indiaman. She is as big as a man- 
 of-war, and as clean as a Dutch door-step. Such a bustle as 
 is going on inside, and about her, nevertheless ! She is 
 under engagement to the ' Honourable Company ' to sail in 
 three days' time ; and her crew will have a tidy three days' 
 work. There are horsey pigs, bullocks, being hoisted on 
 board ; there are sheep in the launch, and ducks and geese in 
 the long-boats. French rolls can be baked on board, and a 
 perfect kitchen-garden maintained foreward. Legions of 
 stores are being taken on board. Mrs. Colonel Chutney 's 
 grand piano ; old Mr. Mango's (of the civil service) hookahs 
 and black servants ; harness, saddlery, and sporting tackle for 
 Lieutenant Griffin of the Bombay cavalry. And there are 
 spruce young cadets whose means do not permit them to go 
 by the overland route, and steady-going civil and military 
 servants of the Company, going out after furlough, and who 
 do not object to a four months' sea-voyage. And there are 
 black Ayahs, and Hookabadars, and Lascars, poor, bewildered, 
 shivering, brown-faced Orientals, staring at everything around 
 them, as if they had not quite got over their astonishment 
 yet at the marvels of Frangistan. I wonder whether the 
 comparison is unfavourable to us in their Brahminical minds, 
 between the cold black swampy Isle of Dogs, the inky water, 
 the slimy hulls, the squalid labourers, the rain and sleet ; 
 and the hot sun and yellow sands of Calcutta ; the blue water, 
 and dark maiden, with her water-pitcher on her head ; the 
 sacred Ganges, the rich dresses, stately elephants, half-naked 
 Sircars of Hindostan ; the rice and arrack, the paddy-fields 
 and bungalows, the punkato, palankeen, and yellow streak of 
 caste of Bengal the beloved ! Perhaps. 
 
 Passengers are coming aboard the Indiaman, old stagers 
 wrangling as to the security of their standing bed-places, 
 
JACK ALIVE IN LONDON. 55 
 
 and young ladies consigned to the Indian matrimonial market, 
 delightfully surprised and confused at everything. The 
 potent captain of the ship is at the Jerusalem Coffee-house, 
 or busy with his brokers ; but the mates are hard at work, 
 bawling, commanding, and counter-commanding. Jack is 
 alive, above, below, aloft, and in the hold, as usual, shoul- 
 dering casks as though they were pint pots, and hoisting 
 horses about manfully. 
 
 Shall we leave the Isle of Dogs, and glance at the West 
 India Docks for a moment ? Plenty to see here at all events. 
 Eice, sugar, pepper, tobacco; desks saturated quite brown 
 with syrup and molasses, just as the planks of a whaling ship 
 are slippery. Jack, in a saccharine state, strongly perfumed 
 with coffee-berries. Black Jack, very woolly-headed, and 
 ivory- grindered, cooking, fiddling, and singing, as it seems 
 the nature of Black Jack to cook, fiddle, and sing. Where 
 the union-jack flies, Nigger Jack is well treated. English 
 sailors do not disdain to drink with him, work with him, and 
 sing with him. Take a wherry, however, to that American 
 clipper, with the tall masts, and the fall man for skipper, and 
 you will hear a different tale. Beneath the star-spangled ban- 
 ner, the allowance of halfpence for Nigger Jacks decreases wo- 
 fully, while that of kicks increases in an alarming proportion. 
 I would rather not be a black man on board an American ship. 
 
 In the London Docks we have a wonderful mixture of the 
 ships of all nations ; while on a Sunday the masts are dressed 
 out with a very kaleidoscope of variegated ensigns. Over 
 the ship's side lounge stunted Swedes and Danes, and ole- 
 aginous Eussians ; while in another, the nimble Gaul, faithful 
 to the traditions of his cuisine, is busy scraping carrots for a 
 pot aufeu. 
 
 Not in one visit not in two could you, O reader ! pene- 
 trate into a tithe of the mysteries of maritime London ; not in 
 half a dozen papers could I give you a complete description 
 of Jack alive in London. We might wander through the 
 dirty mazes of Wapping, glancing at the queer, disused old 
 stairs, and admiring the admirable mixture of rotting boats, 
 tarry cable, shell-fish, mud, and bad characters, which is there 
 conglomerated. We could study Jack alive in the hostelries, 
 where, by night, in rooms the walls of which are decorated 
 with verdant landscapes, he dances to the notes of the enli- 
 vening fiddle ; we might follow him in his uneven wanderings, 
 sympathise with him when he has lost his register ticket, 
 
56 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 denounce the Jews and crimps who rob him. Let us hope- 
 that Jack's life will be amended with the times in which we 
 are fortunate enough to live ; and that those who have the 
 power and the means, may not long want the inclination to 
 stretch forth a helping hand to him. Eatcliffe and Shad well, 
 Gable Street and Back Lane, maybe very curious in their 
 internal economy, and very picturesque in their dirt; but it 
 cannot be a matter of necessity that those who toil so hard., 
 and contribute in so great a degree to our grandeur and pros- 
 perity, should be so unprotected and so little cared for. 
 
 V. 
 
 THINGS DEPARTED. 
 
 I USE the parlour, I am not ashamed to say it, of the ' Blue 
 Pigeon.' There was an attempt, some months since, headed, 
 I believe, by that self-educated young jackanapes, Squrrel, to 
 prevail on the landlord to change the appellation of ' parlour ' 
 into ' coifee-room ;' to substitute horsehair-covered benches 
 for the Windsor chairs ; to take the sand off the floor, and the 
 tobacco-stoppers off the table. / opposed it. Another per- 
 son had the impudence to propose the introduction of a 
 horribly seditious publication, which he called a liberal news- 
 paper. I opposed it. So I did the anarchical proposition 
 to rescind our standing order, that any gentleman smoking 
 a cigar instead of a pipe, on club nights, should be fined a 
 crown bowl of punch. From this you will, perhaps, Sir, 
 infer that I am a Conservative. Perhaps I am. I have my 
 own opinions about Catholic Emancipation, Parliamentary 
 Eeform, and the Corn Laws. 
 
 I have nothing to do with politics, nor politics with rne y 
 just now ; but I will tell you what object I have in address- 
 ing you. I can't help thinking, coming home from the club, 
 how curiously we adapt ourselves to the changes that are 
 daily taking place around us ; how, one by one, old habits 
 and old customs die away, and we go about our business 
 as unconcernedly as though they never had been. Almost 
 the youngest of us if he choose to observe, and can re- 
 member what he observes must have a catalogue of ' things- 
 departed;' of customs, ceremonies, institutions, to which. 
 
THINGS DEPARTED. f>7 
 
 people were used, and which fell gradually into disuse; 
 which seemed, while they existed, to be almost necessaries, 
 of life, and for which now they don't care the value of a 
 Spanish bond. There was a friend of mine, a man of genius, 
 whose only fault was his continuous drunkenness, who used 
 to say that the pith of the whole matter lay in the ' doctrine 
 of averages.' I was never a dab at science and that sort of 
 thing ; but I suppose he meant that there was an average 
 in the number of his tumblers of brandy and water, in the 
 comings up of new fashions, and in the goings down of old 
 ones ; then of the old ones coming up again, and so vice versa, 
 till I begin to get muddled (morally muddled, of course), and 
 give up the doctrine of averages in despair. 
 
 I have a copious collection in my memory of things de- 
 parted. I am no chicken (though not the gray-headed old 
 fogy that insulting Squrrel presumes to call me) ; but if I 
 were to tell you a tithe of what I can remember in the way of 
 departed fashions, manners, and customs, the very margins of 
 this paper would be flooded with type. Let me endeavour 
 to recall a few a very few only of what I call things de- 
 parted. 
 
 Hackney-coaches, for instance. Why, a boy of twelve 
 years of age" can remember them; and yet, where are they 
 now? AY ho thinks of them? Grand, imposing, musty- 
 smelling, unclean old institutions they were. Elaborate 
 heraldic devices covered their panels ; dim legends used to be 
 current amongst us children, that the}'' had all been noble- 
 men's carriages once upon a time, but falling with the 
 princely houses they appertained to in to decay, had so come 
 to grief and hackney-coachhood. They had wonderful coach- 
 men, too imposing individuals, in coats with capes infinite 
 in number. How they drove ! How they cheated ! How 
 they swore ! The keenest of your railway cabbies, the most 
 extortionate of your crack Hansoms, would have paled before 
 the unequalled Billingsgate of those old-world men, at the 
 comprehensive manner in which you, your person, costume, 
 morals, family, and connections, were cursed. As all boat- 
 men at Portsmouth have (or say they have) been Nelson's cox- 
 swain, so used I to believe every hackney-coachman I saw to 
 be the identical Jarvej^ who had been put inside his own. 
 vehicle by the Prince of Wales, and driven about the metro- 
 polis by that frolicsome and royal personage, in company 
 with Beau Brummel, Colonel Hanger, and Philippe Egalite. 
 
58 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 But the hackney-coach is now one of the things departed. 
 There is one one still, I believe stationed in the environs 
 of North Audley Street, Oxford Street. I have seen it a 
 ghostly, unsubstantial pageant flit before me, among cabs 
 and omnibuses, like a vehicular phantom ship. The coach- 
 man is not the rubicund, many-caped Jehu of yore. He is 
 a thin, weazened old man in a jacket (hear it!) and Welling- 
 ton boots. The armorial bearings on the coach-panels are 
 defaced ; the springs creak ; the wheels stumble as they roll. 
 I should like to know the man who has the courage to call 
 that hackney-coach off the stand, and to ride in it. He must 
 be a Conservative. 
 
 What have they done with the old hackney-coaches ? Have 
 they sent them to Paris as raw materials for barricades ? Are 
 their bodies yet mouldering, as in a vale of dry bones, in 
 some Long Acre coach-builder's back shop ? and some day, 
 mounted on fresh springs, fresh painted and fresh glazed, 
 newly emblazoned with heraldic lies, with flaunting hammer- 
 cloths and luxurious squabs, are they to roll once more to 
 courtly levee, or civic feast, to stop the way at ball or opera, 
 to rattle nobility to the portal of St. George's, Hanover 
 Square, to be married, or follow it, creeping, and with win- 
 dows up, to be buried ? 
 
 What have they done with the old cabriolets, too the 
 bouncing, rattling, garishly-painted cabs, with a hood over 
 the passenger, and a little perch on one side for the driver ? 
 They upset apple-stalls often their fares, too, frequently. 
 Their drivers were good whips, and their horses skittish. 
 Where are they now ? Do they ply in the streets of Sydney 
 or San Francisco, or have their bodies been cut up, years 
 ago, for firewood and lucifer-matches ? 
 
 Intimately connected, in association and in appearance, 
 with the Jarveys, were the Charleys, or watchmen. They 
 went out with oil-lamps, the Duke of Wellington's ministry, 
 and the Bourbon family. Like the coachmen, they wore 
 many-caped coats ; like them, they wore low-crowned hats, 
 and were rubicund in the countenance ; like them, they were 
 abusive. In the days of our youth we used to beat these 
 Charleys, to appropriate their rattles, to suspend them in mid 
 air, like Mahomet's coffin, in their watch-boxes. Now-a-days, 
 there be stern men, Policemen, in oilskin hats, with terrible 
 truncheons, and who ' stand no nonsense ;' they do all the 
 beating themselves, and lock us up when we would strive to 
 
THINGS DEPARTED. 59 
 
 knock them down. There is yet, to this day, a watch-box 
 a real monumental watch-box standing, a relic of days gone 
 by somewhere near Orchard Street, Portman Square. It 
 has been locked up for years ; and great-coated policemen 
 pass it nightly, on their beat, and cast an anxious glance 
 towards it, lest night-prowlers should be concealed behind its 
 worm-eaten walls. 
 
 And, touching great-coats, are not great-coats themselves 
 among the things departed ? We have Paletots (the name 
 of which many have assumed), Ponchos, Burnouses, Syl- 
 phides, Zephyr wrappers, Chesterfields, Llamas, Pilot wrap- 
 pers, Wrap-rascals, Bisuniques, and a host of other garments, 
 more or less answering the purpose of an over-coat. But 
 where is the great-coat the long, voluminous, wide-skirted 
 garment of brown or drab broadcloth, reaching to the ankle, 
 possessing unnumbered pockets ; pockets for bottles, pockets 
 for sandwiches, secret pouches for cash, and side-pockets for 
 bank-notes ? This venerable garment had a cape, which, 
 in wet or snowy weather, when travelling outside the ' High- 
 flyer ' coach, you turned over your head. Your father wore 
 it before you, and you hoped to leave it to your eldest son. 
 Solemn repairs careful renovation of buttons and braiding 
 were done to it, from time to time. A new great-coat was an 
 event a thing to be remembered as happening once or so in a 
 lifetime. 
 
 There are more coaches and coats that are things departed, 
 besides hackney-coachmen and long great-coats. Where are 
 the short stages ? Where are the days when we went gipsy- 
 ing, in real stage-coaches, from the ' Flower-Pot,' in Bishops- 
 gate Street, to Epping Forest, or to Kensington, or to the 
 inaccessible Harnpstead ? The time occupied in those me- 
 morable journeys now suffices for our transportation to 
 Brighton fifty-two good English miles. Where is the 
 Brighton coach itself its four blood-horses ; the real live 
 baronet, who coached it for a livelihood ; and, for all the 
 'bloody hand' in his scutcheon, sent round his servant to 
 collect the gratuitous half-crowns from the passengers. 
 
 Things departed are the pleasant view of London from 
 Shooter's Hill, the houses on the river, and, over all, the 
 great dome of St. Paul's looming through the smoke. What 
 is the great North Eoad now ? one of the Queen's highways, 
 and nothing more ; but, in those days, it was the great coach- 
 ing thoroughfare of the kingdom. Highgate flourished ; but, 
 
60 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 where is Highgate now ? I was there the other day. The 
 horses were gone, and the horse-troughs, and the horse- 
 keepers. Yet, from the window of the Gate-house I could 
 descry in one coup d'ceil, looking northwards, thirteen public- 
 houses. The street itself was deserted, save ~foy a ragged 
 child, struggling with a pig for the battered remnant of a 
 kettle. I wondered who supported those public-houses now ; 
 whether the taps were rusty, and the pots dull ; or whether, 
 in sheer desperation at the paucity of custom, the publicans 
 had their beer from one another's houses, and, at night, 
 smoked their pipes and drank their grog in one another's bar- 
 parlours. So, yet wondering and undecided, I passed through 
 Highgate Archway where no man offered to swear me 
 and came to the turnpike, where I saw a lamentable illustra- 
 tion of the hardness of the times, in the turnpike-man being 
 obliged to take toll in kind ; letting a costermonger and a 
 donkey-cart through for vegetables ; and a small boy, going 
 Islington- wards, for an almost bladeless knife. 
 
 Where is Cranbourne Alley ? where that delightful maze of 
 dirty, narrow, little thoroughfares, leading from Leicester 
 "Square to St. Martin's Lane ? There was an alley of bonnet- 
 shops behind whose dusty windows faded Tuscans and 
 Leghorns were visible, and at the doors of which stood 
 women, slatternly in appearance, but desperate and accom- 
 plished touters. Man, woman, or child, it was all the same to 
 them ; if they had made up their minds that you were to buy 
 a bonnet, buy one you were obliged to do, unless gifted with 
 rare powers for withstanding passionate persuasion and awful 
 menace. Piteous stories were told of feeble-minded old 
 gentlemen emerging from the ' courts,' half-fainting, laden 
 with bonnet-boxes, and minus their cash, watches, and jewel- 
 lery, which they had left behind them, in part payment for 
 merchandise which they had bought, or had been compelled 
 to buy. The Lowther Arcade was not built in those days ; 
 and, in Cranbourne Alley, there were toy-shops, and cheap 
 jewellery warehouses, and magazines for gimcracks of every 
 description. Moreover, in Cranbourne Alley was there not 
 Hamlet's not Hamlet the Dane, but Hamlet, the silversmith ! 
 How many times have I stood, wondering, by those dirty 
 windows, when I ought to have been wending my way to 
 Mr. Wackerbarth's seminary for young gentlemen ! Peering 
 into the dim obscurity, dimly making out stores of gigantic 
 silver dish-covers, hecatombs of silver spoons and forks 
 
THINGS DEPARTED. Cl 
 
 Pelions upon Ossas of race-cups and church services, Hamlet 
 was, to me, a synonyme with boundless wealth, inexhaustible 
 credit, the payment of Consols the grandeur of commercial 
 Britain, in fact. Hamlet, Cranbourne Alley, and the Consti- 
 tution ! Yet Cranbourne Alley and Hamlet are both things 
 departed. 
 
 In the shops in this neighbourhood they sold things which 
 have long since floated down the sewer of Lethe into the 
 river of Limbo. AY hat has become of the tinder-box ? the 
 box we never could find when we wanted it ; the tinder that 
 wouldn't light ; the flint and steel that wouldn't agree to 
 strike a light till we had exhausted our patience, and chipped 
 numerous small pieces of skin and flesh from our fingers ? 
 Yet Bacon wrote his ' Novum Organum,' and Blackstone his 
 4 Commentaries/ by tinder-box-lighted lamps : and Guy Fawkes 
 was very nearly blowing up the Legislature with a tinder- 
 box-lighted train. The tinder-box is gone now; and, in its 
 place, we have sinister-looking splints, made from chopped-up 
 coffins ; which, being rubbed on sand-paper, send forth a 
 diabolical glare, and a suffocating smoke. But they do not 
 fail, like the flint and steel, and light with magical rapidity ; 
 so, as everybody uses them, I am obliged to do so too. 
 
 And, while I speak of lights and smoke, another thing 
 departed comes before me. There is no such a thing as a 
 pipe of tobacco now-a-days, sir. I see English gentlemen go 
 about smoking black abominations like Irish apple-women. I 
 hear of Milo's, Burns' cutty-pipes, Narghiles, Chiboucks, 
 meerschaums, hookahs, water pipes, straw pipes, and a host of 
 other inventions for emitting the fumes of tobacco. But 
 where, sir, is the old original alderman pipe, the church- 
 warden's pipe, the unadulterated ' yard of clay ?' A man was 
 wont to moisten the stem carefully with beer ere he put it to 
 his lips ; when once it was alight, it kept alight ; a man could 
 sit behind that pipe, but can a man sit behind the ridiculous 
 figments they call pipes now ? The yard of clay is departed. 
 A dim shadow of it lingers sometimes in the parlours of old 
 city taverns ; I met with it once in the Bull Eing at Birming- 
 ham. I have heard of it in Chester ; but in its entirety, as a 
 popular, acknowledged pipe, it must be numbered with the 
 things that were. 
 
 AVhere are the franks ? I do not allude to the warlike race 
 of Northmen, who, under the sway of Pharamond, first gave 
 Prance its name ; neither do I mean those individuals who, 
 
62 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 rejoicing in the appellation of Francis, are willing to accept 
 the diminutive of Frank 1 mean those folded sheets of letter- 
 paper, which, being endorsed with the signature of a peer, or 
 of a Member of Parliament, went thenceforward post-free. 
 There were regular frank-hunters men who could nose a 
 Member who had not yet given all his franks away, with a 
 scent as keen as ever Cuban bloodhound had for negro flesh. 
 He would give chase in the lobby; run down the doomed 
 legislator within the very shadow of the Sergeant-at- Arms' 
 bag- wig ; and, after a brief contest, unfrank him on the spot. 
 They were something to look at, and something worth having, 
 those franks, when the postage to Edinburgh was thirteen- 
 pence. But the franks are gone gone with the procession of 
 the mail-coaches on the first of May ; they have fallen before 
 little effigies of the sovereign, printed in red, and gummed at 
 the back. English Members of Parliament have no franks 
 now ; and the twenty-five (though of a metallic nature) 
 allowed, till very lately, to the Members of the French Legis- 
 lature, have even been abolished. 
 
 I never think of franks without a regretful remembrance of 
 another thing departed a man who, in old times, stood on 
 the steps of the Post-office in St. Martin's le Grand, with a 
 sheet of cartridge-paper, and whom I knew by the appellation 
 of ' it forms.' 4 It forms,' he was continually saying, * now it 
 forms a jockey-cap, now a church-door, a fan, a mat, the 
 paddle-boxes of a steamer, a cocked hat ;' and, as he spoke, he 
 twisted the paper into something bearing a resemblance to 
 the articles he named. He is gone ; so is the sheet of fool's- 
 cap we used to twist into the semblance of cocked hats, silk- 
 worm-boxes, and boats, when boys at school. The very secret 
 of the art is lost in these degenerate days, I verily believe, 
 like that of making Venetian bezoar, or staining glass for 
 windows. 
 
 Whole hosts of street arts and street artists are among the 
 things departed. Where is the dancing bear, with his piteous 
 brown muzzle and uncouth gyrations ? W 7 here is the camel ? 
 Where the tight-rope dancers ? the performers on stilts ? 
 Where are these gone ? Say not that the New Police Act has 
 abolished them ; for though that sweeping piece of legislation 
 has silenced the dustman's bell., and bade the muffin-boy cry 
 muffins no more, we have still the organ-grinders with, or 
 without, monkeys, the Highland bagpipes, and the acrobats. 
 The fantoccinis are almost extinct; and I suppose Punch 
 
THINGS DEPARTED. (\\\ 
 
 will go next. It is all very well, and right, and proper, of 
 course. Dancing bears and camels, monkeys and fantoccinis, 
 are all highly immoral, no doubt ; but I should just like to 
 see what the British Constitution would be without Punch and 
 Judy. 
 
 The small-coal man is gone ; the saloop stall ; the blind 
 man and his dog are becoming rarce aves ; the grizzled Turk 
 with a dirty turban, and a box of rhubarb before him, is 
 scarcely ever to be met with. In his stead we have a liver- 
 coloured Lascar, shivering in white cotton robes, selling tracts 
 of the inflammatory order of Piety, and occasionally offering 
 them in exchange for gin. Age, caprice, the encouragement 
 of new favourites, are driving these old-established ornaments 
 of the streets away. 
 
 I do not quarrel so much with the ever-changing fashions 
 in dress. I can give up without a sigh the leg-of-mutton 
 sleeves, those dreadful pear-shaped monsters of silk and 
 muslin, they wore about the year '30. I will not clamour for 
 the revival of the bishop's sleeves unwieldy articles that 
 were always either getting squashed flat as a pancake in a 
 crowd, or dipping into the gravy at dinner. I will resign the 
 monstrous Leghorn hats the short-waisted pelisses, the Cos- 
 sack trousers, and flaming stocks in which we arrayed our- 
 selves, when George the Fourth was king ; but let me drop 
 one tear, heave one sigh, to the memories of pig-tails and 
 Hessian boots. 
 
 Both are things departed. One solitary pig-tail, I believe, 
 yet feebly flourishes in some remote corner of the agricultural 
 districts of England. It comes up to town during the season ; 
 and I have seen it in New Burlington Street. The Hessians, 
 though gone from the lower extremities of a nation, yet find 
 abiding place on the calves of the Stranger in Mr. Kotzebue's 
 play of that name, and over the portals of some bootmakers of 
 the old school. The Hessians of our youth are gone. The 
 mirror-polished, gracefully- outlined, silken-tasselled Hes- 
 sians exist no more those famous boots, the soles of which 
 Mr. Brummel caused to be blacked, and in the refulgent 
 lustre of which the gentleman of fashion immortalised by 
 Mr. Warren was wont to shave himself. 
 
 Of the buildings, the monuments, the streets, which are 
 gone, I will not complain. I can spare that howling desert in 
 the area of Leicester Fields, with its battered railings, its cat- 
 haunted parterres, its gravel walks, usurped by snails, and 
 
64 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 overgrown with weeds. I like Mr. Wyld's Great Globe better. 
 I can dispense with the old Mews of Charing Cross, and the 
 bill-covered hoarding surrounding them, though I loved the 
 latter, for the first announcement of the first play I ever saw 
 was pasted there. I like Trafalgar Square (barring the 
 fountains) "better. I can surrender the horrible collection of 
 mangy sheds, decomposed vegetables, and decaying baskets, 
 which used to block up Farringdon Street, and which they 
 called Fleet Market. I can renounce, though with a sigh, the 
 Fleet Prison, acquiesce in the superiority of New Oxford Street 
 over St. Giles's and the Holy Land, and of Victoria Street, as 
 compared with the dirt and squalor and crime of Westminster. 
 Yet, let me heave one sigh for King's Cross, that anomalous 
 little area where many roads converge, and many monuments 
 have stood. There was a stone monster, an adamantine Guy 
 Fawkes, which was traditionally supposed to represent George 
 the good, the magnificent, the great ; his curly wig, his portly 
 mien, his affable countenance. Little boys used to chalk 
 their political opinion freely on the pedestal, accompanied by 
 rough cartoons of their parents and guardians, their pastors 
 and masters ; omnibus drivers and conductors pointed the 
 finger of hilarity at it, as they passed by ; it was a great 
 statue. They have taken it away, with the Small-pox Hos- 
 pital into the bargain, and though they have set up another 
 George, stirrupless, hatless, and shoeless, in Trafalgar Square, 
 and the Hospital is removed elsewhere, the terminus of the 
 Great Northern Eailway, and the pedestal with three big 
 lamps now standing in their stead, are a dis-sight to mine 
 eyes, and make me long for the old glories of King's Cross and 
 Battle Bridge. 
 
 Smithfield is going. Tyburn is gone (I am not such an old 
 fogy, Mr. Squrrel, as to be able to remember that ; nor so 
 stanch a Conservative as to regret it, now that it is gone). 
 Bartholomew Fair is gone. Greenwich Fair going. Chalk 
 Farm Fair a melancholy mockery of merriment. Let me ask 
 a few more interrogations, and let me go too. 
 
 Where are the fogs ? Light brumous vapours I see hang- 
 ing over London, in December ; but not the fogs of my youth. 
 They were orange-coloured, substantial, palpable fogs, that 
 you could cut with a knife, or bottle up for future inspection. 
 In those fogs vessels ran each other down on the river ; link- 
 boys were in immense request ; carriages and four drove into 
 chemists' shops and over bridges ; and in the counting-house 
 
THINGS DErAKTED. (5f) 
 
 of Messrs. Bingo, Mandingo, and Flamingo, where I was a 
 small boy, copying letters, we burnt candles in the battered old 
 sconces all day long. I saw a fog, a real fog, the other day, 
 travelling per rail from Southampton ; but it was a white 
 one, and gave me more the idea of a balloon voyage than of 
 the fog de facto. 
 
 Gone with the fogs are the link-boys, the sturdy, impudent 
 varlets, who beset you on murky nights with their flaming 
 torches, and the steady-going, respectable, almost aristocratic 
 link-bearers, with silver badges often, who had the monopoly 
 of the doors of the opera, and of great men's houses, when 
 balls or parties were given. I knew a man once who was in 
 the habit of attending the nobility's entertainments, not by the 
 virtue of an invitation, but by the grace of his own indomi- 
 table impudence, and by the link-boys' favour. An evening 
 costume, an unblushing mien, and a crown to the link-boy, 
 would be sufficent to make that worthy bawl out his name 
 and style to the hall-porter ; the hall-porter would shout it to 
 the footman; the footman yell it to the groom of the chambers ; 
 while the latter intoning it for the benefit of the lady or 
 gentleman of the house, those estimable persons would take it 
 for granted that they must have invited him ; and so bowing 
 and complimenting, as a matter of course, leave him 
 without restriction to his devices, in the way of dancing, 
 flirting, e'carte playing, and supper-eating. Few and far 
 between are the link-boys in this present 1859. The running 
 footmen with the flambeaux have vanished these many years ; 
 and the only mementos surviving of their existence are the 
 blackened extinguishers attached to the area railings of some 
 old-fashioned houses about Grosvenor Square. With the 
 flambeaux, the sedan-chairs have also disappeared; the drunken 
 Irish chairmen who carried them; the whist-loving old 
 spinsters, who delighted to ride inside them. I have seen 
 disjecta membra venerable ruins, here and there, of the sedan- 
 chairs at Bath, at Cheltenham, at Brighton ; but the bones 
 thereof are marrowless, and its eyes without speculation. 
 
 The old articles of furniture that I loved, are things 
 departed. The mirror, with its knobby gilt frame, and 
 stunted little branches for candles, the podgy eagle above it, 
 and its convex surface reflecting your face in an eccentric and 
 distorted manner ; the dumb waiter, ugly and useful ; the 
 dear old spinnet, on which aunt Sophy used to play those 
 lamentable pieces of music, the ' Battle of Prague ' and the 
 
 F 
 
66 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 ' Calipli of Bagdad ;'* the old cheffonnier, the ' whatnot,' and 
 the ' Canterbury;' the workbox, with a view of the Pavilion 
 at Brighton on the lid ; the Tunbridge ware, (supplanted now 
 by vile, beautifully-painted, artistic things of papier-mache, 
 from Birmingham, forsooth,) gone, and for ever. 
 
 Even while I talk, whole crowds of ' things departed ' flit 
 before me, of which I have neither time to tell, nor you 
 patience to hear. Post-boys, c wax-ends from the palace,' 
 Dutch-pugs, black footmen, the window-tax, the Palace Court, 
 Gatton, and Old Sarum! What will go next, I wonder? 
 Temple Bar, Lord Mayor's Day, j or the ' Gentleman's Maga- 
 zine ?' 
 
 Well, well : it is all for the best, I presume. The trivial 
 things that I have babbled of, have but departed with the 
 leaves and the melting snow with the hopes that are ex- 
 tinguished, and the ambition that is crushed with dear old 
 friends dead, and dearer friendships severed. I will be con- 
 tent to sit on the milestone by the great road, and, smoking 
 my pipe, watch the chariot of life, with Yguth on the box and 
 Pleasure in the dicky, tear by till the dust thrown up by its 
 wheels has whitened my hair, and it shall be my time to be 
 numbered among the things departed. 
 
 VI. 
 
 PHASES OF 'PUBLIC' LIFE. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 WHEN the race of this huge London World-City shall be run 
 when the millstone shall have been cast into its waters, 
 and the word has gone forth that Babylon the great is fallen, 
 is fallen when the spider shall weave his web amidst the 
 broken columns of the Bank ; the owl shriek through the 
 deserted arcades of the Exchange ; and the jackal prowl 
 through labyrinths of ruins and rubbish, decayed oyster-shells 
 and bleached skeletons of the dogs of other days, where once 
 was Eegent Street I should very much like to know what 
 the ' Central Australian Society for the Advancement of 
 Science,' or the ' Polynesian Archaeological Association,' or 
 the ' Imperial New Zealand Society of Antiquaries/ would be 
 likely to make of a great oblong board which glares at me 
 
 * Temporarily resuscitated lately. 
 
 f It is well nigh gone. The man in armour is a myth, and his place 
 knows him no more. 
 
PHASES OF ' PUBLIC' LIFE. 67 
 
 through the window at which I am writing this present paper 
 a board some five-and-twenty feet in length perchance, 
 painted a bright resplendent blue, and on which are em- 
 blazoned in glittering gold the magic words, ' Barclay, Perkins, 
 and Co.'s Entire.' 
 
 One of these boards will, perchance, be disinterred by 
 some persevering savant from a heap of the relics of old 
 London antiquities; wheel-less, shaft-less, rotting Hansom's 
 cabs, rusted chimney-cowls, turnpike -gates of ancient fashion 
 and design, gone-by gas-lamps and street-posts. And the 
 savant will doubtless imagine that he will find in the mysterious 
 board the once glittering characters some sign, some key, 
 to the secret freemasonry, some shibboleth of the old London 
 world. Learned pamphlets will be written, doubtless, to 
 prove a connection between Barclay and Perkins and Captain 
 Barclay the pedestrian, and Perkins' steam-gun, who and 
 which, joined together by some Siamese bond of union, be- 
 came thenceforth and for ever one entire * Co.' Other sages, 
 haply, will have glimmering notions that Barclay and Perkins 
 have something to do with a certain X.X.X. ; others stoutly 
 maintain that the words formed but Christian and surnames, 
 common among the inhabitants of old London, even as were 
 the well-known Smiths,' and the established ' Jones.' ' We 
 know,' they will say, ' that the great architect of the most 
 famous buildings in old London was called " Voluntary Con- 
 tributions ;" we know that a majority of the citizens of that 
 bygone city were addicted to the creed of Zoroaster, or sun- 
 worship ; for we find on the ruins of their houses votive 
 plates of brass, of circular form, bearing an effigy of the sun, 
 with a reference to fire-insurance these things have been 
 demonstrated by learned doctors and professors of ability; 
 why may we not, then, assume that Barclay and Perkins were 
 names possessed in an astonishingly prolific degree by London 
 citizens, who, proud of belonging to so respectable a family, 
 were in the habit of blazoning the declaration of their lineage 
 in blue and gold on an oblong board, and affixing the same 
 to the front of their houses?' The Emperor of China has 
 upwards of five thousand cousins, who are distinguished from 
 the tag-rag and bobtail of the Celestial Empire by wearing 
 yellow girdles. 'Why,' these sages will ask, 'may not the parent 
 Barclay Perkins have been a giant, blessed with hundreds of 
 arrows in his quiver, whose thousand thousand descendants 
 were proud to be clad like him in a livery of blue and gold ?' 
 
 F 2 
 
68 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 Then the sages will squabble, and wrangle, and call each 
 other bad names, and write abusive diatribes against each 
 other by magnetic telegraph, just as other sages were wont to 
 squabble and wrangle about the Eosetta Stone, the Source of 
 the Niger, and Bruce's discoveries ; or, as they do now, about 
 the North-West Passage and the percement of the Isthmus of 
 Suez, the causes of the cholera and diphtheria, and the possibi- 
 lity of aerial navigation. As it has been, so it is, and will be, 
 I suppose ; and if we can't agree nowadays, so shall we, or 
 rather our descendants, disagree in times to come, and con- 
 cerning matters far less recondite or abstruse than Barclay 
 Perkins. 
 
 / know what Barclay and Perkins mean, I hope ; what 
 Combe and Delafield what Truman, Hanbury, and Buxton 
 what Calvert and Co. what Eeid and Co. what Bass what 
 Allsopp what Broadwood, Mundell, and Huggins. You know, 
 too, gentle, moderate, and bibulous reader of the present age. 
 They all mean BEER. Beer, the brown, the foaming, the 
 wholesome, and refreshing, when taken in moderation; the 
 stupifying, and to-station-house-leading, when imbibed ^to 
 excess. That oblong board, all blue and gold, I have spoken 
 of as visible from my parlour window, has no mystery for 
 me. Plainly, unmistakably, it says Beer : a good tap ; four- 
 pence a pot in the pewter ; threepence per ditto if sent for in 
 your own jug. 
 
 And if you admit (and you will admit, or you are no true 
 Englishman) that beer be good and, being good, that we 
 should be thankful for it can you tell me any valid reason 
 why I should not write on the subject of Beer ? Seeing how 
 many thousands of reputable persons there are throughout the 
 country who live by the sale of beer, and how many millions 
 drink it, seeing that beer is literally in everybody's mouth, 
 it strikes me we should not ignore beer taken in its relation 
 towards the belles lettres. Tarry with me, then, while I 
 discourse on Beer on the sellers and the buyers thereof 
 and of their habitations. I will essay to navigate my little 
 bark down a river of beer, touching, perchance, at some little 
 spirit-creek, or gently meandering through the ' back-waters ' 
 of neat wines. 
 
 When the Spanish student immortalised by Le Sage was 
 inducted into the mysteries of the private life of Madrid, he 
 availed himself of a temporary aerial machine, in a person of 
 diabolical extraction, called Asmodeus who further assisted 
 
PHASES OF ' PUBLIC' LIFE. 69 
 
 Mm in his bird's-eye inspection, by taking the roofs off ihe 
 houses. When the nobility and gentry frequenting the 
 fashionable circles of the Arabian Sights, were desirous of 
 travelling with extraordinary rapidity, they were sure to be 
 accommodated with magical carpets, or swift-flying eagles, or 
 winged horses. Then they could be rendered invisible, or 
 provided with telescopes, enabling them .to see through every 
 obstacle, from stone walls to steel castles ; but things are 
 changed, and times are altered now. One can't go from 
 London to Liverpool without buying a railway-ticket, and 
 being importuned to show it half a dozen times in the course 
 of the journey. If you want to study character in the Stock 
 Exchange, you can get no more invisible suit to do it in than 
 a suit of invisible green, and run, moreover, the risk of 
 hearing a howl of '201 !' and feeling two hundred pair of 
 hands, and two hundred pair of feet to match, bonneting, 
 buffeting, hustling, and kicking you from the high place of 
 Mammon. 
 
 So, then, in the study of Beer and Beerhouses, I have had 
 no adventitious aid from accommodating demons, obliging 
 genii, invisible caps, carpets, or cloaks. ' Experientia ' you 
 know the rest. I have graduated in Beer ; I have mastered 
 its mysteries; and I will now assume, for your benefit, a 
 magic power, which I devoutly wish I had possessed dining 
 my Beery researches. Come with me, then, in the spirit, to 
 Bankside ; and, after a cursory stroll round the fountain-head 
 of beer, let us seat ourselves (still in the spirit) at the tail of 
 one of these big drays, drawn by big horses, and, fearing no 
 cries of ' whip behind !' from jealous boys (for, being spiritual, 
 we are, of course, invisible), perambulate the metropolis, rapt 
 in the contemplation of Beer. Surrounded with Barclay and 
 Perkins's beer-barrels, our steeds conducted by Barclay and 
 Perkins's red night-capped draymen, we will go in this, our 
 magic chariot, from public-house to public-house : ' The latent 
 tracks, the giddy heights explore ;' ' shoot folly as it flies, 
 and catch the manners living as they rise ;' attempt a mild 
 classification of the peculiar social characteristics of the 
 different metropolitan ' publics ;' give, in short, a view and a 
 description, however lame and incomplete it may be, of 
 * London on Tap.' 
 
 I do not purpose, in these pages, at least, to enter minutely 
 into the consideration of the aspect of a London Brewery, 
 or of the manufacture of the great English beverage ; so, then, 
 our stay will be but short in this huge brick beer emporium. 
 
70 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 I make remark, en passant, that an odour prevails in and about 
 the establishment, resembling an amalgamation of several 
 washing-days, a few cookshops, and a stable or two. To 
 cursory spectators, such as you and I are, the brewery will 
 offer very little besides this, and a general impression of 
 ' bigness,' length, height, breadth, rotundity. The premises- 
 are large, the vats are large ; the stables, the strong, stalwart 
 horses, the provisions of hay and straw, of malt and hops, of 
 smoke and steam, are all large. Large, also, to almost Titanic 
 extensiveness, are the draymen gladiators of the Beery 
 arena, with Phrygian caps of scarlet hue, and wide-spread 
 leathern aprons. Large are their labours ; larger still, their 
 appetites ; largest and mightiest of all, their thirst of beer. 
 Grocers and pastry-cooks, they say, give their apprentices 
 and shopmen the run of all the delicacies they deal in, for the 
 first month of their service carte blanche to the plums, and 
 figs, and tarts, of which to the ultimate benefit of the 
 tradesman they speedily get very sick and tired ; but with 
 the drayman-neophyte it seems quite different; for I never 
 heard nor, did I hear, should I credit the assertion that any 
 of Barclay and Perkins's men ever got tired of Barclay and 
 Perkins's tap. Largely impressed, therefore, with their per- 
 vading largeness, we will leave the brewhouse for the present. 
 
 Privately, we may be allowed, and confidentially, to 
 surmise, that the profits of the proprietors are also large 
 very large, indeed : but goodness forbid that we should 
 venture to hint (aloud, at least) that the prices they demand 
 and obtain for beer are large, and considering malt, and 
 hops, and grain, and Free Trade, and that sort of thing a 
 great deal too large, and not quite just. 
 
 The heavy wheels of our chariot have been rumbling, 
 while I spoke, through the great thoroughfare which com- 
 mences at Charing Cross, and ends at Mile End somewhere 
 about where there was, once on a time, a Maypole. It 
 diverges, going westward ; and we are in a trice in a 
 street, in which / never was in a vehicle in my life without 
 being blocked up, and in which, in the present instance, we 
 are comfortably wedged with a timber-laden waggon, a hearse, 
 and an advertising-van in front, and a Hansom cab or two, 
 a mail-phaeton, and Mr. Ex-Sheriff Pickles's elegant chariot 
 behind. Leaving the respective drivers to exchange com- 
 pliments, coached in language more or less parliamentary, we 
 will descend for a moment for the neighbourhood is thickly 
 studded with public-houses and we shall have time, ere our 
 
PHASES OF ' PUBLIC' LIFE. 71 
 
 chariot be extricated, to investigate numerous varieties of 
 ' London on Tap.' 
 
 Here, first blatant, gay, and gaudy is a GIN PALACE a 
 ' ginnery,' in full swing. 
 
 The Palladio or the Vitruvius who built this palace, has 
 curiously diversified the orders of architecture in its construc- 
 tion. We have Doric shafts with Corinthian capitols an 
 Ionic frieze Kenaissance panels a Gothic screen to the bar- 
 parlour. But French polish and gilding cover a multitude of 
 (architectural) sins ; and there is certainly no lack of either 
 the one or the other here. Tier above tier surround the 
 walls, supporting gigantic casks, bearing legends of a fabulous 
 number of gallons contained within. Yet are they not 
 dummies ; for we may observe spiral brass pipes, wriggling 
 and twisting in snake-like contortions till they reach the 
 bar, and so to the spirit-taps, where they bring the costly 
 hogshead of the distiller home to the lips of the humblest 
 costermonger, for a penny a glass. Beer is sold, and in con- 
 siderable quantities a halfpenny a pint cheaper, too, than at 
 other hostelries ; but it is curious beer beer of a half-sweet, 
 half-acrid taste, black to the sight, unpleasant to the taste, 
 brown in the froth, muddy in consistence. Has it been in 
 delicate health, and can that shabby old man, in close confab 
 with the landlord at the door, at the steps of the cellar, be 
 the ' Doctor ?' Or has it been adulterated, ' fined/ doctored, 
 patched, and cobbled up, for the amusement and instruction 
 of amateurs in beer like steam-frigates, for instance, or Acts 
 of Parliament ? 
 
 The area before the bar, you will observe, is very spacious. 
 At this present second hour of the afternoon, there are, 
 perhaps, fifty people in it ; and it would hold, I dare say, 
 full twenty more, and allow space, into the bargain, for a neat 
 stand-up fight. One seems very likely to take place now 
 between the costermonger, who has brought rather an incon- 
 venient number of ' kea-rots ' and ' turmuts ' into the bar with 
 him, and a peripatetic vendor of fish the quality of whose 
 wares he has (with some show of justice, perhaps) impugned. 
 So imminent does the danger appear, that the blind match- 
 seller who was anon importuning the belligerents hastily 
 scuttles off; and an imp of a boy, in a man's fustian jacket, 
 and with a dirty red silk 'kerchief twisted round his bull 
 neck, has mounted the big tub, on which he sits astride, pipe 
 in hand a very St. Giles's Bacchus declaring that he will 
 see ' fair play.' Let us edge away a little towards the bar 
 
72 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 for the crowd towards the door is somewhat too promiscuous 
 to be agreeable ; and it is not improbable that in the melee, 
 some red-'kerchiefed citizen, of larger growth, whose extensor 
 and flexor muscles are somewhat more powerfully developed, 
 may make a savage assault on you, for his own private gratifi- 
 cation, and the mere pleasure of hitting somebody. 
 
 This ginnery has not only a bar public, but divers minor 
 cabinets, bibulous loose boxes, which are partitioned off from 
 the general area ; and the entrances to which are described in 
 flowery, but somewhat ambiguous language. There is the 
 4 Jug and Bottle Entrance,' and the entrance ' For Bottles 
 only.' There is the ' Wholesale Bar,' and the i Eetail Bar ;' 
 but, wholesale or retail, jug or bottle, the different bars all 
 mean Gin ! The long pewter counter is common to all. 
 A counter perforated in elaborately-pricked patterns, like a 
 convivial shroud, apparently for ornament, but really for the 
 purpose of allowing the drainings, overflowings, and out- 
 spill ings of the gin-glasses to drop through, which, being 
 collected with sundry washings, and a dash, perhaps, of 
 fresh material, is, by the thrifty landlord, dispensed to his 
 customers under the title of ' all sorts.' Your dram-drinker, 
 look you, is not unfrequently paralytic, wofully shaky in the 
 hand; and the liquor he wastes, combined with that acci- 
 dentally spilt, tells up wonderfully at the close of the year. 
 There are cake-baskets on the counter, patronised mostly by 
 the lady votaries of the rosy (or livid ?) god ; but their tops 
 are hermetically sealed, and their dulcet contents protected 
 by a wire dome, or cupola, of convex form. Besides what I 
 have described, if you will add some of my old friends the 
 gold-blazoned boards, bearing the eulogies of various brewers, 
 together with sundry little placards, framed and glazed, and 
 printed in colours, telling, in seductive language, of * Choice 
 Compounds,' ' Old Tom,' ' Cream of the Valley,' ' Superior 
 Cream Gin,' ' The Eight Sort,' Kinahan's L.L.,' ' The Dew 
 off Ben Nevis,' the ' Celebrated Balmoral Mixture, patronised 
 by his Eoyal Highness Prince Albert ' (the illustrious person- 
 age, clad in full Highland costume, with an extensive herd of 
 red deer in the distance, is represented taking a glass of the 
 ' Mixture ' with great apparent gusto) ; besides these, I 
 repeat, you will need nothing to ' complete the costume,' as 
 the romancers have it, of a Gin Palace. 
 
 Except the landlord, perhaps, who is bald and corpulent, 
 who has a massive watch-chain, and a multiplicity of keys, 
 and whose hands seem to leave the pockets of his trousers as 
 
PHASES OF ' PUBLIC* LIFE. 73 
 
 seldom as his keen eye does the gin-drawing gymnastics of 
 his barmen. Gymnastics they are, tours deforce, feats of calis- 
 thenics as agile as any performed by the agile professor whom 
 I have just seen pass, all dirt, flesh-coloured drawers, and 
 
 rgles. A quick, sharp, jerking twist for the spirit tap, 
 vdng to run till the liquor is within a hair's breadth of 
 the top of the measure, and no longer ; a dexterous tilt of the 
 'two/ or 'three out' glasses required; an agile shoving for* 
 ward of the pewter noggin with one hand, while the other 
 inevitable palm is presented for the requisite halfpence ; and 
 oh ! such a studious carefulness that one hand is not emptied 
 before the other is filled. It is not everybody can serve in 
 the bar of a Gin Palace. The barman wears a fur cap gene- 
 rally sometimes a wide-awake. He is addicted to carrying 
 a piece of straw, a pipe-light, or the stalk of a flower in his 
 mouth, diversifying it occasionally by biting half-crowns 
 viciously. When he gives you change, he slaps it down on 
 the counter in a provocatory manner ; his face is flushed ; his 
 manner short, concise, sententious. His vocabulary is limited ; 
 a short ' Now then,' and a brief ' Here you are,' forming the 
 staple phrases thereof. I wonder what his views of human 
 nature of the world, its manners, habits, and customs can 
 be like. Or what does the barmaid think of it ? I should 
 like to know : the young lady in the coal-black ringlets (like 
 magnified leeches), the very brilliant complexion, and the 
 coral necklace. Mercy on us ! what can she, a girl of eighteen, 
 think of the faces, the dress, the language of the miserable 
 creatures among whom she spends sixteen hours of her life 
 every day every mortal day throughout the year once in 
 every three weeks (her ' day out ') excepted ? 
 
 One word about the customers, and we will rejoin our 
 chariot, which must surely be extricated by this time. 
 Thieves, beggars, costermongers, hoary-headed old men, 
 stunted, ragged, shock-haired children, blowzy, slatternly 
 women, hulking bricklayers, gaunt, sickly hobbedehoys, with 
 long greasy hair. A thrice-told tale. Is it not the same 
 everywhere ! The same pipes, dirt, howling, maundering, 
 fighting, staggering gin fever. Like plates multiplied by the 
 electro-process like the printer's c stereo ' like the reporter's 
 ' manifold ' you will find duplicates, triplicates of these for- 
 lorn beings everywhere. The same woman giving her baby 
 gin; the same haggard, dishevelled woman, trying to coax 
 her drunken husband home; the same mild girl, too timid 
 
71 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 even to importune her ruffian partner to leave off drinking the 
 week's earnings, who sits meekly in a corner, with two dis- 
 coloured eyes, one freshly blacked one of a week's standing. 
 The same weary little man, who comes in early, crouches in 
 a corner, and takes standing naps during the day, waking up 
 periodically for ' fresh drops.' The same red-nosed, ragged 
 object who disgusts you at one moment by the force and 
 fluency of his Billingsgate, and surprises you the next by 
 bursting out in Greek and Latin quotations. The same thin, 
 spectral man who has no money, and with his hands piteously 
 laid one over the other, stands for hours gazing with fishy 
 eyes at the beloved liquor smelling, thinking of, hopelessly 
 desiring it. And lastly, the same miserable girl, sixteen in 
 years, and a hundred in misery ; with foul, matted hair, and 
 death in her face ; with a tattered plaid shawl, and ragged 
 boots, a gin-and-fog voice, and a hopeless eye. 
 
 Mr. Ex-Sheriff Pickles' s carriage no longer stops the way, 
 and the big draymen have conducted the big horses and the 
 big dray to its destination. Beer has to be delivered at the 
 sig;n of the ' Green Hog Tavern ;' whither, if you have no 
 objection, we will forthwith hie. 
 
 The Green Hog is in a tortuous, but very long street a 
 weak-minded street indeed, for it appears unable to decide 
 whether to go to the right or to the left, straight or zig-zag, 
 to be broad or to be narrow. The Green Hog participates in 
 this indecision of character. It evidently started with the 
 intention of having a portico, but stopping short, compromised 
 the matter by overshadowing the street door with a hideous 
 excrescence between a verandah, a ' bulk,' and a porch. Con- 
 tradictory, also, is the Green Hog ; for it calls itself, over the 
 door, the Green Hog Tavern, over the window, a Wine Vaults, 
 and round the corner (in the Mews) a Spirit Stores. The bar 
 is shamefaced, having run away to the end of a long passage ; 
 and even then, when you do get to it, is more like a bow- 
 window than like a bar, and more like a butler's pantry than 
 either. Very few customers do you see standing at the bar of 
 the Green Hog ; yet does its verdant porcinity considerable 
 business with Barclay Perkins. 
 
 The truth is, the Green Hog is one of a class of publics, 
 becoming rapidly extinct in London. It is a tavern one of 
 the old, orthodox, top-booted, sanded-floored taverns. It does 
 a good business, not by casual beer-drinkers, but in c lunch, 
 dinner, and supper beers.' A better business, perhaps, in 
 
PHASES OF ' PUBLIC' LIFE. 75 
 
 wines and dinners; for to the Green Hog resort a goodly 
 company of the customers of the ' old school,' men who yet 
 adhere to the traditional crown bowl of punch, and the his- 
 torical ' rump and dozen,' who take their bottle of wine after 
 dinner, and insist upon triangular spittoons. They are behind 
 the times, perhaps, and the Green Hog is a little behind them 
 too. The Green Hog can't make out competition, and new 
 inventions, and fresh blood, and new resources. ' My father 
 kept this house afore me,' says the Green Hog, * and my son'll 
 keep it after me.' So, within his orthodox and time-honoured 
 precincts, a ' go' of sherry is still called a bottle of sherry a 
 glass of brandy and water is charged a shilling. ' Bell's Old 
 Weekly Messenger ' is taken in ; and the Green Hog goes to 
 bed at midnight winter or summer week-day or Sabbaths { ^ 
 
 The parlour (or common room) of the Green Hog is a sight. 
 The ceiling is low and bulging, and is covered with a quiet, 
 gray-patterned paper. There is a sanded floor, a big fireplace, 
 * settles ' on either side thereof, long substantial tables, and a 
 chair on a dais nailed against the wall. No newfangled por- 
 traits hang on the walls, of race-horses, Radical Members, of 
 performers at the Theatres Eoyal. There is, however, Mr. 
 Charles Young, in mezzotint, Roman costume, and toga. 
 There is the best of monarchs in jack-boots and a pig-tail,, 
 reviewing two hundred thousand volunteers in Hyde Park. 
 There is the next best of monarchs in his curliest wig, smiling 
 affably at the fur collar of his surtout. There is the portrait 
 of the late landlord, and the portrait of the present one. 
 There is, finally, Queen Caroline, looking deeply injured in 
 an enormous hat and feathers, and an aquatint view of the 
 opening of Blackfriars Bridge. 
 
 To this comfortable and old-fashioned retreat come the 
 comfortable and old-fashioned customers, who ' use ' the Green 
 Hog. Hither comes Mr. Tuckard, a round old gentleman, 
 supposed to be employed in some capacity at the Tower of 
 London, but whether as a warder, an artillery-man, or a gen- 
 tleman-gaoler deponent sayeth not. He appears regularly at 
 nine o'olock every morning, eats a huge meat-and-beer break- 
 fast, orders his dinner, re-appears at six o'clock precisely, cats 
 a hearty dinner, drinks a bottle of port, and smokes nine pipes 
 of tobacco, washed down by nine tumblers of gin and water. 
 He invariably finishes his nine tumblers just as John the 
 waiter (of whom no man ever knew the surname, or saw the 
 bow to his neck-tie) brings in tumbler of brandy and water, 
 
76 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 number four, for Mr. Scrayles, the eminent corn-chandler 
 (reported to be worth a mint of money). The door being 
 opened, Mr. Tuckard rises, looks round, nods, and without 
 further parley, makes a bolt through the door and disappears. 
 This, with but few interruptions, he has done daily and nightly 
 for five-and-thirty years. He rarely speaks but to intimate 
 friends (with whom he has had a nodding acquaintance for 
 twenty years, perhaps). He occasionally condescends to im- 
 part, in a fat whisper, his opinions about the funds and the 
 weather. It is reported that he cannot read, for he never was 
 known to take up a newspaper that he cannot write that 
 he never sleeps. No one knows where he lives. He is 
 Tuckard, employed in the Tower of London; that is all. 
 Sometimes, on high days and holidays, he hands round a por- 
 tentous golden snuff-box, purporting, from the engraving on 
 its lid, to have been presented to Thomas Tuckard, Esquire, 
 by his friends and admirers, members of the ' Cobb Club.' 
 Who was Cobb ? and what manner of Club was his ? 
 
 Besides the mysterious possessor of the snuff-box, and the 
 wealthy corn-chandler, there are some score more grave and 
 sedate frequenters of the parlour, all ' warm ' men, financially 
 speaking, all quietly eloquent as to the funds and the weather, 
 and all fond of their bottle of wine, and their tumbler of grog. 
 Time and weather, changes of ministry, births, deaths, and 
 marriages seem to have but little effect on them, nor to ruffle, 
 in any sensible degree, the even tenour of their lives. They 
 will continue, I have no doubt, to ' use ' the Green Hog as 
 long as they are able to use anything ; and when the grog of 
 life is drained, and the pipe of existence is extinguished, they 
 will quietly give place to other old codgers, who will do, 
 doubtless, as they did before them. 
 
 Don't suppose that Barclay and Perkins's dray, or Barclay 
 and Perkins's men have been idle or unprofitably employed 
 while I have been poking about the parlour of the Green Hog. 
 No : theirs has been the task to raise the cellar-flap on the 
 pavement, and to lower, by means of sundry chains and ropes, 
 the mighty butts of beer required for the lunches, dinners, 
 and suppers of the Green Hog's customers. Curious evolu- 
 tions, both human and equestrian, were performed during the 
 operation. Small boys took flying leaps over the prostrate 
 barrels ; the stalwart steeds cut figures of eight in the narrow 
 thoroughfare, occasionally backing into the chandler's shop 
 opposite, to the imminent peril of the Dutch cheeses, balls of 
 
PHASES OF 'PUBLIC' LIFE, 77 
 
 twine, screws of tobacco, and penny canes there exposed to 
 view, and the loudly-expressed consternation of the proprie- 
 trix ; the pavement on one side was rendered temporarily 
 impassable by a barricade of tightly-strained cordage, and 
 the otherwise equable temper of the servant-maid from 
 No. 4, seriously ruffled, as, emerging from the door with a 
 foaming jug of half-and-half, a dirty rope came right across 
 her clean white stocking. Then, after all this, have the 
 gigantic draymen rested and refreshed themselves. A tem- 
 porary game of hide-and-seek has taken place each red- 
 capped butt-twister wandering about anxiously inquiring for 
 his ' mate ;' but the lost have been found ; and, when from 
 the dark and poky parlour we re-enter the bow-windowed bar 
 (where the sweet -smelling thicket of lemons, and the punch- 
 bowls, the punch-ladles, with William and Mary guineas 
 soldered in them, and the bright-eyed landlord's daughter are) 
 we find the mighty yeomen discussing huge dishes of beef- 
 steaks and onions, and swallowing deep draughts from the 
 Pierian spring of Barclay's best. 
 
 Take with me, I entreat, a glass of Dutch bitters from that 
 pot-bellied, quaint-shaped bottle with the City shield and 
 dagger on it, for all the world like one of the flasks in 
 Hogarth's Modern Midnight Conversation. Then as the 
 draymen have finished their repast, and our chariot awaits us, 
 let us sally forth into London again, and seek a fresh tap. 
 
 What have we here? A pictorial 'public.' Lithographic 
 prints, wood engravings in the windows ; Highland gentlemen, 
 asseverating, in every variety of attitude, that their names are 
 Korval that their pedigrees are pastoral, and that, their last 
 past places of residence were the Grampian Hills ; Hamlet 
 declaring his capacity to tell a hawk from a handsaw ; Job 
 Thornbury vindicating the rights of the Englishman's fireside : 
 Lady Macbeth lamenting the inutility of all the perfumes of 
 Arabia to sweeten ' this little hand ' which looks large ; 
 clowns bewailing the loss of a ' farden/ grinning hideously 
 meanwhile all as performed by Messieurs and Mesdames So- 
 and-so, at the Theatres Eoyal. The little glazed placards in 
 the window, telling of chops, steaks, and Schweppe's soda- 
 water, are elbowed, pushed from their stools, by cartoons of 
 the ' Bounding Brothers of the Himalaya Mountains ;' Signer 
 Scapino and his celebrated dog Jowler ; Herr Diavolo Buffo, 
 the famous corkscrew equilibrist (from the Danube), and tight- 
 rope dancer; or Mademoiselle Smicherini the dancer, with 
 
78 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 undeniable silk fleshings, and very little else. Lower down, 
 bills of theatrical benefits, tournaments at tea-gardens, 
 ' readings ' from; Shakspeare, and harmonic meetings dispute 
 the pavement with the legitimate possessors of the soil the 
 brewers and distillers. Within is a grove a forest rather, of 
 play-bills, waving their red and black leaves in Yallambrosan 
 density. Patent theatres, minor theatres, country theatres 
 even Transatlantic temples of the drama. This is a theatrical 
 ' public ' a house of call for Thespians. Over the way is the 
 Theatre Eoyal, Barbican ; round the corner, up the court and 
 two pair of stairs, Mr. Wilfred Grindoff Belville, has his thea- 
 trical agency office ; here meet the Sock and Buskin Club ; 
 and here, in days gone by, the great Konks, the tragedian, 
 was wont to imbibe that bottle and a half of gin, without the 
 aid of which he disdained to perform his famous character of 
 * The Eobber of the Hills.' 
 
 To the theatrical public come the actors of the Theatre 
 Eoyal, Barbican, their friends and acquaintances, being actors 
 at other theatres, and that anomalous class of persons who 
 hunt for orders, and scrape acquaintance with theatrical 
 people, of which and of whom they afterwards discourse 
 voluminously in the genteel circles. Hither, also, come 
 comedians, dancers, and pantomimists who are for the time out 
 of engagements, who have placed their names on Mr. W. Gr. 
 Belville's ' list,' and expect situations through his agency. 
 A weary-looking, heart-sick with hope deferred body they are. 
 There, intently studying the bill of the Bowie-knife Theatre, 
 New York, is Mr. Montmorency de Courcy (ne Snaggs) in a 
 mulberry-coloured body-coat and gilt basket buttons, check 
 trousers, and a white hat. He is from the Northern Circuit, 
 and hopes, please the pigs and Mr. Belville, to do second low 
 comedy in London yet, though he has been a long time ' out 
 of collar.' At the door, you have Mr. Snartell, the low 
 comedian from Devonport, and Mr. Eollocks, the heavy father 
 from the Bath Circuit, who affects, in private life, a low- 
 crowned hat with a prodigious brim (has a rich though some- 
 what husky bass voice), and calls everybody ' My son.' These, 
 with many more dark-haired, close-shaven, and slightly 
 mouldily-habited inheritors of the mantles of Kean, Dowton, 
 or Blanchard, wait the live-long day for the long-wished-for 
 engagements. 
 
 Inside, at the bar, Signor Scapino, in proprid persona, is 
 exercising his celebrated dog Jowler at standing on the hind 
 
PHASES OF ' PUBLIC* LIFE. 79 
 
 legs, placing a halfpenny on the counter, and receiving a 
 biscuit instead ; two or three stage-carpenters are enjoying 
 themselves over the material used to l grease the traps/ i. e. 
 half a crown's worth of stimulants placed to their credit by 
 the author of the last new piece over the way ; while the 
 author himself, a mysterious individual in spectacles, and 
 clutching an umbrella, eagerly scrutinizes the pile of country 
 play-bills, in the hope of discovering among them some theatre 
 at which one of his pieces has lately been performed, and on 
 which he can be ' down ' for half a crown an act for each 
 representation. Then there is a little prematurely-aged man, 
 Doctor Snaffles, indeed, as he is called, who did the l old man ' 
 line of business, but who does very little to speak of now, 
 except drink. Drink has been his bane through life ; has 
 thrown him out of every engagement he ever had, has muddled 
 his brain, rendered his talent a shame and a curse, instead of 
 a credit and a blessing to him ; made him the ragged, decrepit, 
 palsied beggar-man you see him now. He asks the barmaid 
 piteously for a pinch of snuff, which she never refuses him 
 and returns him in addition, sometimes (when he can find no 
 old theatrical friend to treat him) half a pint of porter. He is 
 never seen to eat, and sleeps nowhere in particular, and has 
 not washed within the memory of man. 
 
 There's a little snuggery or private parlour behind the bar, 
 to which are only free the actors of the adjacent theatre, of a 
 certain standing, and their friends. In the intervals of re- 
 hearsals before and after the performance this little snuggery 
 is crammed. The heavy tragedian makes jokes that set the 
 table in a roar, and the low comedian is very dismally and 
 speechlessly drawing lines in beer with his finger on the 
 Pembroke table. In the chimney corner sits Mr. Berrymax, 
 a white-haired old gentleman, with a p]easant expression of 
 countenance, who, though not an actor, enjoys prodigious con- 
 sideration in the profession, as a play-goer of astonishing an- 
 tiquity, who is supposed to remember Mrs. Bracegirdle, Peg 
 TVoffington nay Betterton, almost; whose opinions on all 
 points of reading, business, and stage traditions, are looked upon 
 as oracles, whose decisions are final, and whose word is law. 
 
 The landlord of the theatrical public-house is, very 
 probably, a retired actor a prompter who has made a little 
 'money or, sometimes, even an unsuccessful manager. His 
 daughter may be in the ballet at the adjacent theatre ; or, 
 perhaps, if he be a little * warm,' she may have taken lessons 
 
80 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 from Signer Chiccarini, wear a black velvet dress, carry an 
 oblong morocco music-case, like a leathern candle-box, and 
 sing at the Nobility's Concerts, and in the choruses of Her 
 Majesty's Theatre. There are other theatrical publics, 
 varying however in few particulars from the one into which 
 we have peeped. There is the ' public ' over the water, 
 whither the performers at the Eoyal Alexandrina Theatre 
 (formerly the old Homborg) resort ; where Jobson, the 
 original Vampire of Venice, reigns supreme, and where you 
 may see a painted announcement, that ' Bottles are lent for 
 the Theatre,' meaning that any thirsty denizen of the New 
 Cut, who may choose to patronise, on a given night, the Eoyal 
 Alexandrina Theatre, with his wife, family, and suite, may 
 here buy beer, and borrow a bottle to hold it, wherewith to 
 regale himself between the acts, the standing order of the 
 theatre as to 'No bottles allowed,' notwithstanding. Then 
 there is the equestrian theatrical house, also, over the water, 
 where you may see fiercely moustachioed gentlemen, who 
 clank spurs, and flourish horsewhips, after the manner of life- 
 guardsmen off duty ; who swear fearfully, and whose grammar 
 is defective ; who affect a great contempt for actors, whom 
 they term ' mummies,' and who should be in polite parlance 
 denominated ' equestrian performers,' but are generally, by a 
 discerning but somewhat too familiar public, known as * horse- 
 riders.' There are, of course, different cliques and coteries 
 holding their little discussions, and conserving their little 
 prejudices and antipathies, their likings and dislikings, in the 
 various classes of theatrical publics ; but there is common to 
 them all a floating population of old play-goers, superannuated 
 pantomimists, decayed prompters, actors out of engagement, 
 and order-hunters and actor-haunters. 
 
 Ramble on again, wheels of Barclay's dray; clatter, ye 
 harness, and crack, ye loud-sounding whips ; and let us leave 
 the world theatrical for the world pictorial. Let us see the 
 Arts on tap ! 
 
 VII. 
 
 PHASES OF 'PUBLIC' LIFE. 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 IN a suburban locality, mostly, shall you find the artistic 
 public-house. There is nothing essentially to distinguish it 
 from other houses of entertainment. Indeed, by day, were it 
 
PHASES OF < PUBLIC' LIFE. 81 
 
 not for the presence, perhaps, of an old picture or two in the 
 bar, and a bran-new sacred piece by young Splodger ' Madonna 
 col Bambino ' (models Mrs. Splodger and Master W. Splodger), 
 with an intensely blue sky, a preternaturally fat Bambino, and 
 a Madonna with a concentrated sugar-candyish sweetness of 
 expression were it not for these, you would be puzzled to 
 discover that the arts had anything to do with this class of 
 public. But after eight o'clock at night, or so, the smoking- 
 room is thronged with artists, young and old : gray-headed 
 professors of the old school, who remember Stothard, and have 
 heard Fuseli lecture ; spruce young fellows who have studied 
 in Paris, or have just come home from Italy, full of Horace 
 Vernet, Paul Delaroche, the loggie and stanze of the Vatican, 
 the Pitti Palace, and the Grand Canal; moody disciples of 
 that numerous class of artists known as the ' great unappre- 
 ciated,' who imagine that when they have turned their shirt- 
 collars down, and their lips up, grown an enormous beard and 
 moustache, "and donned an eccentric felt hat, all is done that 
 can be done by art, theoretical, practical, and sesthetical, and 
 that henceforward it is a burning and crying shame if their 
 pictures are not hung ' on the line ' in the Exhibition of the 
 Royal Academy, or if the daily papers do not concur in a 
 unanimous pa3an of praise concerning their performances. Very 
 rarely condescends also to visit the artists' public that trans- 
 cendent genius Mr. Cimabue Giotto Smalt, one of the P.P.P.B. 
 or * Prse-painting and Perspective Brotherhood.' Mr. Smalt, 
 in early life, made designs for ' The Ladies' Gazette of Fashion,' 
 and was suspected also of contributing the vigorous and 
 highly- coloured illustrations to ' The Hatchet of Horrors' 
 that excellent work published in penny numbers by Skull, of 
 Horrorwell Street. Subsequently awakening, however, to a 
 sense of the hollowiiess of the world, and the superiority of 
 the early Italian school over all others, he laid in a large 
 stock of cobalt, blue, gold leaf, small wooden German dolls, 
 and glass eyes, and commenced that course of study which 
 has brought him to the proud position he now holds as a de- 
 votional painter of the most esthetic acerbity and the most 
 orthodox angularity. He carefully unlearned all the drawing 
 and perspective which his kind parents had been at some 
 trouble and expense to have him taught ; he studied the 
 human figure from his German dolls, 'expression from his col- 
 lection of glass eyes, drapery from crumpled sheets of foolscap 
 paper, colour from judiciously selected morceaux (in panel), such 
 
82 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 as Barclay and Perkins's blue board, and the ' Eed Lion 'at 
 Brentford. He paints shavings beautifully, sore toes fault- 
 lessly. In his great picture of St. Laurence, the bars of the 
 gridiron, as branded on the saint's flesh, are generally con- 
 sidered to be masterpieces of finish and detail. Some critics 
 prefer his broad and vivid treatment of the boils in his picture 
 of 'Job scraping himself (the potsherd exquisitely rendered), 
 exhibited at the Academy last year, and purchased by the 
 Dowager Lady Grillo of Pytchley. He dresses in a sort of 
 clerico-German style, cuts his hair very short, sighs continu- 
 ally, and wears spectacles. No Mondays, Tuesdays, or Wed- 
 nesdays, are there in his calendar. The days of the week are 
 all Feasts of St. Somebody, or Eves of something, with him. 
 When he makes out his washing-bill, his laundress is puzzled 
 to make out what ' shyrtes ' and ' stockynges ' mean, for so he 
 writeth them down ; and when he wanted to let his second 
 floor, not one of the passers-by could for the life of them 
 understand the wondrous placard he put forth in h'is parlour- 
 window, the same being an illuminated scroll, telling in red, 
 blue, and gold hieroglyphics of something dimly resembling 
 this : 
 
 PVRNISHED CHAMBERES MATE ON YE UPPER FLOOR BEE HADDE. 
 
 Pipes are in great request in the smoking-room of the 
 artists' public fancy pipes of elaborate workmanship and ex- 
 traordinary degrees of blackness. The value of a pipe seems 
 to increase as its cleanliness diminishes. Little stumpy pipes, 
 the original cost of which was one halfpenny, become, after 
 they have been effectually fouled and smoke-blackened, pearls 
 beyond price few content themselves with a simple yard of 
 clay something more picturesque more moyen age. Chrome, 
 who paints c still life ' nicely, fruit and flowers, and so on, (his 
 detractors say apples, oranges, and bills of the play,) smokes 
 a prodigious meerschaum, warranted to be from the Danube, 
 crammed with Hungarian tobacco, and formerly the property 
 of the Waywode of Widdin. Scumble (good in old houses 
 and churches) inhales the fumes of a big pipe with a porcelain 
 bowl, purchased in the Dom-Platz of Aix-la-Chapelle, and 
 having Saladin and all his paladins depicted thereon. The 
 black cutty, patronised by Bristley (son of Sir Hogg Bristley, 
 E.A.) f has been his constant companion in the adventurous 
 sketching journeys he has undertaken was with him when 
 
PHASES OF ' PUBLIC' LIFE. 83 
 
 Tinder sentence of fusillation for sketching a droschky in the 
 Nevski Perspective at Petersburgh ; when lion-hunting in 
 Caffreland; nay, it is suspected, even lay quiescent in lii.s 
 pocket when hunted as a lion here, on his return. 
 
 In the further corner, sits, as perpetual vice-chairman, the 
 famous Nobbs. Nobbs was gold medallist and travelling 
 student of the Eoyal Academy in the year Thirty-four. He 
 has been a blockhead ever since. He has never painted a 
 picture worth looking at ; . nor, I seriously believe, were you 
 to lock him in a room with a pencil and a piece of paper, 
 could he draw a pint pot from recollection. Yet hath he 
 covered roods, perches, acres of tinted paper, with studies 
 from the antique and the life ; set him before a statue, with 
 drawing-board, crayons, compasses, and plumb-line complete, 
 and he will give you every hair of Moses's beard, every muscle 
 of the Discobolus ; give him a Eaphael or a Titian to copy, 
 and he will produce a duplicate so exact that you would be 
 puzzled to tell the ancient from the modern. 
 
 Storyteller in ordinary, historiographer, and undisputed 
 nautical authority, is Jack Bute, who is supposed, once upon 
 a time, to have painted Lord Nelson's portrait, and who, on 
 strength of that one achievement, has been a famous man ever 
 since. Who would not be proud of standing fourpenn'orth to 
 Jack Bute ? Jack has been a sail or, too, a gallant sailor. ' I 
 was at Algiers, sir,' he says, * and fit there ' he always says 
 fit. 4 1 was among the boarders, and the only difficulty I had 
 was in shaking the Algerine blackguards off my boarding- 
 pike, I spitted so many of them,' Sometimes an over-sense of 
 his dignity,, and an over-dose of gin and water, make Jack 
 quarrelsome and disagreeable ; sometimes he is maudlin, and 
 can only ejaculate ' Nelson ' ' Fourpenn'orth ' amid floods 
 of tears. 
 
 The artists' i public ' is generally hard-by a ' life school,' or 
 institution where adult artists meet nocturnally to study the 
 numaii figure, animals &c., from the life. One of the standing 
 patterns or text-books of the school is quietly standing in front 
 of the house now, in the shape of a symmetrically-shaped 
 donkey, which Bill Jones, its master, the costermonger, is 
 very happy (for a consideration) to lend to the life school to 
 be ' drawed' at night, after the patient animal has been draw- 
 ing all day. Another pattern is refreshing himself with mild 
 porter at the bar, being no other, indeed, than the well-known 
 Caravaggio Potts, Artiste -modele, as he styles himself. He began 
 
 G 2 
 
84 ' GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 life as Jupiter Tonans, subsequently passed through the Twelve 
 Apostles, and is now considered to be the best Belisarius in the 
 model world. His wife was the original Venus Callipyge, of 
 Tonks, E.A., but fluctuates at present between Yolunmia and 
 Mrs. Primrose. 
 
 The landlord of the artists' inn knows all about the exhibi- 
 tions, what days they open, and what days they shut who 
 ought to have been hung ' on the line,' who the prize-holders 
 in the Art Union are, and what pictures they are likely to 
 select for their prizes. Were you to enter the sitting-room, 
 you would be astonished at the number of portraits, full- 
 length, half-length, three-quarter-length, in oil, water-colour, 
 and crayons, of himself, his wife, children, and relations gene- 
 rally, which adorn that apartment. Has the blushing canvas 
 blotted out the sins of the slate ? 
 
 Between art and literature there is a very strong band of 
 union (becoming stronger every day, I trust), and I would 
 step at once from the artists' tavern to the literary tavern, 
 were I not enabled to save time and our chariot steeds by re- 
 maining awhile in Camden Town, where two or three varie- 
 ties of Public life yet remain to be noticed ; for, in this lo- 
 cality uplifts its lofty head ' The Railway Tavern ;' here, also, 
 is the c house ' frequented by veterinary surgeons ; here, the 
 hostelry affected by medical students. A brief word we must 
 have with each of them. 
 
 Hope wild, delusive, yet comfortable hope baked the 
 bricks and hardened the mortar of which the Eailway Tavern 
 was built. Its ,contiguity to a railway station appeared to its 
 sanguine projector a sufficient guarantee for immense success. 
 He found out what the fallacies of hope were, before he had 
 done building. He hanged himself. To him enters an enter- 
 prising licensed victualler, formerly of the New Cut, w r ho ob- 
 tained a transient meed of success by an announcement of the 
 sale within of ' Imperial black stuff, very nobby.' Every- 
 body was anxious to taste the c Imperial black stuff,' and for 
 some days the Eailway Tavern was thronged; but the public 
 found out that the mixture was not only very nobby, but very 
 nasty, and declined a renewal of the draught. The next pro- 
 prietor was a fast gentleman , which may account for his having 
 gone so very "fast into ' The Gazette ;' although he always attri- 
 buted his ruin to his having had a great many pewter pots 
 stolen, which he subsequently unwittingly received again in 
 the guise of bad half-crowns. For years the Eailway Tavern 
 
PHASES OF 'PUBLIC' LIFE. 85 
 
 stood, big, white, deserted-looking, customerless ; but a new 
 neighbourhood gradually arose round the station ; front streets 
 gradually generated back streets ; back streets begot courts 
 and alleys. There is a decent assemblage of customers, now, 
 at the bar ; a fair coffee-room connection, and a very numerous 
 parlour company, composed of guards and engine-drivers ; 
 strongly perfumed with lamp-oil, who call the locomotives 
 'she/ the company ' they,' and each other 'mate.' Though 
 it has been built some years, the Railway Tavern has yet an 
 appearance of newness. The paint seems wet, the seats un- 
 worn, and the pots unbattered. The doors have not that com- 
 fortable, paint-worn manginess about the handle common to 
 public-house portals in frequented neighbourhoods. The 
 Railway Tavern always reminds me of the one hotel in a 
 small Irish town that square, white, many-windowed, un- 
 comfortable-looking edifice, frowning at the humble, ram- 
 shackle little chapel, awing the pigs and embellishing the 
 landscape ; but seldom troubled with custom or customers. 
 
 Out of the way, lumbering drink-dray of ours, and let this 
 smart gig, with the fast-trotting mare braced up very tight in 
 the shafts thereof, rattle by ! In the vehicle sits a gentleman 
 with a very shiny hat, a very long shawl, and an indefinite 
 quantity of thick great-coats, from the pocket of one of which 
 peep a brace of birds. The gig is his ' trap,' and the fast- 
 trotting mare is his mare Fanny, and he himself is Mr. Sand- 
 cracks, of the firm of Sandcracks and Windgall, veterinary 
 surgeons. He is going to refresh Fanny with some meal and 
 water, and himself with some brandy and ditto, at the Horse 
 and Hocks, a house especially favoured and frequented by 
 veterinary surgeons, and the walls of whose parlour (the H. 
 and H.) are decorated with portraits of the winners of ever so 
 manyDerbys, and some curious anatomical drawings of horses. 
 The frequenters of the H. and H. are themselves curious com- 
 pounds of the sporting character and the surgeon. You will 
 find in the bar, or behind it (for they are not particular), or 
 in the parlour, several gentlemen, with hats as shiny, shawls 
 as long, and coats as multifarious, as Mr. Sandcracks', discours- 
 ing volubly, but in a somewhat confusing manner, of dogs, 
 horses, spavins, catch-weights ; the tibia and theflfibiila, handi- 
 caps, glanders, the state of the odds, and comparative anatomy. 
 They will bet on a horse and bleed him with equal pleasure 
 back him, dissect him, do almost everything with him that can 
 be done with a horse. They must work hard and earn money ; 
 
86 - GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 yet to my mind they always seem to be driving the fast-trot- 
 ting mare in the smart gig to or from the Horse and Hocks. 
 
 Medical men don't enter into my category of ' public ' users. 
 They have their red port wine at home. The Medical students' 
 public is never known by its sign. It may be the Grapes, or 
 the Fox, or the Magpie and Stump, but it is always distin- 
 guished among the students as Mother So-and-so's, or Old 
 "What-d'ye-call-him's. The students generally manage to drive 
 all other customers away. Nor chair, nor benches nay, nor 
 settles, are required for the students' parlour. They prefer 
 sitting on the tables ; nor do they want glasses they prefer 
 pint pots ; consuming even gin and water from those bright 
 flagons : nor do they need spittoons, nor pictures on the walls, 
 nor bagatelle-boards. 
 
 If I wonder how the veterinary surgeon finds time to prac- 
 tise, how much greater must be my dubiety as to how the 
 medical students find time to study! The pipe, the pot of 
 half and half, the half-price to the theatre, the Cider-cellars to 
 follow, and the knocker-twisting gymnastics to follow that 
 (with, sometimes, the station-house by way of rider), appear to 
 nil up their whole time to leave not a point unoccupied upon 
 the circle of their daily lives. Yet, work they must, and work 
 they do. The smoking, drinking, fighting life, is but an ordeal 
 somewhat fiery, it is true from which have come unscathed 
 Doctor Bobus, rolling by in his fat chariot ; Mr. Slasher, ready 
 to cut off all and each of my limbs, in the cause of science, at 
 St. Spry's Hospital ; but, from which have crawled, singed, 
 maimed, blackened, half- consumed, poor Jack Fleam (he sang 
 a good song did Jack, and was a widow's son), now fain to be 
 a new policeman ; and Coltsfoot, the clinical clerk at Bar- 
 tholomew's, who died of delirium tremens on his passage to 
 Sydney. 
 
 On again we roll, and this time we leave the broad suburban 
 roads, furzed with trim cottages and gardens white cottage 
 bonnets with green ribbons for crowded streets again. If 
 you want to back Sally for the Chester Cup, or Hippopotamus 
 for the double event, or to get any information on any sporting 
 subject, where can you get it better, fresher, more authentic, 
 than in one ; of the sporting-houses, of which I dare say I am 
 - not very far out if I say there are a hundred in London ? Not 
 houses where sporting is casually spoken of, but where it is 
 the staple subject of conversation, business, and pleasure to 
 , the whole of the establishment, from the landlord to the potboy. 
 
PHASES OF ' PUBLIC' LIFE. 87 
 
 Let us take one sporting-house as a type. Dozens of pictures 
 Derby winners, Dog Billys, the Godolphin Arabian ; Snaffle, 
 the jockey ; Mr. Tibbs, the trainer (presented to him by a 
 numerous circle of,. <fec,,&c.). Nailed against the wall are a 
 horse-shoe, worn by Eclipse, and a plate formerly appertain- 
 ing to Little Wonder. In a glass-case behind the bar is a 
 stuffed dog Griper ; indeed, the famous bull-dog formerly the 
 property of that enthusiastic sporting character, Jack Myrtle, 
 who having had rather too decided a settling day with one 
 Mr. Ware, was done to death at Aylesbury ; the body of Mr. Ware 
 having been found in a pond, and twelve ignorant jurymen 
 having concurred in a verdict that the bold Jack Myrtle put 
 him there. The landlord of the sporting-house is a sporting 
 character you may believe me. Such a chronological memory 
 he has of all the horses that have won races, for goodness 
 knows how many years ! Such bets he makes touching these 
 same chronological questions ! such crowns, half-crowns, and 
 
 * glasses round ' he wins ! When he has been lucky on an 
 '* event,' he stands unlimited champagne. He had a Derby 
 Sweep, and a St. Leger Sweep, and a Great Northamptonshire 
 Sweep, and a great many other sweeps, or ticket lotteries, at 
 his house ; of. which sweeps I only know that I never drew 
 the highest horse in any of them, and never knew the sporting 
 character who did.. 
 
 Horses are A. 1, of course, at the sporting public, but dogs 
 are not despised. The Screwtail Club have a ' show ' meeting 
 every Friday night, followed by an harmonic meeting. At 
 the ' show,' comparisons take place, and the several qualifica- 
 tions are discussed of spaniels, terriers, greyhounds, and almost 
 every other kind of canine quadruped. Dark- whiskered men 
 in velveteen shooting-coats, loom mysteriously about the bar 
 on show nights. In their pockets they have dogs ; to them 
 enter ' parties,' or agents of ' parties ' who have lost the said 
 
 * dogs ' flagons of beer, and noggins of Geneva without 
 number, are discussed to bind bargains, or ' wet ' bargains, or 
 as portions of the ' regulars,' to which the agents or their 
 assigns are entitled. 
 
 Who comes to the sporting public-house ? Who drinks in 
 its bar and parlour ? Who puffs in its smoking-room ? who, 
 but the sallow-faced little man, with the keen black eye and 
 the bow-legs swathed in thick shawls and coats who, every 
 Derby-day, bursts on your admiring gaze, all pink silk, snowy 
 buck-skins, and mirror-like tops, as a jockey ? Who but 
 
88 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 4 Nemo,' who "offers you an undeniable 4 tip,' and ' Mendax,' 
 with his never-failing ' pick ?' who come incog., indeed, but 
 still come to see without being seen ? Who, but that fool of 
 all fools that dupe of all dupes that gull of all gulls the 
 sporting fool, the sporting dupe, the sporting gent ! He (brain- 
 less youth) who has ' good information ' about Hawkeye, who 
 4 lays out his money ' upon Buster ; who backs Pigeon for the 
 * double event ;' who ' stands to win ' by every horse, and loses 
 by them all ; who is so stupendously knowing, and is so 
 stupidly and grievously plucked by the most transparent 
 sharpers upon earth ! 
 
 London, the great city of refuge for exiles of all nations, the 
 home or place of sojourn for foreign ambassadors, foreign mer- 
 chants, foreign singers, cooks, artists, watchmakers, sugar- 
 bakers, organ-grinders, and hair-dressers, has necessarily also 
 its public-houses, favoured by the more especial and peculiar 
 patronage of foreigners temporarily or permanently resident 
 in the metropolis. The foreigner can take his glass, and imbibe 
 his * grogs ' with as much pleasure as the true Briton ; although, 
 perhaps, with somewhat more moderation, and less table- 
 thumping, glass-replenishing, waiter-bullying, and subsequent 
 uneven and uncertain locomotion. It is a great mistake to 
 imagine that foreigners cannot appreciate and do not occasion- 
 ally indulge in conviviality ; only they generally content 
 themselves with the * cheering ' portion of the cup, eschewing 
 its ' inebriating ' part. 
 
 Let us essay a pull at the beer-engine of one of the foreign 
 hostelries of London the refugees' house of call. Heir Brutus 
 Eselskopf, the landlord, is a refugee himself, a patriot without 
 a blot on his political scutcheon. He has been a general of 
 brigade in his time ; but he has donned the Boniface apron, 
 and affiliated himself to the Boniface guild, and dispenses his 
 liquors with as much unconcern as if he had never worn 
 epaulettes and a cocked hat, and had never seen real troops 
 with real bands and banners defile before him. Where shall 
 his house be ? In the purlieus of Oxford Street, near Leicester 
 Square, or in the centre of that maze of crooked, refugee- 
 haunted little streets between Saint Martin's Lane and Saint 
 Anne's Church, Soho ? Go for Soho ! Go for a mean, unpre- 
 tending-looking little house of entertainment at the corner of 
 a street, a Tadrnor in the wilderness, set up by Herr Brutus 
 Eselskopf for the behoof of his brothers in exile. 
 
PHASES OF ' PUBLIC* LIFE. 89 
 
 No very marked difference can at first be discerned, as 
 regards fittings up and appurtenances, between the refugees' and 
 any other public-house. There is a bar and a barmaid, there 
 is a beer-engine and there are beer-drinkers ; and were it not 
 that the landlord wears a Turkish cap, with blue tassels, and 
 a beard and moustachios of prodigious magnitude, all of which 
 are rather out of the common or Britannic order of things, you 
 might fancy yourself at an English public-house. But five 
 minutes' sojourn therein, and five minutes' observation of the 
 customers, will soon convince you to the contrary. Herr 
 Eselskopf's little back parlour is filled, morning, noon, and 
 night, with foreigners under political clouds of various degrees 
 of density, and in a cloud of uniform thickness and of strong 
 tobacco, emitted in many-shaped fumes from pipes of eccentric 
 design. By the fire, reading the Allgemeine Zeitung ' or 
 ' Ost-Deutsche Post,' and occasionally indulging in muttered 
 invectives against the crowned heads of Europe, generally, 
 and the Emperor of Austria in particular, is that valiant re- 
 publican Spartacus Bursch, erst P.H.D. of the University of 
 Heidelberg, then on no pay, but with brevet rank, behind a 
 barricade formed of an omnibus, two water-carts and six pav- 
 ing-stones at Frankfort ; subsequently and afterwards of the 
 Charite Hospital at Berlin, possessor of a broken leg ; after- 
 wards of the fortress of Ehrenbreit stein, condemned "to im- 
 prisonment for life ; afterwards of Paris, France, Red 
 Republican, manufacturer of lucifer-matches, affilie of -several 
 secret societies, chemical lecturer, contractor for paving roads, 
 usher in a boarding-school ; then of Oran, Algeria, private 
 soldier in the Foreign Legion ; then of Burgos, Santander, St. 
 Sebastian, and Passajes, warrior in the Spanish service, Carlist 
 or Christino by turns ; then of Montevideo ; then of the United 
 States of America, professor in the colleges of Gouveville, Va., 
 and Ginslingopolis, Ga. ; barman at a liquor store, professor 
 of languages, and marker at a New Orleans billiard-room ; 
 subsequently and ultimately of London, promoter of a patent 
 for extracting vinegar from white lead, keeper of a cigar-shop, 
 professor of fencing, calisthenics, and German literature ; and 
 latterly out of any trade or occupation. 
 
 There is likewise to be found here, the Polish colonel with 
 one arm, Count Schottischyrinkski playing draughts with 
 Professor Toddiegraif, lately escaped from Magdeburg ; Cap- 
 tain Scartaffaccio, who has fought bravely under Charles 
 Albert, at Novara, and for the Danes in Schleswig Holstein, 
 
90 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 and against the French on the battlements of Eome, and under 
 Manin, at Venice, against the Austrians ; also there may be 
 encountered sundry refugees of the vielle souche the old style, 
 in fact men who can remember the Grand Duke Constan- 
 tine, the knout, nose-slitting, and Siberia ; who have been 
 St. Simonians, and Carbonaros, and- Setembrists ; who can 
 tell you grim, stories of the piombi of Venice, of Prussian 
 citadels, and Italian galleys, of the French cellular vans, and 
 the oubliettes of Spielberg. But the last few years, and the 
 almost European revolt that followed the Eevolution of 1848, 
 has brought to England a new class of refugees, somewhat 
 looked down on, it must be said, by the old hands, the matri- 
 culated in barricades, and those who have gone in for honours 
 in street combats, but still welcomed by them as brothers in 
 adversity. These are enthusiastic young advocates, zealous 
 young sons of good families, patriotic officers, who have 
 thrown up their commissions under despot standards to fight 
 for liberty, freedom-loving literary men, republican jour- 
 nalists, Socialist workmen. These poor fellows have been 
 hunted from frontier to frontier on the Continent, like mad 
 dogs. Half of them have been condemned to death in their 
 own country, many of them forced to fly from home, and 
 kindred, and friends, and occupation, for deeds or thoughts 
 expressed in print or writing, which ministers or govern- 
 ments would take, here, more as compliments than otherwise. 
 They manage things differently abroad ; and so there are in 
 London many public-houses and coffee-shops always full of 
 refugees. Harmless enough they are, these unfortunate 
 forestieri. There are black sheep among them, certainly ; but 
 St. Wapshot's sainted fold itself has, sometimes, muttons of 
 suspicious hue amongst its snowy fleeces. There are refu- 
 gees who cheat a little sometimes at billiards, and who rob 
 their furnished lodgings, and attempt to pass bad half-crowns, 
 and forge Prussian bank-notes (I never could find out how 
 they could pay for forging, for their value appears to vary 
 between twopence-halfpenny and sixpence). There are 
 refugees who get up sham testimonials, and are connected 
 with swindling companies and gambling cigar-shops ; but 
 consider how many thousands of them here in London, born 
 and bred gentlemen, who have lost everything in the main- 
 tenance of what they conscientiously believed to be the right 
 against might, live quietly, honestly, inoffensively, doing no 
 harm, existing on infinitesimal means, working hard for 
 
PHASES OF ' PUBLIC' LIFE. 01 
 
 miserable remuneration, willing to do anything for a cmst, 
 teaching languages for sixpence a. lesson, painting portraits 
 for a shilling a-piece, taking out lessons on the flute or piano- 
 forte in bread or meat ! AVe give them foot-room, to be sure, 
 but little more ; and stout John Bull, with all his antipathy 
 to foreigners, may sometimes melt at the sight of a burly 
 Polish major of heavy dragoons, explaining the intricacies of 
 an Italian verb to the young ladies in a boarding-school, or a 
 Professor of moral philosophy selling cigars on commission 
 for his livelihood. They live, somehow, these poor foreigners, 
 much as the young ravens do, I opine ; yet they meet some- 
 times at Herr Eselskopf s, in Soho, or at some French or 
 Polish or Italian public-house in the same refugee neighbour- 
 hood, and take their social glass, drinking to better times, 
 when they shall enjoy their own again. Meanwhile, they 
 accommodate themselves, as best they may, to the manners 
 and customs of their step-fatherland, forgetting Ehine wines 
 and Bavarian beer, and such foreign beverages for the 
 nonce, and living humbly, industriously, contentedly, good- 
 humouredly, on such poor meats and drinks as they can get. 
 
 I call these refugees (and they form the great majority of 
 the exiles in London) the quiescent ones ; but there are also 
 the incandescent ones, the roaring, raging, rampaging, red- 
 hot refugees ; the amateurs in vitriol, soda-water bottles full 
 of gunpowder, and broken bottles for horses' hoofs ; the 
 throwers of grand pianofortes from first-floor windows on 
 soldiers' heads, the cutters off of dragoons' feet, the impalers 
 of artillerymen. There are some of these men in London. 
 Where do they meet? Not at Herr Eselskopf s, certainly. 
 They did frequent his establishment ; but since Hector 
 Chalamot, ex-silkweaver from Lyons, attempted to bite off 
 the nose of Captain Sprottleowski, on the question of assas- 
 sinating the King of Prussia : which little rixe was followed 
 by Teufelshand, delegate of the United Society of Brother 
 Butchers, demanding the heads of the company : and by 
 little Doctor Pferdschaff insisting on singing his ' Tod-lied,' 1 or 
 Hymn to the Guillotine, to the tune of the Hundredth Psalm, 
 since these events, good Herr Eselskopf would have none 
 of them. They met after that at a little gasthaus in AYhite- 
 chapel, formerly known as the ' Sclrinkenundbrod' or German 
 sandwich house ; but Strauss, the landlord, in compliment to 
 the severe political principles of his guests, re-christened it 
 under the title of the ' Tyrants' Entrails.' Liberty, equality, 
 
92 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 and fraternity were here the order of the day, until Dominico 
 Schiavonne was stabbed by an Italian seaman from the docks, 
 because he was a Eoman; the assassin being subsequently 
 knived himself by another seaman, because he was a Tuscan. 
 Well, well ! Can ever a pot boil without some scum at the 
 top ? There is bellow and black smoke as well as a bullet to 
 every blunderbuss. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 PHASES OF * PUBLIC ' LIFE. 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 SHOULD the readers of these pages have formed or expressed 
 any opinion on the subject of Barclay's Dray, formerly herein 
 adverted to, I should not wonder if they opined that the 
 wheels of that vehicle stood grievously in need of lubricating ; 
 inasmuch as the spokes and axles thereof have ceased revolv- 
 ing for some time ; a dead lock being thereby created, and a 
 crowded literary thoroughfare blocked up. Weighty and 
 sufficient reasons are not wanting to be alleged in excuse for 
 this temporary stoppage. The writer could, if he chose, 
 plead as many pleas as the defendant in an action at law 
 from ' never indebted,' to 4 leave and license ;' yet he is of 
 opinion that it would be far more graceful and respectful in 
 him. to follow the example of that Mayor of Boulogne, who, 
 of the four-and-twenty sufficient reasons he had provided to 
 account for the non-firing of a salute to Henry the Eighth, 
 put forward as the first reason, that he had no gunpowder. 
 So I may say, humbly," that the third chapter of this essay 
 was not sooner printed, because it was not written ; a tho- 
 roughly logical and conclusive reason, reminding me of the 
 Spanish fleet, which could not be seen, because it was not in 
 sight ; or, to come nearer home, of some worthy men Con- 
 servatives, ratepayers, vestrymen, and other residents of a 
 country town I know, who petitioned lately against the 
 introduction of gas- lamps into the streets ; for which they 
 alleged as a reason not that gas was atheistical, or papistical, 
 or subversive of Church and State but solely that, as they 
 expressed it with beautiful simplicity, ' they didn't want no 
 gas.' 
 
 The world has grown older, and the Eegistrar-General has 
 written a good many columns in the ' Times ' since we sat in 
 
PHASES OF * PUBLIC' LIFE. 93 
 
 the dray together among the beer-barrels. The May sun was 
 shining and the birds were singing, when I sat down to write 
 chapter the first ; but now, as I bend over chapter the third, 
 the trees are strewing dead leaves on the grave of summer, 
 and the October blast moans lamentably through the branches 
 as though it were a dog, howling by night before a house for 
 the year that is to die. 
 
 The public life of Israel ; Judaical conviviality ; that shall 
 be my theme. The publics used by the peculiar people are 
 marked with distinctive characteristics, like everything else 
 appertaining to that curious race. AVhen Holywell Street 
 was more old clothesy than literary ; and, when children of 
 the Tribes lay'fin wait at the shop-doors behind cloaks and 
 paletots, like wild beasts in ambush, frousy little public- 
 houses nestled among the old clothes shops pretty numerously. 
 They were not cheerful nor gaily-decorated establishments. 
 Mostly with semicircular counters, mostly without forms or 
 settles (for it is a peculiarity of the ' persuasion ' to take its 
 refreshment almost invariably standing) : they smelt into- 
 lerably of stale tobacco-smoke that of bad cigars which the 
 landlord and his customers continually smoked. No pipes 
 were ever seen and no cigar-cases or cigar-boxes were ever 
 produced. All smoked cigars, yet no man ever seemed to light 
 a fresh ' weed,' but kept on, from morn to dewy eve, con- 
 tinuously puffing at the same stump or fag-end of rolled 
 tobacco or cabbage, or lettuce-leaf, as the case might be. 
 They appeared to possess some magical property of indefinite 
 prolongation. 
 
 The ' Jews' Harp ' stood somewhere between Old Castle 
 Street, Holywell Street, and Lyons Inn. There was an old 
 clothes shop, wholesale, retail, and for exportation, on either 
 side. Early in the morning, winter and summer, the gentle- 
 men clothesmen of the vicinity called in for a cigar before 
 they started on their habiliment-collecting rounds. Liquor 
 they never consumed before business, and they even went 
 trust (till the afternoon) for the cigar : it being a maxim 
 among the people never to part with money, where disburse- 
 ment could by any means be avoided, before some bargains 
 had been made, and some profit, however small, secured. 
 Towards twelve o'clock the clothesmen would return with 
 heavily-laden bags ; and then the space before the bar became 
 so crowded with Jews and their sacks that it resembled a 
 granary of old clothes ; then was the foaming pot quailed, and 
 
94 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 the fried flounder eaten ; then were racy anecdotes told of 
 keen bargains and unwary customers, and clothes-vendors 
 who ' didn't know the value of things, no more than a child, 
 my dear.' Towards evening the bar would be crowded 
 again, but always with Jews. They betted on every ima- 
 ginable topic horses, dogs, the various lengths of cigars, 
 theatricals, politics, anything, in short, on which a variety 
 of opinion could possibly exist, and could consequently offer 
 a field for a wager. And then they played these jovial 
 Jews at cribbage, at all-fours, at any game at which six- 
 pences could be won or lost. The card-tables were the top 
 of the counter, the crown of a hat, the knees of the players, 
 a pair of bellows, or any other object offering a plane surface. 
 The card-playing at the ' Jews' Harp ' grew to such a pitch, 
 that at last Moss lost his licence. He goes under the name of 
 Montmorency now; has a Brougham, and handsome cham- 
 bers in Waterloo Place ; and, I am given to understand, does 
 little bills for the Guards, horse and foot. 
 
 If you would see a genuine Jewish public (since Holy well 
 Street has been un-Israelitised), our dray must rumble us 
 through the narrow straggling City streets via Aldgate Pump 
 to the heart of Jewish London. We could have taken St. 
 Mary Axe as a nearer approach to it ; but Bevis Marks, Mitre 
 Street, Duke's Place, Cree Church Lane, St. Anne's Square, 
 half a dozen choked-up little streets running into the broad 
 channel of Houndsditch, are more redolent of Jewish life. 
 The sign of the people is everywhere. The air is heavy with 
 the fumes of Minories-made cigars. Old very old Old 
 Jewry is puffing lazily from open windows, or lounging on 
 door steps, or chatting at street corners apparently idle, but, 
 trust me, doing keen strokes of business. It is Sunday morn- 
 ing, and the New Police Act notwithstanding, I can find half 
 a dozen publics, not wide open, but still in the full swing of 
 business. Sunday not being the Sabbath v of the peculiar 
 people, they have, of course, none of the scruples connected 
 with working on that day that we have ; so the Nemesis of 
 the blue uniform, the lettered collar, and the glazed hat 
 slumbers in Jewry on Sunday morning ; won't see that beer 
 is sold, won't remember that Church service is proceeding, 
 won't hear the gurgling of beer-engines, or the murmurs of 
 spirit-taps. Our Judaical public-house lies in Aminadab 
 Street, close to Talmud Square, and hard by the Marks. It 
 used to be known as Duke's Place. On one side resides Mr. 
 
PHASES OF ' PUBLIC' LIFE. D.l 
 
 Reuben Sheeny, dealer in old gold and silver, who displays 
 nothing more valuable in his shop window than a wo< 
 bowl with two anchor buttons, within a ragged, tarnished 
 epaulette ; but who, I dare say, has the wealth of the Indies 
 inside, somewhere. On the other side is a little squeezed-up 
 sandwich of a shop ; which, at first sight, I mistook for a stall 
 for the repair of Hebrew soles and upper leather ; imagining 
 that the Hebrew inscription over the window and on the door- 
 jambs related to the mysteries of the crispinical art. But I 
 have since found out my error. The grave old man with 
 goggle-eyed spectacles and a flowing white beard is not a 
 cobbler. He is a scribe, a public letter-writer, an ecrivain 
 public. He will write love-letters, draw contracts and agree- 
 ments, make severe applications for little bills, and conduct 
 the general correspondence of Jewry. Unchanging Jewry ! 
 Here, among the docks and screaming factories, to find a 
 scribe. Writing, perhaps, with a reed pen, and possessing 
 very probably the rolls of the law in his corner cupboard. 
 Between these two tenements is the Bag o' Eags. The 
 shutters are up, and the front door is closed ; but, by the side 
 door, free ingress and egress are afforded. Not less than fifty 
 persons are in the narrow parlour and scanty bar, and your 
 humble servant the only Nazarene. Behind the counter is 
 Miss Leah, a damsel of distracting beauty, but arrayed for the 
 moment in a gown of cotton print. Probably Miss Cosher 
 adheres to the principle that beauty, when unadorned, is 
 adorned the most, although yesterday, had you seen her 
 walking to Synagogue, you would have seen the rainbow- 
 tinted produce of the Chinese insect on her 'fair bodye ;' the 
 cJief-d' ceuvre of the looms of India on her symmetrical shoulders ; 
 the sparkling treasures of the mines of Golconda and of the 
 Brazils on her neck and fingers ; and with surely ' enough 
 gay gold about her waist ' in the way of watches, Trichinopoly 
 chains, chatelaines and waist-buckles, to purchase that landed 
 estate in the county of Northumberland alluded to by the 
 proud young porter of Lord Viscount Bateman. Old Cosher 
 sits smilingly by his blooming daughter, smoking ; old Mrs. 
 Cosher (very fat, and with a quintuple chin), is frying 'fish 
 in a remarkably strong-smelling oil in the snuggery behind 
 the bar, and Master Rabshekah Cosher, aged eight, is officia- 
 ting as waiter, and pocketing the perquisites or royalties 
 attached to his office with amazing rapidity, and with a con- 
 fidence beyond his years. On the muddy pewter counter sits 
 
96 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 a huge tom-cat a cat of grave and imposing mien, a feline 
 Lord Chancellor sitting, solemnly blinking from out of his 
 robes of three-piled fur. 
 
 I may say of the customers of this hostelry, of the neigh- 
 bouring public ' The Three Hats/ and of 'The Sheenies Arms ' 
 round the corner, that the chief object of their Sunday morn- 
 ing's sojourn is the buying or selling of some articles of 
 merchandise. From old Simon Eybeck of Bremen, who from 
 his dress and piteous look you would not take to be worth 
 twopence-halfpenny, but who from the depths of his greasy 
 overcoat produces dazzling bracelets, and rings of price and 
 necklaces such as a princess might covet, and as you, my dear 
 sir, would like to present to your bride that is to be ; from 
 Mr. Levi, who wants to dispose of a brocaded petticoat 
 formerly in the wardrobe of Queen Anne ; from Mr. Belasco, 
 who has some humming-birds, unstuifed, to sell ; and brings 
 them out by handsful, till the table is covered with iris- 
 tinted feathers ; from these down to Jewish lads and strip- 
 lings, willing to swop, buy, sell, or speculate on anything in 
 a small way bargaining is the rule, quiet consumption of 
 grog or beer with no reservation the exception. Old Mr. 
 Eybeck has just brought out of his waistcoat pocket (after 
 much fumbling and diving, and bringing up rusty keys and 
 bladeless penknives) a'dirty screw of paper which you would 
 take, haply, to contain a pennyworth of tobacco, but which, 
 unscrewing, Mr. Eybeck shows to contain loose diamonds 
 four or five hundred pounds' worth perhaps. From dirty 
 hands to dirty hands are passed about massive golden chains 
 and weighty arguments ; and in some of the greasy, frayed, 
 battered pocket-books, which are from time to time produced, 
 lurk several of those autographs of Mr. Matthew Marshall, the 
 sight of which is so good for sore eyes. 
 
 One parting glance we give at these strange Sunday 
 customers these olive faces and glistening eyes, and moist, 
 red, pulpy lips. Look around, ere you leave, at an engraving 
 on the parlour wall, of the New Synagogue and the Jews' 
 Asylum; at the passover cakes over the mantel-piece, kept 
 there from year's end to year's end ; and, finally, into the 
 dim snuggery in which Mrs. Cosher fried the fish. It is very 
 dark and very narrow ; but there is a rich Turkey carpet and 
 handsome furniture, and a great cupboard, making a brave 
 show of plate and linen. Among the dinner-party damask 
 you would find, I dare say, a significant garment Mr. Cosher's 
 
PHASES OF ' PUBLIC ' LIFE. 97 
 
 shroud, which he wears over his clothes, and walks about 
 City streets in on the day of the ' \\hite Fast.' 
 
 A sporting public-house. Have you any curiosity, gentlo 
 reader and student of beer in its varieties, to peep at the 
 interior of a ' fighting-house ?' You Lave : then let us stop 
 our chariot before the sign below depicted. 
 
 It is evening. The 4 mill ' between Lurky Snaggs and Dan 
 Pepper (the ' Kiddy '), for one hundred pounds a side, is due 
 on the proximate morning. The parlour of the fighting-house, 
 where the whereabouts of the fight is to be notified, is thronged 
 by professional and amateur members of the Fancy. Hard 
 talking has rendered these gentlemen's throats rather dry. 
 Beer is indignantly repudiated as something too drouthy and 
 thin-bodied by these noble sportsmen ; and steaming l fours ' 
 of gin and ' sixes ' of brandy troop into the room on the 
 waiter's tray in succession, as rapid as the flowers from the 
 inexhaustible hat of Herr Louis Dobler. The parlour itself is 
 a pugnacious-looking apartment, grimed with smoke, the 
 paper torn from the walls in bygone scuffles and punchings of 
 heads. Belcher, Mendoza, and Molyneux the black, spar 
 ominously at the spectator from muddled mezzotinto plates in 
 shabby black frames ; while a tarnished gilt frame, on the 
 surface of which a thousand flies had given up the ghost, 
 surrounds a portrait, in oils, of Mr. Coffin himself, his muscles 
 spasmodically developed, murderous highlows on his feet, and 
 a gay Belcher handkerchief twisted round his waist ; the 
 whole painted by Archy M'Gilp (a clever man, but given to 
 drinking). This work of art is flanked by a shadowy, evanes- 
 cent engraving of Mr. Figg the gladiator, stripped to box for 
 the championship in the reign of Queen Anne. There is a door, 
 on the back of which divers accusations of unpaid drams are 
 scored in chalk against members of the Prize Ring. There is, 
 wheezing before the fire, an elderly bull-dog, blind of one 
 eye, and with a face so scratched and scarred, and beaten out 
 of shape in former combats, so crafty, savage, and villanous of 
 aspect, that were I to see it on human shoulders and in a 
 felon's dock, a thought very like 'fifteen years across the 
 water for you, my man,' would pass through my mind. The 
 parlour tables are dinted by angry pewter pots ; the parlour 
 chairs are dislocated by angry men who have used them as 
 weapons of offence and defence, or who have exhibited feats 
 of dexterity and strength with them ; such as balancing 
 them 011 the tips of their noses swinging them on their 
 
 H 
 
98 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 little fingers at arms' length, or holding them between their 
 teeth. The parlour company is numerous and not select. 
 In a corner, tossing for half-crowns in a hat with Spanks the 
 omnibus-proprietor, is a lord a live lord, ye knaves ! one of 
 the few live lords who yet support the P.K. He is in a rough 
 great-coat, every hair of which stands on end like quills upon 
 the fretful porcupine, and known in sporting circles, I believe, 
 from its resemblance to the outer envelope of a shaggy dog, as 
 a 4 bow-wow coat.' This is Lord Shortford, Lurky Snaggs's 
 'backer.' His noble father, the Earl of Absentaroo (whose 
 broad lands were recently brought to the judicial hammer in 
 the Encumbered Estates Court, in the island of Ireland), is a 
 zealous admirer of the ' noble art of self-defence,' even at this 
 time of day ; he being on the wrong side of seventy, and very 
 paralytic. At his lordship's Villa-Fisterati, near Cufficina, 
 Tuscany, his lordship's grooms frequently have a * set-to ' on 
 the lawn for his lordship's amuseme-.it : v, *th the gloves on, of 
 course ; though, if they happen to 3^1 o 3 after the third or 
 fourth round, his lordship is not unappeaseably incensed. 
 Next to the lord is a cadaverous, wild-haired man, ' all 
 tatter'd and torn.' He is an author, and cultivates literature 
 upon small ' goes ' of grog. He has written handbooks to the 
 ring, memorabilia of boxers, ana of sporting characters without 
 end. He has the chronology of every event in every fight, 
 from the days of Figg and Broughton to the last fight, at his 
 fingers' ends. His toilet is on his back ; his dressing-case (in 
 the shape of a felting comb with all the back teeth knocked 
 out) is in his pocket, cheek-by-jowl with his library (a torn 
 copy of * Boxiana ') and his writing-desk (a tattered pad), an 
 iron pen lashed on to the stump of a tobacco-pipe by a piece 
 of twine, and a penny bottle of ink with a paper plug formed 
 from a defunct screw of bird's-eye tobacco instead of a cork. 
 He is as strong as a bull, but never fights. He is an oracle, 
 but is too timid to bet, and too honest to go into the prophetic 
 line of business. He is content to write his literary com- 
 positions on tap-room tables for the meagre wages doled out 
 to him by cheap sporting periodicals, to get drunk at those 
 said tables afterwards, and to sleep peaceably beneath their 
 Pembroke canopies, when he falls. He has a pretty turn for 
 poetry, and will write you an acrostic on any subject from 
 geology to gaiters, for sixpence. He was a compositor once, 
 and even works occasionally now, being able to set up in type 
 the rounds of a fight, right off, without any manuscript. 
 
PHASES OF < PUBLIC' LIFE. 90 
 
 Lord Shortford patronises him, from time to time ; and he is 
 fond of reciting an ode, in the Alcaic measure, composed by 
 him in honour of his lordship, in which he (the peer) is 
 celebrated as the ' Maecenas of the ring,' and for which 
 Maecenas stood two dozen of Champagne. The room is, 
 besides, thronged by fighting men, all with close-cropped 
 hair, flattened noses, discoloured faces, wide mouths, short 
 within of the natural allowance of teeth ; and all addicted to 
 the wearing of coats with big buttons, cloth-boots, and staring 
 shawls. Then, there are young gentlemen in loose and slack 
 garments, who were lately flogged at Eton? and are now in 
 the Guards old gentlemen, who have been a considerable 
 time on town, and know, I am led to believe, every move 
 thereon seedy gentlemen living on their wits, and, seem- 
 ingly, not thriving much on that course of diet. There are 
 gentlemen who, from top to toe, are as plainly and clearly 
 dupes as though they carried pigeon inscribed in legible 
 characters on their hat-bands; and gentlemen in nose, whisker, 
 and pervading appearance as unmistakeably hawks. There 
 are some meritorious public characters decorated with a pro- 
 fusion of chains and rings, who know several Inspectois of 
 the Metropolitan Police by sight, are on bowing terms with 
 the stipendiary magistrates sitting at the London Police 
 Offices, and who, I dare say, were you to ask them, could tell 
 you which was the snuggest corner on Brixton treadmill, and 
 the warmest cell in Coldbath Fields prison. There is the 
 landlord, in a decent suit of black and a white neckcloth, 
 which costume, superadded to his bonifacial apron and his 
 eminently prize-fighting face, would tend to create a confused 
 idea in your mind that, after he had been a gladiator, he had 
 had a call and had gone into the ministry ; but, finding that 
 not to agree with him, had taken, eventually, to the public 
 line. Finally, there is Lurky Snaggs, himself, the hero of 
 to-morrow's fray. Mr. Coffin has had him in training for the 
 last two months; and the devoted Snaggs has worn spiked 
 shoes, and carried dumb-bells, and taken long country walks 
 in heavy great-coats, and eaten semi-raw beef-steaks, all for 
 the more effectual bruising, pounding, and mutilating of Dan 
 Pepper, the ' Kiddy,' to-morrow- morning. He broke away 
 from his training a fortnight since, and was found in an 
 adverse house solacing himself with a pint of raw rum, which 
 abberration caused some terrible fluctuations in the betting- 
 market ; but, all things considered, he has been very docile 
 
 ii 2 
 
100 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 and abstemious, and is, as Mr. James Coffin triumphantly 
 asseverates, ' in prime condition, with flesh as firm as my 
 thumb.' 
 
 Betting, laughing, smoking, fierce quarrelling, snatches of 
 roaring songs are the entertainments at the Bottleholder and 
 Sponge. But Lurky Snaggs is off to bed, and we must be off 
 with him. Whither shall this much-enduring dray convey 
 us now ? Let us go down to Flunkeyland to a Servants' Public. 
 
 No low neighbourhoods for you now no narrow streets or 
 swarming courts. Hie we to Belgravia ; nay, that is too new 
 to Tyburnia : nay, the mortar is scarcely dry there, either. 
 Let it be time-honoured Grosvenoria, the solemn, big-wigged, 
 hair-powdered region, where the aristocracy of this land 
 have loved to dwell time out of mind. Tyburnia and Bel- 
 gravia may be very well for your yesterday nobility your 
 mushroom aristocrats millionnaires, ex-Lord Mayors, and 
 low people of that sort ; but for the heavy swells of the 
 peerage, those of the blue blood and the strawberry-leaves, 
 and who came over with the Conqueror, Grosvenoria is the 
 place. There seems to be a natural air of fashion and true 
 gentility about it. Yet things do change, and streets will 
 decline. The Earl of Craven lived in Drury Lane once ; Sir 
 Thomas More resided down Bishopsgate way; the Duke of 
 Monmouth's address was Soho Square ; and, who knows, some 
 day or other, perhaps I shall engage a garret in the mighty 
 Lower Grosvenor Street itself. 
 
 Out of Crinoline Square runs, parkwise, as all men know, 
 Great Toppletoton Street. Where that thoroughfare intersects 
 with Tip Street is, as you well know, Wangwidgeon House 
 a big mansion in the rustic style, of brick, with stone dress- 
 ings, standing in a court-yard where dwells that mighty 
 prince, the Duke of Pampotter. Next door to him, down Tip 
 Street, is the bachelor's mansion of the Honourable Tom Sar- 
 danapalus, M.P. Then comes Mrs. Zenobia, the rich Indian 
 widow (worth two lacs : husband was in council : eats too 
 much mulligatawney : a great tract distributor, and horse- 
 whips her maid-servants). Then is the noble mansion, a 
 double house, of old Sir Fielding Framboise, of the firm of 
 Framboise, Yerditter, and Plum, bankers, and a sleeping 
 partner in a great brewery. And then, sir, come Topple- 
 toton Mews, and down Toppletoton Mews is the Cocked Hat 
 and Smalls, used by all the gentlemen servants in the neigh- 
 bourhood. 
 
PHASES OF 'PUBLIC' LIFE. 101 
 
 Checks, the landlord, who was the Bishop of Bosfursus's 
 butler, and married Mrs. Crimmins his Grace's housekeeper, 
 has a very delicate and difficult task to perform, I can assure 
 you, to keep on friendly terms with all his customers to 
 oblige all and offend none. Some of the gentlemen are so 
 very particular, so very scrupulous as to precedency and pro- 
 fessional etiquette. There's the duke's gentleman, Mr. Lapp. 
 Well, once upon a time, he was not too proud to step round 
 and take a glass with Checks in his private snuggery, be it 
 understood and even to smoke a pipe with Binns, Mrs. 
 Zenobia's butler, and Truepenny, the Honourable Tom Sar- 
 danapalus's man, who reads all his master's blue-books, and is 
 crushingly erudite on the case of the Ameers of Scinde. But, 
 bless you, Mr. Lapp happening to see a groom a low stock- 
 broker's groom in Checks's parlour, dandling Mrs. Crim- 
 mins' sister's child, there and then cut and repudiated 
 Checks and his establishment for ever. He told Mr. Wedge- 
 wood, Prince Knoutikowski's groom of the chambers, that he 
 ' would never enter that man's house again.' Checks, when 
 he heard of it, said in great wrath, that ' nobody wanted him 
 so for to do,' that he was ' a hupstart ;' and that he, Checks, 
 had kicked him many a time, when they both lived at Sir 
 John's where Checks was under-butler, and the duke's' gen- 
 tleman was a knife-boy. Then, the footmen rebelled, because 
 Doctor Philblister's coachman used the coffee-room. Then, 
 even the grooms revolted, because a man of stably appear- 
 ance, supposed to be an ostler out of place, used the tap-room ; 
 and, as he sat, made a hissing noise as though he was nibbing 
 down horses. Poor Checks was very nearly out of his mind ; 
 at last he bethought him of the expedient of dividing his 
 coffee-room into two, by a moveable wooden partition. In 
 one of these he put the butlers, and in another the footmen. 
 The great men among the former, and the tip-top valets were 
 free of his snuggery ; the grooms and coachmen had the tap- 
 room; and the common helpers and stable-folk and the 
 general public the bar. 
 
 Our dray has brought us from Mr. Checks's establishment 
 to the brewery. We may, perhaps, by-and-by, look in upon 
 it again, to inspect its home the head-quarters of every one 
 of the Phases of Public life we have already described. 
 
102 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 POWDER DICK AND HIS TRAIN". 
 
 THE Surrey shore of the Thames at London is dotted with 
 damp houses of entertainment. The water-side public-house, 
 though, perchance, hard by an archiepiscopal residence, and 
 over against a legislative palace, is essentially watersidey. 
 Mud is before, behind, around, about it : mud that in 
 wet weather surges against its basement in pea-soup-like 
 gushes, and that in summer cakes into hard parallelograms of 
 dirt, which, pulverised by the feet of customers, fly upwards 
 in throat-choking dust. The foundations of the water-side 
 public-house are piles of timbers, passably rotten; timbers 
 likewise shore up no inconsiderable portion of its frontage. 
 It is a very damp house. The garrets are as dank and oozy 
 as cellars, and the cellars are like what ? well : mermaids' 
 caves. The pewter pots and counters are never bright ; the 
 pipe splints light with a fizzy sluggish sputter ; an unwhole- 
 some ooze hangs on the wall ; the japanned tea-trays are 
 covered with a damp rime ; the scanty vegetation in the back- 
 garden resembles sea-weed ; the ricketty summer-house is 
 like the wreck of a caboose. The landlord wears a low- 
 crowned glazed hat, and the pot-boy a checked shirt ; the very 
 halfpence he gives you for change are damp, so is the tobacco, 
 so are the leaves of last Saturday's ' Shipping and Mercantile 
 Gazette/ They don't wash the water-side public-house much, 
 but let it fester and ooze and slime away as it lists ; neither 
 do they attempt to clear away the muddy sort of moat sur- 
 rounding it ; although, for the convenience of customers 
 wishing to preserve clean boots, there is a species of bridge or 
 pontoon leading from the road to the public door, formed of 
 rotten deck-planks, and stair-rails. One side of the door is 
 guarded by a mop as ragged and as tangled as the unkempt 
 head of Peter the wild boy ; the other by a damp dog, 
 looking as if he had been in the water too long, had not been 
 properly dried when he came out, and had so got chapped and 
 mangy. 
 
 Bollocks is the landlord of the water-side public-house, the 
 Tom Tug's Head. Bollocks was a jolly young waterman 
 
POWDER DICK AND HIS TRAIN. 103 
 
 once, and used for to ply at Blackfriars and elsewhere in the 
 days when the waters of the Thames were ruffled by oars 
 feathered with skill and dexterity ; and not by the paddle- 
 wheels of the Citizen and Waterman steamboats, Bollocks 
 won Doggett's Coat and Badge twenty years ago. Afterwards, 
 when by the introduction of steam-vessels aquatics had 
 become more a sport than an avocation, Bollocks won many 
 hard-contested matches. He beat Sammon the Newcastle 
 coaley, by three lengths, and was subsequently matched to 
 row Jibb, the famous, sculler, from Execution Dock, for a 
 matter of two hundred pounds. On the evening of the pay 
 ment of the last deposit (made good at Thwaits's, the Trim 
 built Wherry, Fish gaff Stairs) it so fell out that Jibb and 
 Bollocks quarrelling as to who fouled whom in some previous 
 match, Jibb broke both Bollocks" shins with an oar ; which, 
 coupled with his getting exceedingly inebriated that night 
 and sleeping in a six-oared cutter half full of water, brought 
 on lameness and rheumatism, broke off the match (Jibb paid 
 forfeit), and moved Bollocks to retire into the public line. 
 He is a damp mildewed man now, with bow legs and very 
 long arms ; to exhibit the symmetry and muscle of which he 
 is, seemingly, nruch addicted if one may judge from his 
 shirt-sleeves being always rolled up to his armpit. 
 
 Bollocks has, behind his bar, the silver cups he has won 
 during his aquatic career; his Doggett's Coat and Badge, 
 with his portrait wearing ditto ; the silver oar presented to 
 him by the Barge Club (Viscount Billingsgate, chairman), the 
 mahogany model of his wager-boat, and a neat collection of 
 oars and sculls of various shapes and dimensions. Likewise 
 the identical cushion on which Her Mellifluous Highness the 
 Grand Duchess Dowager of Kartoffelshausen-Stoubenfeldt sat 
 when he, Bollocks, had the honour to row her from Yauxhall 
 to Whitehall Stairs, during the visit of the Allied Sovereigns 
 to England in 1815. Bollocks's parlour is decorated with 
 various coloured engravings of crack scullers in crack wager- 
 boats, all bearing (the boats, I mean) in their sharp-nosedness, 
 slim-shapedness, and eager, straining attitudes, a certain 
 curious, inanimate, yet striking resemblance to so many race- 
 horses, winning memorable Derby s. There is a screen before 
 the fire, on which are pasted sundry pictorial illustrations of 
 the songs of Mr. Thomas Dibdin ; notably Jolly Dick the 
 lamplighter, in a full curled wig, lighting a large lamp with 
 an enormous flambeau, in so jaunty a manner, that his tumbling 
 
104 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 off his ladder seems an event anything but problematical of 
 occurrence. 
 
 When a rowing-match is on the tapis or, more appro- 
 priatety, on the water the parlour of the Tom Tug's Head is 
 scarcely large enough to contain the eager crowd of fresh- 
 water sportsmen, watermen, bargees, backers, and amateurs in 
 aquatics. On these occasions it is by no means unfrequent to 
 see the happy class of society, known among the commonalty 
 as 4 swells,' muster strongly within Bollocks's damp walls. 
 The alumni of the two great seats of Academic education are- 
 here in great numbers, their costumes presenting a sumptuary 
 medley, in which the fashions of the wild-beast menagerie- 
 mingle with those of the stable. At present, they come to. 
 Eollocks's (which is close to Hook's, the great boat-builder) ; 
 they drink out of his pots arid clap him on the back, and are 
 hail-fellows well met with the decayed tapsters and discarded 
 serving-men ; the river weeds, and slime, and scum. They 
 meet here, not because they like it, but because some of their 
 associates who have been two terms longer than they have at 
 ' Keys,' or ' Maudlin,' say that it is very ' jolly ' to go to 
 old Eollocks's ' crib,' that it is fi life, my boy,' that it is ' the- 
 thing,' and so on. 
 
 Apart from the parlour of the Tom Tug's Head connected 
 with aquatics as a sport, I must enumerate a miscellaneous 
 population who are of the water and watery, though they run 
 no races and win no cups. Here by night smoke their pipes 
 and drink their grog, captains of river steamboats : silent y 
 reserved men, mostly, lost in fogs of fluvial metaphysics, 
 perhaps ; or forming mental charts of shoals in the river yet 
 undiscovered. These aquatic omnibus-drivers, if I may call 
 them so, puzzle and disconcert me mightily. They are 
 inscrutably mysterious. Where do they live? What were 
 they before the steamboats were started ? Do their wives (if 
 they have wives) call themselves Mrs. Captain So and So ? 
 Are the call-boys their sons? Have they studied steam? 
 Could they stoke ? Would they be sea-sick if they were to go* 
 to sea? They are nautical men, yet why do they always wear 
 frock coats, round hats, and half-boots? When shall we see a, 
 ' Citizen ' captain in a cocked hat ? 
 
 Not so much parlour customers, but chiefly frequenters of 
 the bar, or hangers about the door and muddy bridge, are- 
 knots of damp, silent, deep-drinking men, surrounding whom 
 there is a halo of deep and fearful interest. I know what 
 
POWDER DICK AND HIS TRAIN. 105 
 
 they wear those huge leathern aprons and thigh boots for. 
 I know why they carry at times that weird apparatus of 
 hooks and cordage. I know what lies sometimes in the long, 
 low, slimy shed at the bottom of the garden, with a padlock 
 on the door, blue, swollen, stiff, stark, dead ! These be the 
 searchers of the river, the finders of horrors, the coroner's 
 purveyors, the beadle's informants, the marine-storekeeper's 
 customers. When a man is no longer a man, but a body, and 
 drowned, these seek and find him. The neighbouring brokers' 
 stalls and rag-shops have dead men's boots and dead men's 
 coats exposed for sale. These men are quiet, civil, sober men 
 enough, and passing honest only there never was a drowned 
 man found with any money in his pockets. 
 
 Homogeneous to the bar and purlieus of the Tom Tug's 
 Head are casual half-pint-of-porter customers, mudlarks, 
 sewer gropers, rat-catchers, finders, river thieves, steamboat 
 touters, waterside beggars, waterside thieves, I arn afraid, 
 sometimes. They pick up a living, nobody knows how, out 
 of the mud and soppy timbers, as men will pick up livings 
 from every refuse ; as a teeming population and an advanced 
 civilization only can have such livings to be picked up. 
 
 I don't know whether I am justified before coining to 
 Powder Dick in describing the house I am about, now, 
 lightly to touch upon as a waterside ' public,' inasmuch as it is 
 less by the waterside than on the water itself an hostelry 
 permanently floating on the muddy bosom of the Thamesian 
 stream. In good sooth this ' public ' hath its habitat on a 
 barge : its basement and cellar are keel and ribs. During 
 the week it is moored by the muddy shore ; but on Sundays 
 it casts anchor a good score of yards therefrom ; and the pro- 
 prietor may, if he list, join in the exulting chorus of the 
 piratical navigator whose bark was his bride, who was afloat, 
 afloat ! and, being a rover, free. I will call the proprietor 
 Mr. Eover; for his hair is red, and he has a jovial, roving 
 delivery and a roving eye (one), and, according to the 
 centilingued Rumour, has roved a great deal in his time to 
 the Antipodes once on compulsion. Mr. Rover's bride, the 
 Barge and Buttons, has attained a green old age to judge 
 by the rankly aqueous vegetation clinging to her mildewed 
 sides. For aught I or Mr. Rover know, she may have been 
 once, as a single barge or lady, first cousin to, if not herself the 
 very identical, Folly on the Thames, at which our great-grand- 
 fathers and grandmothers halted sometimes in their wherries 
 
106 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 on their way to a Vauxhall masquerade. The Barge and 
 Buttons may have beheld the ' nice conduct of a clouded 
 cane,' the surrounding waters may have rippled reflectively 
 with the dazzling brightness of Belinda's diamonds, of the 
 still more dazzling brightness of Belinda's eyes. The Barge's 
 rotten timbers may have been mute witnesses of the humours 
 of Lieutenant Lismahago, of the fopperies of Beau Tibbs, of 
 the assurance of Ferdinand Count Fathom, of the fashionable 
 airs of Miss Caroline Arabella Wilhelmina Skeggs ; for the 
 Folly on the Thames was the resort of highly fashionable 
 company, and if bears were danced there they were never 
 danced but to the very genteelest of tunes. I only hazard 
 this, nothing more. I am not certain. 
 
 Eover is a cunning man. Sunday, the dies non (com- 
 paratively speaking) of the publican, of the financier (though 
 beer can be sold in church hours and bargains made at church 
 doors), is a harvest day for him. On week-days, as I have 
 said, his boat is on the shore ; but, hebdomadally, his bark is 
 on the sea, or rather on the river ; and, being there, Eover is 
 extra-parochial, and can sell all sorts of exciseable commodities. 
 So can, and do, as all men know, the river steamboats. All 
 sorts of benches of magistrates, parochial and municipal 
 authorities, have tried to do all sorts of things with the 
 astute landlord ; but in vain. The Eover is free and licensed. 
 You have, to be sure, to pay a small augmentation of price on 
 the liquors you consume, owing to the necessity of taking a 
 wherry or a ferry-boat to put you on board the Barge and 
 Buttons ; but what is a penny to a man who must and will 
 have his drink, week-day or Sunday, fair weather or foul ? 
 
 Touching Sunday, I am moved to advert here, cursorily, to 
 a class of bibulous philosophers, who unite the wisdom of the 
 serpent to the subtilty of the fox, and who, drunken dogs as 
 they mostly are, have been wary and expert enough to baffle 
 persons and powers of no meaner note than the Houses of 
 Lords and Commons. These are the Sunday c dram-waiters.' 
 The legislature has said to the dram- waiter, c John Smith, 
 during such and such hours, when divine service is per- 
 formed, you shall not buy beer of Thomas Swypes.' To the 
 publican it has said, ' Swypes, you shall not, during the 
 aforesaid hours, sell any beer to John Smith ; and if you do, 
 I, the Law, will send my lictors, or " bobbies," after you, and 
 I will mulct you of golden pounds and take away your licence, 
 and bring you very low, and, in fact, play the devil with you.' 
 
POWDER DICK AND HIS TRAIN. 107 
 
 But the * dram-waiter,' wiser, subtler, and warier than even 
 the collective wisdom of the nation, forthwith sets to study 
 parochial law and parochial regulations. He finds, that in 
 one parish, afternoon service begins at one hour, and in 
 another at another ; that in the one street in the county of 
 Middlesex, called the Strand, there are houses that close from 
 two till four, from three till five, from three till eight, from 
 six to seven, P.M., respectively : that some publics are extra- 
 parochial. The ' dram-waiter ' will do without his Sunday- 
 morning drink by taking as much home over-night as he 
 wants, or he will introduce himself surreptitiously into a 
 c public ' with the connivance of a lawless licensed victualler ; 
 but he is not to be baulked of his post-prandial potations. He 
 knows to a moment when the Bag o' Kails opens, and when 
 the Elephant and Shoestrings closes. He can roam from 
 bar to bar, suck sweets from every noggin, and keep himself 
 all the time within the strict limits of legality. He is never 
 hard up for a drink. He may get as drunk as an African 
 king between litany and sermon, and endanger no man's 
 licence. So much will perverted human ingenuity do. The 
 glutton studies Latin to be able to read the beastly messes of 
 Apicius in the original. We learn to paint in order to 
 blacken, to write in order to libel. Heaven gives ns the 
 talents, and somebody else their application. 
 
 But, revenons a nos Buttons. This barge-tap offers, both on 
 week-days and Sundays, many features of social peculiarity 
 worthy of entrance into the common-place book of the philo- 
 sophic observer. Analogically thinking, I perpend that this 
 beery vessel has many points in common with the dark, 
 stifling mouldy cheese, and rancid rat, and raw rum-smelling 
 store-room of an emigrant-ship, or to the worst class of bar in 
 the worst class American steamer. This reeking smell of 
 bad spirits, this lowering roof, these sticky stains of beer, 
 this malty mildew, these haggard or crimsoned customers 
 these, the accessories more or less of almost every public- 
 house, but here denuded of the adventitious concomitants of 
 light and glitter and gilding, stand forth in hideous and 
 undisguised relief. They mean drink and drunkenness with- 
 out excuse or extenuation ; the cup that inebriates and does 
 not cheer ; the bowl that is wreathed with no flowers of soul, 
 but with the crass dockweeds of intemperance. Bacchus is 
 dismounted here, and lies wallowing in the thwarts of a 
 bumboat. Sir John Barleycorn staggers about disknighted, 
 
108 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 with his spurs hacked off his heels. It is convivial life, but 
 life seen in a Claude Lorraine glass, and that glass a pothouse 
 rummer blackened with the smoke of a pipe of mundungus. 
 
 1 Love levels ranks,' Lord Grizzle says, but intemperance 
 has pre-eminently the power of levelling and confounding 
 ranks and ages and sexes, and species even. And thus it 
 happens that from so levelling a system there will result a 
 terrible sameness of feature and expression, of habit, manner, 
 and custom ; even as drill makes ploughboys, mechanics, and 
 vagabonds all machines, as similar to each other as the 
 sequent spikes in an area railway ; even as slavery makes all 
 negroes alike as one parched pea to another ; even as judicious 
 flogging will train a pack of hounds to run and cry and stop 
 as one dog. Tyranny is most potent for exacting and main- 
 taining conformity ; and there is no tyranny so strong as that 
 of the King of Drink, no conformity so abject and so universal 
 as that of drunkards. Which must be my excuse, gentles, if I 
 find no very novel characters among the bibbers at the Barge 
 and Buttons. 
 
 Stay ! one, a man ; nay, half a man ; nay, a quarter man ; 
 nay, less than that, a trunk a drunken trunk. As I live, a 
 miserable little atomy, more deformed, more diminutive, more 
 mutilated than any beggar in a bowl, any cul-de-jatte, than that 
 famed Centaur-beggar who, as Charles Lamb phrased it, ap- 
 peared to have had his equestrian half hewn off in some dire 
 Lapithsean conflict. This wondrous abortion's name, if he 
 have a name, is doubtful. Men call him ' Powder Dick/ 
 whether in remembrance of some terrible Dartford or Houns- 
 low explosion, by which his limbs were (supposititiously) 
 blown off, or because his chest and face are ceaselessly covered 
 with the black powdery refuse of coal-barges, or because he 
 was so actually baptized, who can say ? Powder Dick he has 
 been for years : blasted, blown up, crushed, torn up, or ampu- 
 tated he must have been at one time or another ; but he cares 
 not to say, and no man cares to ask him ; for, though an atomy, 
 he blasphemes like an imp of Acheron, and, though he cannot 
 fight he can bite and spit, and with one maimed arm his acci- 
 dents have left him, hurl pewter pots, and broken glasses, 
 and hot tobacco ash, with unerring aim. His occupation is 
 that of a ferryman ; and he ferries fares 'cross river from six 
 in the morning till nine in the evening all the year round. 
 
 Not, of course, that he rows himself. He sits at the stern 
 of the boat like a hideous pagod, and steers, swearing mean.- 
 
POWDER DICK AND HIS TRAIN. 109 
 
 while, and craunching a monstrous plug of tobacco, in the 
 manner of a wild beast over a shin-bone of beef. His wife 
 plies the oars a tall, bony, ay, and a strong-boned woman 
 quick of action quicker of imprecation and vituperation, who 
 on a disputed copper would not scruple to paint your eyes as 
 black as Erebus with the fire out. She is called Mrs. Dick, 
 but whether that be her right name, or she have her ' marriage 
 lines ' to prove her legitimate connection with Mr. Dick, I 
 should advise you not to be too curious in inquiring. She is 
 communicative, however, when unruffled. ' My fust/ she 
 vouchsafed to tell your correspondent, 'was a Hfe-guardsman, 
 and I kep him, for he carried on dreadful, and his pay wouldn't 
 a kep him in blacking. My second was a navvy, and I kep 
 him. So then I took up along with Powder Dick, here, and, 
 rabbit him, I a'most keeps him, for though the boat is his 
 hown, and the hoars hare his hown, my harms is my hown, 
 and they keeps us all afloat. A penny, please, sir.' 
 
 Every evening at nine Mrs. Dick marches into the bar of 
 the Barge and Buttons with Powder Dick, pickaback ; which 
 mode of conveyance she adopts and he acquiesces in with the 
 utmost coolness and complacency. Powder Dick is then set 
 up on end in a corner of the bar, propped up by emptied 
 measures ; and there he remains, on end, guzzling fiery com- 
 pounds, and roaring forth obscene songs, till his wicked old 
 trunk is suffused with drink to the very stumps, and he 
 tumbles or rolls on to the floor, at which period of time his 
 wife, who has been drinking rum and porter mixed all the 
 evening, with an inflexible countenance raises him, replaces 
 him in the pickaback posture, and so exit with him towards 
 that unknown slum of the purlieus of Lambeth, which may 
 contain his home if he have a home or den. 
 
 Powder Dick has engrossed so much of my space, has caused 
 me to digress in what is itself but a long digression, because I 
 consider him. to be in some measure not only an original but a 
 meritorious deformity most cul-de-jattes contenting themselves 
 with existing upon charity wheeling themselves about on 
 small trucks like cockhorses ; sitting on kerbstones with rude 
 oil paintings spread before them, pictorially explaining how 
 they came by their mutilation ; being conveyed about as riders 
 to perambulating organs ; or simply crouching on the cellar 
 flaps of public-houses, holding hats in their mouths much in the 
 fashion of poodle dogs, with an associate (unmutilated) posted 
 close handy to give timely intimation of the approach of the 
 
110 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 police. But Powder Dick, inasmuch as lie is the owner and ex- 
 ploiter of a flourishing ferry-boat (albeit the feme coverte, his 
 wife, rows it), inasmuch as he makes an honest living and 
 gets drunk on his proper earnings, may almost be considered 
 in the light of a Mister Biffin, working as he does, though so 
 horribly foreshortened. 
 
 I knew another meritorious deformity once (he is dead now), 
 who positively became independent through his deformed in- 
 dustry, coupled with ingenuity. This worthy, being born 
 endowed with qualities combining ignorance the most crass 
 and most persistent, with idleness the most stedfast and per- 
 severing, is reported (I speak from report, for I knew him not 
 in his perfect manhood) to have wilfully cast himself three 
 separate times beneath the wheels of three separate carriages 
 belonging to the nobility and gentry. Three mutilations of 
 the most appalling nature, obtained from the charitable and 
 wealthy occupants of the carriages three separate though 
 trifling annuities, amounting in the aggregate to twenty-eight 
 pounds a year. I believe he enacted the part of a votary of 
 Juggernaut a fourth time ; but the vehicle turning out to be a 
 yellow hackney coach with a prodigious coat of arms on each 
 panel, he gained little this time, save a five-pound note from 
 the coach proprietor and two months' eleemosynary treatment 
 in Saint Bartholomew's hospital. He then retired upon his 
 annuities, and, feeling naturally lonely and in want of comfort, 
 fixed his eyes and affections on a young and ugly vender of 
 fruit in the public thoroughfares, to whom he was shortly 
 after united, but who does not appear to have had that regard 
 and consideration for the trunk of her husband, to which his 
 talents and well-earned competence would have seemed to 
 entitle him. At the commencement of my acquaintanceship 
 with him (he had then been married two years) , it was patent 
 and notorious that his unfeeling partner was in the frequent 
 habit of leaving him for days together without sustenance, 
 on-end in his chair, from which, owing to his infirmity, he 
 was, it is needless to say, unable to move. Nay, as a refine- 
 ment of brutality, she has been known to place at the foot of 
 the chair a large footbath of mustard and water, thus insult- 
 ingly and derisively taunting him with his inability to avail 
 himself of that useful adjunct to the toilet. But his sufferings 
 were speedily terminated. My unfortunate friend was one 
 morning found dead, drowned, his stumps uppermost, and his 
 head in the footbath. It was conjectured that, after a too 
 
POWDER DICK AND HIS TRAIN. Ill 
 
 copious dose of snuff (to which, he was much addicted, and to 
 which he was wont to help himself by a dexterous extension 
 and elongation of his upper lip, between a bag of snuff sus- 
 pended round his neck and his nose thus quite rivalling the 
 elephant and his trunk) he had fallen into a violent fit of 
 sneezing ; and, in the midst of his convulsive movements, had 
 been precipitated from his chair into the bath, and so as- 
 phyxiated. His annuities died, with him, and I hope his 
 unworthy widow went to the workhouse. 
 
 One more variety of the waterside public, and I will go 
 inland. Farther, much farther down river must you sail with 
 me (our dray hath masts and sails now) before you come to 
 the Trinchinopoly Crab. Far down below Woolwich, with 
 its huge Dockyard and Field of the Balls of Death, or Arsenal, 
 and hideous convict-hulks spruce men-of-war once, but now 
 no more like men-of-war than I to Hecuba ; far down below 
 Dumbledowndeary, the already-sung (which charming water- 
 port hath lately been endowed with a garrison of fourteen 
 real coast-guardsmencalled by the natives ' perwenters,' 
 armed with real muskets and cutlasses : and who shall say 
 the coast's in danger now ?) ; far, even below Bluehithe, 
 where the gentleman hung his harriers, and Grays, and 
 Purfleet, and Kainham, where the gentlemen fight for money 
 in a reach, a lonely reach, a swampy-shored reach the 
 grim sedgy banks of Essex staring from over the way, the 
 salt marshes of Kent behind and on each side here is the 
 Trinchinopoly Crab, a lone white house, approached from the 
 shore by a bridge over a slough of worse than Despond ; 
 approachable from the western side of Kent by ferry only, 
 other communication being cut off by a sludgy miry little 
 estuary Dead Man's Creek. 
 
 The Trinchinopoly Crab is dismally white. Its frame 
 might be taken for the bones of a house, bleached by the wind. 
 The rickety bridge is painted white, so is the door of entry, 
 with ghastly, skeleton-like chequers on either jamb, that 
 remind you of the pips on the Dice of Death. The outward 
 aspect of the Trinchinopoly Crab is, decidedly, not canny; 
 yet within it is a very haven of maritime joviality and jollity. 
 From the ships in the river come skippers, pilots, mates, 
 supercargoes; from the adjacent villages come river-pilots, 
 ship-chandlers, slop-dealers. From, no man knows whither 
 going, no man knows where come strange mysterious 
 men, who seem to know everything and everybody, who 
 
112 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 smoke cigars of inconceivable fragrance, moucher themselves 
 with, rainbow-hued bandannas, and must be either smugglers 
 (none of your London street 'duffers/ but real smugglers 
 fellows who could run a cargo of Hollands in the teeth of all 
 my lords mustered in the Long Eoom at the Custom House), 
 or else aquatic detective policemen. 
 
 If you put your head, and subsequently your corporeality, 
 into the long low coffee or tap-room (for it serves for both) of 
 the Crab, you will first of all be sensible that the tobacco 
 smoked by the majority of the company is of a far better and 
 more fragrant quality than that vended by your lordship's 
 tobacconist. Your olfactory nerves will be gratefully titillated 
 by the pungent fumes of the genuine molasses-mixed Caven- 
 dish ; by the incense-like suavity of the pure Oronooko ; by 
 the manly, vigorous smoke of unadulterated Virginia, and the 
 dream-like languor of Varinhas and Latakia. Next you shall 
 observe pipes, strange in form and fashion not alone meer- 
 schaums and cherry-sticks of foreign make, but also yards of 
 clay with outlandish bowls and tubes. Lastly, you are to be 
 struck by the fact, that, although three-fourths of the company 
 present are nautical men, you cannot detect any one nautical 
 item in any portion of their attire. Sic vos non vobis. The 
 stout little man in the rough brown coat and wide-awake has 
 just come home from Smyrna, and is going back again in 
 ballast, which, in the shape of sand, he is come down river to 
 load himself with, from' this portion of the Kentish coast. 
 The tall, lean, wiry, sallow-faced man, wearing a fluffy white 
 hat, a brown frock-coat, light cord trousers very much pulled 
 up over his Wellington boots, and a steel watchguard exactly 
 like a patent corkscrew, is a Yankee skipper, come on shore 
 to see if he can pick up some sea-stores advantageously for the 
 return voyage. Observe that he has whittled away a con- 
 siderable portion of the circular wooden platter on which the 
 pewter pots are placed, and has spat his and his neighbour's 
 spittoon quite full, and is now sowing expectoration broadcast 
 on the boots of the company underneath the table. His ship 
 is a temperance ship, and he is a temperance man ; for, al- 
 though he has to all appearances consumed two or three 
 tumblers of grog already (judging from the rubicund hue of 
 the bumpers supplied him), his refreshment is, in reality, 
 nothing more than a harmless compound, or temperance 
 cordial called raspberry. All publics frequented by those who 
 6 go down to the sea in ships ' keep a store of this, and similar 
 
POWDER DICK AND HIS TRAIN. 113 
 
 cordials, such as gingerette, lemonette, orangette, all 
 with sugar and hot water in a duly groggy manner, but all 
 perfectly innocuous and teetotal. There are snuggeries in 
 Liverpool, frequented almost solely by American captains 
 temperance captains be it understood which have no sale at 
 all for malt or alcoholic liquors. 
 
 The fat, gray-headed, farmer-like man in the body coat, 
 pepper-and-salt trousers, and brown gaiters, with a heavy 
 bunch of watch-seals at his fob and a broad-brimmed hat, is 
 a pilot ; not one by any means you will say resembling the 
 interesting individual with bushy whiskers, snowy ducks, 
 varnished hat, telescope, and black neckerchief tied in a 
 nautical knot, who very properly enjoined the impertinent 
 passenger to go below to his berth and trust in Providence 
 on a certain fearful night : for which vide the song and Mr. 
 Brandard's lithographed frontispiece thereto. The pilot I 
 have first introduced you to does not answer to the lithographed 
 pilot. He is not at all like him. / never saw one like him ; 
 I never even saw a pilot in a pilot-coat, though I have seen 
 one in a hat like a London dustman's, in a Jerry hat, in a 
 costermonger's fur cap, and in a red nightcap. Never a one 
 like him of the lithograph. But, my dear sir, is anything in 
 life like the lithograph, or the book, or the canvas, or the pro- 
 scenium picture thereof ? Is a Eoyal Academy brigand like a 
 Calabrian brigand ? a Eoyal Italian Opera Swiss maiden like 
 a young girl of any one of the thirteen Cantons ? Are poet- 
 shepherdesses like women who tend sheep ? Are stage pea- 
 sants like Buckinghamshire labourers ? Is any imitation, re- 
 production, or representation of life, like life?- of man, like 
 man ? All men are liars. Put pencils or pens, or 'broidering 
 needles in our hands, we straightway fall a lying, and lie our 
 heads out of shape, calling that imagination, fiction, forsooth ! 
 
 The long low room of the Trinchinopoly Crab, though by 
 day a very Lybian desert of sandy floor, tenantless settles, and 
 pyramid-spittoons, and drawing, perhaps, scarcely a butt of 
 beer per month, does a roaring trade at night ; for there are 
 always ships in the river, and boats to row, and skippers who 
 have used the Crab before, and nautical tradesmen eager to 
 meet them ; though this river-side house is a good mile and a 
 quarter from any village, or even inhabited house. Decent, 
 honest, civil, God-fearing men are these seamen-captains -the 
 nobly great majority of them that is of every port and nation. 
 From the blunt whaling captains at Hull and Glasgow, to the 
 
 I 
 
114 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 mighty mail steamer skippers at Liverpool or Southampton, 
 they are almost invariably the same : civil of speech, quiet of 
 demeanour, modest of assertion, and incapable of grandilo- 
 quence, almost to a fault. They will tell you diffidently of 
 the Isles of Greece that they ' were down Cerigo way once 
 with fruit ;' whereas young Swallowpounce of the Treasury, 
 whose Mediterranean travels I verily believe have never 
 extended beyond Malta, is for ever bragging of and quoting 
 
 * Eternal summer gilds them yet, 
 But all except their sun is set/ 
 
 Have they been to India? Um, yes: Calcutta, and so on, 
 said as easily as ' Chelsea.' The terrible Patagonian promon- 
 tory, the awful and inhospitable land of Terra del Fuego is to 
 them merely The Horn ; and Venice, the Adriatic, Dalmatia, 
 Styria, are all summed up in a simple ' Up the Gulf as far as 
 Tryeast with hides." Farewell, ye seamen-captains, honest 
 men, who as pertinaciously persist in wearing chimney-pot 
 hats and frock-coats, as your pictorial and literary delineators 
 are incorrigible in delineating } r ou in large-buttoned peacoats, 
 wide ducks, and flat hats. Simple-minded men, making the 
 little parade you do of your travelling lore and nautical learn- 
 ing leaving the first only to be guessed at in your mahogany 
 cheeks and sun-crimsoned foreheads and embrowned hands ; 
 the second only to be known in the hour of danger and peril, 
 when the sea runs mountains high, and the masts bend like 
 whips, and the rigging writhes like the tresses of a woman 
 possessed. 
 
 X. 
 
 MY SWAN. 
 
 THERE was once a great Italian painter the same who had a 
 hand in building Saint Peter's who, when he came to be 
 nearly eighty years of age, when he was justly considered 
 and renowned throughout Europe as the most learned artist 
 living, as a man who knew by heart every bone, ligament, 
 muscle, and vein, and could pourtray them with the most 
 recondite foreshortening and the most erudite symmetry 
 which, indeed, he could designed a rough pencil sketch, 
 representing a very old man (himself) seated in a go-cart, 
 drawn by a little child; while underneath the drawing these 
 
MY SWAN. 115 
 
 words were written: ' Ancora impart 'Still he learns.' 
 The octogenarian sage the oracle of art was wise and 
 modest enough to confess how little he knew, and how much 
 he had yet to learn. 
 
 Now, though I do not pretend to the learning of Michael 
 Angel o, or I say it in all modesty to know much about 
 anything, I did flatter myself that I was passably well read in 
 4 public ' lore that, as I once foolishly boasted, I had gradu- 
 ated in beer. Flippantly, as men of superficial acquirements 
 are prone to do, I summed up the phases of ' public ' life in 
 three chapters. Fatuitous scribe ! I had but broken the 
 ground with the point of my spade. Insensate ! I had thought 
 to do in a day what it would take years to accomplish a 
 moiety of. Impotent ! I had essayed to dip the Mississippi 
 dry with a salt-spoon ! 
 
 Consider the contemplative man's recreation. The fishing 
 public-house ! On the banks of a suburban stream, or by the 
 towing-path of a canal, or by the mud-compelling, stream- 
 restraining portals of a lock shall we find the piscatorial 
 public : the Jolly Anglers, maybe, or the Izaak Walton, or 
 very probably the Swan. What connection there can be 
 between a Swan and the gentle craft I know not ; but it is a 
 fact no less strange than incontrovertible, that the Swan is the 
 favourite sign for fishing-houses : the White Swan, the Old 
 Swan, the Silver Swan, the Swan and Hook, but the Swan, 
 always. 
 
 The Swan, my Swan on the little fishing river Spree 
 (which has been playing some astonishing freaks of late 
 overflowing its banks and depositing roach and dace in back 
 kitchens and dustbins) always puts me in mind of a very old 
 man with very young legs ; for whereas it is above, as far as 
 regards its upper and garret story, a quaint, moss-covered, 
 thatched-roofed edifice with crooked gable ends, and an oriel 
 window with lozenge-panes, it is below an atrociously modem 
 erection of staring yellow brick with an impertinent stuccoed 
 doorway, and the usual rhetorical conventionalities in golden 
 flourishes about neat wines, fine ales, good accommodation, 
 and the rest of it. This doorway faces the high omnibus road, 
 and is a sixpenny ride from the Bank a great convenience to 
 anglers whose everyday occupations are of a City or commer- 
 cial cast. The sign of the Swan formerly stood in this high 
 road, or at least creaked and swung within an iron frame 
 affixed to a post standing there. This Swan was a brave bird 
 
 I 2 
 
116 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 with, a neck like a corkscrew, and a head like the griffin's in 
 the City Arms. There were faint vestiges of a gold-laced 
 cocked hat, and a rubicund red nose gleaming through the 
 whity-brown plumage of the bird, and old folks said that 
 before the house had been the Swan, it was known as the 
 General Ligonier. Other old folks held out stoutly that the 
 cocked hat and rubicund nose belonged to the publican's 
 friend, the Marquis of Granby, while a third party swore hard 
 that they were the property of Admiral Byng, and that he was 
 dissignified after they had shot him. When Groundbait, the 
 present landlord of the Swan, took the house, he caused the 
 sign to be removed as too shabby and tarnished, and agreed 
 with Joe Copal, the journeyman decorator, to paint a new one 
 for a crown and a bottle of wine. Unfortunately he paid the 
 money and the liquor in advance, and Joe soon after emigrated 
 to Texas, leaving not only the sign unpainted, but a consider- 
 able score for malt liquors and tobacco unsettled ; whereupon 
 Groundbait grew moody and abstracted on the subject of signs ; 
 refusing to have a new one painted, and replying haughtily to 
 such friends as pressed him on the subject that 4 the gentlemen 
 as used the Swan knew his 'ouse was the Swan without a swan 
 being painted up outside like a himage ; and that if they didn't 
 they might go to any other swan or goose :' after which he was 
 wont to expel several vehement whiffs from his pipe, and knit- 
 ting his brows, gaze ruefully at Joe Copal's unliquidated score, 
 which to this day remains in full chalk characters behind the 
 parlour door ; it being as much as Dorothy the pretty barmaid's 
 place is worth to meddle with, or hint about effacing it. 
 Groundbait has looked at it a good many times since the dis- 
 covery of the gold-fields in Australia, as he has an idea that 
 Texas may be somewhere that way ; and that Joe, coming back 
 repentant some day with a store of nuggets, may call in and 
 settle it. 
 
 The Swan has been a fishing-house for years, not only as in 
 the neighbourhood of a fishing stream and the resort of metro- 
 politan anglers, but also as a species of house-of-call for fresh- 
 water fishermen a piscatorial clearing-house a fishing news- 
 exchange, a social club-house for the amateurs of the rod and 
 line. 
 
 The little bar parlour of the Swan, which is of no particular 
 shape and has a paper ceiling, has a door covered on the inner 
 side half by a coloured mezzotint of George the Third in jack- 
 boots, on a horse like a gambolling hippopotamus, reviewing 
 
MY SWAN. 117 
 
 one hundred thousand volunteers in Hyde Park ; half by the 
 famous abacus, or slate the tabular record of scores. Dorothy, 
 the 'neat-handed Phillis' of the Swan, albeit a ready reckoner 
 and an accomplished artiste in stewing carp and frying smelts, 
 is not a very apt scholar; so she has devised a system of 
 financial hieroglyphics to cover her want of proficiency in the 
 delineation of the Arabic numerals. Thus in her money 
 alphabet, a circle (o) stands for a shilling ; a half moon ( ([ ) 
 for sixpence, a Maltese cross for a penny, and a Greek ditto 
 for a halfpenny. Farthings are beneath the calculations of the 
 Swan ; and pounds are represented by a very large indeed ; 
 the agglomeration of a score of circles into one circumference. 
 The room is hung round with badges and trophies of the 
 piscatorial craft. Eods of all shapes and sizes, eel-spears, 
 winches, landing-nets, Penelopean webs of fishing-tackle, 
 glistering armouries of hooks, harpoons, panniers, bait-cans ; 
 and in a glass case a most wonderful piscatorio-entomological 
 collection of flies flies of gorgeously tinted floss silk, phea- 
 sants' feathers, and gold and silver thread flies warranted to 
 deceive the acutest of fish; though if, viewed through a 
 watery medium, the flies come no nearer Nature than these 
 do, I have no great opinion of the fishes' disceinment. AVith 
 all due reverence for the Eleusinian mysteries of fly-fishing 
 which I do not understand, be it said. Over the fire-place is 
 the identical rod and line with which J. Barbell, Esq., hooked 
 the monstrous and European-famed jack in the river Dodder, 
 near Dublin, and in the year of grace eighteen hundred and 
 thirty-nine ; in one corner are the shovel and bucket with 
 and in which at the same place and time the said jack, after 
 being walked seven miles down the banks of the Dodder, and 
 cracking the rod into innumerable fissures (though the supe- 
 rior article, one of Cheek's best, would not break), was 
 ultimately landed. Conspicuous between the windows is the 
 portrait of J. Barbell, Esq., a hairy-faced man, severely 
 scourging a river with a rod like a May-pole ; beneath that, 
 the famous jack himself in proprid. persona, in a glass case, 
 stuffed, very brown and horny with varnish, with great 
 staring glass eyes (one cracked), and a mouth wide open 
 grinning hideously. He is swimming vigorously through 
 nothing at all, and has a neat fore-ground of moss and 
 Brighton-beach shells, and a backing of pea-green sky. There 
 are very many other glass cases, containing the mummies of 
 other famous jacks, trout, roach, dace, and carp, including 
 
118 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 the well-known perch which was captured after being heard 
 of for five years in the back waters of the Thames near 
 Beading, and has a back fin nearly as large as Madame de 
 Pompadour's fan. Not forgetting a well-thumbed copy of 
 dear old Izaak's ' Complete Angler ;' a price-list of fishing 
 materials sold at the Golden Perch or the Silver Eoach in 
 London, with manuscript comments of anglers as to the 
 quality thereof pencilled on the margin, and the contributions 
 of the ingenious Ephemera to 'Bell's Life in London,' cut 
 from that journal and pasted together on the leaves of an old 
 cheesemonger's day-book ; not forgetting these with a certain 
 fishy smell prevalent, I think I have drawn the parlour of the 
 Swan for you pretty correctly. The first thing you should do 
 on entering this sanctuary of fishing is to keep your skirts 
 very close to your person, and to duck your head a little the 
 air being at times charged with animal matter in the shape of 
 dried entrails twisted into fishing-lines, which flying about, 
 and winding round your clothes or in your hair, produce a 
 state of entangelment more Gordian than pleasant. The 
 chairs and other articles of furniture are also more or less 
 garnished with hooks of various sizes, dropped from the parch- 
 ment hook-books of the gentlemen fishermen. These protrude 
 imperceptibly, but dangerously, like quills upon the fretful 
 porcupine ; and it is as well to examine your chair with a 
 magnifying glass, or to cause a friend to occupy it prelimi- 
 narily, before you sit down in it yourself. 
 
 If you come to the Swan to fish you cannot do better than 
 tackle (I do not use the word with the slightest intention of 
 punning) Groundbait, the landlord, immediately. That Boni- 
 face will be but too happy to tell you the latest fishing news, 
 the most approved fishing places, the neighbouring gentry 
 who give permissions to fish. He knows of fish in places you 
 would never dream of: he has cunningly devised receipts for 
 ground-bait : his butcher is the butcher for gentles, his oil- 
 shops are the shops for greaves ; he has hooks that every fish 
 that ever was spawned will gorge, lines that never break, 
 rods that never snap. If you would go farther a-field after an 
 essay at the mild suburban angling of the Eiver Spree, he will 
 put you up to rare country fishing spots, where there are 
 trouts of unheard of size, eels as big as serpents, pikes so large 
 and voracious that they gnaw the spokes of water-wheels ; of 
 quiet Berkshire villages, where the silver Thames murmurs 
 peacefully, gladsomely, innocently between sylvan banks, 
 
MY SWAN. 119 
 
 through a green thanksgiving landscape, among little islets, 
 quiet, sunny, sequestered as the remote Bermudas ; where the 
 river, in fine, is a river you may drink and lave in and rejoice 
 over, forgetting the bone factories and gas-works and tanneries, 
 the sweltering sewerage, inky colliers, and rotting corpses 
 "below Bridge. 
 
 If you come to the Swan merely as an observer of the 
 world, how it is a wagging, as I do, you may take your half- 
 pint of neat port with Groundbait, or shrouding yourself 
 behind the cloudy mantle of a pipe, study character among the 
 frequenters of the Swan. Groundbait does not fish much 
 himself. The engineer has an objection to see himself hoist 
 with his own petard. Doctors never take their own physic. 
 Lawyers don't go to law. Groundbait, the arbiter piscatoriwm, 
 the oracle, the expert jure of angling, seldom takes rod in hand 
 himself. He has curiously a dominant passion for leaping, 
 darting the lancing pole, swinging by his hands, climbing 
 knotted ropes, and other feats of strength and agility. He 
 has quite a little gymnasium in his back garden, leading to 
 the river a kind of gibbet, with ropes and ] adders, an erec- 
 tion which, when he first took the Swan, and set up his gym- 
 nastic apparatus, gave his neighbour and enemy, the Eeverend 
 Gricax Typhoon, occasion to address several stinging sermons 
 to the congregation sitting under him at little Adullam, 
 touching the near connection between publicans and the most 
 degraded of mankind, such as public executioners, with a neat 
 little historical parallel concerning Mordecai and Haman. 
 
 The angling company frequenting the Swan are varied and 
 eccentric. Earely, I am of opinion, is eccentricity so preva- 
 lent as among Anglers. Take Mr. Jefferson Jebb, among his 
 intimates known as JeiF. He is something in the City, that 
 mysterious place, the home of so many mysterious avocations. 
 Every evening during the summer months, and every Sunday 
 throughout the year, he comes to the Swan to fish or to talk of 
 fishing. He is intensely shabby, snuffy, and dirty, and wears a 
 beaver hat brushed all the wrong way and quite red with rust. 
 On one finger he wears a very large and sparkling diamond 
 ring. His boots are not boots but bats splay, shapeless, de- 
 formed canoes, with bulbous excrescences on the upper leather. 
 "When he sleeps at the Swan, and you see the boots outside his 
 door, they have an inexpressibly groggy, wall-eyed, shambling 
 appearance, and sway to and fro of their own accord like the 
 Logan or rocking stone in Cornwall. I think Jeff must be in 
 
120 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 the habit of drinking coffee at breakfast, and, purchasing dried 
 sole-skins wherewith to clear the decoction of the Indian 
 beny, be continually forgetting to take his purchases out of 
 his pockets, for there is a fishy smell about him, constant but 
 indescribable. He never catches any fish to speak of. He 
 does not seem to care about any. His principal delight is in 
 the peculiarly nasty process of kneading together the com- 
 pound of gravel, worms, and soaked bread, known as ground- 
 bait, small dumplings of which ordinarily adhere to his hands 
 and habiliments. He smokes a fishy pipe, and frequently 
 overhauls a very greasy parchment-covered portfolio filled 
 with hooks. His line or plan of conversation is consistent 
 and simple, but disagreeable, consisting in flatly contradicting 
 any assertion on angling, or, indeed, any other topic advanced 
 by the surrounding company. This peculiarity, together with 
 a general crustiness of demeanour and malignity of remark, 
 have earned for him the sobriquets of the 'hedgehog/ 'old 
 rusty,' ' cranky Jeff,' and the like. If he be not a broker's 
 assistant, or a Custom House officer in the City, he must 
 certainly be a holder of Spanish bonds, or Mexican scrip, or 
 some other description of soured financier. 
 
 The arm-chair immediately beneath the portrait of J. Bar- 
 bell, Esq., is the property, by conquest, by seniority, and by 
 conscription, of Mr. Bumblecherry, Captain Bumblecherry, 
 who has been a brother of the angle, and a supporter of the 
 Swan for twenty years. For the last five he has boarded and 
 lodged beneath Groundbait's hospitable roof. In his hot 
 youth he was an exciseman : for some years he has been a 
 gentleman, existing on the superannuation allowance granted 
 him by a grateful country. He keeps a vehicle which he calls 
 a ' trap,' but which is, in reality, a species of square wicker- 
 work clothes-basket on wheels, drawn by a vicious pony. 
 Burnblecherry is a very square, little old man with a red 
 scratch wig, a bulbous nose, and a fangy range of teeth. He 
 looks very nearly as vicious as his pony. He bids you good 
 morning in a threatening manner ; scowls when you offer him 
 a light for his pipe, and not unfrequently takes leave of the 
 parlour company at night with the very reverse of a benedic- 
 tion. He is a very bad old man ; and when he speaks to you 
 looks very much as if he would like to bite you. He does not 
 believe in anything, much, except fishing, at which recreation 
 he is indefatigable ; fishing at all times and all seasons when it 
 is possible to fish, singing the while, in a coffee-mill voice, a 
 
MY SWAN. 121 
 
 dreary chaunt, touching ' those that fish for roach and dace.' 
 In the evening, when he is in a decent humour, he will 
 volunteer an equally dismal stave called * The Watchman's 
 nervous,' and a certain song about a wheelbarrow, of whose 
 twenty-four verses I can only call to mind one, running, I 
 think, 
 
 * The Mayor of Hull come in jiis coach, 
 Come in his coach so slow 
 And what do you think the Mayor come for? 
 Why, to borrow my wheelbarrow oh, oh, oh!' 
 
 Ad libitum. 
 
 It is a sight to see the captain savagely fishing in all 
 weathers, fair or foul ; pouring maledictions on all who dare 
 to meddle with his tackle ; gloomily cooking the fish he has 
 caught, or driving doggedly along in the basket-cart with the 
 vicious pony which brute anon attempts to bite crossing 
 passengers, anon stands stock still, whereat Buinblecherry 
 gets out and kicks him till he moves again. He abuses 
 Dorothy very frequently, but as he occasionally makes her 
 presents of odd hanks of floss-silk he uses in fly-making, meat- 
 pies, and other confectionary, and once attempted to kiss her 
 in disengaging a double-barbed hook from her dress, there is a 
 report that he means to marry her, and at his decease endow 
 her with the fabulous wealth he is supposed to have accu- 
 mulated during his connection with the British excise. 
 
 A frequent visitor to the Swan is a tall, high-dried French 
 gentleman in a short cloak, decorated with 'the almost obsolete 
 poodle collar. Nobody knows his name, so he is generally 
 called, with reference to his foreign extraction, as the 
 ' Moossoo.' He is a very assiduous, but pensive and melan- 
 choly, fisherman, and, sitting on a stump with the poodle 
 collar turned up over his countenance, looks very like 
 ' Patience on a monument.' In hot weather he will not 
 disdain to take off his stockings, and, rolling up his trousers, 
 fish barelegged at a considerable distance from the bank. He 
 is an amateur in the breeding and care of gentles and worm- 
 bait, and generally carries about with him a box of lob-worms, 
 which, he laments to Mrs. Groundbait (who speaks a little 
 French), are continually getting loose, and walking up and 
 down the stairs of his house ' la canne a la main ' an anecdote 
 I venture to relate with a view to signalling a peculiarity, 
 hitherto unknown, in the natural history of lob- worms. 
 
 In summer weather a great crowd of dandy fishermen 
 
122 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 invade the Swan. These gay young brothers of the Angle 
 bucks of Cheapside and exquisites of the Poultry come 
 down on afternoons and Sundays in the most astonishing 
 fishing costume, and laden with the most elaborate fishing- 
 tackle. Wide-awake hats of varied hue, fishing-jackets of 
 curious cut, veils, patent fishing-boots, belts, pouches, winches 
 like small steam-engines, so complicated are they ; stacks of 
 rods, coils of lines, bait-cans painted the most vivid green : 
 such are the panoplies of these youths. Tremendous is the 
 fuss and pother they make about bait and hooks, elaborate are 
 their preparations, bold and valorous their promises, but, 
 alas ! frequently and signally lame and unsatisfactory their 
 performances. With all their varied armament and intricate 
 machinery, I have seen them, many a time and oft, distanced 
 and defeated by a stick and a string, a worm at one end, and a 
 little barelegged boy at the other. 
 
 XI. 
 
 THE BOTTLE OF HAY. 
 
 I AM a retired publican, and date from the days when pub- 
 licans were publicans. I kept the Bottle of Hay, in Leather 
 Lane, when public-houses were worth keeping. I have a 
 tidy penny in the funds now, a neat little box at Hoxton, am 
 an elder of my chapel, one of the committee of my Literary 
 and Scientific Institution, and a governor of the Licensed 
 Victuallers' Association. If I had kept my house as houses 
 are kept now I might have a villa at Ealing, and be a Middle- 
 sex magistrate, perhaps ; or, just as probably, I should be 
 occupying apartments in the Licensed Victuallers' Alms- 
 houses. I prefer my tidy funded penny and my box to both. 
 Altogether I may claim to be a respectable man, for I have a 
 very snug little trap (under tax) and my pony, Barrett (he 
 was a butcher's before he was mine, and a swell's before he 
 was a butcher's), can do something considerable in the trotting 
 line. 
 
 My trap and I and my friend Spyle, who has a neat super- 
 annuation on the Customs, go about a goodish deal among 
 public-houses now. You see I have a kind of liking for the 
 old trade ; and there is no amusement I like so much as 
 tasting the beer at a new house, or dropping in at stated 
 
THE BOTTLE OF HAY. 123 
 
 times, and in rotation on an old one, or looking about as to 
 the next probable owner of a shut-up house, or attending 
 public-house auctions and the like. Something might turn up 
 some day, you know, where a party could invest his little 
 savings profitably ; and that is why I like to keep in with 
 my distillers, Porcus and Grains, and with my old brewers, 
 Spiggot, Buffle, and Bung, for business reasons, over and 
 above the drop of something comfortable that they are sure to 
 ask me if I will take this morning. In fact, if you could put 
 me up to any snug concern drawing a reasonable number of 
 butts a month, that a party could drop in to reasonable, I 
 think I might hear of a bidder. 
 
 This doesn't interfere a tittle, however, with my firm and 
 settled opinion that the public line is going to ruin. To rack 
 and ruin. The teetotallers, of course, have done a deal of 
 harm ; but still they take a decent quantity medicinally, and 
 the very fierce ones, they generally break out very fierce 
 about once a month, and make up for lost time. It's the 
 publicans themselves that do the injury by introducing all 
 sorts of innovations and new-fangled enticements to drink 
 to their customers. As if a man wanted leading on to 
 drink ! He never did in my time. The landlords themselves 
 are their own enemies, and with their plate glass and gilding 
 and rosewood fittings and the rest of it, they are making the 
 line disrespectable. At least, I think so. A public-house 
 isn't a public-house, now, but something quite different. 
 
 Now, there's my old house in Leather Lane the Bottle of 
 Hay. I sold the lease, stock, goodwill, and fixtures to old 
 Berrystack. He was one of the old school, as I am, and if he 
 hadn't taken it into his senses to go out of them, and to be 
 now in a lunatic asylum and a padded room, he would have 
 carried the house on in the old, and my manner, to this day, I 
 have no doubt. Before he went mad, however, he had sense 
 enough to sell the house to young Bowley, whose father was 
 a ganger in the docks. The licence and Berrystack's pretty 
 daughter Louisa were transferred to Bowley at the same time ; 
 and as man and wife (Louisa was the prettiest hand at mixing 
 a twopenn'orth, hot, and saying a civil word to the old 
 gentlemen that used the house, that ever you saw) they went 
 on for a year or two as comfortable as may be. But what did 
 young Bowley but go to cards, and then to Horse-racing and 
 betting, and to wearing a horseshoe pin in his neckerchief, 
 and trousers much too tight for him about the legs ? And 
 
124 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 where did he go afterwards but into Whitecross Street, and 
 afterwards to the Insolvent Court; and where did Mrs. 
 Bowley go but off to Boulogne with the cash-box and the 
 military chap (I never could abide him with his mustachoes 
 and his airs) that was always hanging about the bar-parlour. 
 A pretty piece of business this for a respectable house ! But, 
 bad as Bowley was, the next tenant was worse. He had 
 plenty of money, and all that; but I have no hesitation in 
 saying that he was a fellow. A fellow. He was ashamed of 
 his apron. Nothing but a full suit of black would suit my 
 gentleman ; and he would stand behind the bar twiddling his 
 Albert guard-chain, and, if he were asked for change, pull it 
 out of a thing like a lady's reticule, which he called his 
 4 port-money.' He'd better have looked to his port wine. 
 He shut his house up all day Sunday, and actually tried to 
 put his pot-boy into a white neckcloth ; but he, being a pot- 
 boy that knew his business, and wasn't above it, told him 
 plainly that he wasn't used to it, and that he had better look 
 out for another young man. 
 
 His bar, instead of being covered with the decent piles of 
 halfpence and trays full of silver, that a right-minded publican 
 loves to accumulate towards Saturday, was tricked out with 
 all sorts of bulbs and roots, and trumpery nasturtiums, 
 heliotropes, ranunculuses, and the like ; and there wasn't an 
 Italian image-man out of Leather Lane that came in to take a 
 drop but he'd buy a Venus, or a Jenny Lind, or a Holy Family 
 of; and these he'd stick up on gim-crack brackets under his 
 tubs, and ask me with a simpering grin if I didn't think 
 the rubbish classical ? Classical ! What business has a 
 licensed victualler with the classics ? I could not stand this ; 
 I turned to Pruffwell (this was the classical gentleman's 
 name), and said I to him 'Mr. Pruffwell, it's my belief that 
 you're not acting becoming. If you're a landlord, say so ; if 
 you're not, the sooner you say so, or go out of the business, 
 the better ;' and thereupon I paid for what I had had and 
 walked out. He said I was an old fool ; but Mr. Batts, of 
 Liquorpond Street, and Mr. Crapper, of Gray's Inn Lane, and 
 little Shoulderblade, the sheriff's officer all respectable warm, 
 men, who used the house went out with me, and all said I 
 had done the thing that was right. I never set my foot in 
 Pruffwell's house again till he left it ; but I heard that he 
 went on from bad to worse afterwards : that he took a wife 
 who was all curls and conceit, and was nervous and musical, 
 
THE BOTTLE OF HAY. 125 
 
 bless us ; and that the choruses at the Wednesday Evening 
 Free and Easy in the tap-room used to be drowned by Mad;i 
 piano-forte up-stairs jangling such variations upon Auld Robin 
 Gray that his mother would'nt have known him. At last he 
 got a fellow with long hair and spectacles, and a turn-down 
 collar, and a tuft, to lecture upon the ' Od force,' and * Things 
 not Seen,' or things never heard of in his coffee-room ; and 
 another (in a cloak and more spectacles, green this time) to 
 demonstrate the ' theory of the earth's movement,' with a 
 piece of string, a copper disc, like the bottom of a stew-pan 
 knocked out, and an old clock dial-plate. He couldn't demon- 
 strate it, it seemed, without a great deal of gin and water 
 first, and turning off the gas afterwards ; and there were two 
 great' coats and seven spoons missing the next morning. 
 When I heard Pruffwell was countenancing such proceedings 
 as these, I thought he was coming to a bad end ; and, sure 
 enough, to a very bad one he came shortly afterwards. He 
 got into some scrape about defrauding the gas-company out of 
 their dues, falsifying the meter and tapping the main himself; 
 but somehow he was too clever, and the gas got into the gin, 
 and the water into that, and the sewer into that ; and the gas- 
 company came in and tore up the flooring, and spoilt the beer- 
 engines, and sued him dreadfully. He ran away very quickly 
 did Mr. Pruffwell after this, Albert chain, port-money, and 
 all. I did hear that he went to America, where he turned 
 schoolmaster, lecturer, and got into some trouble about the 
 notes of a bank that had stopped payment ; and, besides that, 
 Mrs. Pruffwell was not Mrs. Pruffwell after all, and after P.'s 
 disappearance, had taken to drinking dreadfully. 
 
 All this while the Bottle of Hay was becoming dingier and 
 dingier, and more dilapidated in appearance every day. The 
 pots had lost their brightness, and the pewter- covered bar 
 counter, which should have been clean and glistening, became 
 stained and discoloured with sticky rings of treacly porter. 
 When the handles of the taps got loose and unscrewed they 
 were never replaced ; the glasses lost half their feet, and the 
 pewter measures half their capacity of containing by dinting 
 and battering. The letters and numbers wore off the gin- 
 tubs ; the till contained nothing but broken tobacco pipes, 
 and pock-marked, defaced, advertisement-branded and per- 
 forated halfpence, which even the neediest of the customers 
 had indignantly refused ; and little Euggs, the tipstaff of the 
 Sheriff's Court, now pretty nearly the only regular customer 
 
126 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 that remained, declared that really lie must use some other 
 house, for that on three separate days the Bottle of Hay had 
 been out of gin and bitters. The harp, piano, and violin that 
 used to come regularly every Saturday night and give a 
 musical performance in front of the door, removed to the 
 Coach and Horses up the lane : and really if it had not been 
 for the sign, and the old portrait of myself in the coffee-room 
 (kitcat, half length, three-quarter face, representing me with 
 my hand in my waistcoat, backed by a crimson velvet curtain 
 and a Grecian column, and flanked by an inkstand, a hat and 
 gloves, four books and an orange cut in halves) I really should 
 not have recognised my old house, where I had worked hard 
 for so many years, and realised such a neat little bit of pro- 
 perty. Then the sheriff came in with his levy and his men 
 in possession ; and for a week or so what little beer was 
 required was drawn by hooked-nosed men of the Israelitish 
 persuasion. Then they hung the carpets out of the window, 
 and had a sale ; and three weeks afterwards I recognised my 
 old arm-chair, bar-flap and beer-engine at a second-hand shop 
 in Brokers' Row, Long Acre, higgledy-piggledy with tin tea- 
 canisters, sham bookshelves, dummy chemists' drawers, bandy- 
 legged counting-house desks and empty jars, labelled ' tama- 
 rinds ' and c leeches.' 
 
 I wish they had pulled down my old house after this. I 
 wish they had built a Methodist Chapel, or Baths and Wash- 
 houses, or a Temperance Hall upon its site. Anything rather 
 than it should have become what it is now. It was shut up a 
 long time ; and I certainly had a slight twinge of melancholy 
 when, passing it occasionally, I saw its doors fast closed and 
 bolted and barred with the doors that had been for so many 
 years on the swing, and of which the paint about the handles 
 had been worn off by the hands of so many good fellows who 
 had got ' comfortable ' in my house so many Monday morn- 
 ings and so many Saturday nights. At last the Bottle of Hay 
 was let. 
 
 The new landlord was a young, beardless man, in a coloured 
 shirt and a wide-awake hat. He was one of three brothers, 
 and they had public-houses all over London : one at Ber- 
 rnondsey, one large gin -palace somewhere over the water at a 
 corner where six crowded thoroughfares met ; one in a sub- 
 urban neighbourhood, very new and very improving, which 
 was an omnibus house ; and an establishment in the City in 
 a dark alley down Dock way, where prime ports and sherries 
 
THE BOTTLE OF HAY. 127 
 
 were drawn from the wood, and sold at an extraordinarily low 
 price per imperial quart, and white-headed old gentlemen 
 whose only occupation it seemed to be to drink (I do a good 
 deal in that way), went to taste the prime wines and eat nuts 
 and cheese-crumbs. Fishtail was this new young landlord's 
 name, and his wide-awake hat was a green one. No other 
 symptom of that colour was there in him, however, for he was 
 as wide awake as his hat or a detective policeman, as cun- 
 ning as a fox, as pert as a magpie, and as avaricious as a Jew. 
 He wasn't above his business. He and the wide-awake were 
 scudding, poking, peeping, scampering morning noon and 
 night about the house during its renovation (doing up, I 
 should call it). He began by pulling the house half down. 
 Then he threw the ground and first floor into one, and filled 
 the window with plate glass and tremendous gilt gas burners. 
 Then he raised an ornamental balustrade above the coping of 
 the roof, and a vase above that, and a statue of Hercules or 
 somebody defying something above that, and a huge flag above 
 all to say nothing of a big gilt clock surrounded with stucco 
 cornucopias and emblems, and which had an illuminated dial, 
 the letters of ' B.O.T.T.L.E. O.F. H.A.Y. O.' instead of 
 numerals, and hands like ornamental fire shovels. Not con- 
 tent with this, the second floor front middle window was 
 blocked up with a large gas star with V.K. and the crown, 
 and the rose, shamrock, and thistle, and Heaven knows what 
 besides, all in gas. The house was painted from top to bottom 
 in as gaudy colours as could be procured, and wherever it 
 was feasible plastered over with compo mouldings and 
 flourishing ornaments. His name, Fishtail, was painted upon 
 almost every imaginable part of the building, in all sorts of 
 colours, and in letters so big that it was almost impossible to 
 read them. The inside of the house was as much trans- 
 mogrified as the outside. 
 
 It was all mahogany at least, what wasn't mahogany, was 
 gilt carving and ground glass, with flourishing patterns on it. 
 The bar was cut up into little compartments like pawnbrokers' 
 boxes ; and there was the wholesale entrance, and the jug and 
 bottle department, the retail bar, the snuggery, the private 
 bar, the ladies' bar, the wine and liqueur entrance, and the 
 lunch bar. The handles of the taps were painted porcelain, 
 and green, and yellow glass. There were mysterious glass 
 columns, in which the bitter ale, instead of being drawn 
 up comfortably from the cask in the cellar below, remained 
 
128 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 always on view above ground to show its clearness, and was 
 drawn out into glasses by a mysterious engine like an air- 
 pump with something wrong in its inside. There were 
 carved benches in the private bar, with crimson plush 
 cushions aerated and elastic. There were spring duffers, work- 
 ing in a tunnel in the wall, which you were to strike with your 
 fist to try your muscular strength. There were machines to 
 test your lifting power, and a weighing-machine, and a lung- 
 testing machine, or ' vital-power determinates ' There were 
 plates full of nasty compounds of chips, saw-dust, and grits, 
 called Scotch bannocks, which were to be eaten with butter, 
 and washed down by the Gregarach Staggering old Claymore 
 or Doch an' Dorroch ale ; but which never should have shown 
 its face in my old house, I warrant you. There were sau- 
 sages, fried in a peculiar manner, with barbecued parsley, and 
 a huge, brazen sausage chest, supported on two elephants, 
 with a furnace beneath, from which sausages and potatoes 
 were served out hot and hot all day long. There were sand- 
 wiches cut into strange devices ; and cakes and tarts that 
 nobody ever heard of before ; and drinks and mixtures con- 
 cocted that, in my day, would have brought the exciseman 
 about a landlord pretty soon, I can assure you. The soda- 
 water bottles had spiral necks like glass corkscrews, and zig- 
 zag labels. The ginger-beer was all colours blue, green, 
 and violet. Every inch of the walls that was not be-plastered 
 with ornaments and gilding, or bedizened with gilt announce- 
 ments of splendid ales and unrivalled quadruple stouts I never 
 heard of, was covered with ridiculously gaudy-coloured prints, 
 puffing the * Cead Mille Failthe AVhisky,' the ' Phthisis 
 Curing Bottled Beer/ recommended by the entire faculty ; 
 the Imperial Kartoffelnsfell-hopfbrunnen Waters bottled at 
 the celebrated mineral springs of Kartoffelnsfell, under the 
 immediate superintendence of the Kartoffelnsfell Government, 
 all of which were to be had in splendid condition, and for 
 which J. Fishtail was the sole agent. This was a nice begin- 
 ning. But the worst was to come. The house was opened, 
 and J. Fishtail was as busy as a bee with an opening dinner, 
 which he bragged and boasted a great deal of having reported 
 in the press. He did, to be sure, get a seedy chap with an 
 umbrella and a hat full of old newspapers and red comforters, 
 who did fires and murders, and the Lord Mayor's state foot- 
 men's liveries at three-halfpence a line; and he certainly 
 came to the dinner, and, when the toast of ' the press ' was 
 
THE BOTTLE OF HAY. 129 
 
 given, prefaced by the appropriate glee of ' When winds 
 breathe soft/ made a neat speech, rendered rather indistinct 
 by hot liquids, in acknowledgment ; but, though he borrowed 
 half a pound and stuck up an unlimited score, and though 
 Fishtail became a quarterly subscriber to * The Weekly Murder 
 Sheet,' price threepence, stamped, I never heard of any account 
 of his grand initiatory banquet being published therein, or in 
 any other newspaper. Meanwhile, his business went on 
 apace. The harp, flute, and violin would have been glad to 
 come back and played outside ; but they were far too low for 
 the Bottle of Hay, now. Nothing would suit Fishtail but a 
 real German green baize band, composed of six dumpy, 
 tawney-haired musicians from Frankfort, all with cloth caps, 
 like shovels of mud, thrown on their heads, and falling over 
 on the other side ; all with rings in their ears and on their 
 thumbs ; and all born barons, at least, in their own country. 
 These gentry put their fists into their horns, and drew out 
 their trombones to amazing lengths, playing such wonderfully 
 complicated tunes, and singing, meanwhile, such long-winded 
 choruses, all ending with * tra la la, tra la la, tra la-a-a-a !' 
 that a dense crowd would gather round them during their 
 performances, and the very policeman would refrain from 
 ordering them to move on, to the great disgust of the Alabama 
 Ethiopian Serenaders (from Cork Buildings, Gray's Inn Lane) 
 who were, in truth, only the harp, flute, and violin fallen into 
 evil days, and disguised in lamp-black, pomatum, Welsh wigs 
 dyed black, paper shirt collars, white calico neckcloths, ban- 
 joes, tambourines, and bones. The gas star, too, and the 
 illuminated clock, brought a great many customers but what 
 ,sort of customers were they ? Italian image-men and organ- 
 grinders, and Irish hodmen, and basket- women. The Irish 
 and the Italians fell to fighting immediately (of course about 
 the Pope), which was bad for themselves; and then they 
 complained that the bar had been so altered that they hadn't 
 room to fight, which was worse for the house ; for the Italians 
 you see, when fighting, were accustomed to tramp in a circle, 
 their knives pointing towards the centre, ready for a lunge, 
 whereas the Irish always wanted a clear stage and no favour 
 at least plenty of space convenient for a spring, and ample 
 room to jump upon a man, or beat his head in with a quart 
 pot, or bite his nose off. The nooks and corners into which 
 the bar had been cut up, rendered this very difficult of 
 accomplishment; and the consequence was, that the fine 
 
 K 
 
130 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 ground-glass panels and lustres, the porcelain tap-handles, 
 the crystal ale columns, the gold-fish fountain (I don't think I 
 mentioned that), the fine gilt and rosewood mouldings, soon 
 came to be knocked off, smashed, and spoilt past mending. 
 J. Fishtail was very savage at this, you may be sure, and, 
 striving to turn the noisy customers out, the wide-awake hat 
 was perpetually being flattened on his head with pewter 
 measures, and his cut-away coat ripped up with clasp knives 
 for he was full of pluck, and did his best to keep order. 
 The police naturally appeared on the scene in these disturb- 
 ances, and a great deal of expense was entailed upon him in 
 ' squaring ' these functionaries, particularly when the Italians, 
 being prevented from fighting, took to gambling on the tubs, 
 at dominoes, moro, or ' buck-buck, how many fingers do I hold 
 up ?' and stabbing each other quietly when they lost. The 
 police had to be ' squared ' so often under these circumstances, 
 that the little court by the side door was half-lined with pots 
 of half-and-half, which the municipals slipped off their beat 
 to drink on the sly ; and as it was, Fishtail albeit, as harm- 
 lessly inclined as any landlord was always in trouble with 
 the magistrates, and having his licence endorsed, and being 
 fined. He grew into awful disfavour with the licensing 
 authorities at Clerkenwell Green, where Major Blueblasis, of 
 Tottenham, once stated his conviction that the Bottle of Hay 
 was an ' infamous den ;' and if Inspector Buffles had not 
 stood Fishtail's friend he would have lost his licence, and the 
 spite of his enemy Ditcher, who keeps the Italian Stores beer- 
 shop in the lane, and has been trying after a spirit licence 
 these five years, would have been gratified. 
 
 Then he got into trouble about his dry skittle-ground. 
 When my old house was near, I had as neat, and as good, and 
 as dry a skittle-alley as any in Clerkenwell parish. Many 
 and many have been the respectable tradesmen that have 
 played there good warm men moral men, and ex-church- 
 wardens. The ' setter-up ' made fifteen shillings a week 
 clear, all the year round. Many, too, have been the rumps 
 and dozen ordered in my house after matches, aye, and paid 
 for. J. Fishtail of course was too go-ahead a young gentle- 
 man to be contented with a dry skittle-ground with plenty of . 
 sawdust and one gas jet, and the pins and balls (like wooden 
 Dutch cheeses) painted on the door-jambs. Oh no ! he must 
 have an American Bowling Alley, with more mahogany, more 
 gilding, more ground-glass shades to the gas-burners, more 
 
THE BOTTLE OF HAY. 131 
 
 crimson-covered benches, a scorer or marker, who played 
 tricks with a grand mahogany board like a railway time-table, 
 instead of using the old legitimate chalk, and a flaring trans- 
 parency outside, representing General Washington playing 
 skittles with Doctor Franklin. Of course there was an 
 additional bar for the use of the skittle-players, where the 
 scorer, who wore a very large shirt collar and a straw hat, 
 and was at least a General in America mixed and sold 
 ' American Drinks :' brandy cock-tails, gin-slings, egg-noggs, 
 timber-doodles, and mint-juleps, which last tasted like very 
 bad gin and water, with green stuff in it, which you were 
 obliged to suck through a straw instead of swigging in the 
 legitimate manner. A fine end for my dry skittle-ground to 
 come to ! 
 
 It hadn't been open a month before Dick the Brewer, Curly 
 Jem Simmons and Jew Josephs, all notorious skittle-sharps, 
 found it out and made it a regular rendezvous for picking up 
 flats. They soon picked up young Mr. Poppinson, the rich 
 pawnbroker's son, who had twenty thousand pounds and 
 water on the brain, and has since gone through the Court. 
 They picked him up to some tune. It wasn't the games he 
 lost on the square (which were few), or the games he lost on 
 the cross (which were many), or the sums he was cheated of 
 at the fine slate billiard table up stairs, or the bottles of cham- 
 pagne he stood (champagne at my old house in Leather 
 Lane !) ; it was the dreadful deal of money he lost at betting : 
 fifties that Dick the Brewer couldn't cross the alley in 
 three jumps, ponies that Curly Jem couldn't name the win- 
 ners of the Derby and Oaks for ten years running even fives 
 that Jew Josephs couldn't turn up a Jack four times out of 
 four. Poor young Mr. Poppinson ! He ruined himself and 
 his poor child of a wife (a little delicate thing you miglt 
 blow away with a puff at most) and his poor old wid( wed 
 mother who sold herself up, and pawned her comfortalle 
 little annuity for her wayward son. I met him the other 
 day he is but a boy still flying in rags ; and said I to 
 myself there are not many people who pass this scarecrow 
 who would believe, were they told it, that in two or three 
 years he managed to squander away twenty thousand golden 
 pounds, not in horse-racing, not at Crockford's, not on 
 actresses and dancing-girls, not even in foreign travel, but 
 between the skittle-alleys and billiard-tables and tap-rooms of 
 three or four low public-houses. I have seen life and a many 
 
 K 2 
 
132 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 phases of it, and know how common these cases are. It is 
 astonishing how often those who spend the most enjoy and 
 see the least for their money. I met a man the other day 
 ragged, forlorn, with no more fat upon him than would grease 
 a cobbler's bradawl. Now I had known this man when he was 
 worth ten thousand pounds. He had spent every penny of 
 it. * How on earth did you manage it ?' I asked him, for I 
 knew that he never drank, or had any ambition to be what 
 you call a swell. ' Ah/ said he, with a sigh, ' I played.' 
 ' What at ?' 1 asked again, thinking of rouge-et-noir, roulette, 
 or chicken hazard. * Bagatelle,' says he. Ten thousand 
 pounds at bagatelle at a twopenny-halfpenny game of knock- 
 ing a ball about with a walking-stick, and that a child could 
 play at ! Yet I dare say he told the truth. Just similarly 
 young Mr. Poppinson went to ruin in J. Fishtail's American 
 Bowling Alley; and when in desperation he gave Curly Jem 
 Simmons and Jew Josephs in charge for swindling him (and 
 they were discharged, of course), people did say that J. Fish- 
 tail was in league with Jew Josephs ; stood in with the whole 
 gang, and had as much to do with cheating Mr. Poppinson as 
 anybody. At all events he got a very bad name by the trans- 
 action. 
 
 Just at thigj time, 1 think, 1 was taken very bad with the 
 rheumatism, atid, lying up at Hoxton, lost sight of J. Fishtail. 
 I expected to $nd him in ' The Gazette ' by the time I was able 
 to be on my feet and about again ; but the next time I looked 
 in at my old house I found him still in Leather Lane, and 
 heard that he was carrying on worse than ever. He had been 
 satisfied with barmaids for some time, and saucy minxes they 
 were too, all ribbons and airs, together with a very fast young 
 barman who was always making up his betting-book when he 
 should have been attending to the customers ; and had run 
 matches, so I heard the wretch upon a turnpike-road in 
 pink drawers, with a ribbon tied round his head. But what 
 do you think J. Fishtail's next move was ? To have a Giant 
 as a barman ! As I live, a Giant. 
 
 He was a great, shambling, awkward, bow-legged, splay- 
 footed brute, considerably more than seven feet high, and as 
 great a fool as he was a creature. He had a head like an ill- 
 made slack-baked half-quartern loaf, inclining to the sugar- 
 loaf form at the top ; or perhaps a bladder of lard would be a 
 better comparison. His little lack-lustre eyes were like two 
 of No. 6 shot poked into the dough anyhow. His mouth 
 
THE BOTTLE OF HAY. 133 
 
 was a mere gash, and he slobbered. His voice was a shrill 
 squeak, with one gruff bass note that always turned up when 
 it wasn't wanted, and oughtn't to have been heard. He had 
 at least four left hands, and spilt half the liquids that he drew, 
 and was always breaking his long shins over stools or any- 
 thing that came handy as almost everything seemed to do, 
 in that sense. To see him in his huge shirtsleeves, with 
 his awkward beefy hands hanging inanely by his side, and 
 his great foolish mouth open, was disgusting : he was a pillar 
 of stupidity, a huge animated pump with two handles, and 
 not worth pumping. He took to wearing a little boy's cloth 
 cap at the back of his monstrous ill-shaped head, which made 
 him look supremely ridiculous. What his name was I never 
 knew or cared to inquire ; but he was generally known as 
 ' Big Bill,' or the ' Giant Barman.' Of course he had been 
 exhibited before the Queen and the principal Courts of 
 Europe, and was patronised by all the royal families extant ; 
 and a gigantic lithographic representation of him in a full 
 suit of black with a white neckcloth, exhibiting his bigness in 
 the private parlour of Windsor Castle, before her Majesty and 
 a select assembly, all the ladies of which wore feathers and all 
 the gentlemen stars and garters, was framed and glazed in 
 J. Fishtail's bar ; while a copy of it in coarse wood engraving 
 was placarded half over London. He had been Professor 
 Somebody once on a time I believe ; and nad squeezed up 
 quart pots, lifted hundred weights of iron with his little 
 finger, and held bars of lead in his teeth ; but where Fishtail 
 picked him up was not known : some said in a caravan at a 
 fair, some sweeping a crossing, some in a ferry steamboat at 
 Liverpool where he amused the company who crossed from 
 the landing stage at Birkenhead. He ' drew 'as the play 
 acting people say rather satisfactorily, at first, and was 
 goaded on by J. Fishtail to ask everybody to treat him to six- 
 penn'orth of brandy and water for the good of the house the 
 consumption of which sixpenn'orths made him maudlin 
 drunk; staggering on his long legs, crying to go home to 
 Worcestershire (where he came from originally, I suppose), 
 and at last falling all of a huge heap in a corner. His ad- 
 mirers, however, were soon confined to people who had half a 
 pint of beer and stared stupidly at him for half an hour 
 together ; and as he was totally useless as a barman, and 
 broke more glasses than he was worth, J. Fishtail soon gave 
 him his travelling ticket and started him. 
 
134 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 J. Fishtail had not done enough to degrade my old house 
 yet. Not a bit of it. ' You'd better have a dwarf, Fishtail/ 
 I said to him in my quiet chaffing way (I always had a turn 
 for satire). ' P'raps a Miss Biffin would suit you, or a pig-faced 
 lady for a barmaid. What do you think of a " What is it ?" 
 or a spotted girl ? You had better have a Eumtifoozle, and 
 put my old house on wheels, and hang my old portrait outside 
 for a placard, and stand at the door yourself and cry, " Walk 
 in, walk in and see the Eumtifoozle, two thousand spots on 
 his body, no two alike ; two thousand spots on his tail, no two 
 alike ; grows a hinch and a half every hanimal year, and has 
 never yet come to his full growth ; the Eumtifoozle which the 
 proprietor would'nt sell to George the Fourth, saying : ' No, 
 George the Fourth, you shall not have our Eumtifoozle ; for 
 the Eumtifoozle has a foot like a warming-pan, and a body 
 like the keel of a vessel, and a tail that would astonish a 
 donkey.' " Try that, Fishtail.' ' Wait a bit,' says he. Three 
 days afterwards he came out with the fat barmaid. 
 
 Ugh ! the monster. She was a lump of suet. She was 
 a dollop of dripping, a splodge of grease. The poor thing 
 was so helplessly fat that she could neither stand nor walk 
 without difficulty ; and all she could do was to crouch lan- 
 guidly in a wide chair, baring her horribly fat arms to the 
 curious customers. She drew at first a little, and was profit- 
 able, and people turned faint directly they saw her layers and 
 creases of fat and her quintuple chin, and were obliged to 
 have three penn'orths of brandy ; but they never came again, 
 oh, no ! and the fat barmaid soon followed the giant. 
 
 After this there came a bit of a lull in the way of monsters : 
 but J. Fishtail was not tired. The cholera was very bad, and 
 Leather Lane being a nice, teeming, no-washing neighbour- 
 hood, they just died off in it and about it like sheep. Out 
 comes J. Fishtail with an infallible specific for the cholera 
 brandy and something, which took wonderfully and paid, for 
 it made people very ill immediately, and compelled them to 
 have more brandy, without anything to set them all right 
 again. The cholera died away, and Fishtail was hesitating 
 between another giant who could sing beautifully, and a 
 bearded lady, and an innocent-looking young lady, with pink 
 eyes and long flaxen hair like floss silk, and was reported to 
 have killed a man with a chopper, and would have been a 
 great catch, if she would have come down to his terms, when 
 the Bloomer costume came out. Straightway, Fishtail put 
 
CITY SPECTRES. 135 
 
 his two barmaids into variegated satin trousers and broad- 
 brimmed hats. I rejoice to say that this move turned out an 
 egregious failure. The increase of frequenters to the Bottle 
 of Hay was confined to blackguard boys, who blocked up the 
 doorways, whooping, and performing on the bones or piecea 
 of slate ; but, as they could see no more of the costume than 
 the broad-brimmed hats, they grew disgusted, and made irre- 
 verent remarks, till the poor girls did nothing but take refuge 
 in the bar-parlour and cry, and Fishtail was compelled, sorely 
 against his will, to allow them to assume their proper attire. 
 
 More monsters; and such a monster this time. James 
 Fishtail had the audacity, the impiety, the indecency, to 
 engage and set up in a Christian bar a painted savage. 
 Whether the wretch was a Caffre, or a Zooloo something, or a 
 Hottentot, or a Kroonian, or an Ashantee, it matters not ; but 
 there he was, all dirt and cock's feathers, and paint and 
 leopard skin. He was a miserable, deformed creature, with 
 bones through his nose, and ears, and chin, of course, and 
 eyes which he was instructed to roll, and teeth to chatter 
 continually. At first he was allowed to go through his na- 
 tional performances of the chace, war, &c., before the bar, 
 with a hatchet, and a bow and arrows, and a string of beads ; 
 but he lost his temper so frequently, and tried to bite Fishtail, 
 and to make ferocious love to the barmaids, that his sphere 
 of action was limited. So J. Fishtail had him penned up in a 
 corner of the bar with stools and pots, where he subsided into 
 a state of helpless stupidity ; but he was wont, at times, to 
 howl so piteously, and to make such frantic efforts to escape, 
 that people cried shame, and Fishtail sent him back to the 
 showman who called himself his guardian, and had bought 
 him for two cows and a yard of red cloth somewhere out at 
 the Cape of Good Hope. 
 
 I was so out of patience with this last want of common 
 propriety on the part of Fishtail, that I solemnly discarded 
 him, and have never entered his house since. 
 
 XII. 
 
 CITY SPECTRES. 
 
 1^ the Eoyal Exchange there always were, and are, and will 
 be, rows of gaunt men, with haggard countenances, and in 
 seedy habiliments, who sit on the benches ranged against the 
 
136 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 walls of the arcades ; sit, silently, immoveably, with a stem 
 and ghostly patience, from morn till dusk. These shabby 
 sedentaries have long haunted me. I call them City Spectres. 
 I have passed through 'Change as early as nine o'clock in the 
 morning, and found the Ghosts there ; I have passed through 
 it just as it was about to close, and found them there still 
 silent, unalterable in their immobility ; speechless in the 
 midst of the gabble and turmoil, the commercial howls, and 
 speculative shrieks of high 'Change. I have gone away from 
 England, and, coming back again, have found the same Ghosts 
 on the same benches. They were on the Old Exchange ; 
 they were on the ' Burse ' in Sir Thomas Gresham's time, I 
 have no doubt ; and when the ' coming man ' the Anglo-New- 
 Zealander of Thomas Babington Macaulay arrives to take his 
 promised view of the ruins of St. Paul's, he will have to place 
 in the foreground of his picture, sitting on crumbling benches, 
 in a ruined Exchange, over-against a ruined Bank, the City 
 Spectres, unchangeable and unchanged. 
 
 What do they do on Sundays and holidays, and after 'Change 
 hours? AVhat did they do when the Exchange was burnt 
 down, and the merchants congregated first at the Old South 
 Sea House, and then in the courtyard of the Excise Office, in 
 Broad Street ? Are they the same men, or their brothers, or 
 their cousins, who sit for hours on the benches in St. James's 
 Park, staring with glazed, unmeaning eyes at the big Life- 
 Guardsmen and the little children ? Are they the same men 
 who purchase half a pint of porter, usurp the best seat (upon 
 the tub, and out of the way of the swing-door) before the bar, 
 to the secret rage of the publican ? Are they connected with 
 the British Museum spectres the literary ghosts who pass 
 the major part of the day in the Eeading-room, not reading - 
 for their eyes always seem to me to be fixed on the same spot, 
 in the same page of the same volume, of the Pandects of 
 Justinian but snuffing, with a grimly affectionate relish, 
 the morocco leather-laden atmosphere, and silently hugging 
 the comfortable chairs and tables, luxuriating in the literary 
 hospitality of Britain the feast of paper-knives and eleemo- 
 synary quill-pens, the flow of well-filled and gratuitous leaden 
 inkstands ? 
 
 Yet these City Spectres must live in their spectral 
 fashion. They must eat. They must drink, even ; for I have 
 observed that not a few of them have noses of a comfortable 
 degree of redness. "Who supplies them with food and rai- 
 
CITY SPECTRES. HIT 
 
 merit ? "Who boards and lodges them ? Who washes them ? 
 no ; that last interrogation is certainly irrelevant ; for the 
 City Ghosts, both as regards their persons and their linen, 
 appear to be able to do without washing altogether. 
 
 I used to ask myself, and I still do ask myself, these ques- 
 tions about the City Spectres with distressing pertinacity ; I 
 form all sorts of worrying theories concerning them. By 
 dint, however, of considerable observation, of unflagging 
 industry in putting ' this and that together,' and, perhaps, of 
 a little stretching of possibilities into probabilities, and pro- 
 babilities into certainties, I have managed to cover the dry 
 bones of the Spectres of the Royal Exchange with a little 
 commercial flesh and blood. I have found local habitations 
 and names for them. I assume avocations which occupy 
 them even as they sit in idle ghostliness on the benches. I 
 discover incomes which cover their meagre limbs with mil- 
 dewed raiment ; which find some work for their lantern jaws 
 in the way of mastication ; and which give a transient rubi- 
 cundity to their sometimes livid noses. I have found out 
 or at least think I have found out who the City Ghosts are ; 
 how and where they live ; what they were before they were 
 ghosts ; and how they came to bench-occupying and to 
 ghosthood. 
 
 Take that tall Ghost who sits in the portion of the arcade 
 called the Wallachio-Moldavian walk, on the bench between 
 the advertisements setting forth the approaching departure of 
 the ' Grand Turk, A. 1, and copper-bottomed for Odessa/ and 
 the pictorial chromo-lithographic placard, eulogising, in so 
 disinterested a manner, the virtues of Mr. Alesheeh's magic 
 strop. See him once, and forget him if you can. His coun- 
 tenance is woebegone : his hat is battered in the crown, torn 
 in the brim, worn away in the forepart, by constant pulling 
 off ; napless long since ; but rendered factitiously lustrous by 
 the matutinal application of a wet brush ; his satin stock 
 black once, brown now fastened at the back with a vicious 
 wrench and a rusty buckle : his sorry body-coat (Spectres 
 never wear frock-coats), tesselated on the collar and elbows 
 with cracked grease-spots ; torn at the pockets with continuous 
 thrusting-in of papers ; dotted white with the tombstones of 
 dead buttons : his shrinking, withered, shame-faced trousers : 
 his boots (not Bluchers, but nearly always Wellingtons) 
 cracked at the sides and gone at the heel, the connection still 
 preserved by the aid of a red-hot poker and gutta percha. I 
 
138 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 know all about that Ghost. He passed to the world of spectres 
 in 1825. He must have been that head clerk in the great 
 banking firm of Sir John Jebber, Jefferson, and Co., which 
 speculated somewhat too greedily in the Patent Washing, 
 Starching, Mangling, and Ironing Company ; in the Amalga- 
 mated Dusthole, Breeze Exportation, and Cinder Consumption 
 Company ; in the Eoyal Eat, Cat, and Eabbit Fur Company 
 (Incorporated by Eoyal Charter) ; in the Imperial Equitable 
 Spontaneous Combustion Association for Instantaneous Illu- 
 mination (in connection with the Northern Lights Office) ; 
 in the Anglico -Franco -Mexico Mining Company for the Rapid 
 Diffusion of Quicksilver all over the World ; in Baratarian 
 (deferred) Bonds. When the panic of '25 came, and there 
 was a rush on Jebber' s bank, and a line of carriages ex- 
 tended from Lombard Street to Ludgate Hill (for most of 
 the aristocracy bankeda t Jebber' s), it was the Spectre who 
 enacted the bold stroke of policy, of having heavy coal- 
 waggons driven artfully into the line of vehicles between 
 Birchin Lane and Nicholas Lane ; and of raising an alarm of 
 ' mad dog ' at the corner of Pope's Head Alley, whereby the 
 stream of customers, rabid to draw out their deposits, was 
 arrested for hours. ? T was he who suggested to the firm the 
 artful contrivance (first practised by a larger establishment) 
 of paying heavy cheques in sixpences ; but all, alas ! in vain. 
 The firm had to be removed from Lombard Street to the 
 Bankruptcy Court, in Basinghall Street. Jebber went into a 
 lunatic asylum ; the Miss Jebbers went out (poor things !) as 
 governesses; and Jefferson, with the Co. emigrated some 
 people said with the cash-box to the land of freedom ; 
 where he became principal director of that famous banking 
 company, the five-dollar notes of which were subsequently 
 in such astonishing demand as shin plasters and pipe-lights. 
 Their head clerk went, straightway, into the Ghost line of 
 business, and has never given it up. The other clerks found 
 easily and speedily berths in other establishments ; but, 
 malicious people said that the Ghost-clerk knew more about 
 that bundle of bank notes, which was so unaccountably miss- 
 ing, than he chose to aver. He did not give satisfactory 
 information, either, about the shares in several of the com- 
 panies we have enumerated, and no one would employ him ; 
 so he became an accountant, with no accounts to keep ; and 
 an agent, with no agencies. Then he was secretary to that 
 short-lived association, ' The Joint-Stock Pin-Collecting Com- 
 
CITY SPECTEES. 139 
 
 pany.' Then he got into trouble about the subscription for 
 the survivors of the ' Tabitha Jane,' Mauley, master ; his old 
 detractors, with unabated malice, declaring that there never 
 was a * Tabitha Jane/ nor a Mauley, master. He sells corn 
 and coal on commission now not at first-hand ; but for those 
 who are themselves commission agents. He is a broker's 
 * man in possession,' when he can get a job. He does a bit 
 of law writing, a bit of penny-a-lining, a bit of process-serv- 
 ing ; an infinity of those small offices known as * odd jobs.' 
 He picks up a sorry crust by these means, and is to be heard 
 of at the bar of the Black Lion. He is sober; but, upon 
 compulsion, I am afraid. If you give him much beer, he 
 weeps, and tells you of his bygone horse and gig ; of his box 
 at Shooter's Hill ; of his daughter Emily, who had the best of 
 boarding-school educations (and married Clegg, of the Great 
 Detector Insurance Office), and who won't speak to her poor 
 old father, now, sir : of his other daughter, Jenny, who is 
 kind to him ; although she is mated with a dissolute printer, 
 whose relations are continually buying him new founts of type, 
 which he is as continually mortgaging for spirits and tobacco. 
 Poor old Ghost ! Poor old broken-down, spirit- worn hack ! 
 When great houses come toppling down, how many slender 
 balustrades and tottering posts are crushed along with the 
 massive pillars ! 
 
 Here is another Spectre of my acquaintance, who has been 
 a ruined man any time these twenty years ; but is a very 
 joyous and hilarious Ghost, notwithstanding. Though utterly 
 undone, he sits cheerfully down all day on his accustomed 
 bench in the Bengalee walk, beating the devil's tattoo with 
 mirthful despair on the Exchange flags. Bless you, he has 
 thriven on ruin. He lives on it now. Burnt out four times 
 broken both legs bed-ridden wife child scalded to death 
 execution on his poor ' sticks,' at this very moment. He 
 is, you will please observe, no begging-letter writer ; he 
 would scorn the act. You can come round to his ' place ' 
 now, if you like, and judge of his total wreck for yourself ; 
 here is the letter of Alderman Fubson, condoling with him ; 
 and, could you lend him half a crown ? 
 
 Turn round another arcade into the Austro-Sclavonian 
 walk, and sympathise with this melancholy Spectre in the 
 hat pulled over his brows, and the shabby cloak with the 
 mangy fur collar. No clerk, cashier, or stock-broker's assist- 
 ant has he been ; but, in times gone by, a prosperous merchant, 
 
140 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 one who walked on 'Change, rattling his watch-chain ; who 
 quoted prices with a commanding, strident voice ; who awed 
 the waiters at Garraway's, at the Cock, in Threadneedle 
 Street, at the New England, and at the Anti-Gallican ; 
 whose name was down in every charity and on every com- 
 mittee ; who carried a gold snuff-box in his hand, and his 
 gloves and silk handkerchief together with his bank-book, in 
 his hat. He failed ; and his brother allows him a small 
 stipend. His hat is now crammed with the records of defunct 
 transactions ; memoranda of mythical bargains ; bills of lading 
 referring to phantom ships that never were loaded ; old blank 
 bills of exchange, with the name of his firm (when it had a 
 name) curiously flourished thereon in copper-plate ; his 
 former seal of office ; a greasy cheque-book, with nothing but 
 tallies telling of sums long since drawn from his banker's ; 
 bits of sealing-wax ; his bankrupt certificate ; his testimonials 
 of integrity from his brother merchants. These have an 
 abiding place in his pockets. He has a decayed pocket-book, 
 too, bulging out with prospectuses of dead companies full of 
 sound and flourish, signifying nothing. He sits alone, and 
 aloof from his brother Ghosts ; not indulging even in the 
 silent freemasonry of these commercial phantoms. The 
 greatest favour you could do him, would be to send him to 
 get a cheque cashed for you (he is perfectly honest), or to 
 leave a bill for acceptance. The trembling eagerness with 
 which he would present the magic document, and answer the 
 bland inquiry of the cashier as to 'how he would have it;' 
 the delirious semblance of business he would put into the 
 mere act of dropping ' this first of exchange ' into the box 
 appointed to receive it, would be quite affecting. When he 
 is not sitting on 'Change, I can picture him wandering 
 furtively about Lombard Street, peering anxiously through 
 the half-opened doors when customers go in and out ; or 
 sauntering along Cheapside ; glancing with melancholy looks 
 at the forms of bills of lading, charter-parties, and policies of 
 insurance, displayed in the windows of the stationers' shops ; 
 scrutinising the strong-backed ledgers, day-books, and journals, 
 in their brave binding of vellum and red, thinking meanwhile 
 miserable man that their glories are no longer for him ; 
 that he hath done with ink, black, red, and blue ; that ' cash 
 debtor contra creditor/ have no longer music for his 
 ears. In the evening, at the shabby coffee-house where he 
 takes his meal, nought strikes him in yesterday's ' Advertiser/ 
 
CITY SPECTRES. 141 
 
 save the list of bankrupts. In bed he is haunted -ghost as 
 he is by the ghosts of buried hopes, by tipstaffs, by irate 
 Commissioners, and by fiats to which he has neglected to 
 surrender. 
 
 As the late Mr. Rothschild was called the * Pillar of the 
 Exchange/ so seemeth this other old phantom. He has been an 
 Exchange Spectre since ever there were Exchanges or Ghosts 
 at all. He puzzles me. I can weave histories, find genealogies, 
 dovetail circumstances for all the other mysterious Bourse- 
 haunters ; but this silver-haired apparition is a mystery 
 inscrutable. Centuries of commercial ghostliness seem hover 
 ing in the innumerable furrows of his parchment face, in the 
 multitudinous straggling locks of his dull, lustreless white 
 hair. Some garment he has on whether a coat, a cloak, or a 
 gaberdine, I will not be bold enough to say which, reaching 
 from his neck to his heels, allows you to see nothing but his 
 furrowed face, and lean, long hands clasped before him. 
 How long has he haunted the city of London ? Did he linger 
 in Paul's Walk, or in the Roundhouse of the Temple Church 
 in Charles's days, when business, intrigue, and devotion were 
 so curiously mingled in Christian temples : when mounte- 
 banks vended their wares by clustered pillars, and dirty- 
 surpliced choristers pursued jingling cavaliers for ' spur- 
 money?' Was he a City Ghost when ladies in sacks, and 
 gallants in cut velvet and embroidery, came to gamble South 
 Sea shares in 'Change Alley ? Did he haunt 'Change when 
 merchants appeared thereon, who had had their ears cut off 
 by the Spaniards in Honduras : when bargains were made for 
 cash in negro flesh ? Does he remember Lord Mayor Beckford, 
 Fauntleroy, and Rowland Stevenson ? Can he have been the 
 broker for the Poyais Loan ? I should not be surprised to 
 hear that his recollection extended to Alderman Richard 
 Whittington, thrice Lord Mayor of London ; or to that top- 
 ping wine-merchant who * in London did well/ and ' who 
 had but one daughter, he loved very well.' 
 
 City Spectres, like the rest of their order, are, for the most 
 part, silent men. Their main object seems to be to impress 
 the spectator, by the inert force of taciturnity, with an idea 
 of the weighty business they have on hand. A few, however, 
 are talkative ; some, as I know to my sorrow, are garrulous. 
 Woe be unto you if you have ever been in the company of, or 
 have the slightest acquaintance with, the talkative Ghost ! 
 Although, to say the truth, when he wants to talk, he will talk, 
 
142 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 and is not even solicitous of an introduction: he thinks he 
 knows you ; or he knew your father, or he knows your wife's 
 second cousin, or he knows somebody very like you; and, 
 upon the strength of that knowledge, he takes you quietly, 
 but firmly, by the button he holds you in his ' skinny hand ' 
 as tightly as if you were the wedding guest and he the Ancient 
 Mariner ; and, for all that you beat your breast, you cannot 
 choose but hear. You listen like a three-years' child, while 
 this ancient bore speaks on, discoursing of his grievances ; of 
 his losses ; of the * parties ' he knows, or has known ; of his 
 cousin, who, would you believe it, my dear sir? drives 
 into the City every morning in a carriage and pair, with a 
 powdered footman in the rumble. All this, he speaks in a 
 low and earnest, though distressingly rambling, tone ; and his 
 brother Ghosts in the distance as if believing he had really 
 business to transact with you clutch their umbrellas, and bend 
 their dull eyes on both of you with looks of jealous curiosity. 
 
 That substantial Spectre, who holds me in spirit- wearying 
 conversation; who speaks in a low, hoarse, secret kind of 
 voice, with long and bitter words, was an attorney a City 
 attorney in large practice ; and, for some alleged malprac- 
 tices, was struck off the Eolls. He has been a Spectre and a 
 bore ever since. You must hear his case ; you must hear the 
 scandalous, the unheard-of manner in which he has been 
 treated. Head his statement to the public, which the news- 
 papers would not insert ; read his letter to Mr. Justice Bull- 
 wiggle, which that learned functionary never answered ; read 
 his memorial to Lord Viscount Fortyshins, which was an- 
 swered, and that was all. Only wait till he has the means to 
 publish a pamphlet on his case. Meanwhile, read his notes 
 thereupon. . Never mind your appointment at three : what's 
 that to justice ? 
 
 Even as he speaks, a slowly gibbering army of Ghosts who 
 have grievances start before you ; Ghosts with inventions 
 which they can't afford to patent, and which unscrupulous 
 capitalists have pirated; Ghosts who can't get the Prime 
 Minister to listen to their propositions for draining Ireland in 
 three weeks, or for swamping the National Debt in a day ; 
 Ghosts against whose plans of national defence the War 
 Office door has been more than once rudely shut ; Spectres 
 who, like Dogberry, have had losses ; Ghosts who when in 
 the flesh (but they never had much of that) were shrunk and 
 .attenuated, with interminable stories of fraudulent partners ; 
 
CITY SPECTRES. 143 
 
 Ghosts who have long been the victims of fiendish official 
 persecutions : lastly, and in particular, that never-to-be- 
 forgotten and always- to-be-avoided Ghost, who has had a 
 Chancery suit on and off for an incalculable number of years ; 
 who has just been with his lawyers, and is going to file a bill 
 to-morrow. Alas, poor Ghost ! ' Be still, old mole ; there 
 is no hope for thee !' 
 
 There is a genealogical Ghost, eyeing me with devouring 
 looks, that bode no conversational good. He only wants one 
 baptismal certificate to prove that he is somebody's great- 
 great-grandson, and to come into twenty thousand a year. 
 Let him but earn, beg, or borrow a crown, and forthwith in 
 the ' Times ' comes out an advertisement, to parish clerks 
 and others/ There is a sporting Ghost, with a phantom 
 betting-book, who tells you, in a sepulchral voice, of c infor- 
 mation ' about ' Job Pastern's lot ;' and that he can give you 
 a * tip ' for safe odds on such and such an * event.' A Ghost 
 there is, too, in mustachoes, who is called, on the strength of 
 those appendages, 'Captain,' and is supposed to have been 
 embodied in some sort of legion in Spain, at some time or 
 another. 
 
 Talkative or taciturn, however, here these poor spectres 
 sit or loiter during the day, retiring into dark corners when 
 genuine business begins, and the merchants and brokers come 
 on 'Change ; always, and without intermission, seeming to be 
 here, yet prowling by some curious quality of body or spirit 
 in other City haunts ; in Garraway's, and in the Auction 
 Mart ; in small civic coffee-houses and taverns ; in the police - 
 courts of the Mansion House ; in Guildhall and the Custom 
 House. 
 
 In Bartholomew Lane wander another race of perturbed 
 spirits, akin in appearance and mysterious demeanour to the 
 Exchange Spectres ; yet of a somewhat more practical and 
 corporeal order. These are the ' lame ducks ;' men who 
 have once been stock-brokers wealthy ' bulls,' purse-proud 
 4 bears ;' but who, unable to meet certain financial liabilities 
 on a certain settling day, have been compelled to retire who 
 have ' waddled,' as is the slang of Cambists from the parlia- 
 ment of money -brokers. Yet do they linger in the purlieus 
 of the beloved Capel Court, even as the Peri waited at the 
 gates of Paradise : yet do they drive small time bargains 
 with very small jobbers, or traffic in equivocal securities and 
 shares in suspicious companies. They affect the transaction 
 
144 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 of business when they have none to transact; and, tinder 
 cover of consulting the share-list of the day, or the City 
 intelligence in a newspaper, they furtively consume Aber- 
 nethy biscuits and ' Polony ' sausages. 
 
 Once, however, in about five-and-twenty years, do they cast 
 off their slough of semi-inactivity ; once even in that period 
 do the Spectres of the Koyal Exchange start forth into life 
 and action. For, look you, once in every quarter of a cen- 
 tury sometimes more frequently do the men, women, and 
 children run stark, staring, raving, ranting mad. They have 
 a MANIA. Now for gold-digging in American Dorados; now 
 for South Sea fisheries; now for joint-stock companies, for 
 doing everything for everybody ; now for railways ; now for 
 life-assurance. Everybody goes crazed for shares. Lords, 
 ladies, divines, physicians, chimney-sweeps; all howl for 
 shares. They buy, sell, barter, borrow, beg, steal, invent, 
 dream of shares. Bank-notes and prospectuses fly about 
 thick as the leaves in Vallambrosa ; men are no longer mere 
 human beings; but directors, provisional committee-men, 
 auditors and trustees. The MANIA continues, and the SPECTRES 
 arise. They become STAGS. Capel Court resounds with their 
 shrill bargains ; and, the spectre of a moment before stands 
 erect, blatant, defiant, a stag of ten tynes. Away with the 
 appointment with the man who never comes ; away with the 
 delusive commission on corn and coals ; away with the phan- 
 tom bill in the mythical Chancery ; away with the air-drawn 
 entail, and the twenty thousand a year ! Shares, real shares, 
 are what they hunger and thirst for. While orthodox specu- 
 lators sell their shares through their brokers, and at the 
 market price, the bold dealers no longer Spectres, but Stags 
 will sell their letters of allotment for fourpence, or anything, 
 premium (so that it be current coin) per share. They per- 
 sonate directors ; they get up impromptu provisional com- 
 mittees in the tap-room of the Black Lion ; their references 
 are bishops, Queen's counsel, fellows of the Eoyal Society ; 
 their substance sham shares in sham companies. For awhile 
 they are attired in purple and fine linen ; they consume rich 
 viands and choice wines in expensive taverns ; they drive 
 high chariots, and prance on blood-horses. For six weeks 
 they live at the rate of ten thousand a year : they ride the 
 whirlwind of Fortune ! But after a storm comes rain ; and 
 after a mania, a panic ! Then comes a run on the banking- 
 houses ; consternation darkens Capel Court ; ruin is rampant 
 
HOUSELESS AND HUNGRY. 145 
 
 on 'Change. And, as I speak, the old Ghosts come creeping 
 back to the old benches, and begin listlessly to wait for the 
 man so punctual in his unpunctuality. The hats are more 
 crammed with papers, the rusty pocket-books more plethoric, 
 the pockets more loaded, the button-holding talks are resumed 
 as earnestly and as lengthily as ever ; yet the flesh and blood 
 of Staghood have departed, and the figures crouching on 
 'Change, and growling about Capel Court, are no longer men, 
 but City Spectres. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 HOUSELESS AND HUNGRY. 
 
 IN the city of London, in two contiguous thoroughfares the 
 shabbiest, dingiest, poorest of their class there are two 
 Houses of Poverty. To the first, entrance is involuntary, 
 and residence in it compulsory. You are brought there by a 
 catchpole, and kept there under lock and key until your 
 creditors are paid, or till you have suffered the purgatory of 
 an Insolvent Court remand. This house is the Debtors' 
 Prison of Whitecross Street. I know it. I have seen the 
 mysteries of the Middlesex side, and have heard the lamenting 
 in the Poultry Ward. Its stones have sermons ; but it was 
 not to hear them that I travelled, one gloomy winter evening, 
 Cripplegate Ward. My business in Whitecross Street was of 
 no debtor or creditor nature ; for I was there to visit another 
 house of poverty, the asylum of the Society for affording 
 Nightly Shelter to the Houseless. 
 
 Let me, in the first instance, state briefly what this Society 
 professes to do. The manner in which it is done will form a 
 subject for after-description. ' It is the peculiar object and 
 principle of this charity ' (I quote the Report), ' to afford 
 nightly shelter and assistance to those who are really house- 
 less and destitute during inclement winter seasons, and the 
 occasional suspension of out-door work, in consequence of the 
 rigour of the weather. To fulfil this intention, it is provided 
 that an asylum shall be open and available at all hours of the 
 night, without the need, on the part of the applicant, of a 
 ticket, or any other passport or plea but his or her own state- 
 ment of helpless necessity.' The relief afforded is limited to 
 bread in a sufficient quantity to sustain nature, warm shelter,. 
 
146 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 and the means of rest. Thus, little inducement is offered to 
 those removed in the slightest degree from utter destitution, 
 to avail themselves of the shelter for the sake of the food. 
 But, in all cases of inanition or debility from exhaustion or 
 fatigue, appropriate restoratives, such as gruel, wine, brandy, 
 soup, and medicine, are administered under medical super- 
 intendence. * Many have been thus rescued/ says the Eeport, 
 'from the grasp of death/ 
 
 I have two friends who do not approve of institutions on 
 the principle stated above. My good friend Pragmos objects 
 to them as useless. He proves to me by figures, by tables, 
 by reports from perspicacious commissioners, that there is no 
 need of any destitution in London ; and that, statistically, 
 tabularly, honourable-boardically-speaking, there is no destitu- 
 tion at all. How can there be any destitution with your out- 
 door relief, and your in-door relief, your workhouse test, 
 relieving officers, and your casual ward? Besides, there is 
 employment for all. There are hospitals and infirmaries for 
 the sick, workhouse infirmaries for the infirm. Prosperity, 
 the war notwithstanding, is continually increasing. None 
 but the idle and the dissolute need be houseless and hungry. 
 If they are, they have the union to apply to ; and, conse- 
 quently, asylums for the houseless serve no beneficial end ; 
 divert the stream of charitable donations from its legitimate 
 channels ; foster idleness and vice, and parade, before the 
 eyes of the public, a misery that does not exist. 
 
 So far Pragmos. He is not hard-hearted ; but simply, 
 calmly conscious (through faith in Arabic numerals, and in 
 the Ninety-ninth Keport of the Poor Law Commissioners) that 
 destitution cannot be. But, he has scarcely finished quoting 
 schedule D, when my other and sprightlier friend, Sharplynx, 
 takes me to task, humorously, jocularly. He rallies me. 
 ' Destitution, my boy,' says Sharplynx, familiarly, ' gammon ! 
 How can you, a shrewd man of the world ' (I blush), * an old 
 stager ' (1 bow), ' be taken in by such transparent humbug ? 
 Haven't you read the " Times?" Haven't you read the " Jolly 
 Beggars ?" Did you never hear of cadgers, silver-beggars, 
 shallow-coves ? Why, sir, that fellow in rags, with the imita- 
 tion paralysis, who goes shivering along, will have veal for 
 supper to-night : the kidney end of the loin, with stuffing, 
 and a lemon squeezed over it. That woman on the door- 
 step has hired the two puny children at fourpence a day; 
 and she will have a pint and a half of gin before she goes to 
 
HOUSELESS AND HUNGRY. 147 
 
 bed. That seemingly hectic fever flush is red paint ; those 
 tremblings are counterfeit ; that quiet, hopeless, silent resig- 
 nation is a dodge. Don't talk to me of being houseless and 
 hungry ! The impostors who pretend to be so, carouse in 
 night cellars. They have turkey and sausages, roast pork, 
 hot punch, paramours, packs of cards, and roaring songs. 
 Houseless, indeed ! 2d give 'em a night's lodgingin the 
 station-house, and send 'em to the treadmill in the morning.' 
 Whereupon Sharplynx departs, muttering something about 
 the good old times, and the stocks, and the whipping-post. 
 
 So they go their separate ways Pragmos and Sharplynx 
 yet I cannot blame either of them. It is but the old story of 
 the many punished for the faults of a few. You, I, thousands 
 are coerced, stinted in our enjoyments, comforts, amusements, 
 liberties, rights, and are defamed and vilified as drunkards 
 and ruffians, because one bull-necked, thick-lipped, scowling 
 beast of a fellow drinks himself mad with alcohol, beats his 
 wife, breaks windows, and roams about Drury Lane with a 
 life-preserver. Thousands whose only crime it is to have no 
 money, no friends, no clothes, no place of refuge equal even 
 to the holes that the foxes have in God's wide world see the 
 hand of charity closed, and the door of mercy shut, because 
 Alice Grey is an impostor, and Bamfylde Moore Carew a cheat ; 
 and because there have been such places as the Cour des 
 Miracles, and Eats' Castle. ' Go there and be merry, you 
 rogue !' says Mr. Sharplynx, facetiously. So the destitute go 
 into the streets, and die. They do die, although you may 
 continue talking and tabulating till Doomsday. I grant the 
 workhouses, relieving officers, hospitals, infirmaries, station- 
 houses, boards, minutes, and schedules, the Mendicity Society, 
 and the Guildhall Solomons. But I stand with Galileo : 
 Si muow I and asseverate that, in the City paved with gold, 
 there are people who are destitute, and die on door-steps, in 
 the streets, on staircases, under dark arches, in ditches, and 
 under the lees of walls. The police know it. Some day, 
 perhaps, the Government will condescend to know it too, 
 and instruct a gentleman at a thousand a year to see abcut it. 
 
 Thinking of Pragmos and Sharplynx, I walked last Tuesday 
 evening through Smithfield and up Barbican. It is a very 
 dreary journey at the best of times ; but, on a raw February 
 night with the weather just hesitating between an iron frost 
 and a drizzling thaw,jind, not making up its mind on either 
 subject, treating you W a touch of both alternately the over- 
 
 L 2 
 
148 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 land route to Whitecross Street is simply wretched. The 
 whole neighbourhood is pervaded with a miasina of grinding, 
 unwholesome, sullen, and often vicious poverty. Everything 
 is cheap and nasty, and the sellers seem as poor as the buyers. 
 There are shops whose stock in trade is not worth half a 
 dozen shillings. There are passers-by, the whole of whose 
 apparel would certainly be dear at ninepence. Chandlers' 
 shops, marine-stores, pawn-shops, and public-houses, occur 
 over and over again in sickening repetition. There is a 
 frowsy blight on the window-panes and the gas-lamps. The 
 bread is all seconds ; the butchers'-shops, with their flaring 
 gas-jets, expose nothing but scraps and bony pieces of meat. 
 Inferior greengrocery in baskets chokes up the pathway ; but 
 it looks so bad that it would be a pity to rescue it from its 
 neighbour the gutter, and its legitimate proprietors the pigs. 
 The air is tainted with exhalations from rank tobacco, stale 
 herrings, old clothes, and workshops of noxious trades. The 
 parish coffin passes you ; the policeman passes you, dull and 
 dingy quite another policeman compared to the smart 
 ArGT. The raw night-breeze wafts to your ears oaths, 
 and the crying of rotten merchandise, and the wailing of 
 neglected children, and choruses of ribald songs. Every cab 
 you see blocked up between a costermonger's barrow and a 
 Pickford's van, appears to you to be conveying some miserable 
 debtor to prison. 
 
 Struggling, as well as I could, through all this squalid life, 
 slipping on the greasy pavement, and often jostled oif it, I 
 came at last upon Whitecross Street, and dived (for that is 
 about the only way you can enter it) into a forlorn, muddy, 
 dimly-lighted thoroughfare, which was the bourne of my 
 travels Playhouse Yard. I have not Mr. Peter Cunning- 
 ham at hand, and am not sufficient antiquary to tell when 
 or whereabouts the playhouse existed in this sorry place. It 
 is but a melancholy drama enacted here now, Heaven knows ! 
 
 I was not long in finding out the Eefuge. About half-way 
 up the yard hung out a lamp with a wire screen over it, and 
 the name of the asylum painted upon it. I made my way to 
 an open doorway, whence issued a stream of light ; and 
 before which were ranged, in a widish semicircle, a crowd 
 of cowering creatures, men, women, and children, who were 
 patiently awaiting their turn of entrance. This was the door 
 to the House of Poverty. 
 
 I need not say that the object of iny visit was promptly 
 
HOUSELESS AND HUNGRY. 149 
 
 understood by those in authority, and that every facility was 
 afforded me of seeing the simple system of relief at work. It 
 was not much in a sight-seeing point of view, that the Society's 
 officers had to show me. They had no pet prisoners; no 
 steam-cooking apparatus ; no luxurious baths ; no corrugated 
 iron laundry ; no vaulted passages, nor octagonal court-yards 
 gleaming with whitewash and dazzling brass-work; no ex- 
 quisite cells fitted up with lavatories and cupboards, and con- 
 veniences of the latest patent invention. Everything was, on 
 the contrary, of the simplest and roughest nature ; yet every- 
 thing seemed to me to answer admirably the purpose for 
 which it was designed. 
 
 I entered, first, an office, where there were some huge 
 baskets filled with pieces of bread ; and where an official sat 
 at a desk, registering, in a ledger, the applicants for admission 
 as they presented themselves for examination at the half-door, 
 or bar. They came up one by one, in alternate sexes, as 
 they had been summoned from the semicircle outside. Now 
 it was a young sailor-boy in a Guernsey frock ; now a travel- 
 stained agricultural labourer ; now a wan artisan ; now a 
 weary ragged woman with a troop of children ; now, most 
 pitiable spectacle of all, some woe-begone, shrinking needle- 
 woman young, but a hundred years old in misery comely, 
 but absolutely seamed and scarred and macerated by famine. 
 The answers were almost identical : They had come up from 
 the country in search of work ; or they were London bred, 
 and could not obtain work ; or the Union was full, and they 
 could not get admission ; or they had no money ; or they had 
 had nothing to eat ; or they did not know where else to go. 
 All this was said not volubly ; not entreatingly ; and with 
 no ejaculations or complaints, and with few additions ; but 
 wearily, curtly, almost reluctantly. What had they to tell ? 
 What beyond a name, a date, a place, was necessary to be 
 extracted from them ? In their dismal attire, in their death- 
 like voices, in their awful faces, there was mute eloquence 
 enough to fill five hundred ledgers such as the one on the 
 desk. I am no professed physiognomist. I believe I have 
 sufficient knowledge of the street- world to tell a professional 
 beggar from a starving man ; but I declare I saw no face that 
 night passing the hatch but in which I could read : Eagged 
 and Tired Dead Beat Utterly Destitute Houseless and 
 Hungry. The official took down each applicant's name, age, 
 and birthplace ; where he had .slept the night before ; what 
 
150 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 was his vocation ; what the cause of his coming there. The 
 ledger was divided into columns for the purpose. I looked 
 over it. To the causes for application there was one unvary- 
 ing answer Destitution. In the ' Where slept the previous 
 night ?' the answers ran : St. Luke's ; Whitechapel ; in the 
 streets ; Stepney ; in the streets, in the streets, and in the 
 streets again and again, till I grew sick. Many men are 
 liars, we know; and among the five hundred destitute 
 wretches that are nightly sheltered in this place there may 
 be I will not attempt to dispute it a per-centage of im- 
 postors ; a few whose own misconduct and improvidence 
 have driven them to the wretchedest straits ; yet, I will back 
 that grim ledger to contain some thousand more truths than 
 are told in a whole library of Eeports of Parliamentary Com- 
 mittees. 
 
 There was a lull in the admissions, and I was inquiring 
 about the Irish, when the official told the doorkeeper to ' call 
 the first female.' By luck, the i first female' was Irish her- 
 self. She was a very little woman, with the smallest bonnet 
 I ever saw. It was, positively, nothing more than a black 
 patch on the back of her head, and the frayed ends were 
 pulled desperately forward towards her chin, showing her 
 ears through a ragged trellis-work. As to her dress, it looked 
 as if some cunning spinner had manufactured a textile fabric 
 out of mud ; or, as if dirt could be darned and patched. I 
 did not see her feet ; but I heard a flapping on the floor as 
 she moved, and guessed what sort of shoes she must have 
 worn. She was the sort of little woman who ought to have 
 had a round, rosy, dumpling face and she had two bead- 
 like black eyes ; but face and eyes were all crushed and 
 battered by want and exposure. Her very skin was in rags. 
 The poor little woman did nothing but make faces, which 
 would have been ludicrous, if in the connection of what 
 surrounded and covered her, and her own valiant deter- 
 mination not to cry they had not been heartrending. Yes ; 
 she was Irish (she said this apologetically) ; but, she had 
 been a long time in Liverpool. Her husband had run away 
 and left her. She had no children. She could have borne it 
 better, she said, if she had. She had slept one night before 
 in the ' Institution ' (she prided herself a little on this word, 
 and used it pretty frequently), but she had been ashamed to 
 come there again, and had slept one night in the workhouse 
 and three nights in the streets. The superintendent spoke to 
 
HOUSELESS AND HUNGRY. 151 
 
 her kindly, and told her she could be sheltered in the Refuge 
 for a night or two longer; and that then, the best thing she 
 could do would be to make her way to Liverpool again. 
 ' But I can't walk it, indeed,' cried the little woman ; * I 
 shall never be able to walk it. 0, dear ! O, dear !' The 
 valorously screwed-up face broke down all at once ; and, as 
 she went away with her ticket, I heard her flapping feet and 
 meek sobs echoing through the corridor. She did not press 
 her story on us. She did not whine for sympathy. She 
 seemed ashamed of her grief. Was this little woman a hum- 
 bug, I wonder? 
 
 A long lank man in black mud came up afterwards ; whose 
 looks seemed fluttering between the unmistakeable ' ragged 
 and tired ' and an ominous * ragged and desperate.' I shall 
 never forget his hands as he held them across on the door- 
 sill long, emaciated, bony slices of integument and bone. 
 They were just the hands a man might do some mischief to 
 himself or some one else with, and be sorry for. I shall 
 never forget, either, the rapt eager gaze with which he re- 
 garded, almost devoured, the fire in the office grate. He 
 answered the questions addressed to him, as it were me- 
 chanically, and without looking at his interlocutor ; his 
 whole attention, wishes, thoughts, being centred in the blaz- 
 ing coals. He seemed to hug himself in the prospective 
 enjoyment of the warmth; to be greedy of it. Better the 
 fire there, than the water of the dark cold river. I was not 
 sorry when he received his ticket ; and, looking over his 
 shoulder at the fire, went shuffling away. He frightened me. 
 
 I was informed by the superintendent (a frank-spoken 
 military man, who had lost a leg in the Caifre war), that, as a 
 rule, the duration of the shelter extended by the Society is 
 limited to three nights to Londoners, and to seven nights to 
 country people. In special cases, however, special excep- 
 tions are made ; and every disposition is shown to strain a 
 point in favour of those weary wanderers, and to bear with 
 them, as far as is consistent with justice to others. A ration 
 of eight ounces of bread is given to each admitted person on 
 entrance, another ration when they leave between eight and 
 nine the next morning. 
 
 Accompanied by the secretary and the superintendent, I 
 was now shown the dormitories. We visited the men's side 
 first. Passing a range of lavatories, where each inmate is 
 required to wash his face, neck, and arms hot water being 
 
152 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 provided for the purpose we ascended a wooden staircase, 
 and came into a 'range of long, lofty, barn-like rooms, divided 
 into sections by wooden pillars. An immense stove was in 
 the centre, fenced in with stakes ; and, in its lurid hospitable 
 light, I could fancy the man in black and some score more 
 brothers in misery, greedily basking. Eanged on either side 
 were long rows of bed-places, trough-like, grave-like, each 
 holding one sleeper. In the early days of the Society (it has 
 been in existence for more than thirty years) the inmates 
 slept on straw ; but, as this was found to possess many draw- 
 backs to health, cleanliness, and to offer danger from fire, 
 mattresses stuffed with hay and covered with waterproofing, 
 which can be washed and aired with facility, have been sub- 
 stituted. Instead of blankets, which harbour vermin and are 
 besides less durable, there are ample coverlets of Basil lea- 
 ther, warm and substantial. With these ; with the ration of 
 bread; with genial warmth, the objects sought for are at- 
 tained. It is not an hotel that is required. The slightest 
 modicum of luxury would corroborate Pragmos, and be an 
 encouragement to the worthless, the idle, and the depraved. 
 The Eefuge competes with no lodging-house, no thieves' 
 kitchen, no tramps' boozing-cellar ; but it is a place for a 
 dire corporeal necessity to be ministered to, by the simplest 
 corporeal requisites. A roof to shelter, a bed to lie on, a 
 fire to warm, a crust to eat these are offered to those who 
 have literally nothing. 
 
 By the flickering gas, which is kept burning all night, I 
 stood with my back to one of the wooden pillars, and looked 
 at this sad scene. The bed-places were rapidly filling. 
 Many of the tired-out wayfarers had already sunk into sleep ; 
 others were sitting up in bed mending their poor rags ; many 
 lay awake, but perfectly mute and quiescent. As far as the 
 eye could reach, almost, there were more ranges of troughs, 
 more reclining heaps of rags. I shifted my position ner- 
 vously as I found myself within range, wherever I turned, of 
 innumerable eyes, eyes calm, fixed, brooding, hopeless. 
 Who has not had this feeling, while walking through an 
 hospital, a lunatic asylum, a prison ? The eyes are upon you, 
 you know, gazing sternly, moodily, reproachfully. You feel 
 almost as if you were an intruder. You are not the doctor to 
 heal, the priest to console, the Lady Bountiful to relieve. 
 What right have you to be there, taking stock of human 
 miseries, and jotting down sighs and tears in your note-book? 
 
HOUSELESS AND HUNGRY. 153 
 
 I found the surgeon at a desk by the fire. He had just 
 been called in to a bad case ; one that happened pretty fre- 
 quently, though. The miserable case was just being sup- 
 ported from a bench to his bed. He had come in, and had 
 been taken very ill ; not with cholera, or fever, or dysentery, 
 but with the disease my friend, Sharplynx, won't believe in 
 Starvation. He was simply at death's door with inanition 
 and exhaustion. Drunk with hunger, surfeited with cold, 
 faint with fatigue. He did not require amputation nor cup- 
 ping, quinine, colchicum, nor sarsaparilla ; he merely wanted 
 a little brandy and gruel, some warmth, some supper, and a 
 bed. The cost price of all these did not probably amount to 
 more than sixpence ; yet, curiously, for want of that six- 
 pennyworth of nutriment and rest, there might have been a 
 bill on the police-station door to-morrow, beginning, * Dead 
 Body Found.' 
 
 I asked the surgeon if such cases occurred often. They 
 did, he said : Whether they ever ended fatally ? Occasion- 
 ally. Only the other night a man was brought in by a police 
 sergeant, who had found him being quietly starved to death 
 behind a cart. He was a tall, athletic-looking man enough, 
 and was very sick. While the sergeant was stating his case, 
 he suddenly fell forward on the floor dead ! He was not 
 diseased, only starved. 
 
 Seeking for information as to the general demeanour of the 
 inmates, I was told that good conduct was the rule, disorderly 
 or refractory proceedings the exception. ' If you were here 
 at eight o'clock, sir/ said the superintendent (it was now 
 half-past seven), ' you wouldn't hear a pin drop. Poor crea- 
 tures ! they are too tired to make a disturbance. The boys, 
 to be sure, have a little chat to themselves ; but they are 
 easily quieted. When, once in a way, we have a disorderly 
 character, we turn him out, and there is an end of it.' I was 
 told, moreover, that almost anything could be done with this 
 motley colony by kind and temperate language, and that they 
 expressed, and appeared to feel, sincere gratitude for the 
 succour afforded to them. They seldom made friends among 
 their companions, the superintendent said. They came, and 
 ate, and warmed themselves, and went on their way in the 
 morning, alone. There is a depth of misery too great for 
 companionship. 
 
 Touching the boys, those juveniles were relegated to a plan- 
 tation of troughs by themselves, where they were plunging 
 
154 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 and tumbling about in the usual manner of town-nursed 
 Bedouins. I learnt that the Institution to use a familiar 
 expression rather fought shy of boys. Boys are inclined to 
 be troublesome ; and, whenever it is practicable, they are 
 sent to the ragged-school dormitaries, where, my guide said, 
 * they make them go to school before they go to bed, 
 which they don't like at all.' More than this, some parents, 
 to save themselves the trouble of providing supper and bed- 
 ding for their children, will send one or more of them to 
 the Eefuge ; and, where space is so vitally valuable, the in- 
 troduction of even one interloper is a thing to be carefully 
 prevented. 
 
 The Eefuge is open after five in the evening, and a porter 
 is on duty all night for the admission of urgent cases. The 
 fires and gas are also kept burning throughout the night, and 
 a male and female superintendent sit up, in case of need. 
 Those who have been in the Eefuge on Saturday night, have 
 the privilege of remaining in the Institution during the whole 
 of Sunday. They have an extra ration of bread and three 
 ounces of cheese, and divine service is performed in the 
 morning and afternoon. There are many Sabbaths kept in 
 London : the Vinegar Sabbath, the Velvet and Satin Sabbath, 
 the Eed Hot Poker Sabbath, the carriage-and pair Sabbath, 
 the gloomily-lazy Sabbath, the pipe-and-pot Sabbath ; but I 
 doubt if any can equal the Sabbath passed in this wretched 
 Playhouse Yard, as a true Sabbath of rest, and peace, and 
 mercy. 
 
 We went up, after this, to the women's wards. The arrange- 
 ments were identical with those of the men ; save, that one 
 room is devoted to women with families, where the partitions 
 between the troughs had been taken away that the children 
 might lie with their mothers. We passed between the ranges 
 of bed-places ; noticing that the same mournful, weary, wake- 
 ful silence, was almost invariable, though not, I was told, 
 compulsory. The only prohibition and safety requires this 
 is against smoking. Now and then, a gaunt girl, with her 
 black hair hanging about her face, would rise up in her bed 
 to stare at us ; now and then, some tattered form amongst those 
 who were sitting there till the ward below was ready for 
 their reception, would rise from the bench and drop us a 
 curtsey ; but the general stillness was pervading and unvary- 
 ing. A comely matron bustled about noiselessly with her 
 assistant, who was a strange figure among all these rags, 
 
HOUSELESS AND HUNGRY. 155 
 
 being a pretty girl in ringlets and ribbons. One seemed to 
 have forgotten, here, that such a being could be in exisstn 
 I spoke to some of the women on the benches. It was the 
 same old story. Needle-work at miserable prices, inability 
 to pay the two-penny rent of a lodging, no friends, utter 
 destitution; this, or death. There were a few and this 
 class I heard was daily increasing who were the wives of 
 soldiers in the Militia, or of men in the Land Transport and 
 Army Works Corps. Their husbands had been ordered away ;* 
 they had no claim upon the regular Military Relief Associa- 
 tion, they had received no portion of their husbands' pay 
 and they were houseless and hungry. 
 
 I stopped long to look down into the room where the women 
 and children were. There they lay, God help them ! head to 
 heel, transversely, anyhow for warmth; nestling, crouching 
 under the coverlets ; at times feebly wailing. Looking down 
 upon this solemn, silent, awful scene made you shudder; 
 made you question by what right you were standing up, 
 warm, prosperous, well-fed, well-clad, with these destitute 
 creatures, your brothers and sisters, who had no better food 
 and lodging than this ? But for the absence of marble floors 
 and tanks, the place might be some kennel for hounds ; but 
 for the rags and the eyes, these might be sheep in the pens 
 in Smithfield Market. 
 
 I went down stairs at last ; for there was no more to see. 
 Conversing further with the secretary, I gleaned that the 
 average number of destitute persons admitted nightly is five 
 hundred and fifty; but that as many as six hundred have 
 been accommodated. Looking at the balance-sheet of the 
 Society, I found the total expense of the asylum (exclusive 
 of rent) was less than one thousand pounds. 
 
 A thousand pounds ! we blow it away in gunpowder ; we 
 spend it upon diplomatic fools' caps ; we give it every month 
 in the year to right honourable noblemen for doing nothing, 
 or for spoiling what ordinary men of business would do 
 better. A thousand pounds! It would not pay a deputy- 
 sergeant-at-arms ; it would scarcely be a retiring pension for 
 an assistant prothonotary. A thousand pounds! Deputy- 
 chaff- wax would have spurned it, if offered as compensation 
 for loss of office. A thousand pounds ! the sum jarred upon 
 my ear, as I walked back through Smithfield. At least, for 
 
 * This paper was written during the Crimean war-time. 
 
156 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 their ten hundred pounds, the Society for Sheltering the 
 Houseless save some hundred of human lives a year. 
 
 I abide by the assertion, that men and women die nightly 
 in our golden streets, because they have no bread to put into 
 their miserable mouths, no roofs to shelter their wretched 
 heads. It is no less a God-known, man-neglected fact, that in 
 any state of society in which such things can be, there must 
 be something essentially bad and rotten. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 THE SECRETS OF THE GAS. 
 
 THE Gas has its "secrets, and I happen to know them. The 
 Gas has a voice, and I can hear it a voice beyond the rush- 
 ing whistle in the pipe, and the dull buzzing flare in the 
 burner. It speaks, actively, to men and women of what is, 
 and of what is done and suiiered by night and by day ; and 
 though it often crieth like Wisdom in the streets and no 
 man regardeth it, there are, and shall be some to listen 
 to its experiences, hearken to its counsels, and profit by its 
 lessons. 
 
 I know the secrets of the gas, but not all of them. Some 
 secrets it has, which are hidden by land, and stream, and sea 
 by accident, position, and authority even from my sight, 
 but not from my ken. The gas has its secrets in palaces, on 
 whose trebly-piled carpets my plebeian feet can never tread. 
 It may be burning now,* to the heavy blow and great dis- 
 couragement of bearded and sheep-skinned purveyors of 
 tallow and lamp-oil burning in an Ural gilt candelabrum, 
 chastely decorated with double eagles in the den the private 
 cabinet, I mean of some grim bear or autocrat, who lies not 
 amidst bones and blood, far away with the weeds and shells 
 at the bottom of the Inner Sea, but lies amidst protocols and 
 diplomatic notes unlighted fusees to the shells of destruction. 
 That gas may be shining on minims and breves of Te Deums, 
 fresh scored and annotated in appropriate red ink to be sung 
 by all orthodox believers, when the heretical fleets of the 
 West shall have followed the Moslem three-deckers to their 
 grave in Sinope Bay. That gas may be flickering now who 
 
 * Temp. Bell. Taurid. Scrip. 
 
THE SECKETS OF THE GAS. 157 
 
 knows ? in the lambent eyes of some tyrant as he peers 
 greedily over the map of Europe, and settles in his own mind 
 where in England this Off shall eat his first candle, or where 
 in France that Owsky shall apply the knout. Permeating in 
 pipes beneath the well-drilled feet of thousands of orthodox 
 serfs, this same gas may be glimmering in the lamps of the 
 Nevskoi Prospekt, and twinkling in the bureau of the Director 
 of Secret Police as he prepares pass-tickets for Siberia, or 
 cancels them for bribes of greasy rouble notes ; it may be 
 glowering at the Moscow railway station, as thousands of 
 human hundred-weight of great-coated food for powder, leave 
 by late or early trains for the frontier ; it may be illumining 
 the scared and haggard face of the incendiary when, on the 
 map he is scanning, the names of the countries he lusts to 
 seize, turn to letters of blood and dust, and tell him (as the 
 handwriting told Belshazzar) that the Medes and Persians 
 are at his gate, and that his kingdom is given to another. I 
 say, this gas, with the glowing charcoal in the stove, and the 
 ceremonial wax candles on the malachite mantelpiece, may be 
 the only spectator of the rage in his eyes, and the despair 
 in his heart, and the madness in his brain. Though, perhaps, 
 he burns no gas in his private cabinet after all, and adheres to 
 the same orthodox tallow fat and train oil, by the light of 
 which Peter plied his adze, Catherine plundered Poland, Paul 
 was strangled, and Alexander was poisoned ! 
 
 The gas may have its secrets unknown to me (now that 
 English engineering has been favoured with the high privi- 
 lege of illumining the Eternal City), in the strong casemates 
 of the Castle of St. Angelo. Yes, may derive deeper shadows 
 from it ; and it may light up tawny parchments with heavy 
 seals, which attest that the Holy Office is yet a little more 
 than a name. There is gas in Venice ; every tourist has had 
 his passport examined by its light ; and who shall say that 
 the gas has not its secrets in the Palace of the Doges ; that it 
 burns not in gloomy corridor, and on stone winding staircase, 
 lighting some imperial gaoler in his tour of inspection ; or 
 that by its unpitying light some wretched prisoner who has 
 dared to violate the imperio-regal Lombardo- Venetian edicts 
 by thinking, or speaking, or writing, in the manner of one who 
 walks on two legs instead of four, is not brought forth to have 
 some state secret (which he knows nothing of) extorted from 
 him by the imperial and royal stick. Eoyal Neapolitan gene- 
 rosity may yet permit some streaks of prison gas to penetrate 
 
158 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 into the Sicilian dens where gentlemen are chained to felons, 
 to show them the brightness of their fetters, and the filthiness 
 of the floor, and the shadow of the sentry's bayonet through 
 the heavy bars outside. Mighty secrets, dread secrets, dead 
 secrets, may the gas have, abroad and at home. Strange 
 stories could the dark lantern of old have told the lantern 
 by the light of which Fawkes laid his train, an I D'Enghien 
 was led into the ditch of Vincennes to be shot, and Pichegru 
 was murdered, and Fletcher Christian whispered with John 
 Adams ; but the light of the lantern pales before the mystery 
 of the gas. The gas saw the blood that was brought from the 
 shambles and smeared over the pavement of the Paris Boule- 
 vards the blood on which, next day, the dynasty of Orleans 
 stumbled and came headlong down to ruin and death. The 
 gas shone broadly, brightly, in hall and corridor and ante- 
 chamber of the Elysee on the eve of the second of December. 
 It penetrated into an inner chamber where one silent man 
 sat, his feet on the fender, smoking a cigar, who to fears and 
 questions, and remonstrances, and doubts, and counsels, had 
 but this one answer, ' Qu'on execute mes ordres /' The same 
 gas saw those orders obeyed as the stealthy hackney-coaches 
 went about with the stealthier Commissaries of Police 3 to 
 kidnap the representatives and generals. I remember passing 
 the Palace of the Elysees on the night of the third of Decem- 
 ber, and seeing the courtyard and windows of this palace of 
 successful power, one blaze of gas blazing on the green 
 liveries of the lacqueys, and the uniforms of the aides-de- 
 camp, and the hands and faces of the soldiers hardly yet 
 cleansed from blood and gunpowder. What secrets that gas 
 of the Kue St. Honor e the same starting from the pert little 
 Cupids quivering in the bonnet-shop opposite must have 
 been a trusty listener to, within those three December nights ! 
 If any man doubt the secrets of the gas, not only abroad but 
 at home not only supposititious and probable but actual 
 let him remember that recent miserable inquiry into the 
 cruelties and tyrannies of some of our vaunted philanthropy- 
 purified English gaols. Let him remember among the list of 
 wretches tied to walls, and strapped to railings, and whipped, 
 and half throttled with collars, let him remember those who 
 as the official memorandum ran were to be ' deprived of 
 their bed and gas.' Bless you, the gas heard all these things 
 while the good Birmingham people (may there never be 
 worse people in England!) slept soundly. The gas knew how 
 
THE SECRETS OF THE GAS. 159 
 
 many turns of the crank prisoner No. 50 was short ; of how 
 many meals 51 had been mulcted ; how many lashes epi- 
 leptic 52 was to receive ; how often 54 was to be deprived of 
 his bed and gas ! 
 
 As I walk about the streets by night, endless and always 
 suggestive intercommunings take place between me and the 
 trusty, silent, ever-watchful gas, whose secrets I know. In 
 broad long streets where the vista of lamps stretches far far 
 away into almost endless perspective ; in courts and alleys, 
 dark by day but lighted up at night by this incorruptible 
 tell-tale ; on the bridges ; in the deserted parks ; on wharfs 
 and quays ; in dreary suburban roads ; in the halls of public 
 buildings ; in the windows of late-hour-keeping houses and 
 offices, there is my gas bright, silent, and secret. Gas to 
 teach me ; gas to counsel me ; gas to guide my footsteps, not 
 over London flags, but through the crooked ways of unseen 
 life and death, of the doings of the great Unknown, of the 
 cries of the great Unheard. He who will bend himself to 
 listen to, and avail himself, of these crets of the gas, may walk 
 through London streets proud in the consciousness of being 
 an Inspector in the great police force of philosophy and of 
 carrying a perpetual bull's-eye in his belt. Like his muni- 
 cipal brother, he may perambulate the one-half world, while 
 
 ' Nature seems dark, and wicked dreams abuse 
 The curtain' d sleep/ 
 
 Not a bolt or bar, not a lock or fastening, not a houseless 
 night- wanderer, not a homeless dog, shall escape that search- 
 ing ray of light which the gas shall lend him, to see and to 
 know. 
 
 The gas on the river. Has it no secrets to tell there ? On 
 bridge after bridge, the long rows of lamps mirror themselves 
 in the dark, still pool of the silent highway, and penetrate 
 like arrows into the bosom secrets of the Thames. The gas 
 knows of the ancient logs of timber, It and Wisdom only 
 know how many centuries old, strong and seasoned in their 
 gray rottenness, the logs which the bargemen and lightermen of 
 Erith and Greenhithe bring home for fuel, or for garden-fences, 
 and which, for aught we know, may have been in dead ages 
 remnants of Danish ships, of Roman galleys, of the primitive 
 skiffs of the old Britons, maybe. Down beneath, where the 
 glittering arrow of the gas points, there may be shields, and 
 arrows, and collars of barbaric gold. There may be the 
 
160 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 drinking-cup of Vortigern, the crown of Canute, the golden 
 bracelets that Alfred hung up on the highways, the rings of 
 Koman knights, and the swords of the Consuls, the amulets 
 of the Druids, and the jewels of the Saxon kings. The gas 
 knows of shoals which the cunningest harbour-masters, the 
 best conservators of the river, and the mightiest hydrographers, 
 cannot point out. The gas knows the weak points of the 
 tunnel ; and where the waters broke in years ago, and where 
 they may break in again. Down where the gas points, may 
 be the bones of men and women drowned before our great 
 grandsires were born. There, may be Henry the Fourth, 
 flung coffin and all from the boat in which his remains were 
 being conveyed for sepulture. There, may be sailors slain in 
 sudden broils on board ship, and flung into the river. There, 
 may be bodies of men murdered by river pirates, plundered 
 by longshore-men and lighthouse-men, and thrown from boats 
 with heavy weights tied to them, into the pit where the water 
 and the gas tell no tales. There, may be mangled corpses 
 brought by assassins on horseback, as Caesar Borgia brought 
 his brother the Duke of Gandia, to the Tiber, and thrown 
 into the dull plashing stream, with stones in their cloaks to 
 make them sink. There, may be dead men, drowned in step- 
 ping from one ship to another, or who have slipped off planks, 
 drunk, or fallen from mast-heads, or who have leaped into the 
 river to escape press-gangs, or robbers, or river policemen. 
 There, may be 6 run ' cargoes of contraband goods, tobacco, 
 fiery spirits, rich silk or delicate lace ; there, may be bales of 
 goods plundered by fresh-water thieves from foreign ships, 
 and sunk by bullets and iron weights until the time shall 
 serve for fishing them up again. There, may be the suicide 
 of yesterday ; the wayward boy, once the pride and hope of 
 the family ; the girl, once loved and prized ; the ruined 
 spendthrift ; the hopeless bankrupt ; the desperate man, 
 driven by an intolerable misery and utter hunger and naked- 
 ness, to cast himself into these jaws of death as into a bed of 
 slumber and soft repose. Oh you gas upon the bridges ! 
 how many times have the garments of forlorn women gleamed 
 in your unpitying light as they flung themselves from the 
 high parapet into the abyss beneath. Oh you gas ! how 
 many sighs and prayers and words of despairing farewell! 
 There was a shriek, a plunge, a plash, the vertical reflection 
 of the gas was for a moment broken into zigzag sparkles by a 
 body combating with the remorseless river. Then, the 
 
THE SECRETS OF THE GAS. 1G1 
 
 waters of death went over the head of mortality, and ail 
 *till and all was over. O Gas! Where are they now? ] 
 hope of the family, the focus of tender love, and anxious care, 
 and fond aspirations. The advertisements which entreat 
 them to return are yet in the ' Times ;' the bills which describe 
 their appearance are yet on the walls ; the watchers at home 
 are waiting ; the river men are out with drags ; but the water 
 holds them fast, and the gas shines secretly above them, and 
 they shall no more appear in the comeliness of life and love. 
 If we ever hear of these, O Gas ! it will be, at best, at the 
 grim dead-house by the waterside, and their only epitaph will 
 be the awful placard on the wall of the Police Station, ' Dead 
 "body found.' 
 
 Fast does the gas keep the secrets of the river. They can- 
 not escape. The janitor gas-lamps guard either side. They 
 watch over long lines of docks, and see that no light, save their 
 own, appear about gaunt-masted ships, and strong bricken 
 warehouses where the old wines ooze into toping casks, and 
 muddle them with vinous fumes : where the sawdust is purpled 
 with emptied glasses; where the spiral threads which the 
 coopers' gimlet has made, dance ; where the great wreaths of 
 cobwebs hang lazily from the roof as if quite gone in liquor 
 and overcome with the tasting-orders of years ; where floors 
 A and B, and cellarages C and D, are pungent with pepper 
 and tobacco, and fragrant with coffee and spices, and sickly 
 with oranges and grapes, and sticky with figs and muscovado 
 and molasses, and aromatic with crisp teas and chicory and 
 pernmican, and ammoniacally nauseous with horns and hoofs 
 and untanned skins and guano, and oleaginous with tallow and 
 palm-oil, and hive-smelling with bees'-wax, and drowsy and 
 vapid with huge chests of opium, packed by Turkish rayahs 
 or Hindoo ryots, and in its black flabby cakes concentrating 
 Heaven knows how much madness, and misery, and death, 
 strangely mingled with soothing relief from pain and with 
 sparkling gaiety. The gas hems in the stealthy dockyard 
 watchman going his rounds, the beetle-browed convict in the 
 dismantled grated-ported hulks, the swift galle} T s of the Thames 
 Police, the moaning sufferers in the Dreadnought hospital-ship : 
 the gas throws into skeleton relief the ribs and timbers of half- 
 demolished ships, the stripped and spectral hulks of condemned 
 and broken-up vessels rotting in the mud. The gas twinkles on 
 the trellised panes of the Gothic windows in the great Parlia- 
 ment Houses, and listens slily to the late debates. The gas 
 
 M 
 
162 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 feebly illumines the blackened coal-barges and lighters, full of 
 bricks and huge paving-stones. It shines at the end of the 
 landing stages, and at the feet of the slimy river stairs, upon 
 moored wherries and river steam-boats so bustling and busy 
 by day, so hushed and quiet by night. The gas gleams on the 
 time-worn bastions of the Tower ; the gas knows the secrets, 
 of the honeycombed old cannon better than do their tompions ; 
 the gas knows the password and the countersign ; the gas is- 
 aware of the slow-pacing sentinel ; the gas mirrors itself in the 
 darkling stream which gurgles about the heavy timber barri- 
 cades, with which the better feeling of the age has blocked up 
 the Traitor's gate. The gas is too young to relate to you the 
 secrets of the Tower in days gone by. It lighted not Elizabeth 
 climbing the slimy stairs, and sitting down defiant of her 
 gaolers, at the top ; it has no knowledge of Jane Grey creeping 
 to her doom ; it has not seen the furtive wherries with the 
 warders and halberdiers in the stern, and the prisoners in the 
 midst, rowing towards the gate of death. It has not seen the 
 courtly mien of Surrey ; the gallant grey hairs, the toil and 
 travel and trouble furrowed, but yet handsome face of Ealeigh ; 
 the fierce white locks of the Countess of Pembroke ; the sneers 
 and sarcasms and wicked wrinkles of Simon Lord Lovat ; the 
 blue eyes and gentle smile ofDerwentwater ; the stern heroism 
 of Charles Eadcliffe ; the crazy fanaticism of George Gordon ; 
 the Spa Fields and Cato Street enthusiasm of the poor feeble 
 traitor Thistlewood. The Tower gas knows not where the 
 posts of the scaffold stood, or how many stones have been be- 
 dewed with blood. It cannot point out the spot where the 
 ghost of Ann Bullen was said to walk. It lighted not to their 
 work Dighton and Forrest creeping to murder the princes. 
 It shone not on the brazen countenance of the King-honoured 
 Blood, as, arrayed in sham canonicals, he compassed the 
 plunder of the crown. The gas knows not where Jane saw 
 the headless body of her husband, or how much good, and gentle, 
 and pious, as well as guilty and ambitious, dust moulders 
 beneath the chancel flags of the little church of Saint Peter and 
 Vincula. Yet has the Tower gas seen the hideous range of 
 brick armouries built by the third William, with their tens of 
 thousands of swords and bayonets and muniments of war, 
 blazing up into one grand conflagration, and driving it, potent 
 gas as it is, into obscurity for a time. It has seen the slow but 
 absorbing footstep of the blessed by-gone years of peace dis- 
 mantle ramparts and brick up portcullises, and rust the mouths 
 
PERFIDIOUS PATHOS. 1G3 
 
 of the howling dogs of war and fill up the mouth. ] f 
 is more peaceful now. It glistens on the gold and crimson of 
 the warders as the ceremony of delivering the Queen's keys is 
 nightly performed. It winks at the spruce young Guardsmen 
 officers as they dash up to the gates in Hansom cabs just before 
 shutting-up time, or saunter jauntily to mess. It lights up the 
 clean pots and glasses in the stone kitchen, and glows upon the 
 rubicund countenances of thirsty grenadiers. It has an eye 
 a silent, watchful eye upon a certain strong room where there 
 is a great cage, and in that cage scintillating the precious 
 stones of the Imperial Crown of England, the gold and silver 
 and jewels of the sceptre, the orb, the ampulla, the great salt- 
 cellar, and all the stately regalia. The gas is a guardian of all 
 these, and defies the Colonel Bloods of '59. (Oh dege- 
 nerate '59, where are the good old Bloods, and where the 
 good old monarchs who were so fond of them ?) An im- 
 partial gas, it shines as brightly on the grenadier's quart-pot 
 as on the queenly crown. A convivial gas, it blazes cheerfully 
 in the mess room of the Beauchamp Tower. A secretive gas, 
 it knows that beneath the curtains and flags of that same mess- 
 room there are dark words and inscriptions cut into the aged 
 wall the records of agony and hopeless captivity, anagrams 
 of pain, emblems of sorrow and hopes fled and youth and joy 
 departed. 
 
 So, from where the town begins to where it ends ; from the 
 twinkling lights of Putney and Kew, to the marshy flats below 
 Deptford ; the gas shines through the still night, and is the 
 repository of secrets known to few, but which all who choose 
 to make the gas their friend, may read, to the softening of their 
 hearts, perhaps, even as they run. 
 
 XV. 
 
 PERFIDIOUS PATMOS. 
 
 THE natural place of refuge for a hunted man is an island. 
 Kone but those who have known what it is to be -pursued 
 from place to place, who have been aware of such and such 
 blood-hounds upon their track, of such and such scouts wait- 
 ing at given points to lead them down to death or captivity, 
 can form an idea of the feeling of security engendered by the 
 knowledge that there is between them and their enemies 
 
 M 2 
 
164 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 a bulwark far more impregnable than any gabion, glacis, 
 bastion, or counterscarp, that Vauban ever dreamed of, in the 
 shape of a ring of blue water. So islands have been, in all 
 ages and circumstances, the chosen places of refuge to men 
 who could find no rest elsewhere for the soles of their feet. 
 Patmos was the elected asylum of St. John the Apostle. In 
 Malta, the last Christian knights of Palestine, driven from 
 their first island refuge Rhodes found a haven of safety, 
 and founded a city of strength against the infidels. The 
 expiring embers of the Druidical priesthood smouldered 
 away in the impenetrable groves of the island of Anglesey. 
 The isles of Greece were the eyries of poetry, and art, and 
 liberty, when the mainland groaned beneath the despotism of 
 the thirty tyrants. The Greeks located their paradise in the 
 islands of the blest. Madeira spread forth pitying, protecting 
 arms to two fugitive lovers. Charles Edward hid in Skye. 
 Once within the pleasant valleys of Pitcairn's Island, Jack 
 Adams and the mutineers of the ' Bounty ' felt secure and safe 
 from courts-martial and yard-arms. There is a hiding-place 
 for the pursued of sheriffs in the island of Jersey and in the 
 Isle of Man ; in which latter insular refuge, Charlotte de la 
 Tremouille, Countess of Derby, sheltered the last remnants of 
 the cause of the Stuarts against Oliver Cromwell. The dogs of 
 Constantinople found protection from the sticks and stones of 
 the men of Starnboul, in an island in the Bosphorus. The 
 last of the London marshes staunchly defy drainage from the 
 strongholds of the Isle of Dogs ; and there is a wall of strength 
 for the choicest London fevers, and the dirtiest London 
 lodging-houses, against Inspectors Eeason and Humanity and 
 their whole force, in and about the mud embankments of 
 Jacob's Island. 
 
 But, chief and pre-elect of islands on which camps of 
 refuge have been built, is the one we are happy enough to 
 live in, the Island of England. There are other islands in 
 the world, far more isolated, geographically speaking, far 
 more distant from hostile continents, far more remote from 
 the shores of despotism. Yet to these chalky cliffs of Albion, 
 to this Eefuge, misnamed the perfidious, come refugees from 
 all quarters of the world, and of characters, antecedents, and 
 opinions, pointing to every quarter of the political compass. 
 The oppressor and the oppressed, the absolutist and the 
 patriot, the butcher and the victim, the wolf and the lamb, 
 the legitimist as white as snow, and the montagnard as red as 
 
PERFIDIOUS PATMOS. 1C5 
 
 blood, the doctrinaire and the socialist men of views so dis- 
 similar that they would (and do) tear each other to pieces in 
 their own lands, find a common refuge in this country, and 
 live in common harmony here. The very climate seems to 
 have a soothing and mollifying influence on the most savage 
 foreign natures. South American dictators, who have shot, 
 slaughtered, and outraged hecatombs of their countrymen in 
 the parched-up plains of Buenos Ayres and Montevideo, roar 
 you as mildly as any sucking doves as soon as they are in the 
 Southampton Water make pets of their physicians, and give 
 their barbers silver shaving-dishes ; pachas of three tails, 
 terrible fellows for bowstringing, impaling, and bastinadoing 
 in their Asiatic dominions, here caper nimbly in ladies' 
 chambers to the twangling of lutes ; hangers of men and 
 scourgers of women forego blood-thirstiness ; demagogues 
 forget to howl for heads ; and red republicans, who were as 
 roaring lions in the lands they came from, submit to have 
 their claws cut, and their manes trimmed, drink penny cups 
 of coffee, and deliver pacific lectures in Mechanics' Insti- 
 tutes. 
 
 England, then, is the Patmos of foreign fugitives a collec- 
 tion of Patmos es, rather ; almost every seaport and provincial 
 town of any note having a little inland island of refuge of its 
 own ; but London being the great champ d'asile, the monster 
 isle of safety, a Cave of Adullam for the whole world. It is 
 with this Patmos that I have principally to do. 
 
 Years ago, Doctor Johnson called London * the common 
 sewer of Paris and of Borne ;' but at the present day it is a 
 reservoir, a giant vat, into which flow countless streams of 
 continental immigration. More so than Paris, where the 
 English only go for pleasure ; the Germans to become tailors 
 and boot-makers ; and the Swiss, valets, house-porters, and 
 waiters. More so than the United States, whose only con- 
 siderable feed-pipes of emigration are Irish, English, and 
 Germans. There is in London the foreign artistic population, 
 among which I will comprise French, and Swiss, and German 
 governesses, French painters, actors, singers, and cooks ; 
 Italian singers and musicians ; French hairdressers, milliners, 
 dressmakers, clear-starchers, and professors of legerdemain, 
 with countless teachers of every known language, and pro- 
 fessors of every imaginable musical instrument. There is 
 the immense foreign servile population : French and Italian 
 valets and shopmen, and German nurses and nursery-maids. 
 
166 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 There is the foreign commercial population, a whole colony of 
 Greek merchants in Finsbmy, of Germans in the Minories, of 
 Frenchmen round Austin Friars, of Moorish Jews in White- 
 chapel, and of foreign shopkeepers at the west end of the 
 town. There is the foreign mechanical, or labouring popula- 
 tion : French, Swiss, and German watchmakers, French and 
 German lithographers, Italian plaster-cast makers and German 
 sugar-bakers, brewers, and leather-dressers. There is the 
 foreign mendicant population : German and Alsatian buy-a- 
 broom girls, Italian hurdy-gurdy grinders, French begging- 
 letter writers (of whose astonishing numbers, those good 
 associations, ' La Societe Fran^aise de Bienfaisance a Londres* 
 and * The Friends of Foreigners in Distress,' could tell some 
 curious tales, maybe), Lascar street-sweepers, and tom-tom 
 pounders. There is the foreign maritime population : an 
 enormous one, as all men who have seen Jack alive in London 
 can vouch for. There is the foreign respectable population, 
 composed of strangers well to do, who prefer English living 
 and English customs to those of their own country. There is 
 the foreign swindling population : aliens who live on their 
 own wits and on the want thereof in their neighbours : sham 
 counts, barons, and chevaliers; farmers of German lotteries, 
 speculators in German university degrees, forgers of Eussian 
 bank-notes, bonnets at gaming-houses, touts and spungers to 
 foreign hotels and on foreign visitors, bilkers of English 
 taverns and boarding-houses, and getters-up of fictitious con- 
 certs and exhibitions. There is the foreign visiting or sight- 
 seeing population, who come from Dover to the Hotel de 
 1'Europe, and go from thence, with a cicerone, to St. Paul's, 
 Windsor, and Richmond, and thence back again to France, 
 Germany, or Spain. Lastly, there is the refugee population ; 
 and this be mine to descant upon. 
 
 The Patmos of London I may describe as an island bounded 
 by four squares ; on the north by that of Soho, on the south 
 by that of Leicester, on the east by the quadrangle of Lincoln's 
 Inn Fields (for the purlieus of Long Acre and Seven Dials 
 are all Patmos), and on the west by Golden Square. 
 
 , The trapezium of streets enclosed within this boundary are 
 not, by any means, of an aristocratic description. A maze of 
 sorry thoroughfares, a second-rate butcher's meat and vege- 
 table market, two model lodging-houses, a dingy parish 
 church, and some ' brick barns ' of dissent are within its 
 boundaries. No lords or squires of high degree live in this 
 
PERFIDIOUS PATHOS. Hi? 
 
 political Alsatia. The houses are distinguished by a plural i f v 
 of bell-pulls inserted in the door-jambs, and by a plurality of 
 little brass name-plates, bearing the names of in-dwelling 
 artisans. Everybody (of nubile age and English extraction) 
 seems to be married, and to have a great many children, 
 whose education appears to be conducted chiefly on the out- 
 door principle. 
 
 As an uninterested stranger, and without a guide, you 
 might, perambulating these shabby streets, see in them 
 nothing which would peculiarly distinguish them from .that 
 class of London veins known inelegantly, but expressively, 
 as 'back slums.' At the first glance you see nothing but 
 dingy houses teeming with that sallow, cabbage-stalk, and 
 fried fish sort of population, indigenous to back slums. The 
 pinafored children are squabbling or playing in the gutters ; 
 while from distant courts come faintly and fitfully threats 
 of Jane to tell Ann's mother; together with that unmean- 
 ing monotonous chant or dirge which street-children sing, 
 why, or with what object, I know not. Grave dogs sit on 
 door-steps their heads patiently cocked on one side, wait- 
 ing for the door to be opened, as in this region of perpetual 
 beer-fetching they know must soon be the case. The beer 
 itself, in vases of strangely-diversified patterns, and borne by 
 Hebes of as diversified appearance, is incessantly thread- 
 ing the needle through narrow courts and alleys. The 
 public-house doors are always on the swing ; the bakers' 
 shops (they mostly sell ' seconds ') are always full ; so are 
 the cookshops, so are the coffee-shops : step into one, and you 
 shall have a phase of Patmos before you incontinent. 
 
 Albrecht Lurleiberg, who keeps this humble little Deutsche 
 Caffee- und Gasthof, as he calls it, commenced business five 
 years ago with a single coffee-pot and two cups and saucers. 
 That was a little before February, 1848. Some few foreigners 
 dropped in to visit him occasionally ; but he was fain to eke out 
 his slender earnings by selling sweetstuff, penny dolls, and 
 cheap Sunday newspapers. After the first three months' 
 saturnalia of revolution in '48, however, exiles began to 
 populate Patmos pretty thickly. First, Barbes' and Albert's 
 unsuccessful riot ; then the escapade of Ledru-Eollin and 
 Louis Blanc ; then the wholesale proscriptions of Hungary, 
 Italy, Austria, Kussia, and Baden all these contributed to 
 swell the number of Herr Lurleiberg's customers a hundredfold, 
 and to fill Patmos to overflowing. The sweetstuff and dolls 
 
168 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 disappeared l right away,' and the coffee-pots and cups and 
 saucers multiplied exceedingly. In addition to this, the 
 Herr caused to be stretched across the single window a 
 canvas blind, on which his name, and the style arid title of 
 his establishment, were painted in painfully attenuated letters, 
 with which, not yet content, he incited young Fritz Schift- 
 mahl, the artist, with dazzling prospects of a carte-blanche for 
 coffee and tobacco, to depict beneath, in real oil colours, the 
 counterfeit presentments of a Pole, a Hungarian, and a 
 German embracing each other in a fraternal accolade, all 
 smoking tobacco like volcanos sulphur; the legend setting 
 forth that true, universal, and political brotherhood are only 
 to be found at Albrecht Lurleiberg's. 
 
 In the Herr's back parlour he once designed in the flush 
 of increased business to enlarge it by knocking it into the 
 back yard, till warned, by a wary neighbour, of the horrible- 
 pains and penalties (only second to prcemunire) incurred by 
 meddling with a wall in England in this dirty back parlour 
 'with rings made by coffee-cups on the ricketty Pembroke- 
 tables, and on the coarsely papered, slatternly printed foreign 
 newspapers and periodicals, are a crowd of men in every 
 variety of beard and moustache and head-dress, in every 
 imaginable phase of attire more or less dirty and picturesque 
 figures such as, were you to see them in the drawings of 
 Leech, or Daumier, or Gavarni, you would pronounce ex- 
 aggerated and untrue to nature; hooded, tasselled, and braided 
 garments of unheard-of fashion ; hats of shapes to make yout 
 wonder to what a stage the art of "squeezability" had 
 arrived ; trousers with unnumbered plaits ; boots made as 
 boots seemed never made before ; finger and thumb-rings of 
 fantastic fashion ; marvellous gestures, Babel-like diversified 
 tongues ; voices anything but (Englishly) human ; the fumes, 
 as of a thousand brick-kilns ; the clatter as of a thousand 
 spoons : such are the characteristics of this in- door Patmos. 
 
 Here are Frenchmen ex-representatives of the people, ex- 
 ministers, prefects and republican commissaries, Proletaires, 
 Fourierists, Phalansterians, disciples of Proudhon, Pierre 
 le Roux and Cahagnet, professors of pantheism, socialism, 
 phalansterianism, all the ' isms ' in ismdom ; men yet young, 
 but two-thirds of whose lives have been spent in prison or 
 in exile. Here are political gaol-birds who have been caged 
 in every state prison of Europe ; in the citadels of France, 
 the cachots of Mont St. Michel, the secrets of the Concier- 
 
PERFIDIOUS PATMOS. 169 
 
 gerie, the piombi of Venice, the gloomy fastnesses of Ehn-n- 
 breitstein and Breslau and Spandlau, the oubliettes of the 
 Spielberg and Salzburg. Here are young men boys almost 
 of good families and high hopes, blasted by the sirocco of 
 civil war. Here are German philosophic democrats scientific 
 conspirators who between Greek roots and algebraical quan- 
 tities, tobacco smoke and heavy folios in German text upon 
 international law, have somehow found themselves upon 
 barricades and in danger of the fate of Kobert Blum. Here 
 are simple-minded German workmen such honest-faced, 
 tawney-bearded young fellows as you see in the beer-cellars 
 of Berlin who have shaken off their dreams of German 
 unity to find themselves in this back slum Patmos far away 
 from home and friends. Here are swarthy Italians, eyeing 
 the Tedeschi (though friendly ones) askance, cursing Eadetzky 
 and Gyulay, and telling with wild gesticulations how Xovara 
 was fought and Borne defended. Here, and in great numbers, 
 are the poor, betrayed, cozened Hungarians, with glossy 
 beards, and small embroidered caps and braided coats. They 
 are more woe-begone, more scared and wild-looking than tho 
 rest, for they are come from nearly the uttermost corner of 
 Europe, and have little fellowship save that of misfortune with 
 their continental neighbours. Lastly, here are the Poles, those 
 historical exiles who have been so long fugitives from their 
 country that they have adopted Patmos with a will, and have 
 many of them entered into and succeeded in business, but 
 would, I think, succeed better if the persons with whom they 
 have commercial transactions were able to pronounce their 
 names those jaw-breaking strings of dissonant letters in. 
 which the vowels are so few that the consonants seem to have 
 compassed them round about, like fortifications, to prevenb 
 their slipping out. 
 
 There are many of these poor refugees (I speak of them in 
 general) who sit in coffee-shops similar to Herr Lurleiberg's, 
 from early morning till late at night, to save the modicum of 
 fire and candle they would otherwise be compelled to consume 
 at home (if home their garrets can be called), and which, God 
 knows, they can ill spare. About one o'clock in the day,, 
 those who are rich enough congregate in the English cook- 
 shops, and regale themselves with the cheap cag-mag there 
 offered for sale. Towards four or five the foreign eating- 
 houses, of which there are many in Patmos of a fifth or sixth- 
 rate order of excellence, are resorted to by those who yet 
 
170 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 adhere to the gastronomic traditions of the land they have 
 been driven from ; and there they vainly attempt to delude 
 themselves into the belief that they are consuming the fricassees 
 and ragouts, the suet puddings and sauerkraut, the maccaroni, 
 risotto, and stuffato of France or Germany or Italy all the de- 
 lightful messes on which foreigners feed with such extreme 
 gusto and satisfaction. But, alas ! these dishes, though com- 
 pounded from foreign recipes and cooked by foreign hands, are 
 not, or, at least, do not taste like foreign dishes. Cookery, 
 like the amor patrice, is indigenous. It cannot be transplanted. 
 It cannot flourish on a foreign soil. I question if the black 
 broth of Sparta would have agreed with the Lacedsemonian 
 palate if consumed in an England d la mode beef shop. 
 
 Patmos is likewise studded with small foreign tobacco 
 shops limited to the sale of tobacco mostly, for the cigar is 
 a luxury in most cases beyond the reach of the exile. You 
 must remember that abroad you may obtain a cigar as large 
 as an Epping sausage (and as damp), as strong as brandy and 
 as fiery as a red-hot poker for a matter of two sous : in some 
 parts of Belgium and Germany for one sous ; and that in 
 England the smallest Cuba of Minories manufacture, smoked 
 in a minute and of no particular flavour, costs three halfpence : 
 a sum ! There is, to be sure, a harmless milk-mild little roll 
 of dark brown colour, the component parts of which, I believe, 
 are brown paper, hay, and aromatic herbs, vended at the 
 charge of one penny. But what would be the use of one of 
 those smoke-toys to an exile who is accustomed to wrap him- 
 self in smoke as in a mantle ; to smoke by the apertures of 
 his mouth, nostrils, eyes, and ears ; to eat cigars, so to speak ? 
 Thus Patmos solaces itself with cut tobacco (good and cheap 
 in England), which it puffs from meerschaums or short clays, 
 or rolls up into fragments of foreign newspapers and makes 
 cigarettes of, 
 
 If there exist a peculiarity of Patmos which I could not, 
 without injustice, avoid adverting to, it is the -pleasure its 
 inhabitants seem to feel in reading letters. See, as we saunter 
 down one of Patmos's back streets a German exile, in a pair 
 of trousers like a bifurcated carpet bag, stops a braided 
 Hungarian with a half quartern loaf under his arm. A sallow 
 Italian (one of Garibaldi's men) enters speedily unto them, 
 and the three fall greedily to the perusal of a large sheet of 
 tissue paper, crossed and re-crossed in red, and black, and 
 blue ink, patchworked outside with postage marks of con- 
 
PERFIDIOUS PATMOS. 171 
 
 tinental frontiers and Government stamps. Few of 1 1 
 missives reach their destination without some curious little 
 scissor marks about the seal, some suspicious little hot-water 
 blisters about the wafers, hinting that glazed cocked hats, and 
 jack-boots, and police spies have had something to do with 
 their letters between their postage and their delivery. In- 
 deed, so well is this paternal solicitude on the part of foreign 
 governments to know whether their corresponding subjects 
 write and spell correctly, known among the refugees, that 
 some wary exiles have their letters from abroad addressed to 
 ' Mr. Simpson Brown/ or Mr. Thomas Williams,' such and 
 such a street, London ; and as foreign governments are rather 
 cautious as to how they meddle with the families of the 
 Browns and the Williams's who grow refractory sometimes 
 and post their letters in the paddle-boxes of war steamers 
 the Brown and Williams letters reach London untampered 
 with. 
 
 More exiles reading letters. One nearly falls over a dog's- 
 ineat cart, so absorbed is he in his correspondence ; another, 
 bearded like the pard, and with a fur cap like an Armenian 
 Galpack, is shedding hot tears on his outstretched paper, 
 utterly unconscious of the astonishment of two town-made 
 little boys, who have stopped in the very middle of a 4 cart- 
 wheel ' to stare at the ' furriner a crying.' Poor fellows ! poor 
 broken men ! poor hunted wayfarers ! If you, brother Briton, 
 well clothed, well fed, well cared for with X 99 well paid to 
 guard you with houses for the sale of law by retail on every 
 side, where you can call for your half-pint of habeas corpus, 
 or your Magna Charta, cold without, at any hour in the day 
 if you were in a strange land, proscribed, attainted, poor, 
 unfriended, dogged even in your Patmos by spies ; could you 
 warrant yourself not to shed some scalding tears, even in a 
 fierce fur cap, over a letter from the home you are never to 
 see more ? 
 
 My pencil may limn an individual portrait or so in the 
 perfidious refuge, and then I must needs row my bark away 
 to other shores. Stop at forty-six, Levant Street, if you 
 please, over against Leg-bail Court. 
 
 Up four flights of crazy stairs, knocking at a ricketty door, 
 you enter a suite of three musty attics. They are very scantily 
 furnished, but crowded with articles of the most heterogeneous 
 description ; mes marchandises, as the proprietor calls them. 
 Variegated shades for lamps, fancy stationery, bon-bon boxes, 
 
172 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 lithographic prints, toys, cigar-cases, nicknacks of every 
 description are strewn upon the chairs and table, and cumber 
 the very floor ; at one window a dark-eyed mild-looking lady, 
 in a dark merino dress, is painfully elaborating a drawing on a 
 lithographic stone ; at another a slender girl is bending over a 
 tambour frame ; at a desk a round-headed little boy is copying 
 music, while in an adjoining apartment even more denuded of 
 furniture and littered with marchandises are two or three little 
 children tumbling among the card-board boxes. All these 
 moveables, animate and inanimate, belong to a Boman Marquis 
 the Marchese del Piiferare. He and his have been reared 
 in luxury. Time was he possessed the most beautiful villa, 
 the finest equipages, the most valuable Eafaelles in the 
 Campagna of Borne ; but la politique, as he tells you with a 
 smile, has brought him down to the level of a species of 
 unlicensed hawker, going with his wares (to sell on com- 
 mission) from fancy warehouse to fancy warehouse, often 
 rebutted, often insulted ; yet picking up an honest livelihood 
 somehow. His wife has turned her artistic talent, and his 
 eldest daughter her taste for embroidery to account ; his son 
 Mithridates copies music for the orchestra in a theatre, for 
 living is dear in London, and those helpless little ones among 
 the card-board boxes must be looked after. He has been an 
 exile for five years. The Holy Father was good enough to 
 connive at his escape, and to confer all his confiscated estates 
 on a Dominican convent. No one knows what the politique, 
 which has been his ruin, exactly was ; nor, I am inclined to 
 think, does the good man know very clearly himself. ' We 
 got away from Borne,' he tells you mildly, ' with a few hundred 
 scudi, and our plate - and a picture or two, and went to Mar- 
 seilles ; but when we had " eaten " (avevamo mangiati) what we 
 had brought with us, we came to England. It was very hard 
 at first ; for we had no friends, and could speak nothing but 
 French and Italian, and the English are a suspicious people, 
 whose first impulse, when they see a foreigner for the first 
 time, is to button up their pockets as if he must necessarily 
 be a thief.' But the marquis went to work manfully, forgot 
 his coronet, and is now doing a very good fancy commission 
 business. He has an invention (nearly all refugees have 
 inventions) for curing smoky chimneys, which, when he has 
 money enough to patent it, he expects will bring him a 
 fortune. In the days of his utterest and most dire distress, 
 he always managed to pay three shillings every Sunday for 
 
LEICESTER SQUARE. 17:; 
 
 the sittings of himself, his wife, and daughter at a foreign 
 Catholic chapel, and to wear every day the cleanest of white 
 neckcloths, fastened no man knows how, for no man ever saw 
 the tie thereof. 
 
 Within these sorry streets these dingy slums are swept 
 together the dead leaves, the rotten branches, the. withered 
 fruits from the tree of European liberty. The autumn 
 blast of despotism has eddied them about from the ends of 
 Europe, has chased them from land to land, has wafted them 
 at last into this perfidious Patmos. where there is liberty to 
 act, and think, and breathe, but also, alas ! liberty to Starve. 
 
 England, happily unconscious of the oppressions and 
 exasperations that have driven these men here, try sometimes 
 to spare some little modicum of substantial relief, some 
 crumbs of comfort, some fragile straws of assistance to the 
 poor drowning exiles ! Their miseries are appalling. They 
 cannot dig (for few, if any, Englishmen will call a foreigner's 
 spade into requisition), to beg they are nobly ashamed. They 
 do not beg, nor rob, nor extort. They starve in silence. 
 The French and Hungarian refugees suffer more, perhaps, 
 than those of other nations. The former have by no means 
 an aptitude for acquiring the English language, and are, 
 besides, men mostly belonging to the professional classes of 
 society classes wofully overstocked in England ; the latter 
 seldom know any language but their own a language about 
 as useful and appreciated here as Cochin-Chinese. Only 
 those who have wandered through Patmos, who have watched 
 the gates of the London Docks at early morning when the 
 chance labourers apply for work, who have sat in night coffee- 
 houses, and explored dark arches, can know what awful 
 shifts some of these poor refugees, friendless, foodless, house- 
 less, are often put to. 
 
 XVL 
 
 LEICESTER SQUARE. 
 
 DID Archimedes square the circle ? The legend (I have a 
 great respect for legends, mendacious though they often be) 
 says that he did. The confident legend has it that he really, 
 truly, and completely succeeded. That, chalk in hand, 
 heedless in his scientific pre-occupation of the sack of Syra- 
 
174 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 cuse, lie bent over the magic diagram he had traced on the 
 floor of his humble domicile, contemplating with joy and 
 exultation the glorious end by which his labours had been 
 crowned. That then, however, a Soldier entered, hot with 
 plunder and blood-spilling. That with his murderous javelin 
 he smote the sage to death ; and that the blood of Archimedes 
 flowing in a sluggish stream effaced the diagram (which was 
 to the ruthless warrior an unmeaning assemblage merely of 
 lines curved and straight). And the circle remains unsquared 
 to this day. 
 
 Many have experimentalized on the mighty problem since 
 the legendary days of the Greek philosopher ; but the failures 
 have been as numerous as the attempts. Not that the thing 
 is impossible ; oh no ! All of us have, more or less, friends 
 and acquaintances on the very verge the extremest point 
 of squaring the circle, as also of discovering perpetual motion, 
 paying the National Debt, and accomplishing some trifling 
 little undertakings of that description. Only, they never do. 
 They resemble somewhat the poor little 'punters' one sees at 
 Hombourg and Baden-Baden the men with 'systems' 
 infallible ' martingales,' believers in masse en avant, who would 
 always have won fifty thousand florins to a dead certainty, in 
 one coup, my dear sir, if red had only turned up again. But 
 it didn't. Bed never does turn up when you want it. So with 
 the circle-squarers, perpetual motion discoverers, National- 
 Debt liquidators, and inventors of directing power to balloons. 
 Something always occurs at the very ace and nick of time 
 the critical moment to nip their invention in the bud. My 
 friend A. would Jiave squared the circle, years ago, if he had 
 not been sentenced to six months' imprisonment in one of 
 Her Majesty's gaols for writing threatening letters to the 
 Earl of Derby, in which the Circle was mixed up, somehow, 
 with a desire to have his lordship's Life. B. is only deterred 
 from terminating his experiments by the want of a loan 
 (temporary) of one pound five. C.'s landlady, in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Eed Lion Square, has impounded for unpaid rent 
 his philosophical apparatus, without which it is impossible for 
 him to complete his discoveries. D., on the very eve of 
 success, took it into his head to preach the Millennium, as 
 connected with the New Jerusalem and the Latter- day Saints, 
 in the vicinity of Rotherhithe; and as for E., the only man 
 who they say has squared the circle these few hundred years, 
 he is at present so raving mad in a lunatic asylum, that we 
 
LEICESTER SQUARE. 
 
 can't make much of the desperate diagrams he chalks on ilio 
 walls of his day room, mixed as are his angles, arcs, and dia- 
 meters with humorous couplets and caricatures of public cha- 
 racters. I might, if I chose, enumerate initials which would 
 use up the alphabet twice over ; from M., who combined philo- 
 sophy with the manufacture of Bengal lights, and blew himself, 
 and half his neighbourhood, up one day, down to Z., who, im- 
 pressed with a conviction that the circle was only to be 
 squared in the interior of Africa, went out to the Gold Coast 
 in a trader, and was supposed to have been eaten up by the 
 natives, somewhere between Tiuibuctoo and the Mountains of 
 the Moon. Still, the circle remains unsquared. 
 
 I, who am no mathematician, and would sooner throw my- 
 self off the parapet of the pons asinorum, or go to sleep in one of 
 the dry arches underneath, than trudge over it, not presuming 
 to attempt squaring a circle, humbly intend to see if I cannot 
 circle a square. Say Leicester Square, in the county of 
 Middlesex. 
 
 In my opinion Leicester Square, or Leicester Fields, or * the 
 Square/ as its inhabitants call it, or ' Lay start* SquarrJ as the 
 French have it, offers in many of its features some striking 
 points of resemblance to an institution expatiated upon ^by 
 Monsieur Philippe de Lolnie, called the British Constitution. 
 The Square, like the Constitution, has been infinitely patched, 
 and tinkered, and altered. Some of its bulwarks have been 
 broken down, some of its monuments have been utterly 
 destroyed ; and coaches-and-six may now be driven where 
 edifices were. But in their entirety both institutions are 
 unchanged. The Square and the Constitution have yet their 
 Habeas Corpus and their Bill of Eights. Much has been 
 abolished, changed, improved; but the Square is the Square, 
 and the Constitution is the Constitution ; and the Briton may 
 point to both with pride, as immutable evidence of the sta- 
 bility of the institutions of a free country. 
 
 Before I commence circling seriatim this square which I 
 may call the liver of London, often spoken of but little known 
 let me say a few words of its history. This quadrangle of 
 houses once went by the name of Leicester Fields. These 
 fields (now partially covered by Mr. Wyld's great globe) were 
 built round, three sides of them, about 1635, what time 
 Charles the First was in difficulties about ship-money, and 
 thirsting for Mr. Pym's ears. During the civil wars and 
 Commonwealth, the powers that were, occupied themselves 
 
176 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 rather more with pulling down mansions than with building 
 them; and the south side remained uncovered with houses 
 until the days of that virtuous and exemplary monarch, who 
 passed the bill for the better observance of the Sabbath, and 
 murdered Algernon Sydney. From 1671 to the middle of the 
 eighteenth century, Leicester Fields were Leicester Fields. 
 Then the royal German gentleman, second of his name, 
 endowed the enclosure in the centre with an equestrian statue 
 of his gracious self (brought from Canons, the seat of the 
 Duke of Chandos), and the fields became thenceforward a 
 square, and fashionable. 
 
 Fashionable, to a certain extent, they had been before ; 
 since Charles the Second's time, Leicester Fields had boasted 
 the possession of a palace. Yes, between where there are now 
 sixpenny shows and cafes chantants with a Shades beneath, 
 and where there is a cigar-shop, once stood Leicester House, 
 built by Eobert Sydney, Earl of Leicester, the father of poor 
 Algernon Sydney, of Henry Sydney (the handsome Sydney of 
 De Grammont's Memoirs), and of Lady Dorothy Sydney, the 
 Sacharissa of Waller the poet. Here, when the Sydney s had 
 come to grief, lived and died the Queen of Bohemia. Here re- 
 sided the great Colbert, Louis the Fourteenth's ablest minister 
 of finance and commerce, when on an embassy to King Charles 
 the Second. Here, in 1703, lived (hiring the house from 
 Lord Leicester) the ambassador from the Emperor of Germany. 
 Prince Eugene lay at Leicester House, and courtiers (no 
 doubt) lied there in 1713. In 1718, no less a personage than 
 the Prince of Wales bought Leicester House, and made it his 
 town residence. Pennant, that sly old antiquary whose wit, 
 though dry, like old port, is as nutty and full-flavoured calls 
 it the ' pouting house for princes ; ' for here, when the next 
 Prince of Wales, Frederick, quarrelled with his papa (who 
 had quarrelled with his), he, too, removed to Leicester House 
 and kept a little sulky Court there. 
 
 Of Leicester House, palatially speaking, what now remains ? 
 Of that princely north-east corner of the square, what is there, 
 save a foreigner-frequented cigar-shop ? Stay, there is yet the 
 Shades, suggestive still of semi-regal kitchens, in their under- 
 ground vastness. And haply there is, above Saville. House, a 
 palace once, for George the Third's sister was married from 
 thence so says the 'European Magazine' for 1761 to a 
 German prince, and, to her misfortune, poor soul, as her German 
 prison-cell shall tell her in years to come. And Saville House is 
 
LEICESTER SQUARE. 177 
 
 a palace still, far more palatial than if kings sat in its upper 
 rooms, and princes in its gates. It is the palace of showman- 
 ship. It is the greatest booth in Europe. 
 
 Saville House ! What Londoner, what country cousin who 
 visited the metropolis twenty years ago, does not immediately 
 connect that magic establishment with the name of Miss Lin- 
 wood and her needlework ? It was very wonderful. I, as a 
 child, never could make it out much, or settle satisfactorily to 
 my own mind, why it should not, being carpeting, have been 
 spread upon the floor instead of being hung against the wall. 
 I did not like the eyes, noses, and lips of the characters being 
 all in little quadrangles ; and I was beaten once, I think, for 
 saying that I thought my sister's sampler superior to any 
 of Miss Linwood's productions. Yet her work was very 
 wonderful; not quite equal to Gobelin tapestry, perhaps, 
 but colossal as respects patience, neatness, ,nd ingenuity. 
 Of and concerning Miss Linwood I was wont in my nonage 
 to be much puzzled. Who and what was this marvellous 
 being? I have since heard, and I now believe that Miss 
 Linwood was a simple-minded, exemplary schoolmistress, some- 
 where near Leicester a species of needle working Hannah 
 More ; but at that time she was to me a tremendous myth a 
 tapestry- veiled prophetess a sybil working out perpetual 
 enigmas in silk and worsted. 
 
 The shows at Saville House remained alive o ! What show 
 of shows came after Miss Linwood ? There were some clumsy 
 caricatures of good pictures and good statues, enacted on a 
 turn-table by brazen men and women, called Poses Plastiques. 
 I, your servant, assisted once at a representation of this de- 
 scription, where I think the subject was Adam and Eve in 
 the garden of Eden. Adam by Herr Something, Eve by 
 Madame Somebody, and the serpent by a real sei^pent, a bloated 
 old snake quite sluggish and dozy, and harmless enough, 
 between his rabbits, to be tied in a knot round the tree. The 
 most amusing part of the entertainment was the middle thereof, 
 at which point two warriors arrayed in the uniform of Her 
 Majesty appeared on the turn-table, and claimed Adam as a 
 deserter from the third Buffs ; which indeed he was, and so 
 was summarily marched off with a great-coat over his flesh- 
 ings, and a neat pair of handcuffs on his wrists the which 
 sent me home moralizing on the charming efficiency of the 
 Lord Chamberlain and his licencers, who can strike a harm- 
 less joke out of a pantomime, and cannot touch such fellows as 
 
 N 
 
178 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 these, going vagabondizing about with nothing to cover them. 
 I think I went the same evening to a certain theatre, where 
 I saw the most magnificent parable in the New Testament 
 parodied into a gew-gaw spectacle a convention between the 
 property-man, the scene-painter, and the corps de ballet 
 which made me think that the Lord Chamberlain and his 
 licencers did not dispense their justice quite even-handedly ; 
 that they strained at the gnats a little too much, maybe, and 
 swallowed the camels a little too easily. 
 
 Serpents both of land and sea ; panoramas of all the rivers 
 of the known world ; jugglers ; ventriloquists ; imitators of 
 the noises of animals ; dioramas of the North Pole, and the 
 gold-diggings of California; somnambulists (very lucid) ; 
 ladies who have cheerfully submitted to have their heads cut 
 off nightly at sixpence per head admission ; giants ; dwarfs ; 
 sheep with six legs ; calves born inside out ; marionnettes ; 
 living marionnettes ; lecturers on Bloomerism ; expositors of 
 orrery all of these have by turns found a home in Saville 
 House. In the enlarged cosmopolitanthrophy of that mansion, 
 it has thrown open its arms to the universe of exhibitions. One 
 touch of showmanship makes the whole world kin ; and this 
 omni-showing house would accommodate with equal pleasure, 
 Acrobats in its drawing-rooms, Spiritual Eappers in its upper 
 rooms, the Poughkeepsie Seer in the entrance hall, and the 
 Learned Pig in the cellar. 
 
 But I shall be doing foul injustice to Saville House were I 
 to omit to mention one exhibition that it has of late years 
 adopted. The assault of arms ! Who has not seen the ad- 
 venturous life -guardsman effect that masterly feat, the ' severi- 
 sation' of the leg of mutton ; and that more astonishing exploit, 
 the scientific dissection at two strokes of the carcase of a 
 sheep ? Who has not applauded the masterly cutting asunder 
 of the bar of lead ; the ' Saladin feat ;' the terrific combat 
 between the broadsword and bayonet ; the airy French fencing 
 and small-sword practice (like an omelette soufflee after solid 
 beef and pudding) ? And then the wind-up, when Saville 
 House, forgetting its antecedents of the drama (slightly ille- 
 gitimate), and puppets and panoramas, takes manfully to fisti- 
 cuffs ! I am reminded of that company of Athenian actors, 
 who, in the earlier days of the Greek drama, essayed a per- 
 formance before an Athenian public ; but who, finding their 
 efforts not by any means appreciated or understood by their 
 audience, took refuge in some gladiatorial acquirements they 
 
LEICESTER SQUARE. 179 
 
 were lucky enough to possess, and ' pitched into ' each other 
 manfully, to the intense delight of the Areopagus. I am re- 
 minded, too, by the way, during this * wind-up,' of the pro- 
 pinquity of certain gentlemen, whose bow-legs, green cut-away 
 coats, flattened noses, fancy shawls, scarred lips, chameleon- 
 coloured eyes, swollen mottled hands, Oxonian shoes (tipped), 
 closely-cropped hair, bull necks, large breast-pins, &c., remind 
 me, in their turn, that I am in the antechamber of the liing ; 
 which leads me to descend into the street, foregoing the 
 pleasure of witnessing the ' Grand exhibition of wrestling 
 between two Southerners/ wherein I am promised a living 
 illustration of the genuine Devonshire kick, and the legiti- 
 mate Cornish hug. Formerly I was wont to linger, by the 
 peristyle of Saville House, at the foot of its wide exterior 
 staircase ; though Mr. Cantelo's acolyte, next door, melliflu- 
 ously invited me to ascend and see how eggs were hatched by 
 sSteam ; though there was a rival lady with her head undergoing 
 the very process of decapitation next door to him ; with a 
 horned lady, a bearded lady, and a mysterious lady, on the 
 other side. Saville House has yet charms for me which I can- 
 not lightly pass by. There are the Shades, a remnant of the old 
 London night cellars, bringing to mind Tom King's Coffee- 
 house, and the cellar where Strap had that famous adventure, 
 and the place where the admired Captain Macheath and his 
 virtuous companions first heard * the souud of coaches.' 
 Saville House boasts also of a billiard-room, where there are 
 celebrated professors in mustachoes, who will give you eighty 
 out of the hundred and- beat you ; who can do anything with 
 the balls and cues save swallowing them; who are clever enough 
 to make five hundred a year at billiards, and do make it, some 
 of them ; where there are markers who look like marquises in 
 their shirtsleeves and difficulties. I have nought more to say 
 of the palace of my square, save that the Duke of Gloucester 
 lived at Leicester House, in 1767, previous to its final de- 
 cadence as a royal residence ; that Sir Ashton Lever formed 
 here the collection of curiosities known as the Leverian 
 Museum ; and that New Lisle Street was built on the site of 
 the gardens of Leicester House in 1791. 
 
 To resume the circling of my square may I beg you to pass 
 Oranbourne Street, also a large foreign hotel, also a hybrid 
 floridly eccentric building of gigantic dimensions, where the 
 Pavilion at Brighton seems to have run foul of the Alhambra, 
 and repaired damages with the temple of Juggernaut : splicing 
 
 N 2 
 
180 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 on a portion of a Chinese pagoda as a jury-mast, and filling 
 up odd leaks with bits of the mosque of St. Sophia. 
 
 Passing this enigmatical habitation (now a circus for horse - 
 riders), tarry, oh viator! ere you come to Green Street, by 
 Pagliano's Sabloniere Hotel, a decent house, Where there is 
 good cheer after the Italian manner. The northern half of 
 this hotel was, until 1764, a private dwelling-house its door 
 distinguished by a bust made of pieces of cork cut and glued 
 together, and afterwards gilt, and known as the ' Painter's 
 Head.' The painter's head was cut by the painter himself 
 who lived there ; and the painter was that painter, engraver 
 and moralist, that prince of pictorial philosophers, 
 
 Whose pictured morals charm the mind, 
 And through the eye correct the heart ; 
 
 the King's Sergeant Painter, William Hogarth. 
 
 I would give something to be able to see that merry, sturdy, 
 bright-eyed, fresh-coloured little fellow in his sky-blue coat, 
 and bob wig, and archly cocked hat, trudging forth from his 
 house. I would hypothecate some portion of my vast estates 
 to have been in Leicester Square the day Will Hogarth first 
 set up his coach ; to have watched him writing that 'wrathful 
 letter to the nobleman who objected to the too faithful vrai- 
 semblance of his portrait, wherein he threatened, were it not 
 speedily fetched away, to sell it, with the addition of horns 
 and a tail, to a wild beast showman, who doubtless had his 
 show in Leicester Fields hard by ; to have seen him. in his 
 painting-room putting all his savage irony of colour and ex- 
 pression into the picture of the bully-poet Churchill ; or 
 * biting in ' that grand etching of sly, cruel, worthless Simon 
 Fraser, Lord Lovat, counting the forces of the Pretender on 
 his fingers ; or correcting the proof-sheets of the Analysis of 
 Beauty ; or scarifying Jack Wilkes on copper ; or haply, 
 keeping quiet, good-humoured company with his gentle lady 
 wife, Jane Thornhill, telling her how he engraved pint pots 
 and masquerade tickets in his youth, and how he painted his 
 grandest pictures for the love of her. We have painters, and 
 engravers, and moralists now-a-days, and to spare, I trow ; 
 but thy name will long smell sweet as violets, Will Hogarth, 
 though thou wert neither a Eoyal Academician nor a c Sir.' 
 
 Yet, circling round about, stand momentarily at the corner 
 of a little street Green Street by name full of musty little 
 book-stalls and fugacious shops. Fugacious I call them, for 
 
LEICESTER SQUARE. 181 
 
 their destinies are as fleeting as their proprietors. They are 
 everything by turns, and nothing long : now betting -offices, 
 now print-shops, now cigar-shops, anon oyster-shops, coffee- 
 orlops, brokers' shops. In Green Street shall you be sensible 
 also of an odour very marked, of the cookery of the various 
 foreign boarding-houses and cook-shops of the neighbourhood ; 
 and, towering above the dingy little houses, shall you see 
 the Elizabethan chimney-shaft of the St. Martin's baths and 
 wash-houses : a beacon of cleanliness to the neighbourhood ; a 
 Pharos of soapsuds ; a finger-post to thrift and comfort. 
 
 We pass St. Martin's Street street of no thoroughfare, but 
 remarkable for Mr. Bertolini's restaurant, and formerly famous 
 as the residence of Sir Isaac Newton. We pass the Soup- 
 kitchen Association's Offices, Star Street, a score of private 
 houses, and, halting at number forty-seven, we descry a 
 mansion of considerable dimensions, formerly the property of 
 Lord Inchiquin, afterwards the Western Literary and Scientific 
 Institution, then the resting-place, I think, of a panorama of 
 the Australian Gold Diggings ; but, before all these, residence 
 of Sir Joshua Eeynolds, Knight, the first President of the 
 Royal Academy. 
 
 It is something to think, gazing at this plain house from the 
 shabby cab-stand opposite (where there are always six cabs, 
 and apparently never any one to hire thencO that to number 
 forty-seven came, sixty years ago, all that was great, noble, 
 and beautiful all that was witty, learned, and brave in this 
 land. It is something to think that the plain awkward 
 country lad, poor in purse and pauper in influence in the 
 beginning, should in this number forty-seven, from 1761 to 
 1792, have held his state undisputed, undisturbed as the 
 pontifex maximus of portrait-painting the Merlin of his art 
 that the steps of his house should have been swept by the 
 ermine of judges, the lawn of prelates, the robes of peers, the 
 satin and brocade of princesses ; that there should have been 
 about his ante-rooms, thrown into corners like unconsidered 
 trifles, of as little account as the gew-gaws of a player's tiring- 
 room, the fans of duchesses, the batons of victorious generals, 
 the badges of chivalry, the laurels of poets, the portfolios of 
 ministers. It is something to think that if some spoony lords, 
 some carpet warriors, some tenth transmitters of a foolish face, 
 have mingled with the brilliant crowd at forty-seven, Leicester 
 Fields, its rooms have re-echoed to the silvery laughter of 
 Georgina Duchess of Devonshire, to the commanding tones of 
 
182 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 Chatham, and Mansfield, and Camden. It is more to think 
 that to this house came, to hold familiar converse with its 
 master, the wise men of England. 
 
 Come back, shades of the mighty dead, to number forty- 
 seven! Come back from Beaconsfield, Edmund Burke! 
 Come back, Percy, scholar and poet ; Joe Warburton ; lively, 
 vain, kind-hearted David Garrick, courtly Topharn Beauclerc, 
 staunch old General Oglethorpe, drawing diagrams of the 
 fields of Belgrade and Peterwardein with filberts, and nut- 
 crackers, and port wine ! Come back, stout-hearted Pasquale 
 di Paoli ; gossipping, toadying, boozy Boswell. Come back, 
 oh, thou leviathan of literature, with the large wig and larger 
 heart, with the rolling gait and voice of thunder, come back, 
 Samuel Johnson ! 
 
 Do thou also return, sprightly, kindly spectre in suit of 
 Filby-made Tyrian bloom poet and novelist and essayist and 
 dramatist, for whom, wert thou alive and hard up for paper, 
 I would send my last shirt to the paper-mill to make Bath 
 post. Eeturn, if for a moment, Oliver Goldsmith ! Sins and 
 follies there may be posted against thee in the Book, but surely 
 tears enough have been shed over the ' Yicar of Wakefield ' to 
 blot them out, and airs of light-hearted laughter have been 
 wafted from ' She Stoops to Conquer ' to dry the leaves again a 
 thousand times ! 
 
 But they cannot come back, these shades, at my poor 
 bidding. Beaconsfield and Poet's Corner, St. Paul's and 
 Dromore, will hold their own until the time shall come. I 
 cannot even wander through the genius hallowed rooms of 
 Keynolds's house. Literary and scientific apparatus, and 
 panorama, have effaced all vestige thereof. I can but muse in 
 the spirit on the dining-room where these great ones met on 
 the octagon painting-room with the arm-chair on a dais, with 
 the high window looking to the northward darkened on the 
 day of Goldsmith's death, with the palette and pencils laid by 
 for the day when Johnson was buried, and on every Sunday 
 afterwards, according to his dying wish. 
 
 My square is nearly circled. When I have stated that 
 David Loggan, the engraver immortalised by Pope, lived next 
 door to Hogarth, and that next door on the other side resided 
 (after the painter's death) John Hunter, the surgeon, who here 
 formed the famous anatomical museum, called the Hunterian 
 collection, and gave every Sunday evening, during the winter 
 months, medical soirees, where matters germane to the scalpel 
 
LEICESTER SQUARE. 183 
 
 and lancet were pleasantly discussed over coffee and muffins, 
 I think I have named all that Leicester Square offers of 
 remarkable, historically speaking. I am not aware that any 
 nobleman ever had his head cut off here ; that Lord Rochester 
 ever said anything witty from any of its balconies ; or that 
 any patriot, from Jack Cade to Mr. Hunt, ever addressed 
 British freeholders within its precincts. 
 
 The diameter I proposed to myself is well-nigh completed ; 
 but there is yet the centre of my self-traced circle to be 
 visited. I shall say no more of Mr. Wyld's globe, save that it 
 is a very excellent vivd voce course of lessons in geography. I 
 will not touch upon the bazaar that was to have been built 
 there once ; but I must, for the benefit of my untravelled 
 readers, say a word about the centre of the square before it was 
 built upon. 
 
 AVhere now is a lofty dome was once, neophyte in 
 London, a howling desert enclosed by iron railings. There 
 was no grass, but there was a feculent, colourless vegetation 
 like mildewed thatch upon a half-burnt cottage. There were 
 no gravel- walks, but there were sinuous gravelly channels and 
 patches, as if the cankerous earth had the mange. There 
 were rank weeds heavy with soot. There were blighted 
 shrubs like beggars' staves or paralytic hop-poles. There 
 were shattered marble vases like bygone chemists' mortars 
 which had lost their pestles, half choked with black slimy 
 mould like preparations for decayed blisters. The earth seemed . 
 to bring forth crops, but they were crops of shattered tiles, 
 crumbling bricks, noseless kettles, and soleless boots. The 
 shrubs had on their withered branches, strange fruits 
 battered hats of antediluvian shape, and oxidised saucepan 
 lids. The very gravel was rusty and mixed with fragments 
 of willow-pattern plates, verdigrised nails, and spectral horse- 
 shoes. The surrounding railings, rusty, bent, and twisted as 
 they were, were few and far between. The poor of the neigh- 
 bourhood tore them out by night, to make pokers of. In the 
 centre, gloomy, grimy, rusty, was the Statue more hideous 
 (if such a thing may be) than the George the Fourth enormity 
 in Trafalgar Square more awful than the statue of the Coni- 
 mendatore in Don Giovanni. 
 
 There were strange rumours and legends current in Leices- 
 terian circles concerning this enclosure. Men told, holding 
 their breath, of cats run wild in its thickets, and grown as 
 large as leopards. There was no garden, and if any man 
 
184 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 possessed a key to the enclosure, lie was too frightened to use 
 it. People spoke of a dragon, a ghoule, a geni, who watched 
 over the square, and for some fell purpose kept it desolate. 
 Some said, the statue was the geni; but in 1851, when the 
 Globe was proposed, he showed himself to the world, howled 
 dismally, and did furious battle to keep his beloved Square 
 intact in all its ruin and desolation. This geni, or dragon's 
 name was, if I remember right, Vested Interests. He was 
 vanquished. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 DAYBREAK. 
 
 IT is but a narrow thread of grayish hue, streaking the 
 murky horizon in the quarter the sun conies from, that I take 
 to spin my feeble web from. Fragile it is, and of as little 
 account as the long, slender, attenuated filament I have seen 
 stretching from the limbs of an oak (whose frame has grown 
 gaunter, but whose muscles seem to grow stronger in its 
 rigid, iron knots, like those of an old athlete) down to the 
 cowslips in a field beneath : the aerial suspension bridge of 
 thej spider. Break of day is ray slender, gray, flickering 
 thread ; but Day and Night are the strong oak and the wide 
 field they connect ; and my thread may serve as a humble 
 link between two mighty subjects. 
 
 And my thread daybreak should it not be a chord in 
 the harp on which Nature at least for ever sings hymns of 
 praise; if men do sometimes fail to pray? And daybreak, 
 is it not a bell, a marriage-bell to millions -a, passing-bell to 
 dying millions too a joy-bell and a knell of death ? And 
 daybreak, is it not the. main, from which tend smaller pipes 
 of light? And daybreak, is it not the chandelier at which 
 both wise and foolish virgins kindle their lamps, to light them 
 their day's work through? The night may seem lifelong; 
 but daybreak comes : it must come like Death. 
 
 Yet, omnipresent as it is, how many children of humanity 
 there be who rise, and work, and go to bed again, through a 
 lifetime, without once beholding my thread. ' Does one man 
 in a million,' asks Paley, in the Natural Theology, ' know 
 how oval frames are turned ?' Is there one man in a thou- 
 sand, I will less boldly ask, who has seen the break of day ? 
 
DAYBREAK. 185 
 
 If all had seen it, what would there be left for me to write 
 about ? If everybody knew everything, how many, many 
 days the poor schoolmasters and philosophers would have to 
 wait for the bread they had cast on the waters ! 
 
 What aspect, observation, has daybreak on a railway? Wo 
 have left London by the night mail for Liverpool. It is 
 August weather, and day breaks just after we have passed 
 Crewe. With a rasping, shattering express motion have we 
 come over the rails, lieading was out of the question. A 
 pale gentleman in spectacles essayed it at Watford ; but the 
 letters danced up and down in all manner of ways against his 
 gold-rimmed pebbles, as though the matrix they (the letters) 
 had descended from had been a maniac ; and they, in con- 
 sequence, mad type, wholly unsuitable for so grave a work as 
 ' The Architectural Psychology of the Middle Ages, as Ex- 
 hibited in Flying Buttresses/ which the pale gentleman 
 essayed to peruse but gave up at last in despair. 
 
 Another traveller, a political-looking man with gray whis- 
 kers and a determined neckcloth the sort of man, I warrant, 
 who looks sharply after the member for his borough, and 
 heads a requisition to him to resign his seat two or three 
 times in the course of a session tried also to read a leader 
 in that day's ' Times ;' but, in spite of the large, bold type, 
 and of his folding the paper into a small, fierce compass, and 
 holding it with both hands, with a paper-knife pressed over 
 the line immediately below the one he read, and so moved 
 downwards, and nearly gluing his eyes to it in the bargain ; 
 in spite of this he had no better success ; and muttering 
 ' Unprincipled print ' (doubtless because he couldn't read it), 
 went austerely to sleep, and dreamed, probably, of the brisk 
 rubbing up he will give the honourable member for Throttle- 
 bury, shortly, concerning his infamous tergiversation about 
 that poor burked little bill which was to have given sewers to 
 Throttlebury. A commercial gentleman, with his great-coat 
 full of gold pencil-cases, vainly attempted at Eugby to jot 
 down an order in his note-book, and failing to make anything 
 but incoherent zigzag diagrams, bound a railway rug round 
 his head till it assumed the semblance of a grenadier's cap 
 that had been stencilled at a paper-stainer's, and went to 
 sleep, too. Somebody (I hope he didn't sit near me), not 
 being able to read, or to sleep, or to snore and gasp and bark 
 like the ball of something with a wide-awake hat in the left- 
 hand off corner, and afraid to sing, presumed to smoke, swal- 
 
186 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 lowing the major part of the fumes through modesty, anct 
 tilting the ashes cautiously out of the little Venetian jalousies 
 above the window. 
 
 We all got out at Wolverton, where the commercial tra- 
 veller disappeared perhaps to take an order for pork pies ; 
 and the pale gentleman in spectacles was indignant (and 
 justly so, I think), that he could not have threepenn'orth of 
 brandy in his tea. So, through the black night have we 
 rushed fiercely through black county after county. At Staf- 
 ford, the ball of something (which has turned out to be 
 camlet cloak), speaking for the first and last time, has re- 
 marked that ' it is a long train ' (which it is not). At some 
 intermediate station whose name, as it was yelped forth by 
 a porter as he hurried by thrusting grease into the hot greedy 
 maw of the axle-box, might just as well have been cried in 
 Chaldee or Sanscrit for anything I could make of it a sim- 
 pering gentleman with a gold chain peeping even from among 
 his many coats, and a Fez cap, proposed to enter the car- 
 riage ; but, drawing back, declared that ' somebody had been 
 smoking,' and that it was a ' disgwace ;' whereupon the guard 
 asked nobody in particular if anybody had been smoking; 
 and, seeming perfectly satisfied with the assurance that no- 
 body had, remarked that 'it was the engine maybe/ and 
 popped my simpering gentleman into the next carriage, in 
 which there were two old maids, one purple satin lady of 
 Lambertian or Armitagian. bulk, a young child (querulous), a 
 black nurse, and a gentleman subject to fits having them, 
 too, every other station or so. No smoking there ! 
 
 Far behind lies Crewe, though but a minute passed. I 
 draw down the window, and the keen morning breeze charges 
 in at the aperture like a Cossack. And in the eastern horizon 
 Day breaks. How many cocks, I wonder, in all the lands day 
 breaks upon are singing their morning hymn now ? I listen 
 for one Chanticleer ; but the engine has a crow of its own, 
 and a yell for going into tunnels, and a howl for coming out 
 of them, and hideous noises for all seasons and every inch of 
 the road. All the cocks in Lancashire might crow them- 
 selves hoarse ere I could hear them amid this din. 
 
 Day breaks fast, and the slender gray thread expands into 
 a wide sheet of pale light. Against it the coldly violet clouds 
 are defined in sharp and rigid relief. These are the frag- 
 ments of the veil of night yielding slowly, and, as it were, 
 reluctantly, to daylight. Slower and slower, almost imper- 
 
DAYBREAK. 187 
 
 ceptibly, as day gains on night, one great bank of cloud sinks 
 in nearly a horizontal line into Erebus, like a pair of flats in a 
 theatrical spectacle ; but the side pieces of clouds the wings 
 and set pieces, if I may call them so split up into jagged, 
 obstinate, refractory cloudlets over the sky, which by this 
 time has turned from ashy pallid gray to silver blue not 
 sky-blue, as we generally understand it, yet but a blue like 
 that we see in the shadow part of silver lace. These clouds 
 are of fantastic shapes : some are dark slices, long, and almost 
 mathematically straight ; others torn and zigzag-shaped ; some 
 take the semblance of fiendish heads, and hideous animals 
 with more legs than were ever dreamt of in the philosophy of 
 Buffon or Cuvier. Fast as the day breaks, and broad day- 
 light as it is by this time, the genial, warming influence of 
 the blessed sun is yet wanting. The guests are bidden and 
 the banquet is spread ; but the bride and bridegroom are not 
 come home from church yet. The contract is drawn up, but 
 lacks the signature. The pyre is heaped up and needs only 
 one friendly torch to set it in a blaze. 
 
 Coldly garish yet is the white, sunless day. Funereally 
 black and dismal loom tufted masses of tall trees their um- 
 brageous mantles chequered here and there by diamond 
 flashes of the sunlight coming up behind them. Coldly gray 
 are the wide leas and ploughed fields. Coldly black are the 
 hedgerows, and hayricks, and stunted pollard willows, and 
 lonely cowshippons. Coldly dark and dismal, rear their 
 heads, the roofed posts of the electric telegraph looking, 
 in the dubious light, like gibbets. Coldly the wind keeps 
 blowing in at the window; so at least tells me my fellow- 
 traveller in the gold pencil line tells me so, too, in a re- 
 markably discourteous tone, with some nonsensical allusion to 
 the ear-ache. I shut the window and pity him. He thinks 
 nothing of the break of day thinks about it no more, nay, 
 not so much as that flapping crow overhead no more than 
 that rustic in the clay-soiled fustian, who has been up since 
 three to fodder the cows and lead Ball and Dapple to the pond 
 to drink, and who now leans over a gate on the line, smoking 
 his break-of-day pipe, and whistling bewhiles. And yet, 
 perhaps, I libel this clay-stained man. Perchance he does 
 think of day and of its Maker in his own rough untutored 
 way sees in the clouds, and the sky, and the light, as clear a 
 connection between the varied Nature and the varied God, as 
 he knows to exist between the two plain sets of iron rails 
 
188 GASLIGHT AND- DAYLIGHT. 
 
 on the gravel road before him, and the mighty terminus at 
 Eustcn Square two hundred miles away. 
 
 Wra-a-a-ah ! the train enters a tunnel. All is black for 
 half a dozen minutes then emerging, we see the sun getting 
 up in the East like a refreshed generous giant, scattering gold 
 over the world. 
 
 Break of day after the Honourable Mrs. Plover's soiree 
 dansante. The Honourable Mrs. Plover was the youngest and 
 seventh daughter of General the Earl of Duxandraques of 
 Liverwing Hall. The footmen at Liverwing have had for 
 some years a somewhat Hebrew-Caucasian cast of countenance, 
 and evil-minded men do say they are bailiffs in disguise. 
 The noble lord's solicitor and heirs male do not dare to trust 
 him, if they can help it, with as much wood as would serve 
 for a lucifer match so addicted is he to cutting down the 
 timber on his estate, and afterwards ' cutting away ' with the 
 ligneous proceeds to Hombourg or Baden-Baden. The Honour- 
 able Miss de Bressbohun (that is the family name of the Dux- 
 andraques) had for her fortune only a remarkably pretty 
 face, and an assortment of the most a captivating blonde 
 ringlets you ever saw ; so she married Mr. Eufus Plover, 
 who is ambiguously known to be ' on 'Change ' and brings 
 fabulously large sums of money off it. They have a grand 
 country-house at Gunnersbury, and a sweet little marine villa 
 at Brighton all Venetian blinds and dazzling stucco ; and, 
 to crown all, a jewel of a house, Number 402 (A), Toppletoton 
 Street, Crinoline Square. In this Elysian mansion (Madame 
 de Pompadour could not have spent more in upholstery upon 
 it than did Mrs. Plover,) the enchanting soirees dansantes of the 
 Honourable Mrs. P. are held. 
 
 This had been a grand night for the P. family. Half Long 
 Acre in the way of carriages. Half the Heralds' College in 
 the armorial bearings on the coach panels. Quite a Zoological 
 Garden of lions rampant, couchant, and passant, griffins spar- 
 ring wildly with their paws at inoffensive shields, and birds', 
 beasts', and fishes' heads drawn and quartered in every imagi- 
 nary way. Quite a little course of ' Latin without a master ' 
 in the heraldic mottos. 
 
 And such company ! No merchants, nor ship-owners, nor 
 people of that sort not even one of Mr. Plover's ' Exchange 7 
 friends. Their exclusion was won from Mr. P. after a hard 
 battle the very morning of the ball, and only after the conces- 
 sion on the part of his lady of two trifles and a model of the 
 
DAYBKEAK. 189 
 
 Great Exhibition in confectionary, to be withdrawn from the 
 menu of the supper. The nearest approach to commerce 
 among the guests was the great Sir Blanke Cheque, the 
 banker of Lombard Street, who has three daughters married 
 to peers of the realm, and one to the Kussian Count Candle- 
 atevich, who is immensely rich, but dare not return to Eussia, 
 where he would infallibly be knouted, have his nose and ears 
 slit, and be sent to Tobolsk, for daring to overstay the time 
 allowed him by the Czar for a continental trip, and for pre- 
 suming to go to a concert where Miss Crotchet sang the 'Fair 
 Land of Poland ;' a due minute of which last crime was made 
 the very next day bylittle Juda Benikowski, the Muscovite* 
 Jew spy, and duly recorded against the count in the archives 
 of the Eussian Consulate General. Among the company was 
 the noble Duke and Duchess of Garternee ; the Earl and 
 Countess of Anchorsheet, and Ladies Fitzfluke (2) ; Field- 
 Marshal Count Schlaghiiitera ; the Ban of Lithuania ; the 
 Way wode of Bosnia ; the Hospodar of Thrace ; the new 
 Bishop of Yellowback Island, West Indies, the Mac Kit of 
 that ilk in full Highland costume, with a dirk in his stocking 
 worth five hundred pounds having come to Mrs. Plover's 
 straight from the anniversary of the Tossancaber Highland 
 Association, where he danced more strathspeys on the table, 
 emptied more mulls of snuff, and drank more glasses of whisky 
 than I care to name. Then there was Chibouck Pasha, in a 
 tight frock-coat like that of an inspector of police, but with a 
 blister of diamonds on his breast, a red cap, and a gorgeous 
 beard. 
 
 There was Mr. Vatican O'Phocleide, M.P. for Barry bugle, 
 Ireland, who had a slight dispute with the Hansom cabman 
 who brought him to Toppletoton Street, and threatened to 
 inflict personal chastisement on Berkely Montmorency, 
 Mrs. P.'s sergeant-footman, for not rightly announcing his 
 style and titles. There was old General Halberts, who 
 served in the Prussian army at Leipsic, who was about sixty 
 years of age -when that battle was fought, but is about fifty- 
 one or two now, has very black hair and whiskers and 
 mustachoes, but being rather shaky and tremulous (not with 
 
 * Nous avons change tout $a will say my Russian friends, who have 
 so improved in civilisation within the last two years, that happening to turn 
 over the leaves of a book called the "Journey due North " the other day 
 at a stall [the "Journey" was marked eightpence] I thought I was 
 reading the narrative of a nightmare. 
 
190 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 age, of course), got nervous at the great confusion of carriages 
 at the top of the street, and chose to dismount and walk to 
 402 (A), whereby he became entangled ^ between one of Mr. 
 Bunter's pastry-cook's men, and Ludovico Scartafaccio from 
 Modena (with his orchestra on wheels, drawn by a pony of a 
 Modenese cast of countenance), and unluckily hooked himself 
 on to an area railing by his diamond-hilted sabre, arid the 
 collar of the Golden Fleece, from which unpleasant position he 
 was at length extricated by policeman P. 95, and Silver Sam, 
 the link-boy. 
 
 Finally, to mention a few more notabilities, there was 
 Bohwanie-Lall, from Calcutta, a being strongly resembling a 
 cocoa-nut candle swathed in a pair of white muslin curtains, 
 bound round with bell-ropes of diamonds, pearls, and emeralds, 
 and surmounted by a toupee of birds-of-paradise feathers. 
 There was the author of the last new novel, and the last 
 new painter, and the last new preacher, and the last new 
 lion of whatever shape or degree he might be. There 
 was Professor Oxalicacides, from Breslau, who, in his lectures 
 on hygiene lately, gravely hinted Jiis suspicions that the English 
 sweet-stuff makers adulterated Everton toffee with sugar of 
 lead and aqua tofana. There was Madame Sostenuta, and 
 Mademoiselle Orphea Sospianti, and Signer Portamento from 
 the Italian Opera, engaged to sing professionally ; and with 
 them Herr Bompazek, the great German basso, with a voice 
 from the tombs, and hair dreadfully long and dishevelled. 
 There were battalions of grand old dowagers in various stages 
 of velvet and satin, more or less airy. There were frigid 
 chaperons, so awful in their impressiveness that they seemed 
 to possess the capacity of doing the office of Medusa's head 
 for you at once. There were anxious mammas..; and 
 simpering young dandies in colossal white neckcloths, and 
 feet so tiny as to endanger their centre of gravity, and to 
 render their tumbling over in the midst of a quadrille anything 
 but unlikely. There were flushed-faced old papas. There 
 was Jullien's band ; and there were cohorts, Pyrrhic phalanxes, 
 of the dear English girls, the forms, the faces, the bright eyes, 
 the red lips, the laughing lips that I will defy you to match 
 Mademoiselle Eulalie, or Signora Bianca, or Friiulein Trud- 
 schen, or Donna Inez, or Sudarinia Nadiezda, or Khanoum 
 Haidee, Gulnare, or Dudu, any summer or winter's day the 
 whole year through. And so, through the noise of the night 
 season, the Hon. Mrs. Plover's soiree dansante proceeded, 
 
DAYBREAK. 191 
 
 How many quadrilles, and polkas, valses a deux temps, Scliot- 
 tisches and mazurkas there were. How the * lamps shone o'er 
 fair women and brave men ;' how ' a thousand hearts beat 
 happily,' and ' eyes looked love to eyes which spoke again ;' 
 how hands were squeezed in conservatories, and soft nothings 
 whispered in balconies ; how crushed white roses were ravished 
 from unresisting Sabines by impetuous dragoons, and tulle 
 ribbons purloined by Cupid-struck undergraduates of the 
 University of Oxford, tell, philosopher in the ill-washed neck- 
 cloth and the dress-coat, to whose appearance candle-light 
 was a decided advantage philosopher, too awkward to dance, 
 too timid to play whist, too moody to do aught else save 
 lounge against doorposts and observe. How Lord Claude 
 Pettitoes proposed (over strawberry ice) to Mrs. Vanilla, the 
 Cuban widow ; how rude General Halberts made a dash at a 
 model of Osier's crystal fountain in barley-sugar, and ate the 
 fluted column up bodily. How Chibouck Pacha quaffed cham- 
 pagne till his face shone again ; and Lady Blanche Pettitoes 
 (sister of Lord Claude and daughter of the Marchioness of 
 Dayryfedde) complained to her mamma, that he, the Pacha, 
 squeezed her ; how Mr. Eemanet, M.P., insisted on talking 
 agricultural statistics to his partner ; how the various lions 
 literary, artistic, and scientific howled, roared, and were 
 stirred up with poles of different lengths and were trotted 
 out in different corners of the different salons. How dancing 
 -commenced again after supper ; how Mrs. Plover was here, 
 there, and everywhere, with a smile for everybody and 
 a frown for nobody, save that sad fellow the member for 
 Barrybugle,, who tried to get a circle together in the boudoir, 
 to discuss the wrongs of Ireland. How Bohwanie Lall from 
 Calcutta, being strictly of the Brahminical persuasion, rigidly 
 refused to partake of supper with unbelievers, and was served 
 with a light repast of pistachio nuts and water-ice in an 
 adjoining apartment, though my private opinion is that he 
 subsequently devoured a trayfull of real patties on the stair- 
 case. How the professional singers sang like syrens, and 
 Herr Bompazek shook the very chandeliers with his sepul- 
 chral tones. How all these things were done, tell, fashionable 
 Muse of soire'es dansantes, if, Muse, thou wert honoured with a 
 card for Mrs. Plover's, which I was not ! 
 
 When daybreak came at last, how garish the yellow candle* 
 light looked against the strong beams of the morning, the 
 stalwart workers, the early-to-bed goers, and early risers. 
 
192 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 How they beat down the flickering wax-ends in their sockets. 
 And the pretty girls pretty still yet looking pale, and a 
 trifle draggled, and a thought sickly. There was a faint 
 odour through the crowded rooms of faded roses and spilt 
 perfumes, and spent champagne corks. The Honourable 
 Mrs. Plover's soiree was over. Slowly down the grand stair- 
 case came the company, looking, if I may be permitted the 
 use of vulgarism, 'seedy/ Slowly the yawning footmen 
 opened the carriage-doors, and the sleepy horses clattered off. 
 This was break of day the day the grubs have to earn their 
 daily bread by and it was time for the butterflies to be in 
 bed. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 ARCADIA. 
 
 ARCADIA ! what a nice place it must have been to be sure ! 
 A perpetual pic-nic, without wasps or thunder-storms, and with 
 nothing to pay. A smiling landscape, all gently undulating 
 no fierce rocks or yawning chasms. Banks on which wild 
 thyme and violets continually grow. Eternal summer. Fruits, 
 flowers, and odoriferous herbs. Innocent flocks of more inno- 
 cent sheeplings ; soft, mild, benignant, undesigning bleaters 
 with dainty coats of whitest wool, hanging in worsted ringlets, 
 unsmirched by the red ochre or cinnabar of mercenary grazier ; 
 yet when the sun rises or sets, gleaming with iris tints from 
 Nature's prism, making of each a mutton-rainbow like Mr. 
 Hunt's sheep in his picture of Our English Coasts. And then 
 the shepherds with their long hair confined by an azure ribbon ; 
 their abundance of clean linen, and guilelessness of braces ; 
 their silken hose, and shoon with purple heels ; their harmless 
 sports consisting in shooting at a stuffed bird on a highly 
 decorated Maypole with a cross-bow bedecked with ribbons. 
 And the shepherdesses, with auburn tresses and wide-spread- 
 ing straw hats, with golden crooks, and wreaths of flowers, and 
 petticoats of gold and silk and satin brocade. And the old 
 women the Dorcases and Cicelys dear old dames with 
 silvery hair, scarlet cloaks, and ebony crutch-sticks ; but who 
 never scolded, oh no, nor had the rheumatism, nor groaned 
 about their precious bones and the badness of the times. 
 There were no Game Laws in Arcadia, no union workhouses, 
 no beer-shops, no tally-men, no police. There were balls every 
 
ARCADIA. 193 
 
 and all day long in Arcadia ; endless country dances. No 
 shepherd beat another shepherd or shepherdess with his crook, 
 or a poker, or pewter-pot ; for there was no quarrelling save 
 here and there a trifle of bickering, a transient fugacious 
 jealousy when Celia detected Corydon kissing of Phyllis, or if 
 Sacharissa in a pet broke Damon's pipe. But these fleeting 
 differences would soon be reconciled : all would kiss and be 
 friends : and banquets to re-united friendship would take place 
 in cool grottoes on carpets of fair flowers ; the viands (fruits, 
 syllabubs, and cakes of finest flour), cooled by murmuring, 
 rippling, pebbly, sparkling streamlets, and by fragrant boughs 
 outside the cave, drooping with foliage and luscious fruit, and 
 waved by the pitying summer breeze ; sheltering the grotto's 
 inmates from the burly Sun's too bold salute. And the sky 
 was very blue, and the birds sang carols continually. 
 
 Yet, though the golden age be gone, and there are no more 
 picturesque shepherds or shepherdesses, save in the canvasses 
 of Watteau and Laneret, Arcadia still exists. It lives in the 
 very heart of London. 
 
 The prototype of the London arcade was, undoubtedly, the 
 Oriental Bazaar. There is not a town in Turkey or Hindostan, 
 without some dirty, stifling, covered passage, both sides of 
 which overflow with amphitheatres of knick-knackery for sale. 
 The Bezesteen of Stamboul is a genuine arcade, with all the 
 crowding and confusion, the kaleidoscopic arrangement and 
 gossip-bargaining of the Arcadia of England. 
 
 The French, who manage so many things better than we our- 
 selves do, and not a few so much worse, have long had an Ar- 
 cadia of their own. As a special measure of relief for their legion- 
 ary flaneurs or street-pacers driven, in wet weather, from the 
 much-sauntered-over Boulevards there were devised the un- 
 rivalled galleries and passages which are the delight of Paris, 
 the admiration of strangers, and the bread-winners of unnum- 
 bered artificers, factors, and retailers of those heterogeneous 
 odds and ends known as articles de Paris. To the Passage de 
 1'Opera, des Panoramas, du Saumon, Jouffroy ; from the Galeries 
 Vivienne, Colbert, and Yero-Dodat ; the caricatures of Gavarni 
 and Grandville, the classic lithographs of Jullien, the novels 
 of Paul de Kock, the statuettes of Danton, and the ballads of 
 Mademoiselle Elo'isa Puget owe their chief celebrity. Beneath 
 those glass roofs literary and artistic reputations have been 
 won and lost. 
 
 Milan followed in the wake of Paris, and the city of the Duoino 
 
194: GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 ooasts many plate-glass-adorned and knick-knack-crowded 
 covered thoroughfares. Vienna and Berlin followed; "but 
 England knew not arcades before the present century. Some 
 inventive genius accomplished a great feat in conjunction with 
 certain shopkeepers and the Cork and Burlington estates. He 
 "brought Arcadia into Piccadilly, and built the Burlington 
 Arcade. 
 
 At first the shops of this Arcade were small and dark. They 
 sold no articles of positive necessity : the useful arts were 
 repellent to Burlingtonian notions of industry : and luxury 
 was almost exclusively purveyed for. Burlington (as became 
 a comital godfather) was intensely aristocratic. Boots and 
 shoes and gloves were certainly sold ; but they fitted only the 
 most Byronically small and symmetrical hands and feet ; none 
 but the finest and most odoriferous leathers were employed in 
 their confection, and none but the highest prices charged for 
 them. The staple manufactures of this Arcade have been in 
 turns jewellery, fans, feathers, French novels, pictorial albums, 
 annuals, scrap-books, caricatures, harps, accordions, quadrille 
 music, illuminated polkas, toys, scents, hair-brushes, odorife- 
 rous vinegar, Kowlands' Macassar Oil, zephyr paletots, snuff- 
 boxes, jewelled whips, clouded canes, lemon-coloured gloves, 
 and false whiskers. Scarcely a fashionable vice, an aristocratic 
 frivolity, or a Belgravian caprice, but had (and has) a repre- 
 sentative in the Burlington Arcade. It was a little Vanity 
 Fair. I have walked it many and 'many a time for years, 
 thinking of John Bunyan, and wondering which was Britain 
 Row and Portugal Row. 
 
 There was but one active handicraft exercised in the Arcade, 
 and that was hair-cutting. The handicraftsmen cut your hair 
 in sophisticated saloons, decorated with fallacious mural paint- 
 ings of impossible Grecian landscapes, with flaming Greeks 
 and Turks fighting. Below they inveigled you to buy drugs 
 and potions wherewith to dye the gray hairs you should be 
 proud of, blue black ; and stuffs to make you emulate the 
 smell of the civet, or the musk rat, and hogs' lard condimented 
 into bears' grease, and wigs ; woven lies made from dead 
 men's hair to thatch live fools. Further on, there were boots 
 to pinch feet, corsets to tighten waists, and gloves to cramp 
 hands. Boys with bundles were rigidly excluded from the 
 precincts. Smoking was not allowed through its length or 
 breadth. It was paraded by padded, tight-booted, tight- 
 girthed, wigged old beaus striving to look like boys of twenty ; 
 
ARCADIA. 
 
 by boys aping the vices of old men ; by carpet warriors, and 
 by knights fresh from Almack tournaments. 
 
 The department of Arcadia to which I have just (and it may 
 seem to you rather harshly) alluded, has not been free from 
 the vicissitudes, humiliations, and mutabilities common to 
 buildings and thoroughfares, as well as to men. Yet, on the 
 whole, it may be said that the Burlingtonians have been a 
 prosperous and well-to-do community. If Burlington had ap- 
 pealed to the wisdom, learning, good taste ; or to the scientific 
 or philosophic tendencies of humanity, it might have been 
 bankrupt long ago, and its traders gone barefoot. But Bur- 
 lington has calculated, like the quack doctor, that of every fifty 
 passers-by forty are fools. With Eobert Macaire it has studied 
 the immortal axiom delivered by that sage to Bertrand, c The 
 day passes, but the fools remain ;' and has occupied itself with 
 what is co-existent with the world and with humanity human 
 folly. But for such customers, the booths in Vanity Fair, 
 wherever its tents be pitched, would drive a poor trade indeed. 
 
 I will leave the Province of Burlington, and direct my 
 attention to that of Exeter. One was of comital rank ; but 
 this is the fief of a marquisate. A word as to its antecedents. 
 
 Where now stands the street that forms the approach to 
 Eennie's magnificent bridge the Bridge of Waterloo ; the 
 bridge of gorgeous sunset views the Bridge of Sighs the 
 Eialto of transpontine theatricals, industrials of the Kew Cut, 
 Elephant and Castle omnibuses, and women without names, 
 without hope, without lives (save a certain dog-like existence), 
 there stood, before I was born, certain dingy brick houses. 
 One of them was the old office of the old ^and now dead) 
 1 Courier ' newspaper ; and many may be old enough to remem- 
 ber the bulletin of the great victory of W aterloo being pasted 
 up on the ' Courier ' windows on the 21st of June, 1815. Another 
 was the old Lyceum Theatre ; a third was Mr. Day's trunk- 
 shop. Close beside these buildings, stood two mighty ele- 
 phants* tusks- and a burly Beefeater, directing the eager sight- 
 seer, the impatient country cousin, the enthusiastic holiday- 
 maker, to the Museum or Menagerie of W ild Animals, known 
 throughout the United Kingdom as Crosse's W 7 ild Beast Show. 
 Here had the lord of ' aitches ' and the Patent Theatres the 
 great John Philip Kemble borrowed of Mr. Crosse the rhino- 
 ceros on which he took his ever-memorable ride through 
 Covent Garden Market in the early morning, when the sun 
 was bright, and saloop-stalls were yet about as dignified as a 
 
 o 2 
 
19C) GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 lord, playing the fool as only wise men can. Here had the 
 howlings of unnumbered savage brutes, the rugged Eussiaii 
 bear, the armed rhinoceros, like the Hyrcanian beast, shook 
 the bricks of Exeter Change. Ye spotted snakes, ye dwelt 
 there ; hyenas, ye have laughed ; jackals, ye have wept 
 deceivingly : blue-faced monkeys, ye have shown your ceru- 
 lean visages in those byegone Arcadian precincts. Here the 
 " White Milliner," supposed to have been the Duchess of Tyr- 
 connel fallen upon evil days, sold ribbons and gauzes. There 
 held out against the united forces of Apothecaries' Hall and His 
 Majesty's foot-guards Chunee, unconquered of refractory ele- 
 phants. There he laughed at pounds of calomel and bales of 
 drugs, and shook his sides with elephantine scorn at guns and 
 pistols ; till the great, embrowned regulation muskets of His 
 Majesty's foot-guards cracked his leviathan skin and let his 
 giant life out. Crosse's must have been an exhibition. Why 
 wasn't I alive when Exeter Change was extant, and the admis- 
 sion * up stairs ' one shilling, or under ? 
 
 But Arcadia was fated to come again ; and Exeter Change, 
 though it retains its name, has changed its locale, and is no 
 more what it was. It is a changed change. It had a transi- 
 tion state a sort of chrysalis -like grubhood as a bad bazaar 
 a very bad and lame imitation of those Margate and Eamsgate, 
 and general watering-place knick-knack shops, where there 
 are countless assemblages of trifles, unconsidered, because really 
 useless, and where you may, perhaps, (if you have great good 
 luck) win, after the investment of from seven to fifteen shillings, 
 such a prize as a German silver pencil-case, or a tea-pot stand 
 of plaited rushes. And then Exeter Change became a wilder- 
 ness of bricks and mortar, scaif old-poles, hods, ladders and 
 ropes, and it and its neighbourhood went mad on the building 
 question, after which and (up to 1853) ultimately, the Change 
 changed its site, and burst on the world as an arcade an 
 Arcade of desolation, silence, despair. 
 
 What can I compare it to? The street of the tombs at 
 Pompeii the Via Sacra with all the shops* shut up and half 
 a dozen funerals of Sextus Quintilius Someo'ody winding their 
 way through its mournful lengths? A street in Tripoli or 
 Algiers at mid- day when the sun is very hot and the plague 
 is very bad about ? The ' dark entry ' in Canterbury Cathedral 
 Yard^multiplied by two ? Lawrence Pountney Hill (about the 
 dreariest of thoroughfares I know) of a Sunday afternoon? 
 Anything, anywhere, in any climate, country, age, or circum- 
 
ARCADIA. 197 
 
 stance that is gloomy, dismal, heart-depressing, unventilated, 
 graveyard-smelling dull. This gloomy avenue leads from 
 one and into another of the merriest London streets you 
 would wish to find : one the bustling Catherine Street with 
 its noisy News Exchange, and Old Drury (though to be sure 
 that is not so very gay) at the top ; the other the lively 
 Wellington Street, embellished as it is with one of the most 
 abusive cab-stands in the metropolis, and the sprightly 
 Lyceum Theatre. But the Arcade is so dull. Some ghastly 
 artist undertook, on its construction, to decorate it with mural 
 arabesques. He has succeeded in filling the spaces between 
 the shop-windows with some skeleton figures ; - - dripping, 
 faded funerealities. These ' arabesques ' (' mauresques ' would 
 be more appropriate, for they are very mortuary) twist them- 
 selves into horrible skeleton presentments, all in a leaden, 
 deadened, dusky tone of colour ; and, high over gas-lamps, 
 and grimly clambering about shop-fronts, are melancholy 
 dolphins and writhing serpents, and attenuated birds of 
 paradise ; all looking intensely wretched at the positions in 
 which they find themselves. Likewise there are scrolls, 
 which the Furies might twist in their hair ; and leaves which 
 seem ready to drop off for very deadness, and sepulchral 
 headings, and egg-and-tongue fillets like rows of coffin nails. 
 
 And are there shops in this Arcadia ? There are. And are 
 these shops tenanted ? Well ; they are tenanted ; but not 
 much. A great many of the shops have had occupants ; but 
 somehow or other the occupiers are continually vacating. 
 They never stopped. Doubtless they had many good and 
 sufficient reasons for so persistently continuing not to remain. 
 They went abroad, relinquished business, made their fortunes 
 perhaps. I can remember in this changing Change, house 
 and estate agents, servants' registry offices, coal-mine offices 
 (with neat little hampers of Wallsend in the window a 
 novelty which would answer well, I opine, with a horse- 
 dealer, if he were to put a few pasterns and fetlocks and a 
 horse-shoe or two in his window), booksellers, newsvenders 
 and publishers (news and publicity here!), cigar-shops, tailors 
 and habit-makers, milliners, dressmakers, and bonnet-builders, 
 architects and surveyors, and a toy-shop : that didn't last. 
 The drums and trumpets, the miniature guns and swords 
 sounded and wielded there must have been of the same sort 
 as those used at Napoleon's midnight review ; the Tombolas 
 must have had death's heads ; the Jacks must have sprung, 
 
198 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 not of boxes, but of sarcophagi ; the kaleidoscopes must have 
 shown nothing but prismatic goblins ; the accordions played 
 nothing but the Dead March in Saul. 
 
 I knew a French bookseller who established himself in 
 Exeter Arcadia, with his wife and olive-branches round him, 
 vainly thinking to live by vending the lively nouvelkttes and 
 vaudevilles of the Land of the Gaul. But his little children 
 
 Eined among the brumous shades of the 'Cade, and sighed, 
 ke Mary Queen of Scots, for the fair land of France again 
 so the Frenchman vamosed. I also knew a confident foreigner 
 who came here in the Exhibition year of '51, with two stools, 
 a desk, and a Nugent's dictionary, on a vague speculation of 
 interpreting, translating for, or verbally assisting foreigners 
 visiting London during the Exhibition season. ' Informations- 
 Bureau ' he called his shop, if I am not mistaken. But, as he 
 spoke no English, and nobody came to make any inquiries 
 who spoke any foreign language, his bureau came to nothing, 
 and he vamosed, too. 
 
 Desolate, dreary, weary, as any grange with any number of 
 moats, art thou, Arcadia of Exeter ! Yet there is hope for 
 thee. ' Hope comes to all,' says Milton, and may I live to see 
 the day when thy shops shall overflow with merchandise, 
 when thy outlets shall be blocked lip with customers, when 
 thy fame shall be spread among the nations, and excursion 
 trains start from the uttermost ends of the earth to visit thee. 
 Till then, farewell, or be, as heretofore, a desert not howling, 
 for there are no wild animals to howl in thee an empty 
 sepulchre, a deserted wine-cellar, an abandoned quarry, an 
 exhausted coal-mine, a ruined temple, or ' Kinny's Tomb/ 
 meet only for the nocturnal rendezvous of some Pyramus of 
 the Strand with some Thisbe of Adam Street, Adelphi ; be 
 anything thou listest for, of a verity, Exeter, I (and, doubt- 
 less, my readers) am weary of thee. 
 
 The Lowther Arcade I seek not to disguise it under any 
 plausible incognito, for I am proud of it is a tube of shops 
 running from St. Martin's Churchyard into the Strand, very 
 nearly opposite Hungerford Market. There is, frequently, 
 very much noise in this tube as in that far-famed one across 
 the Menai Straits that Mr. Stephenson built ; and there are 
 collisions and signals but here my railroad similes end ; for, 
 in lieu of being a pitch-dark colour with grim iron-ribbed 
 sides, with a flooring of slippery rails on which huge locomo- 
 tive dragons with many jointed tails of carriages glide, this 
 
ARCADIA. 199 
 
 tube is light and airy, and roofed with glass. It is noisy ; 
 but not with the screaming and snorting, and panting of 
 engines, the rattling of wheels, and the jangling of chains : it 
 is resonant with the pattering of feet, the humming of voices, 
 the laughter of children, the rustling of silken dresses, and 
 buying, selling, bargaining, and chaffering. 
 
 The commodities vended in the Lowther Arcade I may 
 classify under three heads : Toys, Jewellery, and Minor Utili- 
 ties, about each of which I have a word to say. 
 
 Imprimis of toys. Enormous, preposterous, marvellous is 
 Lowther in respect of toys. She possesses amphitheatres, 
 rows upon rows, galleries upon galleries ; Great Pyramids 
 of Egypt, Great Towers of Belus, Great Tuns of Heidelberg, 
 Great Beds of Ware, Great Dragons of Wantley, Giant Helmets 
 of Otranto of what ? Of toys. Birmingham is the toyshop 
 of Europe ; Blair's Preceptor and Pinnock's Treasury of Know- 
 ledge say it is. But no : Lowther is. Look around, if you 
 are sceptical, upon the toys of all nations, and for children of 
 all ages, which give children such exquisite delight in playing 
 with them which give papa and mamma delight scarcely less 
 exquisite in buying them. Cosmopolitan toys, too. Look at 
 the honest, hearty, well-meaning toys of old England. The 
 famous cockhorses of such high blood and mettle, that the 
 blood has broken out all over their skins in an eruption of 
 crimson spots ; so full of spirit that their manes stand bolt 
 upright, and their tales project like comets ; such high and 
 mighty cockhorses, that they disdain to walk, and take con- 
 tinual carriage exercise on w r ooden platforms, running on 
 wheels. The millers' carts, so bravely painted, so full of 
 snowy sacks, supposed to contain best boulted flour ; but, in 
 reality, holding sawdust. The carriers' carts, the mail phaetons, 
 the block-tin omnibuses, the deal locomotives with woolly 
 steam rushing from the funnels, the brewers' drays, and those 
 simple, yet interesting, vehicles of plain white deal exact 
 models, in fact, of the London scavengers' carts so much in 
 request at Brighton and Margate for the cartage of sand, 
 pebbles, and sea- weed, and sometimes used as hearses for the 
 interment of a doll, or as Bath chairs for the exercise of an 
 unwilling poodle. 
 
 Can you look unmoved, although you le a philosopher and 
 your name Zeno, Plato, or Socrates, on the great Noah's arks 
 those Edens of wooden zoology, where the mouse lies down 
 with the cameleopard (and is nearly as big), where the lion is 
 
200 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 on such familiar terms with the jackass as to allow him to 
 stand atop of him, with his hoofs in his jagged mane ; where 
 the duck is neatly packed (for more commodious stowage) in 
 the bosom of the tigress, and then stands on his head between 
 the fore feet of the elephant ? Can you passively inspect the 
 noble fluffy donkeys, with real fur, and the nicely equipoised 
 panniers, and harness of softest, brownest leather ? And those 
 desirable family mansions, the dolls' houses, with the capital 
 modern furniture, plate, glass and linen, with commands to 
 sell which Messrs. Musgrove and Gadsden are not likely to be 
 honoured. And the glorious kitchens, with that bottle-jack 
 and meat screen and dripping-pan, at which was roasted the 
 wooden sirloin of beef, painted and varnished. The boxes of 
 red-handled carpenters' tools, which cut, and sawed, and 
 chiselled nothing but children's fingers. The boxes of tea-, 
 things now of wood, now of more ambition, tin and lead. 
 The dolls from Missey's flaxen-headed beauty, with the 
 moveable blue eyes and the elegant pink leather extremities, 
 swathed in silver tissue paper, to Master Jackey's favourite 
 policeman, A. 1, very blue in attire, and very stiff, with a very 
 glazed hat, an intensely legible number, and varnished wooden 
 boots. The fierce Hungarian hussar on horseback, with that 
 cruel curved wire and counter-weight stuck through his en- 
 trails, with which he maintains an unceasing see-saw. The 
 drummer with moveable arms. The musical toys, the accor- 
 dions, the marvellous kaleidoscopes regarded at first as phan- 
 tasmagoria of delight ; but, breaking, or being broken, soon 
 disclosing to our great disappointment and disgust, nothing 
 but a disc of tin, a fragment of smoked glass, and some tawdry 
 coloured chips ? And such is life. 
 
 Hoops, nine-pins, drums covered with real parchment, in- 
 nocently white above, but which, were you to tear them, and 
 look at the underpart, would, I gage, be found to be fragments 
 of old deeds and indentures such is life again : French toys, 
 fierce toys, warlike toys, smelling of Young France, and glory, 
 and blood such as miniature cannon, lancers, sabretasches, 
 war steamers armed en flute, sabres, muskets, shakos, and tri- 
 coloured flags surmounted by the resuscitated Eagle of France. 
 German toys, which like everything else coming from Deutsch- 
 land, are somewhat quaint, and somewhat eccentric, and a 
 thought misty : for example, queer old carved men and 
 women, in queer attitudes, and animals whose anatomy is 
 likewise of the queerest kind, and who yet have a queer ex- 
 
AKCADIA. 201 
 
 pression of life and animation about them. Tortuous games, 
 played with hammers and dice, and bells, and little men, 
 which remind you somehow, you know not why, of Rhine 
 Schlosses, and Gnomes and Undine, and Albert Diirer's mailed 
 knights. Then the Germans have monks and hermits who 
 open, like the dolls' houses cupboard-door fashion, and show 
 you (where gentlemen are generally supposed to accommodate 
 well, there is no harm in it their insides) little chapels 
 and oratories, with little altars and candles and priests. And 
 who but the Germans too, would make long panoramas and dio- 
 ramas opening in the accordion and collapsing manner, and 
 strange monsters in boxes? An infinity of other jou-joux, such 
 as India-rubber balls, whips of all shapes and capacities for 
 chair or cock-horse flagellation, skipping-ropes, flutes, spades, 
 Brakes and hoes : all these are to be found in the toy depart- 
 ment of the Lowther Arcade. 
 
 These toys are sold by bright-eyed damsels, and they are 
 bought by plump married couples, and pretty cousins, and 
 prim yet benignant old aunts, and cross yet kind old grand- 
 mothers yea and by cross-grained bachelors and sulky myso- 
 gynists, and crabbed City men. I have seen a man one of 
 those men who were he but five-and-twenty you would 
 immediately feel inclined to call, mentally, an old fellow 
 enter Lowther Arcadia by the Strand, looking as savage, as 
 ill-tempered, as sulky as the defendant in a breach-of-promise 
 case, dragging rather than leading a child ; but I have seen 
 him emerge ten minutes afterwards with an armful of toys 
 looking sunny with good humour. 
 
 And they are bought, these toys, for that marvellous little 
 people who are the delight and hope and joy, the sorrow, 
 solace, chief anxiety, and chief pleasure, of grown-up man 
 and womankind ; for those little manuscripts of the book of 
 life yet unsent to press, unset up in stern uncompromising 
 type, as yet uncirculating in proof-sheets for the inspection 
 of the judge : to be bound and published and criticised at the 
 last; for those innocent little instruments of even-handed 
 justice the justice that makes of our children the chief 
 punishment or reward to us a heaven or a torment about us 
 here in life. And whether Arcadia live or die, and whether 
 those ruddy children and these plump parents continue or 
 surcease, there will be toy-shops and toys and parents and 
 children to purchase them to the end, I hope ; for I believe 
 toys to be the symbolic insignia of the freemasonry of child- 
 
202 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 hood as aprons and mallets, adzes and jewels are to the 
 older freemasons of Lincoln's-Inn Fields and that they are 
 bonds of union, pledges of affection, from the man-child to 
 the child -man ; and that they are substantial lectures on use- 
 ful arts and useful recreations; and although of course I 
 would exclude from my Tommy's or Emily's play-box every 
 toy that could suggest or hint at cruelty, intolerance, injustice 
 or wrong, I do think that English toys (I speak not of the 
 Gallic and bellicose ones) are mainly honest and well- 
 meaning, and even moral playthings. I love toys. 
 
 The second department of Lowther Arcadia of which I 
 would wish, cursorily, to treat, is that connected with the 
 sale of jewellery. The Lowther bijouterie is certainly unique. 
 It may want the intrinsic value of the productions of Howell 
 and James or Hunt and Boskell. The Lowtherian brilliants 
 may not be of a water so fine as those of Eegent Street or 
 Cornhill ; but the jewellery of my Arcade is as sparkling and 
 as showy, as gay and as variegated, as any assemblage of gems 
 you like to mention the jewel-house in the Tower of Lon- 
 don, or the Queen of Spain's jewels, or Mr. Hope's. The gold 
 is as yellow ; though, perhaps, not quite so valuable as any 
 Brown and Wingrove have to refine. The emeralds are green, 
 the rubies red, the turquoises blue : and what other colours 
 would you have emeralds, and rubies, and turquoises to be? 
 Lowther shines, too, in cameos none of your shrinking, 
 shamefaced, genuine Eoman ones but great, bold, bouncing, 
 pictorial pancakes : heads of Minerva as big as Bristol Channel 
 oysters, and trios of Graces vying in size with bread-and- 
 butter plates. Lowther hath, in its huge glass cases and 
 beneath glass domes, good store of necklaces (the pearl ones 
 like strings of varnished plovers' eggs), bracelets, agraffes, 
 buckles, shirt-pins, hair ornaments ; but it is in the article of 
 brooches that she chiefly shines : brooches with a vengeance. 
 Geological brooches, comprising every variety of strata, from 
 blue clay to red sandstone, genteelly cut, polished, and set. 
 Pictorial brooches, forcing on you the counterfeit present- 
 ments of a heterogeneous assemblage of celebrated female 
 characters: Mary Queen of Scots, Madame de la Yalliere, 
 Marie Antoinette, and Jenny Lind; with a more cautious 
 selection from among the gentlemen, ranging from Oliver 
 Cromwell to Buffon the naturalist, or from Henry the Eighth 
 to M. Kossuth. Brooches for hair, and simple jet or cornelian 
 brooches. Landscape brooches, where the lake of Chainouni, 
 
ARCADIA. 203 
 
 and Mont Blanc the monarch of mountains, who was 
 crowned so long ago are depicted in a vivid blue and green 
 manner astonishing to the eyes of Professor Forbes, or Mr. 
 Brockedon. Brooches for all ages, from, that blushing girl of 
 eighteen yonder for whom the fond youth in the astonishing 
 coat and the alarming waistcoat is purchasing a gigantic oval 
 half-length of Charles the Second set in elaborate filigree 
 down to the white-headed old grandmamma, doubly widowed 
 and doubly childless, who will here provide herself with a 
 cheap yet handsome locket-brooch wherein to preserve a lock 
 of sunny brown hair, all that is left (save a ciphering book) 
 to remind her of that gallant nephew Harry, who went down 
 in the war-steamer 'Phlegethon, 1 with all hands, far in the 
 Southern Seas. 
 
 ; Nor is it the worse for being unreal sham is hardly the 
 word ; for Lowther says boldly, ' Here is my jewellery ; I will 
 sell it to you at a price. If you choose to believe my half- 
 crown cameo-moons are made of green cheese, my eighteen- 
 penny bracelets sapphires or opals, my three-and-sixpenny 
 necklaces barbaric pearl and gold, believe and be blest. We 
 do not attempt to deceive you ; if our price be too cheap, don't 
 buy/ It may seem inconsistent in me, who have so lately 
 borne rather hard upon the arcade of Burlington, that I should 
 defend the fictitious gems that have their abode in the arcade 
 of Lowther. But I consider this : that there is a difference 
 between a sham deliberate, a wilful sophistry or wanton piece 
 of casuistry, and a lie confessant ; a work of fiction for in- 
 stance a novel, a fable, or a pleasant tale. As such, I 
 consider the jewels of Lowther. Is it because my pretty 
 tradesman's daughter, nay humble milliner or sempstress ; 
 even my comely cook, housemaid, or damsel of all work can- 
 not afford the real barbaric pearl and gold the real rose and 
 table diamonds that they are to be debarred from wearing 
 innocent adornments, wherewith to accomplish the captiva- 
 tion (which their bright faces have begun) of their respective 
 swains and sweethearts ? No. Leaving their aristocratic 
 sisters to disport themselves in real Cashmeres from Delhi and 
 Allahabad, and real lace shawls from Brussels and Malines, 
 they are content with humble Paisleys, and unobtrusive 
 Greenocks ; so, abandoning genuine precious stones, genuine 
 guinea gold, genuine pearls and cameos, to perhaps not the 
 happiest, but at least the more fortunate of their sex, they 
 shall revel as it pleases them in the eighteenpenny finely of 
 
204 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 this Arcadia ; and Samuel or William walking * along with 
 them/ or ' keeping of 'em company ' in the smartest of sur- 
 touts and the whitest of Berlin gloves, on crowded steam- 
 boats, or amid the velvetty glades of the metropolitan parks, 
 shall be as proud of them and of their jewels as though they 
 were duchesses. 
 
 One more department of Arcadia yet remains to be ex- 
 plored* This is the section devoted to what I may Call minor 
 utilities, and though minor, they occupy a very considerable 
 portion of the Lowther Arcade. Heaped in wild confusion 
 though not worse confounded on the estrades of half a dozen 
 merchants, are different ranges of shelves ; grades on grades 
 of such articles as cakes of Windsor soap, shaving dishes, 
 shaving brushes, pocket combs, snuffer trays, bronze candle- 
 sticks, lucifer boxes, pipe lights, sealing wax; hair, tooth, 
 clothes, and blacking brushes, French coffee-pots, tea canis- 
 ters, workboxes, nutmeg graters, paper weights, pencil-cases, 
 china mantel-shelf ornaments, knick-knacks for drawing-room 
 tables, artificial flowers, watch-chains, perfumery, hair pins, 
 plaster statuettes, penknives, scissors, dog-chains, walking- 
 sticks, housewife-cases, knives, forks, and spoons, china plates, 
 cups and saucers, wine glasses, decanters, presents from 
 Brighton, tokens from Eamsgate, letter-clips, portfolios, music- 
 cases, reticules, scent-bottles, and fans. There is scarcely a 
 minor want, an everyday wish in the catalogue of everyday 
 wants and wishes, but which can be supplied from the delight- 
 fully egregious farrago of fancy hucksteries here collected. It 
 is the Bagdad of housekeeping odds and ends, the very place 
 I should advise all those about to marry to visit when they 
 have found that besides the household furniture, plate, linen, 
 and bedding, pots, pans, they have discovered indispensable 
 in fitting up their bridal mansion, there are yet a thousand 
 and one things they cannot do without, and which nothing 
 but a walk through Arcadia will satisfy them that they really 
 want. 
 
 The most wonderful thing connected with the cosmopolitan 
 merchandise displayed in the Lowther Arcade, is the apparent 
 recklessness with which the commodities are exposed to the 
 touch of the passers-by, and the enormous apparent confidence 
 which their proprietors appear to place in their customers. 
 The toys are tested, and the minor utilities examined ; the 
 musical instruments are sounded at the good pleasure of those 
 without, whether they mean buying or not buying ; but be 
 
AUCADIA. 205 
 
 assured, man of sin pilferer of small wares and petty 
 larcener that there is an eye within keenly glancing from 
 some loophole contrived between accordions and tin breast- 
 plates that watches your every movement, and is ' fly,' to 
 use a term peculiarly comprehensible to dishonest minds to 
 the slightest gesture of illegal conveyancing. 
 
 The Lowther Arcade should, to be properly appreciated 
 and admired, be viewed at three widely distant periods of the 
 day. First, in the early morning, when the bells of St. Mar- 
 tin's have just commenced carilloning the quarter-chimes to 
 eight. Then the myriad wares that Lowther has to sell, are 
 scattered about in a manner reminding you of the parti- 
 coloured chaos of one of the Lowther' s own kaleidoscopes 
 indefinitely magnified and blown to pieces, or of the wardrobe 
 and property room of a large theatre combined, when the 
 employes are ' taking stock.' In the midst of this chaotic olla 
 podrida of oddities pick their way, with cautious steps yet 
 nimble, the Arcadian shepherds and shepherdesses, wearing 
 mostly over their pastoral garments large aprons and pina- 
 fores of brown holland and gray calico. With feather brooms 
 or gauzy dusters they dust and cleanse and furbish and rub 
 up and brighten all the multifarious paraphernalia of their 
 calling ; and, swift the amphitheatrical benches or grades are 
 crowned with rainbow toys, or glittering glass cases sym- 
 metrically arranged, artistically displayed to catch the eye 
 and provoke the appetite of taste. Some pilgrim from the 
 west may, at such times, fortuitously be found gliding among 
 the fancy goods that corruscate the pavement, nervously 
 apprehensive of stepping an inch to the right or to the left, 
 lest he should ' fall into a bit of property,' his own might not 
 be sufficient to replace. 
 
 I have no room for statistics, so I will not enter into any 
 calculation as to the numerical quantities of fancy wares 
 vended in the Lowther Arcade ; the gross amount of money 
 received, the average number of visitors, or matters of that 
 kind. I may passingly observe, that there are toys, and gems, 
 and knick-knacks here, that are things of great price to-day, 
 and positive drugs in the market to-morrow. At one time the 
 public toy-taste runs upon monkeys that run up sticks, or old 
 gentlemen that swing by their own door-knockers, squeaking 
 dreadfully the while : at another period the rage is for the 
 equeezeable comic masks and faces (at first and fallaciously 
 supposed to be made of gutta-percha, but ultimately dis 
 
206 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 covered, through the agency of a precocious philosopher, aged 
 seven who ate one of them to be formed from a composi- 
 tion of glue, flour, and treacle).. Now, horrible writhing 
 gutta-percha snakes are up, and now they are down; now 
 pop- guns go oif arid now hang fire. 
 
 There are certain toys and fancy ornaments that always, 
 however, preserve a healthy vogue, and command a ready 
 sale. Of the former, the Noah's arks, and dolls' houses, and 
 India-rubber balls, may be mentioned ; although their no- 
 minal nomenclatures are sometimes altered to suit the exi- 
 gencies of fashion. Thus we are enticed to purchase Uncle 
 Buncle's Noah's ark, Peter Parley's balls, or Jenny Lind's 
 Doll's mansion. Of the fancy goods, I may hint fugitively 
 that some attenuated vases of artificial flowers under glass 
 shades, I have known as Queen Adelaide's Own, Victoria's 
 Wreath, The Jenny Lind Bouquet, and the Eugenie Yase. 
 These flowerets are much cultivated as chimney ornaments 
 by maiden ladies in the neighbourhoods of Peckham Rise and 
 Muswell Hills. Lastly, there is a model, or sample piece of 
 workmanship, of which copies are to this day sold, principally 
 to the ladies, which I have known for nearly twenty years. 
 It consists of a hollow cottage of latitudinarian architecture, 
 composed of plaster of Paris, with stained glass windows, and 
 with a practicable chimney. In the hollow part of the edifice 
 an oil lamp is nocturnally placed ; and the light pouring 
 through the windows, and the smoke curling up the chimney 
 (not altogether inodorously), produce a charming and pic- 
 turesque effect. This building has had many names. When 
 I knew it first, it was, I think, William Tell's Chalet. Then 
 it was the Birthplace of the Poet Moore. Then it was Shak- 
 speare's House. Then Her Majesty's Highland Hut or Shiel- 
 ing, near Balmoral, in Scotland. And now it is the Birth- 
 place of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe. House of many names ! 
 farewell ! and thou, too, Arcadia ! till at some future day I 
 wander through thy spangled glades again. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 TEAVELS IN CAWDOR STREET. 
 
 To the unobservant peripatetic, Cawdor Street is merely a 
 thoroughfare, leading from Soho to Oxford Street, just as the 
 
TRAVELS IN CAWDOR STREET. 207 
 
 ' Venus de Medici ' would be the stone figure of a lady, and 
 nothing more, and the ' Transfiguration ' of Raphael simply so 
 much canvas, covered with so much paint. To the ordinary 
 street-lounger, even Cawdor Street can only offer a few musty 
 shops, filled with ancient furniture ; half a dozen dingy book- 
 stalls, some brokers' shops, and a score or more receptacles for 
 cloudy-looking oil pictures in tarnished frames. 
 
 And, perhaps, this is the most sensible way of looking, not 
 only at Cawdor Street, but at things generally. "Why the 
 plague should we always be making painful and blue-looking 
 anatomical preparations, when we should be satisfied with the 
 nice, wholesome-looking, superficial cuticle ? "Why should we 
 insist on rubbing the plating off our dishes and sugar-basins, 
 and on showing the garish, ungenteel-looking copper beneath ? 
 "Why should we lift up the corner of the show and pry out 
 who pulls Punch's legs, and causes Shallabalah to leap ? Why 
 can't we take Cawdor Street, its old curiosity-shops, brokers, 
 book-stalls, and picture-dealers, the world generally, for 
 granted ? 
 
 We ought to do so, perhaps ; but we can't. I am sure 
 that / cannot. Cawdor Street is to me a fearful and wonderful 
 country to be explored. There are mysteries in Cawdor 
 Street to be unravelled, curiosities of custom and language to 
 be descanted on, causes to be ascertained, and effects to be 
 deduced. Though from eight to ten minutes' moderately 
 rapid exercise of the legs with which Nature has provided 
 you would suffice to carry you from one end of Cawdor Street 
 to the other, I can sojourn for many hours in its mysterious 
 precincts. I am an old traveller in Cawdor Street, and it 
 may not be amiss to impart to you some of the discoveries I 
 have made during these my travels. 
 
 I will spare you the definition of the geographical boun- 
 daries of Cawdor Street. I will be content with observing 
 that its south-westerly extremity is within a hundred miles, 
 as the newspapers say, of Princes Street, Soho. The climate 
 may, om the whole, be described as muggy ; fogs appear to 
 have a facility in getting in, and a difficulty of getting out of 
 it. The coy and reserved Scotch mist, and the bolder and 
 more prononce pelting snow, linger pertinaciously on its pave- 
 ments ; and when it is muddy in Cawdor Street it is muddy. 
 
 Cawdor Street has public-houses, and butchers' shops, and 
 dining-rooms, as other streets have. It has the same floating 
 population of ragged children, policemen, apple- women, and 
 
208 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 domestic animals. The inhabitants, I have reason to believe, 
 pay rent and taxes : cabalistic metallic plates point out the 
 distance of the fire-plug from the foot-pavement; and the 
 banners of Barclay and Perkins, conjointly with those of 
 Combe and Delafield, of Truman, Hanbury, and Buxton, and 
 of Sir Henry Meux, hang out, as in other streets, upon the 
 outward walls. 
 
 The intelligent reader will, I dare say, by this time begin 
 to ask, why, if Cawdor Street resembles, in so many points, 
 hundreds of other streets, I should be at the trouble of 
 describing it ? Patience ; and I will unfold all that Cawdor 
 Street has of marvellous, and why it is worth travelling in. 
 It is the seat of a great manufacture ; not of cotton, as is 
 Manchester the grimy and tall-chimneyed; not of papier- 
 mache, as is Birmingham the red-bricked and painfully-paved ; 
 not of lace, as is Nottingham the noisy and pugilistic, but of 
 Art. Those well-meaning but simple-minded men who, two 
 or three years since, set about making spoons and dishes, 
 bread-baskets and cream-jugs, after artistic designs, and 
 which they called art-manufactures, thought, in their single- 
 heartedness, they had originated the term. Why, bless them ! 
 Cawdor Street has had extensive art-manufactures for scores 
 of years. It has been manufacturing Art, artistic furniture, 
 and artists to boot, almost since the time that Art came into 
 England. 
 
 For in Cawdor Street, be it understood, dwell the great 
 tribe of manufacturers of spurious antiques, of sham moyen-age 
 furniture, of fictitious Dresden china, of delusive Stradivarius 
 violins. In Cawdor Street abide the mighty nation of picture- 
 dealers, picture-forgers, picture * clobberers,' picture -pawn ers, 
 and other picture-traffickers, whose name is legion. In 
 Cawdor Street are sellers of rare Eembrandt etchings, etched 
 a year ago; of autographs of Henry the Eighth, written a 
 week since ; in Cawdor Street, finally, are gathered together 
 (amongst many respectable and conscientious dealers) some 
 rapacious gentry, who sell, as genuine, the things that are 
 not, and never were ; who minister to the folly and credulity 
 of the ignorant rich, on whom they fatten ; who hang on the 
 outskirts of Art, seeking whom they may devour ; who are the 
 curse of Art, and the bane of the artist. 
 
 I often wonder what Eaphael Sanzio of Urbino, Gerretz 
 van Ehyn, commonly called Eembrandt, Michael Angelo 
 Buonarotti, and other professors of the art of painting would 
 
TRAVELS IN CAWDOR STREET. 209 
 
 think, if, coming with a day-rule from the shades (Elysian, I 
 trust), they could behold tlie daubs to which their names 
 are appended. I often wonder how many hundred years it 
 would have taken them to have painted, with their own 
 hands, the multitudinous pictures which bear their names. 
 Nay, if even the most celebrated of our living painters could 
 see, gathered together, the whole of their ' original ' works 
 which Cawdor Street dealers have to sell, they would, I 
 opine, be sore astonished. Canvases they never touched, 
 compositions they never dreamed of, effects of colour utterly 
 unknown to them, would start before their astonished gaze. 
 For every one white horse of Wouvermans, five hundred 
 snowy steeds would paw the earth. For every drunken boor 
 of Teniers, Ostade, or Adrien Brouwer, myriads of inebriated 
 Hollanders would cumber Cawdor Street. Wonderful as were 
 the facility and exuberance of production of Turner, the dead 
 Academician would stare at the incalculable number of works 
 imputed to him. Oh, Cawdor Street, thoroughfare of decep- 
 tions and shams ! Oh, thou that sulliest bright mirrors with 
 ignoble vapours ! thou art not deceitful, but deceit itself ! 
 
 Here is the collection of ancient furniture, armour, old 
 china, cameos, and other curiosities and articles of vertu, form- 
 ing the stock in trade of Messrs. Melchior Saltabadil and Co. 
 A magnificent assemblage of rare and curious articles they 
 have, to be sure. Not a dinted breastplate is there but has its 
 appropriate legend ; not a carved ebony crucifix but has its 
 romance ; not a broadsword or goblet of Bohemian glass but 
 has its pedigree. That china monster belonged to the 
 Empress Maria Louisa ; that battered helmet was picked up 
 on the field of Naseby ; that rusted iron box was the muni- 
 ment-chest of the Abbey of Glastonbury; that ivory-hafted 
 dagger once hung at the side of David Eizzio ; and that long 
 broadsword was erst clasped by one of Cromwell's Ironsides. 
 Come to the back of the shop, and Messrs. Melchior Saltabadil 
 and Co. will be happy to show you a carved oak and velvet- 
 covered pne-dieu once belonging to the oratory of Ann of Austria. 
 That shirt of mail, yonder, hanging between the real Damascus 
 sabre and the superb specimen of point lace, dates from the 
 Crusades, and was worn by Kobin de Bobbinet at the siege of 
 Acre. Step up stairs, and Melchior Saltabadil and Co. 
 have some exquisite needlework for your inspection, of a date 
 coeval with that of the Bayeux Tapestry. An astounding 
 collection of curiosities have they, from worked altar-cloths, 
 
210 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 and richly-stained glass of the fourteenth century, to Dresden 
 shepherds and shepherdesses, and dazzling tea and dessert- 
 services of genuine Sevres china. 
 
 Chasuble Cope, dealer in Ecclesiastical Antiquities, has his 
 magasin. just opposite to that of the before-mentioned mer- 
 chants. Mr. Cope is great in altar-candlesticks, pyxes, rochets, 
 faldstools, elaborately carved or brazen lecterns, mitres of 
 the Middle Ages, illuminated missals, books of ' hours,' and 
 other specimens of the paraphernalia of Eomish ecclesiology. 
 He has the skeleton of a mitred abbot in the cellar, and 
 Bishop Blaise's crosier up stairs. Next door to him, the 
 Cawdor Street traveller will find, perhaps, the copious and 
 curious collection of Messrs. Pagoda and Son, who more 
 specially affect Egyptian, Chinese, and Indian curiosities. 
 Curiously-painted shells and fans, ivory concentric balls, 
 wonderful porcelain idols, tear-bottles, bags of mummy 
 wheat, carved Hindoo sceptres, brocaded draperies of astonish- 
 ing antiquity these form but a tithe of the Oriental relics 
 detailed to view. Farther up Cawdor Street are establish- 
 ments teeming with old furniture, and crowding the pave- 
 ment with their overplus of carved chairs, and bulky tables 
 with twisted legs, the boards of which glistened, in Harry 
 the Eighth's time, with those sturdy flagons and long spiral- 
 columned glasses now resting quietly on the dusty shelves ; 
 and there are Queen Elizabethan cabinets, and stools on which 
 Troubadours and Trouveres rested their harps when they sang 
 the ' Eoman du Eou,' and the legend of King Arthur, in good- 
 ness knows how many ' fy ttes/ There are small curiosity-mer- 
 chants in Cawdor Street, as well as extensive ones ; humble 
 dealers, whose stores resemble more the multifarious odds-and- 
 ends in brokers' shops than collections of antiquity and vertu. 
 These bring home the savage tomahawk, the New Zealand 
 boomerang, the rosary of carved beads, to the poorest door ; 
 and render old armour, old furniture, old lace, and tapestry, 
 comprehensible to the meanest understanding. 
 
 And why should not all these be genuine real, undoubted 
 relics of ages gone by ? To the man of poetical imagination, 
 what can be more pleasant than to wander through these 
 dingy bazaars of the furniture, and armour, and knick- 
 knackery of other days ? The sack, and malvoisie, and hypo- 
 eras are gone ; but there are the flagons and beakers that held 
 them. The mailed knights, and pious monks, have been dust 
 these five hundred years; but there is their iron panoply, 
 
TRAVELS IN CAWDOIl STREET. 211 
 
 there are their hauberks, and two-handed swords ; there are 
 the beads they counted, the roods before which they prayed, 
 the holy volumes they were wont to read. Cromwell's name 
 is but a noise ; but those ragged buff-boots may have enclosed 
 his Protectorial extremities. The mattock, and the spade, and 
 the earthworm have done their work with Diane de Poitiers 
 and Gabrielle d'Estrees ; yet in that quaint Venetian mirror 
 they may have dressed their shining locks, and mocked the 
 glass with sunny glances. That should have been the Black 
 Prince's surcoat ; that pearl and ivory box, the jewel-casket 
 of Ninon de 1'Enclos ; that savage club, carved, beaded, and 
 ornamented with tufts of feathers, who shall say it was not 
 wielded once by Montezuma, or was an heirloom in some far 
 South American forest, ere Columbus was born, or Cortez and 
 Pizarro heard of? Besides, are not the dealers in these 
 curiosities respectable men? Are not little labels affixed to 
 some of the rarer articles, announcing them to have formed 
 part of the Stowe collection, of that of Strawberry Hill, of 
 Fonthill Abbey, of Lansdowne Tower to have been bought 
 of the Earl of Such-a-one's executors, or acquired at the Duke 
 of So-and-so's sale? My friend, when you have travelled as 
 long in Cawdor Street as I have, your poetical imaginings 
 will have cooled down wofully ; and your faith in Oliver 
 Cromwell's boots, Ed ward the Black Prince's surcoat, and Ninon 
 de 1'Enclos's jewel-casket, will have decreased considerably. 
 Some of the furniture is curious, and much of it old ; but, oh ! 
 you. have never heard, you have never seen (as I have) the 
 art-manufactures that are carried on in Cawdor-Street garrets, 
 in frowzy little courts, and mysterious back slums adjoining 
 thereon. You do not know that wily armourers are at this 
 moment forging new breastplates and helmets, which, being 
 battered, and dinted, and rusted, shall assume the aspect of 
 age and ages. You do not know that, by cunning processes, 
 new needlework can be made to look like old tapestry ; that 
 the carved leg of an old chair, picked up in a dusty lumber- 
 room, will suffice, to the Cawdor Street art-manufacturer as a 
 matrix for the production of a whole set of carved, weather- 
 stained, and worm-eaten furniture chairs, tables, stools, side- 
 boards, couches, and cabinets enough to furnish half a dozen 
 houses of families of the Middle Ages, ' about to marry.' Y r ou 
 have not heard that corpulent man in the fur cap, and with the 
 pipe in his mouth and who eyed you slily just now, as 
 you were handling those curious silver-mounted pistols 
 
 p 2 
 
212 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 tell the swart artisan by his side that there is rather a rnn 
 for inlaid Spanish crucifixes just now, and bid him make a 
 dozen or two according to the model he gives him. How 
 many of those Dresden shepherds and shepherdesses are of 
 Saxon origin, think you? On how many of those squat, 
 grinning, many-coloured Pagods did Indian sun ever shine ? 
 The brie a brae shops of the Quai Yoltaire, in Paris, swarm with 
 spurious antiquities ; the dealers in antiques, in Eome, make 
 harvests out of credulous ' milords,' in the way of cameos, pro- 
 duced at the rate of about two scudi, and sold at ten guineas- 
 each; in fragments of marble urns, statues, and rilievi, pur- 
 posely mutilated, buried in the environs of the Eternal City y 
 and then dug up to be sold as ancient originals. How, then, 
 should Cawdor Street be exempt from the suspicion of decep- 
 tion ? Cawdor Street, standing, as it does, in the midst of that 
 land, and of that city, so bursting, so running over, with com- 
 mercial competition, that, panting to do business at any price, 
 it cannot refrain from vending counterfeit limbs, spurious gar- 
 ments, sham victuals and drink even. The worst of it is, that 
 knowing how many of the curiosities 'and [rarities in these 
 seeming shops are cunning deceits, a man is apt to grow 
 sceptical as regards them all. For my part, I would rather, were 
 I a collector of curiosities, rummage in old country public- 
 houses (I would I could remember the whereabouts of that one 
 where, as I live, 1 saw in the tap-room a genuine and a 
 beautiful Yandyck, smoke-grimed and beer-stained !) or search 
 in obscure brokers' shops, where, among rusty lanterns, beer- 
 taps, bird-cages, flat-irons, fishing-rods, powder-flasks, and 
 soiled portraits of Mrs. Billington in * Mandane,' one does 
 occasionally stumble on an undoubted relic of the past, and 
 say, * here is Truth.' 
 
 But it is in the article of pictures that the art-manufacturers 
 of Cawdor Street have astonished the world, and attained 
 their present proud pre-eminence. Pictures are their delight, 
 and form their greatest source of profit. Take, for example, 
 the lion of Cawdor Street, the great Mr. Turps, ' Picture- 
 dealer, liner, and restorer. Pictures bought, sold, or ex- 
 changed. Noblemen and gentlemen waited upon at their 
 own residences.' To look at Mr. Turps' shop, you would not 
 augur much for the magnitude or value of his stock in trade. 
 A small picture panel of a Dutch Boor, boosy, as usual, and 
 bestriding a barrel of his beloved beer; this and a big picture 
 of some pink angels sprawling in, or rather on, an opaque 
 
TRAVELS IN CAWDOR STREET. 213 
 
 sky; these are pretty nearly all that is visible above the 
 wire-wove blinds which veil the penetralia of Mr. Turps' 
 domicile. But only walk in arrive well-dressed come, 
 above all, in a carriage and the complaisant, the voluble 
 Turps will show you stacks, mountains of pictures. He deals 
 only in dead masters. He has nothing to say to the moderns. 
 There is an original Sebastiano del Piombo, formerly in the 
 Orleans collection ; there a Madonna col Bambino of Eaffaelle, 
 which my Lord Bricabrac offered to cover with golden sove- 
 reigns, would he, Turps, only sell it to him. There is the 
 * Brigand Keposing,' by Salvator Eosa, formerly in the Bog- 
 gotrotti Palace, and smuggled out of Eome in an extraordinary 
 manner. The Prince Cardinal Boggotrotti, Turps tells you, 
 had been prohibited by the Papal Government from selling 
 any of his pictures ; but being deeply in debt, and wanting 
 ready money sadly, he ceded to the importunities of the ad- 
 venturous Turps, who purchased the picture ; but had another 
 picture, St. Bartholomew, flayed alive,' painted over the 
 original, in distemper. With this he triumphantly eluded 
 discovery ; and though Saint Bartholomew's great toe was 
 nearly rubbed out by a careless porter, he passed the Custom 
 House and the Police, and brought his treasure to England. 
 But here is a gem of gems, Turps' almost priceless picture 
 a little, old, shabby panel, on which you can discover some- 
 thing dimly resembling a man's head, blinking through a 
 dark -brown fog. This is THE Eembrandt ' Three-quarter 
 Portrait of the Burgomaster Tenbroeck/ painted in 1630. 
 Wonderful picture ! wonderful ! 
 
 I have a great respect for Mr. Turps (who has a pretty 
 house at Stamford Hill, and can give you as good a glass of 
 pale sherry, when he likes, as ever you would wish to taste) ; 
 but I must tell the honest truth. The Sebastiano del Piombo 
 was bought at Smith's sale, hard by, for three pounds seven ; 
 and Turps knows no more who painted it, or where or when 
 it was painted, than the Cham cf Tartary does. The Boggo- 
 trotti Eaffaelle was 4 swop,' being bartered with little Mo 
 Isaacs, of Jewin Street, for a Wouvermans, a millboard study 
 by Mortimer, and two glasses of brandy and water. As for 
 the famous Eembrandt, Turps, in good sooth, had it painted 
 himself on a panel taken from a mahogany chest of drawers he 
 picked up cheap at a sale. He paid Young M'Gilp (attached 
 to a portrait club, and not too proud to paint a sign occasion- 
 ally,) just fifteen shillings for it; and a very good Eembrandt, 
 
214 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT, 
 
 now it is tricked up and smoked down, it makes, as [times 
 go. 
 
 At the top of Mr. Turps' house he has two large attics, 
 where some half-dozen of his merry men manufacture pictures 
 to order. According to the state of the market, and the 
 demand for the works of particular painters, so do they turn 
 out counterfeit Claudes, Murillos, Poussins, Fra Bartolomeos, 
 Guidos, Guercinos, Giulio Eomanos, Tenierses, Ostades, Ge- 
 rard Dows, and Jan Steens. If the pictures they forge (a 
 hard word, but a true one) are on canvas, they are, on com- 
 pletion, carefully lined so as to resemble old pictures restored ; 
 if on panel, the wood is stained and corroded so as to denote 
 antiquity. Little labels of numbers, bearing reference to sale 
 catalogues, are carefully pasted on, and as carefully half torn 
 off again. Sometimes the canvas is taken off the stretcher, 
 and rolled backwards, so as to give it a cracked appearance; 
 anon, the panel is covered with a varnish, warranted to dry 
 in a very network of ancient-looking cracks. Then the 
 painting is tricked or ' clobbered ' with liquorice-water, and 
 other artful mixtures and varnishes, which give it a clouded 
 appearance. Chemical substances are purposely mixed with 
 the colours to make them fade ; whites that dry yellow, and 
 reds that turn brown. And then this picture, painted for the 
 hire of a mechanic, is ready to be sold at a princely price to 
 any British nobleman or gentleman who will buy it. Herein 
 lies Mr. Turps' profit. The price of one picture will pay the 
 expenses of his establishment for a twelvemonth, and leave 
 him heavy in purse besides. His victims well, never mind 
 who they are perhaps mostly recruited from the ranks of the 
 vulgar with money, who purchase fine pictures as a necessary 
 luxury, just as they buy fine clothes and carriages and horses. 
 There are magnates of this class, who will absolutely buy 
 pictures against each other ; Brown becoming frantic if Jones 
 possess more Titians that he does; Eobinson running neck 
 and neck with Tomkins in Claudes, and beating him cleverly 
 sometimes with a Canaletto. These competitions do good, you 
 may belie ve^me^ to Mr. Turps, and bring considerable quantities 
 of grist to his mill. From his extensive collection also are the 
 4 original chef d'oeuvres of ancient masters,' which, from time to 
 time, are brought to the auctioneer's hammer, both in private 
 houses, and in public sale-rooms. The ' property of a gentle- 
 man, going abroad;' the ' collection of a nobleman, deceased;' 
 the 'gallery of an eminent amateur;' all these Mr. Turps 
 
TRAVELS IN CAWDOR STREET. 215 
 
 will supply at per dozen, and many score of his brethren in 
 London are ready to do the same. 
 
 Not that I wish to insinuate that there are no honest picture- 
 dealers, and no bond fide picture auctions, in London. There 
 are many and there need be some, I am sure, to counteract 
 the swarms of those which are impudent swindlers. 
 
 Of the same kindred as Mr. Turps, and having his abode in 
 the same congenial Cawdor Street, you will find the well known 
 Mr. Glaze, who turns his attention almost entirely to modern 
 pictures. His art-manufactures consist of Turners, Ettys, 
 Mulreadys, Landseers in short, of all the favourite masters 
 of the English school. He has a band of artists, who, for 
 stipends varying from a pound to thirty shillings weekly, 
 produce counterfeits of the works of our Royal Academicians 
 by the yard or mile. These forgeries have their sale principally 
 on the Continent, where English pictures (notwithstanding the 
 doubts sometimes expressed by our neighbours as to whether we 
 can paint at all) are eagerly sought after, and where a genuine 
 Landseer is a pearl beyond price. Occasionally, though very 
 rarely, Mr. Glaze buys original pictures by unknown artists 
 Snooks of Cleveland Street, perhaps, or Tibbs of Cirencester 
 Place. He gives a few shillings for one rarely half a sove- 
 reign. Then, according to the genre, or to some faint analogy 
 in style or colour, the name of some celebrated living master 
 is, without further ceremony, clapped on the unresisting 
 canvas', and as a Mulready, a Webster, or a Creswick, the 
 daub goes forth to the world. 
 
 Travelling yet through Cawdor Street, we come upon yet a 
 lower grade of traffickers in pictures. These ingenious persons 
 devote themselves to the art of picture-dealing, insofar as 
 it aifects pawnbroking. They employ artists (sometimes 
 daubers more frequently) to paint pictures for a low but 
 certain price. These occasionally they pawn, selling the 
 tickets subsequently to the unwary for whatever they will 
 fetch ; or, they buy tickets themselves, and remove them 
 from one pawnbroker to another, who, as their knavish ex- 
 perience teaches them, gives a better price for pictures. 
 ' My Uncle,' however, it must be admitted, has grown rather 
 wary lately with respect to pictures and picture-pawners. 
 He has been ' done ' by apparent noblemen driving up to his 
 door in carriages and pair, and by the footman bearing a care- 
 fully-veiled picture into his private office, and telling him 
 that ' my Lord ' must have fifty pounds this evening. He has 
 
21G GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 been surfeited with, pictures, new from the easel, painted by 
 necessitous artists in their extremity, and known in the trade 
 as ' pot-boilers.' So that, now, he ' would rather not ' lend 
 you anything on a picture ; and would prefer some more con- 
 vertible article say a flat-iron, or a pair of boots to all the 
 Titians or Eembrandts you could bring him. 
 
 You might go on travelling up and down Cawdor Street for 
 days, and find out some fresh proof of the deception and 
 duplicity of this picture-dealing business at every step. It 
 makes me melancholy to do so. And I think sometimes 
 that not a few painters, who have had K.A. appended (and 
 worthily) to their names, and have dined at the tables of live 
 Dukes and Duchesses, may have thought of their old Cawdor 
 Street days with a sort of tremor. More than one of them, I 
 will be bound, as he has passed through Cawdor Street, has 
 recognised an ancient master, or a modern original, in the 
 painting of which he had a hand, and a considerable one, too. 
 Our own Wilkie, we know, had no other employment for a 
 long time save that of counterfeiting Tenierses and Ostades ; 
 and he is not the only great painter who has done grinding- 
 work for the picture-dealers, and who has travelled wearily 
 and sorrowfully through Cawdor Street. 
 Meanwhile, 
 
 ' The thane of Cawdor lives, 
 A prosperous gentleman ! ' 
 
 XX. 
 
 HOUSES TO LET.* 
 
 I HAVE often heard conjectures hazarded, as to who and what 
 manner of people they may be that read the Supplement of 
 the ' Times ' newspaper. That a very fair proportion of the 
 subscribers and readers of that journal do so, is a fact, I take 
 it, apparent to, and acknowledged by, the frequenters of 
 parlours, coffee-houses, club-rooms, and hotel snuggeries. 
 Admitting always that it is read, it is not by any means so 
 certain who reads it. The advertisers may do so, wishing, 
 like careful men of business, to make sure that they have had 
 their pennyworth for their penny. The proof reader reads it 
 
 * This article was written before the abolition of the stamp duty on 
 newspapers. There is now no supplement at all to the ' Times' ; the 
 whole concrete mass 4 of advertisements and news being sold as an aggre- 
 gate for fourpence. 
 
HOUSES TO LET. 217 
 
 bon gre, malgre, though, very likely, while toiling down the 
 dreary columns of uninteresting announcements, he may say, 
 with Ancient Pistol, in the Great Leek Consumption Case, 
 4 1 read and eke I swear.' But do you or I affect the perusal 
 of that portentous broad-sheet. From time to time we may 
 glance at the Education near London column ; at the New 
 Discoveries in Teeth ; at the Sales by Auction ; and the 
 Horizontal Grand Pianofortes : but we know that the really 
 interesting * ads.' are in the body of the paper ; that the 
 profligate initials are entreated to return to their parents, or 
 to send back the key of the tea-caddy in the second or third 
 column of the front page ; and that the unfathomable hiero- 
 glyphics hold sweet converse in the same locality. In that 
 Pactolean front page, who knows, from morning to morning, 
 but that Messrs. Wouter, Gribble, and Sharp, of Gray's Inn, 
 may publicly express their wish to communicate something to 
 our advantage to us ? In that front page, conscientious cab- 
 men have found the wearing apparel and jewellery we have 
 lost, or dog-fanciers (more conscientious still) the dogs which 
 
 have been st well, mislaid. In that same page we can 
 
 put our hands on all the announcements we want : the Steam 
 Navigation, which is to waft us to Rotterdam and the Rhine, 
 or to Paris, via Calais, in eleven hours ; of the exhibitions 
 and dioramas we delight in witnessing; of the charitable 
 associations it so pleaseth us (kind souls !) to subscribe to ; 
 of horses and carriages, we buy or sell ; of the commodious 
 travelling-bags, replete with every ne'cessaire de voyage, from a 
 bootjack to a toothpick, which Mr. Fisher of the Strand ex- 
 horts us to purchase ere we set out 011 the grand tour ; of Mr. 
 Bennett's watches ; and Mr. Sangster's umbrellas, and Mr. 
 Tucker's lamps ; and of the oats, which good Mary Wed- 
 lake so pertinaciously desires to know if we bruise yet. 
 If we want clerks or governesses, or, as clerks and gover- 
 nesses, are ourselves wanted ; if we wish to borrow or to 
 lend money, or to see what new books or new music appeal 
 to our taste, literary or musical, we find them, if not ia the 
 front page, still almost invariably in the main body of the 
 ' Times ;' it is only on special occasions when the ho- 
 nourable Member for Mugborough divides the house at two 
 o'clock in the morning ; or the Crushclod Agricultural Society 
 holds a meeting, unusually stormy or lengthy ; or my Lord 
 Centipede gives a dinner, at which everybody drinks every- 
 body's health, and returns thanks into the bargain, that the 
 
218 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 really interesting advertisements are crowded into the Supple- 
 ment. On other occasions, that document remains a dreary 
 acceptance for the education, teeth, pianoforte, and auctioneer 
 advertisements, with the addition, perhaps, of a few camphine 
 lamps, liquid hair-dyes, and coals at nine shillings per chal- 
 dron. Yet the Supplement is read by thousands, not merely 
 by that pale man in the brown cloak and the discontented face 
 opposite to me, who has engaged the ' Times ' de facto after me, 
 and is only, I can plainly see, affecting to read the de jure 
 Supplement ; having rage in his heart, caused by the convic- 
 tion (wherein he is right) that I intend to keep the paper till 
 I have read the ' leaders ' through ; not merely by him, but by 
 the numerous and influential class of persons who are inte- 
 rested in a phalanx of advertisements, which I have hitherto 
 omitted to enumerate, as among the contents of the dullest 
 Supplement; and which have reference to Houses to Let. 
 This is, at least, my theory. If ever I see a man really 
 mentally immersed in the perusal of the ' Times ' Supplement, 
 and appearing to derive any genuine interest therefrom, I 
 make pretty sure that he has either a House to Let, or that he 
 wants to take one. 
 
 Houses to Let ! The subject is fraught with speculative 
 interest for those philosophers who are content to leave the 
 sun, the moon, the pre-Adainite dynasties, the Mosaic theory of 
 creation, the ^Eolic digamma, and the perpetual motion, to their 
 betters; and can find sufficient food for philosophy in the 
 odds and ends, the sweeping of the House of Life who can 
 read homilies in bricks and mortar, sermons in stones, the 
 story of a life, its hopes and fears, its joys and woes, in the 
 timbers of a dilapidated pigstye, in the desolation of a choked- 
 up fountain, or the ruins of a springless pump ! 
 
 We change our dresses, our servants, our friends and foes 
 how can our houses expect to be exempt from the mutabilities 
 of life ? We tire of the old friend, and incline to the new ; 
 the old baby is deposed in favour of the new baby ; the fat, 
 turnip silver watch our father gave us, gives place to a gold 
 Geneva we change, and swop, and barter, and give up, and 
 take back, and long for, and get tired of, all and everything 
 in life why not of houses too ? So the Supplement of the 
 'Times' can always offer Houses to Let ; and we are continually 
 running mad to let or hire them, as vice versa, six months hence, 
 perhaps we shall be as maniacally eager to hire or to let. 
 
 Subdivision, classification, and elaboration, are certainly 
 
HOUSES TO LET. 219 
 
 distinguishing characteristics of the present aora of civilisation. 
 The house-agents of the 'Daily Courant,' of the 'Public Ledger/ 
 or the ' Evening Intelligencer,' would have been coupled with 
 the announcement pur et simple, that in such and such a street, 
 or part of the court, there was a House to Let. They might, 
 perhaps, have added, at the most, that it was over-against the 
 Bear Garden, or that it formerly belonged to a tradesman 
 possessing an infallible cure for the scurvy, and who ' made 
 the very best purle that ever was brewed ;' but there they 
 would stop. Catch us doing anything of the sort in these en- 
 lightened days. \Vhere our benighted grandfathers had boys' 
 and girls' schools, we have seminaries, academies, lyceums, 
 and colleges, for young ladies. Where they had sales 'by 
 inch of candle,' we had Mr. George Robins, and have now 
 Messrs. Musgrove and Gadsden, and Frederick Jones, who 
 are always being ' honoured with instructions ' to sell things 
 for us or to us. A spade isn't a spade in 1859, but something 
 else ; and with our house-agents, a house is not only a house, 
 but a great many things besides. 
 
 A House to Let may be a mansion, a noble mansion, a 
 family mansion, a residence, a desirable residence, a genteel 
 residence, a family residence, a bachelor's residence, a distin- 
 guished residence, an elegant house, a substantial house, a 
 detached house, a desirable villa, a semi-detached villa, a 
 villa standing in its own grounds, an Italian villa, a villa-resi- 
 dence, a small villa, a compact detached cottage, a cottage 
 ornee, and so on, almost ad infinitum. Rarely do the advertise- 
 ments bear reference only to a house, a villa, or a cottage : we 
 must call the spade something in addition to its simply agra- 
 rian title. 
 
 Now, are all these infinitesimal subdivisions of Houses to 
 Let merely intended as ingenious devices to charm the house 
 hirer by variety, in the manner of Mr. Nicoll, with regard to 
 his overcoats, and Messrs. Swan and Edgar with reference to 
 ladies' cloaks and shawls ; or do there really exist subtle dis- 
 tinctions, minute, yet decidedly perceptible, between every 
 differently named house ? Can it be that the desirable 
 residence has points calculated to satisfy desire in a different 
 degree to the elegant predilections to be gratified by the 
 elegant residence ? Can it be that a residence, after all, isn't 
 a house, nor a house a residence ? It may be so. People, in 
 the innocence of their hearts, and unaccustomed to letting or 
 hiring houses, may imagine that there can be no very material 
 difference between a villa, a genteel villa, and a compact 
 
220 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 villa ; but in the mind of the astute house-agent, and equally 
 intelligent house-hirer, differences, varieties of size, aspect, 
 and convenience, immediately suggest themselves ; and to their 
 experienced eyes there are as many points of distinction 
 between the genteel and the compact, the desirable and the 
 distinguished, as to the visual organs of those learned in 
 horses between a cob and a hack, a racer and a screw; or 
 to the initiated in dog-lore, between a greyhound and a setter. 
 
 I do not pretend to any peculiarly nice perception as to 
 things in general. I cannot tell to this day a hawk from a 
 falcon (between the former bird and a handsaw I might be 
 able to guess). It was a long time before I could distinguish 
 between a leveret and a rabbit, or tell very high venison from 
 decomposed shoulder of mutton ; and I will not be certain, 
 even now, if I could tell from the odour (being blindfolded), 
 which was pitch and which tar. So, the immense variety of 
 Houses to Let has always been to me a mystery, the subtle 
 distinctions in their nomenclature sources of perplexed specu- 
 lation. There may be those who are more learned than I am 
 those who, with similar acuteness as the gentlemen men- 
 tioned in Hudibras, who had been beaten till they could tell 
 to a splinter of what wood the cudgel was composed, and 
 kicked till they knew if the shoe were ' calfskin or neat's 
 leather ' can mark the strong connections, the nice depen- 
 dencies, the gradations just of houses, mansions, villas, and 
 residences, and with their ' pervading souls look through ' the 
 wondrous variety of Houses to Let. 
 
 I can only theorise. I have studied the ' Times ' attentively, 
 and gazed wearily at the elongated crimson baize- covered 
 panels in the house-agents' windows, on which, written on 
 slips of foolscap, the announcements of Houses to Let are 
 secured with parti-coloured wafers. Goodness knows how 
 far from the actual mark I may be ; but you shall hear what 
 my ideas are on this very open House question. 
 
 First, of the Mansion. What manner of house would you 
 imagine that to be ? I take it to be situate at Kew, possibly 
 at Ohiswick, peradventure at Putney. Eed brick, stone 
 window casings, a great many chimney-pots, a steep flight of 
 steps before the door. Perhaps the advertisement says that it 
 is < approached by a carriage drive.' I can see that carriage 
 drive, the mangy gravel, weeds and grass springing up 
 between ; the brown ragged lawn in the middle ; the choked- 
 up flower-beds, with pieces of broken bottles and fractured 
 tobacco-pipes, where once were geraniums, and heliotropes. 
 
HOUSES TO LET. 221 
 
 There must be a wall in front, and a pair of rusty iron 
 gates, or more probably a paint-destitute portal, scored over 
 with drawings in crayons of unpopular churchwardens, and 
 fierce denunciations of the Pope of Rome, the College of 
 Cardinals, and the New Police Act. This door is blistered 
 with the sun, dinted by the peg-tops and hockey-sticks of 
 savage boys. In the centre you may see a parallelopipedal 
 patch, where the paint is of a lighter colour, and where there 
 are marks of bygone screws. That was where the brass plate 
 was, when the mansion was occupied by the Reverend Doctor 
 Brushback. It was called ' Smolensko House ' then, and on 
 Sundays and holidays a goodly procession of youths educated 
 therein issued from it. A small confectioner's (' sock-shop,' 
 the boys called it) was started in the adjacent lane, on the 
 sole strength of the school custom ; and Widow Maggie, the 
 greengrocer, who supplied the establishment with birch- 
 brooms, actually started her boy Dick in a cart with a live 
 donkey from her increased profits. But the Reverend Doctor 
 Brushback, at the age of fifty-seven, and in a most unaccount- 
 able manner, took it into his head to turn the wife of his 
 bosom out of doors. Then he flogged three-fourths of his 
 scholars away, and starved the remainder. Then he was 
 suspected of an addiction to strong drinks, and of breaking 
 Leather's (the shoe, knife, and general errand boy's) head, 
 because he could not tell him what was Greek for a boot-jack. 
 Smolensko House speedily presented that most melancholy 
 spectacle, a bankrupt school; and the last time I heard of 
 Doctor Brushback, it was on a charge (unfounded, of course) 
 at the Public Office, Bow Street, of being drunk and disor- 
 derly in the gallery of Drury Lane Theatre. Was not our 
 mansion, after this, Minerva House Finishing Academy for 
 Young Ladies ? Surely so. The Misses Gimp devoted them- 
 selves to the task of tuition with a high sense of its onerous 
 duties, and strenuously endeavoured to combine careful ma- 
 ternal supervision with the advantages of a finished system of 
 polite education (iride * Times') But the neighbourhood was 
 prejudiced against the scholastic profession, and the Misses 
 Gimp found few scholars, and fewer friends. Subsequently, 
 their crack scholar, Miss Mango, the heiress, eloped with Mr. 
 De Lypey, professor of dancing, deportment, and calisthenics. 
 The resident Parisienne married Mr. Tragacanth, assistant to 
 Mr. Poppyed, the chemist, and the Misses Gimp went to ruin 
 or Boulogne. I lost sight of my mansion about here for a 
 
222 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 time at least. It must, however, have been rented by Captain 
 Vere de Vere Delamere, and his family, who paid nobody, 
 and, owing innumerable quarters for rent, were eventually 
 persuaded to remove by a bribe from the landlord. Or was 
 the mansion ever in the occupation of the celebrated Mr. Nix, 
 who said he belonged to the Stock Exchange, and removed in 
 the midst of winter, and at the dead of night, taking with him, 
 over and above his own furniture, a few marble mantel-pieces, 
 register stoves, and other trifles in the way of fixtures ? Or 
 was this mansion the one taken by Mr. Fluffy, immensely 
 rich, but very eccentric, who turned his nephews and nieces 
 out of doors, painted all the windows a bright red, kept a 
 tame hyaana, and persisted in standing outside his gate on 
 Sunday mornings with nothing on, to speak of, save a leather 
 apron and a meerschaum, assuring the public generally that 
 he was Peter the Great ? 
 
 I glance again at the advertisement, and find my mansion 
 described as a ' noble ' one. In that case I should say it was 
 in some nice, marshy, swampy, reedy part of Essex, where 
 the owls scream, and the frogs croak blithely at night. There 
 are two stone hawks sculptured above the gates ; a garden, as 
 tangled and savage-looking as an Indian jungle ; a dried-up 
 fountain ; and maimed, broken-nosed, mildewed statues, tot- 
 tering on moss and weed-covered pedestals. In the old time, 
 the Earl of Elbowsout lived at the ' noble ' mansion ; but his 
 lordship afterwards resided in sunny Italy for many years, 
 deriving immense benefit (not pecuniary, of course) from a 
 judicious consumption of Professor Paracelsus's pills. He left 
 an heir ; and whenever Inspector Beresford was wont to force 
 open the door of some harmless house in Jermyn Street, with 
 sledge hammers, you would be pretty sure to find, among the 
 list of prisoners, conveyed to Vine Street, on a suspicion of 
 indulging in the forbidden game of chicken-hazard, the names 
 of Robert Smith or of John Brown ; one of whom, you might 
 have been as certain, was no other than Lord Viscount Hawker, 
 his lordship's son. 
 
 ' Convenient Mansion,' says the ' Times ' again. Ah ! I know, 
 A big, square block of a house, very small windows, iron- 
 barred, and a high wall inside. Just suitable for Doctor 
 Muffles's asylum for the insane ; plenty of cold water laid on. 
 Very convenient ! Family Mansion, Plenty of bed-rooms, 
 high gate on the nursery-stairs, stables, coach-house, and 
 detached room, for the gardener. < Picturesque Mansion.' 
 
HOUSES TO LET. 223 
 
 Decidedly picturesque, but damp. Picturesque in propor- 
 tion to its ruin, and out of all habitable repair. Thomas 
 Hood wrote a beautiful poem once, of a Picturesque Mansion 
 A Haunted House and which has haunted me ever since. 
 The choked-up moat ; the obscene birds, that flapped their 
 wings on the roof; the foul insects, that wove webs inside; 
 the gaunt rats, that held unholy gambols in the kitchen ; 
 the weed-grown courtyard, window-sills, and door-steps ; the 
 damp feciilence, dust, dirt, rust, about all or everything ; the 
 one Sunbeam, coming through a grimed window, arid illumi- 
 nating a bloody hand. There had been a murder done there, 
 and the house was haunted. I can well believe it. I, too, 
 saw, once upon a time, a mansion, where a foul and wicked 
 murder had been done. I saw labourers searching the muddy 
 moat for the weapons of the assassins ; I was taken to see the 
 corridor where the deed had been done ; and I followed the 
 footsteps of the murderer through mud and slush, snow and 
 straw, from the mansion to the farm he lived at. 1 never read 
 poor Hood's plaintive poem without thinking that Stanfield 
 Hall shut up, un-tenanted, moat-dried would be a very 
 counterpart, now, of the house he shadowed forth. 
 
 Not, however, to forget Houses to Let. Shall I take the 
 Bachelor's Residence ? An invisible hand points to Highgate 
 an inward feeling suggests Mitcham. / go for Crickle- 
 wood : Kilburn is too near, and Edgeware too far ; but Crickle- 
 wood holds a juste milieu between them. I can see the 
 Bachelor's Residence a pert, smart, snug, little habitation, 
 standing alone, mostly; for your bachelor is incorrigible 
 (steady or fast) with regard to musical instruments. Your 
 fast bachelor will manage the Redowa on the cornet-a-piston ; 
 and your steady one, set ' Ah ! non giunge,' to hard labour on 
 the flute but all will practise ; and should their bachelors' 
 quarters happen to be supported, right and left, by family 
 residences the inhabitants of Acacia Terrace or Plantain 
 Grove are apt to become remarkably disagreeable in their 
 reclamations to the bachelor himself. The bachelor is a bank- 
 clerk, very likely, or a stock-broker, not over-plethoric just 
 yet with profits ; or a young fellow with a small independence. 
 He has a front garden and a back garden ; both, ten to one, 
 provided with a trim little summer-house, where he is very 
 fond of sitting on .fine afternoons with his friends, clad in 
 bachelor-like deshabille, consuming the grateful beer of Bass, 
 and gently whining the cutty-pipe of Milo, or the meerschaum. 
 
224 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 He has flowers, but has a faint idea that the tobacco-smoke 
 does not do them any good. He has a housekeeper generally 
 middle-aged, and frequently deaf many friends, more pipes, 
 and frequently an anomalous kind of little vehicle, drawn by 
 an eccentric pony, and which he calls his ' trap.' Sunday is 
 his great day. All his fly-rods, fishing-tackle, gardening im- 
 plements, guns, rabbit-hutches, and pipe-racks, are overhauled 
 on that day ; grave judgments are passed on the dogs and 
 horses of his friends ; and an impervious cloud of Bird's-eye 
 or Oronooko hangs about the little summer-houses. But the 
 bachelor marries ; goes a little too fast, perhaps, or dies (for, 
 alas ! even bachelors must die) ; and so his Bachelor's Eesi- 
 dence is To Let. 
 
 The Desirable Eesidence. I have the secret of that ' House 
 to Let/ I will be bound. A lodging-house ! What could 
 there be more desirable, in the way of a residence, than that, 
 I should like to know ? Twelve-roomed house, in Manchester 
 Street, Manchester Square. Blue damask curtains in the first- 
 floor windows ; red ditto in the parlour windows ; a never- 
 disappearing placard, of Apartments Furnished (for however 
 full the lodging-house may be, it always seems to have a 
 marvellous capacity for holding more) ; and area railings, 
 frequently enlivened and ornamented by the three-quarter 
 portrait of a pretty servant maid. Whenever you see the 
 butcher, or the baker, or the grocer's man, at the door of the 
 Desirable Eesidence, you will be sure, if you watch, to see 
 him produce a red account-book ; for people who keep lodging- 
 houses invariably run bills with tradesmen, probably to give 
 an air of veracity and colourable truth to the persevering 
 assertion made to their lodgers, that they have a little bill to 
 pay to-morrow. If the lady who keeps the Desirable Eesi- 
 dence is married, you will not be very far out, if you assert 
 that her husband has something to do with the Docks, or that 
 he is a barrister's clerk, in good practice. You can't be wrong, 
 if you set him down as an indifferently-dressed man, with an 
 umbrella, who, whenever he speaks to you, calls you ' Sir.' 
 If your landlady should happen to be a widow, take my word 
 for it, that ' she was not always in these circumstances ;' that 
 her late husband's executors have used her shamefully ; and 
 that she has a pretty daughter or niece. 
 
 Unless I am very far out in my theory, the ' Substantial 
 Eesidence ' is a lodging-house too, and the ' Genteel Eesidence ' 
 not very far from it. Cecil Street, Strand, for the former, and 
 
HOUSES TO LET. 225 
 
 Camberwoll for the latter, would not be very wide of the 
 mark. Cecil Street is full of substantial houses, in which 
 lodgers, sometimes not quite so substantial as the houses, 
 continually dwell. The prices of provisions are high in Cecil 
 Street, and the quantity of nourishment they afford far from 
 considerable. Penny loaves are twopence each, and you can't 
 get more than one dinner oif a leg of mutton. The profits 
 arising from the avocations of the landladies of substantial 
 residences must be so large, that I wonder they ever come 
 to be advertised as ' to let ' at all. Perhaps it is that they 
 make their fortunes, and migrate to the * elegant residence/ 
 or the ' distinguished residence.' 
 
 Am I wrong in placing the locale of these two last species of 
 
 * Houses to Let,' in Belgravia and Tyburnia? They may, 
 after all, be wasting their elegance and their distinction in 
 Golden Square, Ely Place, or Kennington Oval. Yet I am 
 always coming across, and reading with great unction, 
 paragraphs in the newspapers, setting forth that, 'after the 
 marriage of Miss Arabella Constantia Tanner, daughter of 
 Hyde Tanner, Esq., of the firm of Bender, Cooter, and Tanner, 
 of Lombard Street, to the Honourable Captain Casey, son of 
 Lord Latitat, the happy couple partook of a magnificent 
 dejeuner at the elegant residence of the bride's father in Hyde 
 Park Gardens ;' or else it is, that ' last evening the Earl and 
 Countess of Hammersmith and Ladies Barnes (2), Sir John 
 Bobcherry, Pillary Pacha, &c., &c., honoured Sir Styles and 
 Lady Springer with their company to dinner at their dis- 
 tinguished residence in Eaton Place.' I can always imagine 
 tall footmen, magnificent and serene in plush and embroidery, 
 lolling at the doors of elegant and distinguished residences. I 
 don't think I can be very far wrong. I reside, myself, over a 
 milk-shop, and I know that to be neither an elegant nor a dis- 
 tinguished residence ; but are there not both elegance and 
 distinction in the stately Belgrave Square, and the lofty West- 
 bourne Grove ? 
 
 Coming, in the pursuit of this superficial examination of 
 
 * Houses to Let,' I stop puzzled at the word ' House,' simple, 
 unadulterated, unaccompanied with eulogy, or explanatory 
 prefix. I have my theory about it, though it may be but a 
 lame one. The lone, silent ' House ' must be like that 
 celebrated one at the corner of Stamford Street, Blackfriars, 
 which, with its two companions, everybody has seen, and 
 nobody knows the history of a house unlet, unletable, yet 
 
 Q 
 
226 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 always to let. Now, a house agent having any bowels what- 
 soever, could not call this a desirable house, nor a convenient 
 house, nor an elegant house So, being too good a man of 
 business to call it an ill-favoured house, a dirty house, and a 
 villanous house, as it is, he calls it a ' House.' A house it is, 
 sure enough, just as a horse, albeit spavined, wind-galled, 
 glandered, staggered, lame, blown, a kicker and a roarer, is a 
 horse still. But what a horse, and what a house ! 
 
 A ' Genteel House ' seems to me different to a genteel 
 residence. The latter's use I have elsewhere hinted at; 
 the former I take to be .situate somewhere in Gower Street, 
 Keppel Street, or Guildford Street, or in some of those 
 mysterious thoroughfares you are always getting into when 
 you don't want them, and never can find when you do. In 
 the genteel house, I should think, two maiden ladies must 
 have lived sisters probably ; say, the Miss Twills, whose 
 father was Twills of Saint Mary- Axe, sugar-baker ; and whose 
 brother, Mr. Twills, in partnership with Mr. Squills, can be 
 found in Montague Place, Bedford Square, where the two carry 
 on a genteel business as surgeons and apothecaries. The Miss 
 Twills kept a one-horse fly (not one of your rakish-looking 
 broughams, be it understood), with a corpulent horse (serious 
 of disposition, and given to eating plum-cake when he could 
 get it), and a mild-looking coachman, who carried a hymn- 
 book in his pocket. One day, however, I surmise, Miss Jessy 
 Twills, the youngest and prettiest sister (she did not mind 
 owning to forty) married the Eeverend Felix Spanker, of 
 Saint Blazer's Chapel, in Milman Street. Miss Betsy Twills 
 went to live with her married sister (the two lead the poor 
 parson a terrible life between them, and Felix is more irate 
 in the pulpit against the Pope than ever), and the genteel 
 residence took its place in the category of ' Houses to Let.' 
 
 The ' Detached House ' bears its peculiar characteristic on 
 its front ; it stands alone, and nothing more can be said about 
 it; but with the 'semi-detached house' there is a subtle 
 mystery, much to be marvelled at. Semi-detached! Have 
 the party-walls between two houses shrunk, or is there a 
 bridge connecting the two, as in Mr. Beckford's house in 
 Landsdown Crescent, Bath ? A semi-detached house may be 
 a house with a field on one side and a bone-boiling factory on 
 the other. Semi-detached may mean half-tumbling to pieces. 
 I must inquire into it. 
 
 The ' mansion,' the residence,' and the house,' seem to 
 
HOUSES TO LET. 227 
 
 indicate dwellings of some considerable degree of impor- 
 tance and extent ; the ' villa,' the ' cottage,' and the ' lodge,' 
 seem to indicate smaller places of abode, though perhaps 
 equalling, if not surpassing, their contemporaries in elegance, 
 gentility, distinction, convenience, desirableness, substantiality, 
 &c., &c. There is one thing, however, certain about the villa 
 one sound basis to go upon, which we do not possess as 
 regards the ' house.' The ' house ' is ambiguously situated, it 
 may be, in Grosvenor Square, in Pall Mall, or in Brick Lane, 
 Spitalfields, or Crown Street, Seven Dials ; but the villa is 
 necessarily suburban. You could not call a house (however 
 small it might be) situated between a pie-shop and a public- 
 house, a c villa.' A four-roomed house in Fleet Street would 
 be a novelty, and if you were to call it a Gothic lodge, would 
 be a greater novelty still ; while Co vent Garden Market, or 
 Long Acre, would scarcely be the locale for a cottage ornee, or 
 an Italian villa. I recognise cottages, villas, and lodges, with 
 the addition of ' hermitages,' ' priories,' ' groves,' ' boxes,' 
 ' retreats,' &c., on all suburban roads ; in Kensington, 
 Hammersmith, and Turnham Green ; in Kingsland, Hackney, 
 and Dalston ; in Highgate, Hampstead, and Hornsey ; in 
 Camberwell, Peckham, and Kennington; in Paddington, 
 Kilburn, and Cricklewood ; their roads, approaches, and 
 environs, inclusive. And a fair proportion do these suburbs 
 contribute to the ' Houses to Let ' in the Supplement of the 
 ' Times.' 
 
 The ' villa standing in its own grounds' is generally 
 suggestive of stockbrokers. Great people are these stock- 
 brokers for villas ; for driving mail-phaetons, or wide-awake 
 looking dog-carts ; for giving capital dinners and wine. 
 The young man who has a stockbroker for a friend, has 
 need but to trouble himself only concerning his lodging 
 and washing ; his board will take care of itself, or, rather, will 
 be amply taken care of in the villa of his Amphitryon. Next, 
 I should say, to a decided penchant for giving and taking the 
 longest of odds, and a marked leaning towards the purchase 
 and sale of horseflesh, hospitality is the most prominent charac- 
 teristic of a stockbroker. He is always ' wanting to stand ' 
 something. His bargains are made over sherry and sand- 
 wiches ; he begins and ends the day with conviviality. AVhat 
 a pity it is that his speculations should fail sometimes, and 
 that his clients should lose their money, and himself be ' sold 
 up ' ostracised from 'Change, driven to dwell among the tents 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 of Boulogne-sur-Mer, or the cities of refuge of Belgium, the 
 boorish and the beery ! Else would he be living in his own 
 ground-surrounded villa to this day, instead of its being 
 confided to the tender mercies of Messrs. Hammer and Bapps, 
 auctioneers and house-agents, as a ' Villa to Let.' 
 
 4 An Italian Yilla to Let.' Pretty, plausible, but deceptive. 
 The house-agent who devised the Italian prefix was a hum- 
 bug. Start not, reader, while I whisper in your ear. The 
 Italian villa is a shabby little domicile, only ? Italian in so much 
 as it possesses Venetian blinds. I know it ; for I, who speak, 
 have been egregiously sold, lamentably taken in, by this 
 mendacious villa. 
 
 < A Villa to Let,' again. Not elegant, desirable, distin- 
 guished, nor Italian ; but a villa. It has bow-windows, I will 
 go bail. A green verandah over the drawing-room window, for 
 a trifle. Two bells, one for visitors, and one for servants. The 
 villa is suitable for Mr. Covin (of the firm of Feraud and 
 Covin, solicitors), who has been importuned so long by Mrs. 
 Covin to abandon his substantial residence in Bedford Bow, 
 that he has at last acceded to her wishes. Covin is a portly 
 man, with a thick gold chain, a bald head, and a fringe of 
 black whisker. He is fond of a peculiarly fruity port, like 
 black-currant jam diluted with treacle and water : and his 
 wife's bonnet-box is a japanned tin-coffer, labelled ' Mr. 
 SoldofFs estate.' He won't live in the villa long, because he 
 will get tired of it, and long for Bedford Bow again, with its 
 pleasant odour of new vellum and red tape. He will let it to 
 Mr. Bunt, the barrister, in ' chamber ' practice, or Mr. Mus- 
 covado, the sugar-broker of Tower Street, or Mrs. Lopp, the 
 comfortably-circumstanced widow, who was so stanch a friend 
 to the Beverend Silas Chewier ; the same who, in imitation 
 of the famous Mr. Huntingdon, S.S., called himself H.B.B., 
 or Half-Burnt Brand. 
 
 What should the ' cottage orne'e ' be like, I should wish to 
 know (to jump from villas to cottages), but that delightful 
 little box of a place at Dulwich, where a good friend of mine 
 was wont (wont, alas!) to live. The strawberries in the 
 garden; the private theatricals in the back parlour; the 
 pleasant excursions on week days to the old College (God 
 bless old Thomas Alleyne and Sir Francis Bourgeois, I say ! 
 Had the former done nothing worthier of benediction in his 
 life than found the dear old place, or the latter not atoned for 
 all the execrably bad modern pictures he painted in his life- 
 
HOUSES TO LET. 229 
 
 time, by the exquisitely beautiful ancient ones he left us at 
 his death) ; the symposium in the garden on Sundays ; the 
 clear church-bells ringing through the soft summer air ; the 
 pianoforte in the boudoir, and Gluck's ' Che faro senza Euri- 
 dice?' lightly, gently elicited from the silvery keys (by 
 hands that are cold and powerless now), wreathing through 
 the open window ; the kind faces and cheerful laughter, the 
 timid anxiety of the ladies concerning the last omnibus home 
 at night, and the cheerful recklessness with which they sub- 
 sequently abandoned that last omnibus to its fate, and con- 
 jectured impossibly fortuitous conveyances to town, conjec- 
 tures ultimately resolving themselves into impromptu beds. 
 How many a time have I had a shake-down on the billiard- 
 table of the cottage orne'e ? How many a time but my 
 
 theme is of Houses to Let. 
 
 And of ' Houses to Let/ I have been unconscionably gar- 
 rulous, without being usefully communicative. I have said 
 too much, and yet not half enough. In houses, I am yet at 
 fault about the little mushroom-like rows of flimsy-looking 
 tenements that spring up on every side in and about the 
 suburbs ; in brick-fields, in patches of ground where rubbish 
 was formerly shot, and vagabond boys turned over three 
 times for a penny. I have yet to learn in what species 
 of ' House to Let ' the eccentric gentleman formerly resided, 
 who never washed himself for five-and-forty years, and 
 was supposed to scrape himself with an oyster-shell after 
 the manner of the Caribbees; where it was, whether in a 
 house, a villa, a residence, or a cottage, that the maiden lady 
 entertained the fourteen torn cats, that slept each in a four- 
 post bedstead, and were fed, all of them, on turtle soup. I 
 want to know what ' every convenience ' means. I should 
 like to have some further information as to what ' a select 
 number' actually implies. I am desirous of ascertaining in 
 what category of ' Houses to Let ' a house-agent would rank a 
 tenantless theatre, a chapel without a congregation or a mi- 
 nister, an empty brewery, or a deserted powder-mill. 
 
 Finally, I should like to know what a ' cottage ' is. Of the 
 cottage orne'e I have spoken ; the compact cottage, the detached 
 cottage, the semi-detached cottage, speak for themselves ; but 
 I am as much puzzled about the simple cottage as about the 
 simple house, mansion, or villa. In my youth I had a 
 chimera of a cottage, and drew rude outlines thereof on a 
 slate. It had quadrangular tiles, a window immediately 
 
230 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 above the door, palings at the side, and smoke continually 
 issuing from the chimney. Its architecture was decidedly out 
 of the perpendicular; afterwards, perusing works of a rural 
 and pastoral description, a cottage became to me a little para- 
 dise of ivy, and honeysuckles, and woodbine. It had a pretty 
 porch, where a young lady in a quilted petticoat, and a young 
 gentleman in a flapped waistcoat, both after the manner (and 
 a very sweet one it is) of Mr. Frank Stone, made first and last 
 appeals to each other all the year round. That was in the 
 time of roses. The times have changed, and I, so I suppose, 
 have changed with them. The roses that remain to us, 
 brother, when our hair becomes inclined to the grizzly, we 
 feel disposed to look commercially upon, and to make money 
 of. Yes ; the fairest rose-leaves from Dainascus's garden will 
 we sell to Messrs. Piesse and Lubin for the making of attar ; 
 even as Olympia, at sixty, sells the love-letters of her youth to 
 Messrs Hotpress and Co, publishers, to make three volumes 
 octavo of 'memoirs.' I am sceptical, ignorant, undecided, 
 about the cottage now. Sometimes it is the slate-pencil cot- 
 tage, sometimes the Frank Stone one, sometimes the cottage 
 of the sixpenny valentines, quitting which, by a bright yellow 
 serpentine path, a gentleman in a blue coat, and a lady in 
 a pink dress, wend their way to the altar of Hymen. Some- 
 times, reader of mine ! I see other cottages, dreadful 
 cottages, squalid cottages, cottages in Church Lane, Saint 
 Giles's, where frowsy women in tattered shawls crouch 
 stolidly on the door-step ; where ragged, filthy children wal- 
 low with fowls and pigs amidst the dirt and squalor. Some- 
 times I see cottages in my fondly pictured rural districts 
 cottages dilapidated, half unroofed, where gaunt agricultural 
 labourers are sullenly wrangling with relieving-officers ; where 
 white-headed, brick-dust faced children cry for bread ; where 
 mother is down with the fever, and grandmother bedridden, 
 yet querulously refusing to go into the dreaded i House.' 
 
 Perhaps I am wrong in all this. Perhaps all these theories 
 about mansions, residences, houses, villas, and the inex- 
 plicable cottages, after all may be but wild and improbable 
 theories crude, vague, purposeless speculations. But I have 
 said my say, and shall be wiser some day, I hope, in other 
 matters besides ' Houses to Let.' 
 
( 231 ) 
 XXI. 
 
 TATTYBOYS RENTS. 
 
 IN Tattyboys Rents the sun shines, and the rain rains, and 
 people are born, and live, and die, and are buried and for- 
 gotten, much as they do in Rents of greater renown. And I 
 do not think that the obscurity of the Tatty boy sians, and the 
 lack of fame of their residence, causes them much grief, 
 simply because it is to be believed that they are unconscious 
 of both fame and obscurity. That happy conformation of the 
 human mind which leads us firmly and complacently to think 
 that the whole world is ceaselessly occupied with our own 
 little tinpot doings that serenity of self-importance which 
 lends such a dignity of carriage to little Mr. Claypipkin, as he 
 sails clown the street in company with big, burly Mr. Brazen- 
 pot these, I dare say, set my friends in the locality that 
 gives a name to this paper, quite at their ease in regard to 
 the place they occupy, in the estimation of the universe, and 
 engender a comfortable indiiference as to whether the eyes of 
 Europe (that celebrated visionary) are continually fixed upon 
 Tattyboys Rents or not. 
 
 To tell the plain truth about them, nevertheless, the Rents 
 and the Renters are alarmingly obscure. Beyond the postman, 
 the tax-collectors, and those miracles of topographical erudi- 
 tion who deliver County Court summonses, and serve notices 
 for the Insolvent Court, I doubt if there are a hundred persons 
 in London, exclusive of the inhabitants themselves, who know 
 anything about Tattyboys Rents, or even whereabouts they are. 
 It is to be surmised that the names of the magnates of the Rents 
 are inscribed in that golden book of commerce, the Post-Office 
 London Directory, but the place itself finds no mention there. 
 By internal evidence and much collation of the work in ques- 
 tion, it maybe conjectured that Tatty boys Rents is not even the 
 proper name of the score of houses so called, and that it is 
 legally known no, not known, for it isn't known but that 
 it should be designated as Little Blitsom Street. Plugg, of 
 the water-rates, says that in his youth he well remembers a 
 small stone tablet on the corner wall of number nineteen, 
 running thus, ' Little Blitsom Street, 1770,' and old Mrs. 
 Brush, the charwoman, who, in the days of King James the 
 First, would infallibly have been burnt for a witch, but is now 
 
232 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 venerated as the oldest inhabitant, minds the time ' when a 
 ferocious band of miscreants/ whether forgers, burglars, or 
 murderers, is not stated, were captured in Tattyboys Bents 
 by that bold runner Townshend, and his red-waistcoated 
 acolytes, and by him conveyed before Sir Eichard Birnie : 
 the wretches being known as the * Little Blitsom Street 
 Gang.' Mogg's Map of the Metropolis, with the later charts 
 of Eichard and Davis, passes the Eents by, in contemptuous 
 silence. Blitsom Street and long, dirty Turk's Lane, into 
 which it leads, are both set down in fair characters, but 
 beyond a nameless little space between two blocks of houses, 
 there is nothing to tell you where Tattyboys Eents may be-. 
 It is no good asking the policeman anything about them. I 
 have my doubts whether he knows ; but even granting 
 his sapience, I have my suspicions that unless he knew your 
 position and character well, he would affect entire ignorance 
 on the subject. He has his private reasons for doing so. 
 Tattj^boys Eents are far too snugly situated, peaceable, and 
 well-behaved, for its locality to be divulged to strangers 
 possibly of indifferent character. Therefore my advice to 
 you is, if you understand navigation, which I do not, to take 
 your observations by the sun and moon, and, by the help of 
 your * Hamilton Moore,' chronometers, quadrant, compass 
 steering due north, and a guinea case of mathematical instru- 
 ments, work out Tattyboys Eents' exact place on the chart, 
 and then go and find it. Or, ' another way,' as the cookery- 
 book says, follow Turk's Lane, till you come to Blitsom 
 Street, up which wander till you stumble, somehow, into 
 Tattyboys Eents. 
 
 The last you are very likely to do literally, for the only 
 approach to the Eents is by a flight of steps, very steep and 
 very treacherous, their vicinity being masked by a grove of 
 posts, and the half-dozen idlers whom you are always sure to 
 find congregated round Chapford's beershop. And it has 
 often happened that, of the few strangers who have travelled 
 in Tattyboys Eents, the proudest and sternest : men who 
 would have scorned to perform the ceremony of the Kotou in 
 China, and would have scouted the idea of salaaming to the 
 Great Mogul : have made their first entrance into the Eents 
 with the lowliest obeisances, with bended knees, and fore- 
 heads touching the pavement. 
 
 If Miss Mitford had not written, years ago, ' Our Village/ 
 it is decidedly by that name that I should have called this 
 
TATTYBOYS RENTS. 233 
 
 paper. For, Tattyboys Bents form not only a village as 
 regards their isolation, and the unsophisticated nature of 
 their inhabitants, but they resemble those villages, few and 
 far between, now-a-days, where there is no railway-station 
 cross-country villages, where the civilising shriek of the 
 engine-whistle is never heard; where the building mania 
 in any style of architecture is unfelt ; where the inhabitants 
 keep themselves to themselves, and have a supreme contempt 
 for the inhabitants of all other villages, hamlets, townships, 
 and boroughs whatsoever; where strangers are barely tole- 
 rated and never popular; where improvements, alterations, 
 and innovations, are unanimously scouted ; where the father's 
 customs are the son's rule of life, and the daughters do what 
 their mothers did before them. The Metropolitan Buildings 
 Act is a dead letter in Tattyboys Kents, for nobody ever 
 thinks of building to say nothing of rebuilding or painting 
 a house. The Common Lodging-House Act goes for no- 
 thing, for there are no common lodging-houses, and the lodgers, 
 where there are any, are of an uncommon character. No one 
 fears the Nuisances Eemovals Act, for everybody has his own 
 particular nuisance, and is too fond of it to move for its re- 
 moval. The Health of Towns Act has nothing in common 
 with the health of Tattyboys Eents, for fevers don't seem to 
 trouble themselves to come down its steep entrance steps, and 
 the cholera has, on three occasions, given it the cut direct. 
 It is of no use bothering about the drainage, for nobody com- 
 plains about it, and nobody will tell you whether it is deficient 
 or not. As to the supply of water, there is a pump at the 
 further extremity of the Eents that would satisfy the most 
 exigent hydropathist ; and, touching that pump, I should like 
 to see the bold stranger female who would dare to draw a 
 jugful of water from it, or the stranger boy who would pre- 
 sume to lift to his lips the time-worn and water-rusted iron 
 ladle attached by a chain to that pump's nozzle. Such persons 
 as district surveyors and inspectors of nuisances have been 
 heard of in Tattyboys Eents, but they are estimated as being 
 in influence and authority infinitely below the parish beadle. 
 There was a chimney on fire once at number twelve, and with 
 immense difficulty an engine was lifted into the Eents, but 
 all claims of the Fire Bigrade were laughed to scorn, and the 
 boys of the Eents made such a fierce attack on the engine, and 
 manifested so keen a desire to detain it as a hostage, that the 
 helmeted men with the hatchets were glad to make their 
 escape as best they could. 
 
234 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 The first peculiarity that will strike you on entering the 
 Eents is the tallness of the houses. The blackness of their 
 fronts and the dinginess of their windows will not appear to 
 you as so uncommon, being a characteristic of Blitsom Street, 
 Turk's Lane, and the whole of the neighbourhood. But, 
 Tattyboys houses are very tall indeed, as if, being set so 
 closely together, and being prevented by conservative ten- 
 dencies from spreading beyond the limits of the Eents, they 
 had grown taller instead, and added unto themselves storeys 
 instead of wings. I can't say much, either, for their pictu- 
 resque aspect. Old as the Eents are, they are not roman- 
 tically old. Here are no lean-to roofs, no carved gables, 
 no old lintels, no dormer or lattice windows. The houses 
 are all alike all tall, grimy, all with mathematical dirty 
 windows, flights of steps (quite innocent of the modern 
 frivolities of washing and hearthstoning), tall narrow doors, 
 and areas with hideous railings. One uncompromisingly 
 tasteless yet terrible mould was evidently made in the first 
 instance for all the lion's-head knockers : one disproportioned 
 spearhead and tassel for all the railings. I can imagine the 
 first Tattyboys, a stern man of inflexible uniformity of con- 
 duct and purpose, saying grimly to his builder : ' Build me a 
 Eents of so many houses, on such and such a model/ and the 
 obedient builder turning out so many houses like so many 
 bricks, or so many bullets from a mould, or pins from a wire, 
 and saying, There, Tattyboys, there are your Eents.' Then 
 new, painted, swept, garnished, with the mathematical 
 windows all glistening in one sunbeam, the same lion's-head 
 knockers grinning on the same doors, the regularity of Tatty- 
 boys Eents must have been distressing : the houses must all 
 have been as like each other as the beaux in wigs and cocked 
 hats, and the belles in hoops and hair powder, who lived 
 when Tattyboys Eents were built : but age, poverty, and dirt 
 have given as much variety of expression to these houses now, 
 as hair, whiskers, wrinkles, and scars give to the human 
 face. Some of the lion-headed knockers are gone, and 
 many of the spear-headed railings. Some of the tall doors 
 stand continually open, drooping gracefully on one hinge. 
 The plain fronts of the houses are chequered by lively 
 cartoons, pictorially representing the domestic mangle, the 
 friendly cow that yields fresh milk daily for our nourishment, 
 the household goods that can be removed (by spring vans) in 
 town or country; the enlivening ginger-beer which is the 
 favourite beverage (according to the cartoon) of the British 
 
TATTYBOYS RENTS. 235 
 
 Field -Marshal, and the lady in the Bloomer costume. Variety 
 is given to the windows by many of their pan,es being broken, 
 or patched with parti-coloured paper and textile fabrics ; and 
 by many of the windows themselves being open the major part 
 of the day, disclosing heads and shoulders of various stages of 
 muscular -development, with a foreground of tobacco-pipes 
 and a background of shirt-sleeves. Tails, brooms, and multi- 
 farious odds and ends, take away from the uniformity of the 
 areas, while the area gates (where there are any left) swing 
 cheerfully to and fro. Groups of laughing children be- 
 spangle the pavement, and diversify the door-steps : and 
 liveliness, colour, form, are given to the houses and the 
 inhabitants by dirt, linen on poles, half-torn-off placards, 
 domestic fowls, dogs, decayed vegetables, oyster tubs, pewter 
 pots, broken shutters, torn blinds, ragged door-mats, lidless 
 kettles, bottomless saucepans, shattered plates, bits of frayed 
 rope, and cats whose race is run, and whose last tile has been 
 squatted on. 
 
 Tatty boys originally intended the houses in his Eents to be 
 all private mansions. Of that there can be no doubt : else, 
 why the areas, why the doorsteps and the lion-headed 
 knockers ? But, that mutability of time and fashion which 
 has converted the monastery of the Crutched Friars into a 
 nest of sugar-brokers' counting-houses, and the Palace of 
 Henry the Eighth and Cardinal Wolsey into a hair-dresser's 
 shop, has dealt as hardly with the private houses in Tatty- 
 boys Eents. The shopkeeping element has not yet wholly 
 destroyed the aristocratic aspect of the place ; still, in very 
 many instances, petty commerce has set up its petty wares in 
 the front parlour windows, and the chapman has built his 
 counters and shelves on the groundfloors of gentility. 
 
 I have spoken so often of Tattyboys Eents, that the ques- 
 tion might aptly be asked, Who was Tattyboys? When did 
 it occur to him to build Eents? By what fortunate in- 
 heritance, what adventitious accession of wealth, what pros- 
 perous result of astute speculations, was he enabled to give 
 his name to, and derive quarterly rents from, the two 
 blocks of houses christened after him ? So dense is the 
 obscurity that surrounds all the antecedents of the locality, 
 that I do not even know the sex of the primary Tattyboys. 
 
 The estates, titles, muniments, and manorial rights (what- 
 ever they may be) of the clan Tattyboys, are at present en- 
 joyed by a black beaver bonnet and black silk cloak of antedi- 
 luvian design and antemundane rustiness, supposed to contain 
 
236 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 Miss Tattyboys herself. I say supposed, for though the cloak 
 and the bonnet are patent in the Rents on certain periodical 
 occasions, the ancient female (she must be old) whom they en- 
 shroud is facially as unknown as the first Odalisque of the 
 Harem to Hassan the cobler, or as the Veiled Prophet of 
 Khorassan was to the meanest of his adorers. No man has 
 seen Miss Tattyboys, not even Mr. Barwise, her agent ; nay, 
 nor old Mr. Fazzle, the immensely rich bachelor of number 
 thirteen ; but many have heard her stern demands for rent, 
 and her shrill denunciation of the * carryings on ' of her 
 tenants. It is said that Miss Tattyboys resides at Hoxton, and 
 that she keeps her own cows. Men also say that she discounts 
 bills, and is the proprietor of a weekly newspaper. It is 
 certain that she is in frequent communication with Mr. Hemp, 
 the officer of the Sheriffs' Court ; and many are the proclama- 
 tions of outlawry made against sprigs of nobility, with tre- 
 mendously long and aristocratic names at the ' suit of Bridget 
 Tattyboys.' Likewise she arrested the Honourable Tom 
 Scaleybridge, M.P., at the close of the last session, before 
 the advent of the present administration, but was compelled, 
 to release him immediately afterwards, he claiming his pri- 
 vilege. There are many solicitors of my acquaintance, who 
 in their mysteriously musty and monied private offices have 
 battered tin boxes with half-effaced inscriptions relative to 
 'Tattyboys Estate, 1829;' 'Tattyboys Trust, 1832;' 'Tatty- 
 boys versus Pat cherry ;' and 'Miss Bridget Tattyboys.' She 
 is mixed up with an infinity of trusts, estates, and will cases. 
 She is the subject of dreary law-suits in which the nominal 
 plaintiff is the real defendant, and the defendant ought not 
 to be a party to the suit at all. Time is always being given to 
 speak to her, or communicate with her, or to summons her to 
 produce papers which she never will produce. Law reports 
 about her cases begin with ' So far back as eighteen hundred 
 and ten ;' ' it will be remembered that ;' ' this part heard 
 case ;' and the daily newspapers occasionally contain letters 
 denying that she made a proposition to A., or sued B., or was 
 indebted to C. : signed by Driver, Chizzle, and Wrench, solicitors 
 for Miss Tattyboys. She got as far as the House of Lords 
 once, in an appeal case against Coger Alley Earn Cunder Loll, 
 of Bombay ; but how this litigious old female managed to get 
 out, physically or literally, to Hindostan, or into difficulties 
 with a Parsee indigo broker, passes my comprehension. A 
 mysterious old lady. 
 
 Meanwhile, Miss Bridget Tattyboys is the landlady of 
 
TATTYBOYS RENTS. 237 
 
 Tattyboys Bents. There is no dubiety about her existence 
 there. Only be a little behindhand with your rent, and you 
 will soon be favoured with one of Mr. Barwise's ' Sir, I 
 am instructed by Miss Tattyboys ;' and close upon that 
 will follow Mr. S. Scrutor, Miss Tattyboys 7 broker, with 
 his distraint, and his levy, and his inventory, and all the 
 sacraments of selling up. I should opine that Miss Tattyboys 
 is deaf, for she is remarkable in cases of unpaid rent for not 
 listening to appeals for time, and not hearing of a compromise. 
 Gilks, the chandler's shopkeeper of number nine, whose wife 
 is always in the family way, and himself in difficulties, once 
 ' bound himself by a curse ' to seek out Miss Tattyboys at 
 Hoxton, to beard her in her very den, and appeal to her 
 mercy, her charity, her womanhood, in a matter of two 
 quarters owing. He started one^morning, with a determined 
 shirt-collar, and fortified by sundry small libations at the 
 Cape of Good Hope. He returned at nightfall with a haggard 
 face, disordered apparel, and an unsteady gait ; was inarticu- 
 late and incoherent in his speech ; shortly afterwards went to 
 bed ; and to this day cannot be prevailed upon by his ac- 
 quaintances, by the wife of his bosom even, to give any 
 account of his interview, if interview he had, with the 
 Megsera of Hoxton. Mrs. Gilks, a wary woman, who has 
 brought, and is bringing, up a prodigious family, has whis- 
 pered to Mrs. Spileburg, of the Cape of Good Hope, that, on 
 the morning after Gilks's expedition, examining his garments, 
 as it is the blessed conjugal custom to do, she found, im- 
 printed in chalky dust, on the back of his coat, the mark of a 
 human foot I What could this portend ? Did Gilks penetrate 
 to Hoxton, and was he indeed kicked by Miss Tattyboys ? or 
 did he suffer the insulting infliction at the foot of some 
 pampered menial ? Or, coming home despairing, was he led 
 to the consumption (and the redundancy of coppers, and the 
 paucity of silver, in his pockets would favour this view of the 
 case) of more liquid sustenance of a fermented nature than 
 was good for him? And was he in this state kicked by 
 outraged landlord or infuriated pot-companion ? Gilks lives, 
 and makes no sign. Pressed on the subject of Miss Tattyboys, 
 he reluctantly grumbles that she is an ' old image/ and this 
 is all. 
 
 Dear reader (and the digression may be less intolerable, 
 seeing that it takes place in what is but a digression itself), 
 I do wonder what Miss Tattyboys is like. Is she really the 
 
238 GASLIGHT AOT> DAYLIGHT. 
 
 stern, harsh, uncompromising female that her acts bespeak 
 her? Does she sit in a rigid cap, or still accoutred in the 
 black bonnet and veil in a dreary office-like parlour at Hoxton, 
 with all her documents docketed on a table before her, or 
 glaring from pigeon-holes, shelves, and cupboards? Or is 
 she a jolly, apple-faced, little woman, in a cheery room with 
 birds and plants and flowers, liking a cosy glass and a merry 
 song : a Lady Bountiful in the neighbourhood, a Dorcas to 
 the poor, the idol of all the dissenting ministers around? 
 Perhaps. Who knows ? Ah ! how unlike we all are to what 
 we seem! How the roar of the lion abroad softens into 
 the bleat of the lamb at home! How meekly the fierce 
 potent schoolmaster of the class-room holds out his knuckles 
 for the ruler in the study ! He who is the same in his own 
 home of homes as he is abroad, is a marvel. 
 
 Miss Tattyboys has a carriage and a horse, but for certain 
 reasons upon which I briefly touched in allusion to the parish 
 engine, her visits to the Eents are made perforce on foot. 
 Monday mornings, black Mondays emphatically, are her ordi- 
 nary visiting days ; and on such mornings you will see her 
 duskyform looming at Mr. Fazzle's door, or flitting through the 
 Eents as she is escorted to her carriage by Barwise, her agent. 
 Communications may be made direct to her, but they always 
 come somehow through Barwise. He may be described as 
 the buffer to the Tattyboys train; and run at her ever so 
 hard, Barwise receives the first collision, and detracts from 
 its force. If Gilks wants time, or Chapford threatens to 
 leave unless his roof is looked to, or Mrs. Chownes asks again 
 about that kitchen range, or Spileberg expresses a savage 
 opinion that his house will tumble in next week, and that 
 there'll be murder against somebody, Barwise interposes, 
 explains, promises, refuses, will see about it. Which Barwise 
 never does. You try to get at Miss Tattyboys, but you can't, 
 though you are within hand and earshot of her. The por- 
 tentous black veil flutters in the wind ; you are dazzled and 
 terrified by her huge black reticule bursting with papers ; 
 you strive to speak ; but Miss Tattyboys is gone, and all you 
 can do is to throw yourself upon Barwise, who throws you 
 over. 
 
 The carriage of the landlady of the Eents is an anomalous 
 vehicle on very high springs, of which the body seems 
 decidedly never to have been made for the wheels, which on 
 their part appear to be all of different sizes, and shriek while 
 
TATTYBOYS RENTS. 239 
 
 moving dreadfully. Much basket-work enters into the com- 
 position of Miss Tattyboys's carriage, also much rusty leather, 
 and a considerable quantity of a fabric resembling bed- 
 ticking. There are two lamps, one of which is quite blind 
 and glassless, and the other blinking and knocked on one side 
 in some by-gone collision, to a Ivery squinting obliquity. 
 A complication of straps and rusty iron attaches this equipage 
 to a very long-bodied, short-legged black horse, not unlike a 
 turnspit dog, which appears to be utterly disgusted with the 
 whole turnout, and drags it with an outstretched head and 
 outstretched legs, as though he were a dog, and the carriage 
 a tin kettle tied to his tail. There have been blood and 
 bone once about this horse doubtless ; but the blood is con- 
 fined at present to a perpetual raw on his shoulder, artfully 
 veiled from the Society's constables by the rags of his dilapi- 
 dated collar, and the bone to a lamentably anatomical develop- 
 ment of his ribs. To him, is Jehu, a man of grim aspect and 
 of brickdust complexion, whose hat and coat are as the hat 
 and coat of a groom, but whose legs are as the legs of an 
 agricultural labourer, inasmuch as they are clad in corduroy, 
 and terminate in heavy shoes, much clayed. He amuses 
 himself while waiting for his mistress with aggravating the 
 long-bodied horse with his whip on his blind side (he, the horse, 
 is wall-eyed) and with reading a tattered volume, averred by 
 many to be a book of tracts, but declared by some to be a ' Little 
 Warbler,' insomuch as smothered refrains of ' right tooral lol 
 looral ' have been heard at times from his dreary coachbox. 
 It is not a pleasant sight this rusty carriage with the long 
 horse, and the grim coachman jolting and staggering about 
 Blitsom Street. It does not do a man good to see the black 
 bonnet and veil inside, with the big reticule and the papers, 
 and overshadowed by them all, as though a cypress had been 
 drawn over her, a poor little weazened diminutive pale-faced 
 little girl, in a bonnet preposterously large for her, supposed 
 to be Miss Tattyboys's niece, also to be a something in Chan- 
 cery, and the ' infant ' about whose c custody ' there is such a 
 fluster every other term, the unhappy heiress of thousands of 
 disputed pounds. 
 
 I cannot finally dismiss Miss Tattyboys without saying a 
 word about Barwise, her agent. Barwise as a correspondent 
 is hated and contemned, but Barwise as a man is popular and 
 respected. His letters are dreadful. When Barwise says he 
 will ' write to you,' you are certain (failing payment) of being 
 
240 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 sued. Barwise's first letters first begin, ' It is now some time 
 since ;' his second missive commences with the awful words, 
 4 Sir, unless ;' and after that, he is sure to be ' instructed by 
 Miss Tattyboys,' and to sell you up. It is horrible to think 
 that Barwise not only collects Miss Tattyboys's rents ; but 
 that he collects debts for anybody in the neighbourhood, 
 takes out the abhorred ' gridirons,' or County Court sum- 
 monses, is an auctioneer, appraiser, valuer, estate, house, and 
 general agent. Dreadful thought for Barwise to have a 
 general agency over you ! Yet Barwise is not horrible to 
 view, being a sandy man of pleasant mien, in a long brown 
 coat. He is a capital agent, too, to employ, if you want to 
 get in any little moneys that are due to you ; and then it is 
 astonishing how you find yourself egging Barwise on, and 
 telling him to be firm, and not to hear of delay. I think 
 there is but one sentiment that can surpass the indignation a 
 man feels at being forced to pay anything he owes and that 
 is the sceva indignatio with which he sets about forcing people 
 to pay, who owe him anything. 
 
 Barwise sings a good song, and the parlour of the Cape of 
 Good Hope nightly re-echoes to his tuneful muse. I don't 
 believe he ever went farther seaward than Greenwich, but he 
 specially aifects nautical ditties, and his plaintive ' Then 
 farewell my trim-built wherry,' and ' When my money was all 
 spent,' have been found occasionally exasperating to parties 
 whose ' sticks ' he has been instrumental in seizing the day 
 before. On festive occasions I have however heard his health 
 proposed, and the laudatory notes of ' For he's a jolly good 
 fellow !' go round. 
 
 There are three notable institutions in Tattyboys Rents. 
 I am. rather at a loss which first to touch upon. These are 
 the posts, the children, and the dogs and all three as con- 
 nected with the steps. Suppose, in reverse order of rank, I 
 take the brute creation first. Tattyboys Eents, if it were 
 famous for anything, which it is not, should be famous for 
 its dogs. They are remarkable, firstly, for not having any 
 particular breed. Gilks, the chandler's shopkeeper, had a 
 puppy which was * giv' to him by a party as was always 
 mixed up with dogs,' which he thought, at first, would turn 
 out a pointer, then a terrier, then a spaniel ; but was mi- 
 serably disappointed in all his conjectures. He had gone to 
 the expense of a collar for him, and the conversion of an 
 emptied butter-firkin into a kennel, and, in despair, took him 
 
TATTYBOYS KENTS. 24 1 
 
 to Chaffers, the greengrocer, and dogs'-meat vendor, in Blit- 
 som Street, and solemnly asked his opinion upon him. 
 ' There hain't a hinch of breed in him,' was the dictum of 
 Chufters, as he contemptuously bestowed a morsel of eleemo- 
 synary paunch upon the low-bred cur. Charley (this was the 
 animal's name) grew up to be a gaunt dog of wolf-like aspect, 
 an incorrigible thief, a shameless profligate, a bully, and a 
 tyrant. He was the terror of the children and the other 
 dogs; and as if that unhappy Gilks had not already sufficient 
 sorrows upon his head, Charley had the inconceivable folly 
 and wickedness to make an attack one Monday morning upon 
 the sacred black silk dress of Miss Tattyboys. You may imagine 
 that Barwise was down upon Gilks the very next day, like a 
 portcullis. Charley thenceforth disappeared. Gilks had a 
 strange affection for him, and still cherished a fond belief 
 that he would turn out something in the thorough-bred line 
 some day ; but the butter-firkin was removed to the back 
 yard, and Charley was supposed to pass the rest of his exist- 
 ence in howling and fighting with his chain in that town- 
 house amid brickbats, cabbage-stalks, and clothes-pegs, having 
 in addition a villegiatura or country-house in an adjacent 
 dust-bin, into which the length of his chain just allowed him 
 to scramble, and in the which he sat among the dust and 
 ashes, rasping himself occasionally (for depilatory purposes) 
 against a potsherd. 
 
 There is a brown dog of an uncertain shade of mongrelity, 
 who (they are all of such decided character, these dogs, that I 
 think they deserve a superior pronoun) belongs to nobody in par- 
 ticular, and is generally known in the Rents as the Bow-wow. 
 As such it is his avocation and delight to seek the company of 
 very young children (those of from eighteen months to two 
 years of age are his preference) whose favour and familiarity 
 he courts, and whom he amuses by his gambols and good- 
 humour. The bow-wow is a welcome guest on all door -steps, 
 and in most entrance-halls. His gymnastics are a never- 
 failing source of amusement to the juvenile population, and 
 he derives immense gratification from the terms of endearment 
 and cajolement addressed by the mothers and nurses to their 
 children, all of which expressions this feeble-minded animal 
 takes to be addressed to himself, and at which he sniggers 
 his head and wags his stump of a tail tremendously. I have 
 yet to learn whether this brown, hairy, ugly dog is so fond of 
 the little children, and frisks round them, and rolls them over 
 
 E 
 
242 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 with, such tender lovingness, and suffers himself to be pulled 
 and pinched and poked by his playmates, all with, immovable 
 complacency I say, I have yet to learn whether he does all 
 this through sheer good-humour and fondness for children, or 
 whether he is a profound hypocrite, skilled in the ways of the 
 world, and knowing that the way to Mother Hubbard's cup- 
 board, when there are any bones in it, is through Mother 
 Hubbard's motherly heart. I hope, for the credit of dog nature 
 and for my own satisfaction, loving that nature, that the first 
 is the cause. 
 
 The only dog in the Eents that can claim any family or 
 breed is an animal by the name of Buffo, who was, in remote 
 times, a French poodle. I say was, for the poodleian ap- 
 pearance has long since departed from him, and he resembles 
 much more, now, a very dirty, shaggy, white bear, seen 
 through the small end of an opera-glass. He was the pro- 
 perty, on his first introduction to the Eents, of one Monsieur 
 i 3 hillips whether originally Philippe or not, I do not know 
 who, it was inferred, from sundry strange paraphernalia that 
 he left behind him on his abrupt departure from his residence, 
 was something in the magician, not to say conjuror and 
 mountebank line. Buffo was then a glorious animal, half- 
 shaved, as poodles should be, with fluffy rings round his legs, 
 and two tufts on his haunches, and a coal-black nose, due per- 
 haps to the employment of nitrate of silver as a cosmetic, and a 
 pink skin. He could mount and descend a ladder ; he could 
 run away when Monsieur Phillips hinted that there was a 
 ' policeman coming ;' he could limp on one leg ; he could drop 
 down dead, dance, climb up a lamp-post at the word of com- 
 mand. It was even said that he had been seen in James 
 Street, Covent Garden, on a ragged piece of carpet, telling 
 fortunes upon the cards, and pointing out Monsieur Phillips 
 as the greatest rogue in company. Monsieur Phillips, how- 
 ever, one morning suddenly disappeared, leaving sundry 
 weeks' rent owing to his landlord, Chapford, of 1he beer-shop ; 
 his only effects being the strange implements of legerdemain 
 I have noticed, and the dog Buffo, whom he had placed at 
 livery, so to state, at least at a fixed weekly stipend for his 
 board and lodging. I need not say that in a very short time 
 the unfortunate dog 'ate his head right off;' the amount of 
 paunch he had consumed far exceeding his marketable value. 
 Chapford, after vainly debating as to the propriety of turning 
 the magician's cups into half-pint measures, and his balls into 
 
TATTYBOYS EENTS. 243 
 
 "bagatelle balls, sold them to Scrutor, tlie broker, and Buffo 
 himself to Joe (surname unknown), who is a helper up 
 Spavins's yard, the livery and bait stables, in Blitsoni Street. 
 Joe ' knowed of a lady down Kensington wot was werry nuts 
 upon poodles;' and Buffo, prior to his introduction to the 
 lady amateur, was subjected to sundry dreadful operations of 
 dog-farriery, in the way of clipping, staining, and curtailing, 
 which made him from that day forward a dog of sullen and 
 morose temper. He soon came back from Kensington in dis- 
 grace, the alleged cause of his dismissal being his having 
 fought with, killed, and eaten a gray cockatoo. He was re-sold 
 to Sirs. Lazenby, old Mr. Fazzle's housekeeper ; but he had 
 either forgotten or was too misanthropic to perform, any of his 
 old tricks, regarded policemen unmoved, and passed by the 
 whole pack of cards with profound disdain. A report, too, 
 founded on an inadvertent remark of Chapford, that he (Buffo) 
 had once been on the stage, and had been fired out of a cannon 
 by the clown in a pantomime, succeeded in ruining him in the 
 opinion of the Eents, who hold all s play-actors ' in horror : he 
 passed from owner to owner, and was successively kicked out 
 and discarded by all, and now hangs about Chapford's, a 
 shabby, used-up, degraded, broken-down beast. 
 
 Is there anything more pitiable in animal nature than a 
 thoroughly hard-up dog? Such a one I met two Sundays 
 back in a shiningly genteel street in Pimlico. He was a cur, 
 most wretchedly attenuated, and there in Pirnlico he sat, with 
 elongated jaws, his head on one side, his eyes wofully up- 
 turned, his haunches turned out, his feet together, his tail 
 subdued, his ribs rampant : an utterly worn-out, denuded, 
 ruined old dog. If he had taken a piece of chalk, and written 
 ' I am starving,' fifty times on the pavement in the most 
 ornamental caligraphy, it could not have excited more sym- 
 pathy than the unutterable expression of his oblique misery, 
 propped up sideways as he was against a kitchen railing. I had 
 no sooner halted to accost him, than, taking it for granted that 
 I was going to kick or beat him because he was miserable, 
 he shambled meekly -into the gutter, where he stood, shiver- 
 ing ; but I spoke him fair, and addressing him in what little 
 I knew of the Doggee language, strove to reassure him. But 
 how could I relieve him? AY hat could I do for him ? It was 
 a stern uncompromising shining British Sunday ; there was 
 no back slum nigh ; no lowly shop, whither I could convey 
 him to regale on dogs'-meat. Moreover it was church time, 
 
 R 2 
 
2-i-I GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 and I could not even purchase licensed victuals for his suc- 
 cour. It was no good giving him a penny. I might as well 
 have given him a tract. He was unmistakeably mangy, and 
 I dared not convey him home ; and I knew of no dog-hospital. 
 So I exhorted him to patience and resignation, and left him 
 reluctantly ; persuaded that the greatest charity I could have 
 extended to him would have been to blow his brains out. 
 
 You are not to think that these I have mentioned are all 
 the dogs of which Tattyboys Eents can boast. Many more 
 are they, big dogs and little dogs : from that corpulent New- 
 foundland dog of Scrutor's, the broker, whose sagacity is so 
 astounding as to lead to his being trusted with baskets and' 
 cash, to purchase bread and butchers' meat the which he 
 does faithfully, bringing back change with scrupulous exacti- 
 tude and whose only fault is his rapid rate of locomotion, 
 and. defective vision, which cause him to run up against and 
 upset very nearly everybody he meets in his journeys tc 
 Bob Blather, the barber's, cock- tail terrier, which can kill a 
 4 power of rats,' and has more than once been matched in 
 * Bell's Life ' (familiarly called by the sporting part of the 
 Rents, ' The Life ') to do so. I may say, to the honour of the 
 dogs of Tattyboys Eents, that they seldom stray beyond its 
 limits ; and that if any strange dog descend the steps leading 
 thereunto, they invariably fall upon, and strive to demolish 
 him with the utmost ferocity. 
 
 The children of the Eents are so much like other street 
 children, that they preserve the same traditions of street 
 games and songs common to other localties. They are re- 
 markable, however, for a certain grave and sedate demeanour, 
 which I have never failed to observe in children who are in the 
 habit of sitting much upon flights of steps. Such steps are the 
 beach of street life, and the sea of the streets rolls on towards 
 the stony shore. The steps of Tattyboys Eents are to the 
 children there a place of deliberation, recreation, observation, 
 and repose. There, is to-morrow's lesson studied ; there, does 
 the baby learn a viv^-voce lesson in walking ; there, is the dirt- 
 pie made, and the sharp-pointed ' cat ' constructed ; there, 
 does the nurse-child rest, and the little maid achieve her task 
 of sewing ; there, are tops wound, and marbles gambled for, 
 and juvenile scandals promulgated ; there, is the quarrel 
 engendered, and the difference adjusted. It is good to see 
 this La Scala of Tattyboys Eents on a sunshiny day ; its 
 degrees sown with little people, whose juvenile talk falls 
 
TATTYBOYS KENTERS. 245 
 
 cheerfully on the ear after the ruder conversation at the posts. 
 The posts are immediately behind the steps, forming a grove 
 of egress, a sort of forest of Soignies, behind the Mont Saint 
 Jean of the Rents, into Blitsom Street. At the posts, is 
 Chapford's beer-shop ; pots are tossed for at the posts, and 
 bets are made on horse-races. Many a married woman in the 
 Kents ' drats ' the posts, at whose bases she lays the Saturday 
 night vagaries of her ' master ;' forgetting how many of her 
 own sex are postally guilty, and how often she herself has 
 stood a-gossiping at the posts and at the pump. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 TATTYBOYS RENTERS. 
 
 THAT gregarious tendency common to men, as well as to the 
 inferior orders of animation, that leads the devouring lion to 
 howl in company with his fellows, minnows to flow together 
 into the net of the snarer, herrings to be taken in shoals 
 of thousands, blacklegs to horde with blacklegs, lords with 
 lords, children with children, birds of a feather, in fact, 
 human as well as ornithological, to flock together has 
 brought a considerable number of eccentric parties together in 
 Tattyboys Eents. For the Rents being decidedly eccentric of 
 themselves as Rents, it was but natural and to be expected 
 that at least one party of eccentric character should, in the 
 first instance, come to reside in them. After this it was not of 
 course surprising, carrying out the birds-of-a-feather theory, 
 that other eccentric parties should come and join party number 
 one ; and the glorious yet natural result has been, that we 
 possess in Tattyboys Rents perhaps as queer a lot of parties 
 as you could find (though we are perfectly solvent) out of 
 Queer Street. 
 
 I strove so hard, remis atque velis, in the first instance, to 
 give you as sufficient an idea of the Rents, architecturally 
 speaking, that I had little space to dilate on the character- 
 istics of the inhabitants. You might have been able to 
 discern something like eccentricity in Miss Tattyboys, but I 
 cannot bring her forward with anything like certainty as a 
 character ; she is so unsubstantial, so mythic. As it has 
 been often and bitterly complained of by her tenants you 
 don't know where to have her. But the Rents can boast 
 
246 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 other characters about whom there is no mistake, who stand 
 out in "bold and well-defined relief, and who, whether trades- 
 men or dealing at one another's shops, are emphatically rum 
 customers. Will you allow me to introduce you to a few ? 
 You will ? Mumchance, stand forth ! 
 
 Eight up at the further end of the Eents, where the 
 thoroughfare is blockaded by the high frowning walls of 
 Smelt and Pigg's foundry, dwells, in a house one of the 
 dingiest, shabbiest, queerest houses in Tattyboys Eents 
 P. E. Mumchance. Would you know for what stand the 
 initials P. E. ? For Peter Eobert, haply ? For Peregrine 
 Eeuben, or Pietro Eolando, or Paul Ealph? Not at all. 
 Mumchance's father (commonly known as Old Nutcrackers, 
 from the strong development of his facial muscles) was a great 
 admirer some say friend and creditor of that virtuous, illus- 
 trious, and magnanimous prince, the penultimate possessor of 
 the British throne; and young Mumchance, being born about 
 the year eighteen hundred and eleven, was christened, in a 
 moment of loyal enthusiasm, Prince Eegent Mumchance. This 
 curious Christian name is a sore point and grievous stumbling- 
 block with Mumchance. The Prince Eegent is his old man 
 of the sea, his white elephant of Ava. He is fond of political 
 discussion. What could an individual bearing so illustrious 
 a name be but an out-and-out, an ultra-cerulean Conserva- 
 tive ? So Mumchance is a Tory of the bitterest and bluest 
 description ; and as the majority of the Eenters are as bitter 
 Eadicals, opposing rates, taxes, rents, or indeed any other 
 imposts, vehemently, the discussions that nightly take place 
 in the parlour of the Cape of Good Hope are not of the 
 pleasantest description. Moreover, Mumchance is fond of his 
 glass ; and could you expect an individual bearing the august 
 name of the great champion of rare beverages (it is whispered, 
 even, the inventor of hock and soda-water) to consume such 
 vulgar liquids as porter, or gin, or rum ? No. P. E. Mum- 
 chance never asks you if you will take a glass of ale, or a 
 * drain ' of gin Glass of sherry wine, sir ?' is the Prince 
 Eegent's hospitable interrogatory ; and a good many glasses 
 of sherry wine does the Prince Eegent take in the course of 
 the twenty-four hours. 
 
 Mumchance keeps a shop a stationer's shop. He sells 
 stationery, account-books, slates and slate-pencils, tops, 
 marbles, string, paste, and, by some curious idiosyncracy, 
 pickles. How he got into that line, or how he can reconcile 
 
TATTYBOYS RENTERS. 247 
 
 pickles with, writing-paper, I cannot imagine ; but there are 
 the pickles walnut, onion, and mixed in big earthen jars ; 
 and at all hours of the day you may see small brigades of 
 children bearing halfpence and cracked teacups or gallipots, 
 bound to Mumchance's for ' a pennorth of pickles, please.' 
 
 But pray don't think that although Mumchance is a 
 stationer and account-book manufacturer, his shop is at all 
 like a stationer's. Not at all. It is considerably more like 
 the warehouse of a wholesale tobacconist who has sold his 
 stock out ; and it has, if I must be candid, a considerable 
 dash of the marine-store and of the rag-shop. There is a 
 ghostly remnant of a whilom gigantic pair of scales ; there 
 are mysterious tubs and packing-cases, and bulging parcels 
 tied with rotten cord. Mumchance does not deny that he 
 buys waste-paper ; the evil-minded whisper that he buys and 
 sells rags : nay, old Mrs. Brush, the veteran inhabitant al- 
 luded to in a former paper, minds the time when a doll a 
 real black doll swung backward and forward in the wind 
 over the door of Toby, commonly higlit old Nutcrackers, the 
 father of Prince Kegent Mumchance. 
 
 That Mumchance is mad many have declared ; but I, for 
 one, do not believe it. That Mumchance is queer, very queer 
 in manners, appearance, and general character, no one can 
 deny. He is an undersized man, whose portrait can be 
 succinctly drawn if I tell you that he is an utter stranger to 
 the brush. By the brush I mean the clothes-brush, and the 
 hat-brush, the hair-brush, the tooth-brush, the nail-brush, 
 and, I may add, the flesh-brush. Buhl-work is a beautiful 
 style of ornamentation, so is marqueterie, so is Venetian 
 mosaic ; but when you happen to find buhl, marqueterie, and 
 mosaic, all represented in a gentleman's face and hands by a 
 complicated inlaying and ingraining of dirt, the spectacle will 
 hardly be so pleasant, I fancy, as examples of the same arts in 
 a cabinet, an escrutoire, or the cupola of St. Mark's Church. 
 So mosaicised is Mumchance. Bets have been freely made 
 that he never washes ; but he has been observed to rub his 
 face occasionally with a very mouldy pocket-handkerchief of 
 no discoverable size or colour, conjectured to be either a 
 fragment of an old window-blind, or one of the ancient rags 
 purchased by his father Toby in the way of business. Even this 
 occasional friction of his countenance, however, is not sup- 
 posed to advance in Mumchance the cause of that state which 
 is said to be next to godliness ; he wipes his face indeed ; but 
 
248 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 lie only removes the impurities of tlie day, of tlie hour, to 
 show, "in all its distinctness, the inlaid dirt of perchance 
 years. It is just as when examining an old picture you pass 
 a wet cloth over its surface ; and lo ! the mellowness of cen- 
 turies becomes visible to you beneath. 
 
 Mumchance's head is, if I may use the expression, rhom- 
 boidal. His hair is, as before stated, utterly unbrushed, 
 somewhat of the colour of an unbaked brick, and generally in 
 a state which I may characterize as fluffy. In fact, minute 
 particles of straw, paper, cotton, bread, and other foreign 
 substances, may freely be detected on its surface by the naked 
 eye alone, which may partially be accounted for, by his 
 carrying most of his purchases, sometimes his letters, and 
 always his lunch, in his hat. His whiskers, which are of the 
 same colour, or the same state of discoloration, as his hair, do 
 not appear to have made up their minds yet as to where they 
 shall settle, and have grown irregularly about his face, just as 
 hirsute things happened to turn up. His complexion I may 
 describe heraldically as a field gules, seme (I believe that is the 
 word) with sable or dirt. No sign of shirt appears in the entire 
 Mumchance. A big black stock confines his neck, and to his 
 chin rises his closely-buttoned blue swallow-tailed coat that 
 woeful blue coat with the odd buttons once gilt, and once 
 tightly sewn on, but now drooping like Ophelia's willow, 
 askant the brook ; the sleeves too short, the tails too long, the 
 coat with many darns, and the nap all turned the wrong way. 
 Add to this coat (without the connecting isthmus of a waistcoat) 
 a pair of corduroy trousers, of which the pockets, apparently 
 disgusted with their long seclusion, have burst forth to see 
 the world, and stand agape, on Mumchance's hips, at that 
 world's wonders ; suppose these trousers to be much frayed at 
 the bottom, much inked (he makes calculations on their knees 
 frequently), and much too short, and conclude them with 
 Wellington boots, patched till they resembled that knight's 
 silk stockings that were darned so frequently that they 
 changed their texture from silk to worsted and you have 
 Mumchance before you, all but his shamble, his watery eye, 
 his rich though somewhat husky voice. 
 
 For all his shabby appearance, however, once a year Mum- 
 chance throws aside his chrysalis garb, and comes forth a full- 
 blown butterfly. Once a year he dines with his Company 
 the Stationers at the grand old hall in the dim regions of the 
 city ; for Mumchance is a citizen, a liveryman, a worshipful 
 
TATTYBOYS RENTERS. 249 
 
 stationer who but lie and so was Toby his father before him. 
 He goes to the dinner of his Company, clean, rosy, shaven, 
 with a shirt, aye, and a shirt frill, a blue coat and gilt buttons, 
 but new, glossy, well brushed, a shiny hat, and shiny boots. 
 Thus he goes ; but how he comes back no inhabitant of Tatty- 
 boys Rents has ever been able to discover. The policeman 
 should know ; but he affects ignorance ; and though I do not 
 wish to impute corruption to that functionary, it is certain that 
 Mumchance is always leaving private drains of liquor for him 
 at the bar of the Cape of Good Hope, for at least a week follow- 
 ing his Company's dinner. 
 
 Some of the renters have affirmed that they have heard with 
 the chimes at midnight dismal ditties trolled forth in inco- 
 herent accents ; and these are surmised to have issued from 
 Mumchance while in a state of conviviality, and to have been 
 occult Stationers' songs, taught him along with the other arts 
 and mysteries of the worshipful craft in his earliest youth. 
 Mrs. Mumchance (an elongated female of an uncertain age, 
 with a vexed cap and a perturbed gown) is a lady with a fixed 
 idea. That idea is Fisher. Fisher, whether he be the family 
 doctor, lawyer, nearest kinsman, dearest friend, or most valued 
 adviser, is at all events Mrs. Mumchance's Law and Prophet. 
 Fisher recommends her change of air. Fisher has inexorably 
 prophesied her dissolution within six calendar months, if she 
 continues worreting herself about her family. Fisher warned 
 her against the second floor lodger, who ran away without 
 paying his rent. Fisher advises her to stand it no longer with 
 Mr. Mumchance's recalcitrant debtors, but to employ Barwise, 
 and summons them all forthwith. When Fisher said Mrs. Mum- 
 chance, said he, beware of Mrs. Tuckstrap, were not those the 
 words of truth? On all emergencies, in all difficulties and 
 dilemmas, Mrs. Mumchance throws herself upon Fisher, He 
 is intimately mixed up with the whole family. Mumchance 
 professes the highest respect and veneration for him. Mr. Fisher 
 lie says, a man of the first, of the very first. Coat buttoned 
 up to here, sir. Great friend of poor father's, sir. Frequently 
 does he escape curtain lectures on late and vinous returns to 
 his Lares and Penates on the plea that he has been ' along with 
 Fisher.' If you ask Charley, Mumchance's youngest, who his 
 godfather was, he will answer, ' Missa Fisser ;' if you ask him 
 who or what Missa Fisser, or Fisher may be, he will answer, 
 a ' chown ;' from which, however, it is not to be inferred abso- 
 lutely that Fisher is connected with the stage in a red ochre 
 
250 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 and bismuth view as a clown ; Charley's ideas of trades and 
 professions being necessarily vague as yet; and his whole 
 bump of admiration having been so engrossed by a pantomimic 
 performance of which he was lately the spectator, that he 
 applies the epithet chown, or clown, to everything great, or ? 
 good, or pleasant ; being even known to address as chown, 
 horses, sweetstuff, hoopsticks, fenders, and halfpence. 
 
 I never had the pleasure of seeing Fisher ; but Mrs. Brush, 
 the oldest inhabitant, has seen him, and describes him as a, 
 pleasant-spoken body. Mrs. Spileburg, of the Cape of Good 
 Hope, declares him to be a born gentleman, as takes his drink 
 quite hearty like, which it would do you good to see. I should 
 like to know Fisher. 
 
 Mumchance has an indefinite number of children. I say 
 indefinite, for they are always being born and going out to 
 service, and walking out with Tom or Dick So and So, and 
 marrying, and so on. There is always, however, an eldest 
 daughter Annie, tall, lanky, and fourteen, who must begin to 
 do something for herself shortly, and a youngest boy, at present 
 Charley ; but the whole family have such a curious way of 
 shooting up and growing into maturity suddenly, that I should 
 not be at all surprised on my next visit to the Eents to learn 
 that Annie was suckling her second, or that Charley had en- 
 listed in the Life Guards. 
 
 Mumchance's trade and manner of doing business, puzzle 
 and amaze me sorely. Men repute him to be wealthy : I 
 know he spends a great deal of money, yet I seldom see him 
 sell anything more considerable than a ha'porth of slate pencil, 
 a sheet of writing-paper, a penn'orth of wafers, or a penny 
 bottle of ink. The man who could purchase a quire of fools^ 
 cap, or half gross of steel pens, was never yet known, I opine, 
 to enter Mumchance's. He tries to force the market! some- 
 times, and to create a factitious excitement about his wares, by 
 displaying in front of his establishment placards in pen and 
 ink, containing such announcements as ' Cheapest wafers in the 
 world !' ' Paper down again !' ' Great news !' ' Ink a penny a 
 bottle ;' but the passers-by regard these notifications irreve- 
 rently, and point to the inferior quality of the paper and ink 
 of the placard, in depreciation of the stationery within : nay, 
 even raise objections against Mumchance's pens, because 
 Mumchance's writing is none of the best, and his orthography 
 none of the most correct. 
 
 Mumchance puts the coldness of the public all down to the 
 
TATTYBOYS KENTERS. 
 
 fault of the times. What's the good of painting the shop, sir ? 
 he asks. Poor father never did, sir, and we had nobility here* 
 Nobility, sir. But look at the times. Would nobility come 
 here now, sir? 
 
 I generally admit, when Mumchance asks me this question, 
 that nobility would not. 
 
 ' That's it, sir,' says Mumchance triumphant (he always 
 says sir, even to the ragged little boys who come in for a 
 penn'orth of pickles). ' That's it, it's the times. Nobody buys 
 stamps now a days. In poor father's time, we sold millions of 
 stamps, sir. Lord Cabus, sir. Proud man, sir. Coat buttoned 
 up to here, sir. Sit on the counter, sir. All in black, sir, 
 with his coat buttoned. Mumchance, he'd say to poor father, 
 Mumchance, bless your eyes, fifty pounds' worth of bill stamps. 
 Proud man, sir, Lord Cabus; never would take hold of the 
 handle of the door with his hand ; always took the tail of his 
 coat to it, like this, sir,' and Mumchance suits the action to the 
 word. 
 
 I may remark as one of the most eccentric among Muni- 
 chance's idiosyncracies that the very great majority of his titled 
 or celebrated acquaintances are always dressed in black, and 
 have their coats buttoned up to here, meaning the chin. Thus,. 
 when Mumchance went to see Edmund Kean, and there -was, 
 in consequence of a certain trial, a violent commotion in the 
 house against the tragedian, Mumchance described Kean as 
 coming forward to address the audience attired in black, with 
 his coat buttoned up to here. Similarly attired, according to 
 Mumchance, was wont to be the famous Jack Thurtell, who 
 was a great customer of poor father's, for bill stamps. Likewise 
 all in black, with coats buttoned up to here, were a mysterious 
 company of four-and-twenty forgers who, according to Muni- 
 chance, were discovered sitting round a long table with a green 
 baize cover (forging with all their might and main, I presume) r 
 vy Townshend the officer (vide Little Blitsom Street gang). 
 I. can imagine Townshend with his coat buttoned up ; but 
 with the traditions of his white hat, red waistcoat, and top 
 boots, still in my mind, I cannot form to myself an idea of him 
 all in black. 
 
 The number of extraordinary characters with whom Muni- 
 chance has been acquainted and connected, and whose little 
 peculiarities he descants upon, is astonishing. His anecdotes 
 bearing upon Colonel Bubb alone, would fill a volume. The 
 Colonel is to Mumchance what Fisher is to Mrs. M. On all 
 
252 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 political, parochial, financial, and social questions, he is his 
 chief adviser, and his heroic advice is ordinarily, ' Mumchance, 
 be firm.' I met Mumchance once, just before the opening 
 of a session of Parliament by her gracious Majesty. There 
 had been some silly mares-nests found about that time by 
 some sillier politicians, and grim whispers circulated about 
 an illustrious personage, treason, the Tower, tampering with 
 treaties, and such twopenny trash. Mumchance was full 
 of it. He had scarcely time to gasp out his customary 
 invite of * glass of sherry wine, sir, and a crust?' and to dive 
 into a previously invisible public-house (he knows all the slip- 
 in and slip-out public-houses in London), before he had me 
 fast with Colonel Bubb on the illustrious question. Saw him 
 this morning, sir. Got his leathers on, sir (I conjecture the 
 Colonel to be in the cavalry). Got his cloak over his leathers, 
 sir (a cloak this time, but well buttoned up you may be sure 
 of it). Mumchance, he says, I've got my army in the park. 
 Drawn up (in their leathers, I suppose). Mumchance, blood 
 before night. Blood ! With which horrifying conclusion, 
 Colonel Bubb departed in his leathers, as Mumchance took 
 care supplementarily to inform me, to rejoin his army. I did 
 go down to the park that day, where I saw the usual number of 
 big lifeguardsmen ; but I missed Colonel Bubb, his cloak, and 
 his leathers, and I saw no blood, either that night or the next. 
 I cannot part with Mumchance without telling you that in 
 his crazy, dingy, unpainted house in Tattyboys Rents he has 
 something else besides slate-pencils, pickles, and penny bottles 
 of ink: Up stairs, amid much dirt, and dust, and flew, he has 
 some nobly carved oaken bedsteads and rare old cabinets filled 
 with real porcelain, yet rarer, and yet older. Also down in 
 his cellar Mumchance has stores of considerable value. Here, 
 among the dirt and dust, and above a sort of subsoil of the 
 rags -in which Mumchance was libellously supposed to deal, lie 
 hundreds of books, many of them bygone and worthless 
 pamphlets and tracts, but many rare and beautiful copies of 
 expensive works. How he came by these Mumchance vouch- 
 safes not to tell ; neither will he explain how he became pos- 
 sessed of the copper-plates engraved in line and mezzotinto 
 and aquatint, which lumber the floor, and on whose dusky 
 surfaces I can observe dim shadowings of landscapes after 
 Wilson, and beauties after Sir Joshua Reynolds. Poor father 
 would appear to have had something to do with the original 
 acquisition of these rarities, and the hardness of the times to 
 
TATTYBOYS RENTERS. 2D3 
 
 prevent their conversion into money ; so here they, and proofs 
 from the plates themselves, and the books, and papers, and 
 rags, all mildew and rot in Mumchance's cellar. 
 
 Rummaging among the heap one day I found a huge oak- 
 bound, iron-clasped volume, written in black and red letter on 
 vellum, in Saxon and Latin. It was the Eent Roll of Glaston- 
 bury Abbey ! I confess that I immediately broke the tenth com- 
 mandment, and began to covet my neighbour's goods ; in fact, 
 I offered Mumchance several small sums, increasing in amount 
 at every bid, for the volume. He seemed at first disposed to 
 acquiesce, but requested time in order that he might consult 
 Fisher. The upshot of it was that Fisher, (seconded no doubt 
 by Colonel Bubb) strongly advised him not to sell the book 
 until the arrival of a lady name unknown then sojourning 
 at Jerusalem, who knew all languages, and could read the 
 volume, as easy as a glove. As I never saw the oak-bound 
 volume again, and as I heard that Mumchance had sold it to 
 the trustees of a public library for forty guineas, I concluded 
 either that the lady possessing the lingual accomplishments 
 had come back from Jerusalem rather sooner than was expected, 
 or that Mumchance was not so mad as his neighbours took him 
 to be. 
 
 Thus have I drawn the portrait of Prince Regent Mum- 
 chance, en pied, yet still grossly, broadly, sketchily. Were I 
 to stay to define, to detail, to stipple the little points of his 
 character, as Mr. Holman Hunt does his faces, I should weary 
 myself and you ; nay, more than that, I should leave no space 
 for a three-quarter portrait of another eccentric party in the 
 Rents, old Signor Fripanelli. 
 
 What Gian Battisto Girolamo Fripanelli of Bologna, pro- 
 fessor of singing and the pianoforte, could have been about 
 when he came to lodge at Miss Drybohn's, number eighteen 
 in the Rents, I am sure I don't know, yet with Miss Drybohn 
 he has lodged for very nearly twenty years. They say that 
 he came over to England at the Peace of Amiens, that he was 
 chapel-master to Louis the Sixteenth, and that he only escaped 
 the guillotine during the reign of terror, by composing a 
 Sonata for the fete of the Goddess of Liberty. At any rate he 
 is of a prodigious age, although his stature is but diminutive. 
 I regret to state that the boys call him Jacko, and shout that 
 derisive appellation after him in the street. These unthink- 
 ing young persons affect to trace a resemblance between the 
 venerable Signor Fripanelli, and the degraded animal which 
 
254: GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 eats nuts and grins between the bars of a cage in tlie Zoolo- 
 gical Gardens. To be sure, the Signor is diminutive in 
 stature. His head is narrow and long, his ears are large, his 
 eyes small, his cheekbones high, his complexion sallow. and 
 puckered into a thousand wrinkles ; to be sure his hands are 
 -singularly long and bony, and he walks with a sort of stum- 
 bling hop, and is generally munching something between his 
 sharp teeth, and has a shrill squeaking voice, and gesticulates 
 violently when excited; but is a gentleman to be called 
 Jacko to be likened to a low monkey for these peculiarities ? 
 Signor Fripanelli wears, summer and winter, a short green 
 cloak, adorned with a collar of the woolly texture, generally 
 denominated poodle ; a white hat stuck at the very back of 
 his head, threadbare black pantoloons, and very roomy shoes 
 with rusty strings. This costume he never varies. In it he 
 goes out giving lessons ; in it, less the hat, he sits at home at 
 Miss Drybohn's ; in it he goes twice every Sunday, in his own 
 simple, quiet, honest fashion to the Eoman Catholic Chapel in 
 Lateran Street, out of Turk's Lane. 
 
 It would seem to favour the insolent Jacko theory concern- 
 ing the poor Signor that Miss Drybohn, who it is generally 
 acknowledged has the worst tongue in her head of any 
 spinster in the Eents, and who, though Fripanelli has lodged 
 with her for twenty years, and has never been a fortnight 
 behind-hand with his rent that Miss Drybohn, I say, declares 
 that when the Signor returns home at night and retires to his 
 bed-room, which is immediately above hers, she always hears 
 (though she knows that he is alone) the noise of four feet 
 pattering above. She accuses nobody, she states nothing, but 
 such (she says) it is and the by-standers shake their heads and 
 whisper that the Signor, on return home, fatigued with teach- 
 ing, assumes his natural position in other words, that he 
 crawls about on all-fours, like a baboon on the branch of a 
 tree. Horror ! 
 
 Seriously, although the little man is like a monkey, he is 
 one of the bravest, worthiest, kindest creatures alive. He has 
 very little money ; none but those who know what the life of 
 an obscure foreign music-master is can tell how difficult it is 
 for him to live, much less to save, in England ; but from his 
 scanty means he gives freely to his poor fellow-countrymen, 
 yea, and to aliens of other climes and other creeds. Fifteen 
 years ago, the Signor had a fine connection among the proud- 
 est aristocracy of this proud land. Yes, he taught singing at 
 
THE MUSICAL WOULD. 
 
 half a guinea a lesson, in Grosvenor Square, and Park Lane 
 and Mayfair. You may see some of his old songs now 
 yellow- tattered and fly-blown on the music book-stalls : 
 Cabaletto, dedicated by permission to the most noble the 
 Marchioness of Antidiloof, by her obliged, faithful, and 
 humble servant, Gian Battisto Girolamo Fripanelli. Aria, 
 inscribed with the most devoted sentiments of respect and 
 reverence to Her Grace the Duchess of Fortherfludd, by Her 
 Grace's etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. There have been scores 
 of the fairest and noblest young English ladies, whose taper 
 fingers have been taught by poor old Jacko to fall harmoni- 
 ously upon the ivory keys, whose ruby lips and pearly teeth 
 he has tutored with much stress of sol-faing, to give due and 
 proper, and gentle, and impassioned utterance to the silver 
 strains of Italian song. Gian Battisto has been asked to 
 lunch by Dukes aye, and to dinner too, and has sat next 
 to Ambassadors and Plenipotentiaries parties to the Holy 
 Alliance and hung with stars and crosses, as that patient 
 gentleman near the Bank of England (who also sells pocket- 
 books) is with dog-collars. He has played the grandest of 
 grand sonatas and symphonies on the grandest of pianofortes, 
 at fashionable soirees ; the fairest of the fair have brought him 
 ices and macaroons; Lords, Baronets, and Chief Justices 
 have called him Fripanelli, and given him to snuff out of their 
 gold and jewelled boxes ; and the list of his pupils, with their 
 half-guinea lessons, has been at times so swollen, that, work 
 from morning till night, however hard he might, some were 
 sure to be in arrear. 
 
 But, ah me ! what changes take place in fifteen months 
 what Worlds are upheaved, demolished, and built up again in 
 fifteen years ; Fripanelli did not change ! he had always 
 been, or seemed to be, as old and as ugly as he was before ; 
 but fashion changed time changed. The fifteen years in 
 their remorseless whirl have caught him up scornfully from 
 Grosvenor Square and the half-guinea lessons and have dropped 
 him in Tattyboys Rents, to give lessons in singing, in instru- 
 mental music, in French, and even Italian, should the latter be 
 required, in tenth-class schools, to the daughters of small 
 tradesmen about the Rents and Blitsom Street, and Turk's 
 Lane, for a shilling a lesson, for sixpence a lesson, for seven 
 shillings a quarter, for anything that poor Gian Battisto can 
 get to buy a crust with. 
 
 Such is life for Art in the world's Rents, as well as Tatty- 
 
256 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 boys'. The educated and titled mob, which is ten times more 
 fickle, false, and capricious than the grossest Flemish rabble 
 that ever idolized an Artevelde, or massacred a De Witt, will 
 quietly drop you, when it has had enough of you, and will 
 let you starve or die, or go hang, with admirable indifference 
 and composure. And it serves you, and all other lions, 
 thoroughly right, who have not had the modest manhood to 
 be quietly superior to such mob, and to let it go its way. I 
 do not say this of poor old Fripanelli, for he was a stranger 
 in the land before he came to the Kents, and he may easily 
 have taken its surface for its core. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 DOWN WHITECHAPEL WAY. 
 
 4 SIR,' said Samuel Johnson to the Scotch gentleman ' sir, let 
 us take a walk down Fleet Street.' If I had not a thousand 
 other reasons to love and revere the memory of the great and 
 good old Doctor, I should still love and revere it for his pre- 
 ference of Fleet Street to the fields of streets generally to 
 sylvan shades of the hum of- men and the rattling of wheels, 
 to the chirp of the cricket or the song of the skylark. It may 
 be prejudice, or an unpoetic mind, or so on ; but I am, as I 
 have observed five hundred times before ; and my critics may 
 well ask, ' why observe it again ?' of the streets, streety. I 
 love to take long walks, not only down Fleet Street, but up 
 and down all other streets, alleys, and lanes. I love to loiter 
 about Whitehall, and speculate as to which window of the 
 Banqueting House it was, and whether at the front, or at the 
 back,* that Charles Stuart came out to his death. I see a vivid 
 mind-picture of the huge crowd gathered together that bleak 
 January morning, to witness the fall of that l grey discrowned 
 head.' Drury Lane I affect especially, past and present the 
 Maypole, Nelly Gwynne, and the Earls of Craven, dividing 
 my interest with Vinegar Yard, the costermongers, the pawn- 
 brokers, and the stage door of the theatre round the corner. 
 
 * At the back for five hundred] pounds, despite Mr. Peter Cunningham, 
 who maintains that it was at the front towards the park. I have law" and 
 prophecy, book and broadside, mint and cumin to prove it, and I will 
 some day. 
 
DOWN WHITECHAPEL WAY. 257 
 
 Holborn, Cheapside, the Old Bailey, the great thoroughfares on 
 the Surrey side of the water, have all equal charms for me. 
 
 I will take a walk * down Whitechapel way.' 
 
 How many thousands of us have lived for years for a third 
 part of our lives, probably, in London and have never been 
 down the Whitechapel Road ? I declare that there are not 
 half a dozen persons in the circle of my acquaintance who can 
 tell me where Bethnal Green is. As to Itatcliffe Highway, 
 Shad well, Poplar, Limehouse, and Rotherhithe, they are en- 
 tirely terrce incognitos to shoals of born-and-bred Londoners. 
 
 ' Down Whitechapel way/ Have you ever been l down ' 
 that way, reader ? Ten to one you have not. You have heard, 
 probably, of Whitechapel needles ; and the costermonger from 
 whom you may occasionally have condescended to purchase 
 vegetables would very likely inform you, were you to ask 
 him, that he lives ' down that way.' Perhaps your impres- 
 sions connected with Whitechapel refer vaguely to butchers, 
 or, probably, to Jews, or possibly to thieves. Very likely 
 you don't trouble yourself at all about the matter. You had 
 an aunt once who lived at Mile End : but she quarrelled with 
 everybody during her lifetime, and left her money to the 
 London Hospital when she died, and you never went to see 
 her. You see scores of omnibuses pass your door daily, with 
 Aldgate, Whitechapel, Mile End, painted on their panels ; but 
 you have no business to transact there, and let the omnibuses 
 go on their way without further comment. 
 
 Those who care to know a little about what their neigh- 
 bours in the Far East are doing this Saturday night, are very 
 welcome to accompany me in the little excursion I am about 
 to make. A thick pair of boots, and perhaps a mackintosh, or 
 some light covering of that sort, would not be out of place ; 
 for it is as rainy, slushy, and muddy a Saturday night as you 
 would desire to have (or not to have) in the month of October. 
 Stay, here is a friend with us who has known \Vhitechapel and 
 its purlieus any time this five-and-twenty years, on all sorts of 
 days and nights. Here is another who is an enthusiast in the 
 noble art of self-defence, and who insists on forming one of 
 our party, on the principle that a night excursion to White- 
 chapel must necessarily involve a * scrimmage/ and an op- 
 portunity to develop the celebrated tactics of the prize-ring on 
 a grand scale. Those who patronize the deleterious weed may 
 light cigars ; and so onward towards \\ hitechapel ! 
 
 On, through Fleet Street passing St. Dunstan's as eight 
 
258 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 strikes ; noting the newspaper offices blazing with gas from 
 basement to garret; jostled occasionally by the well-looking 
 (though ruined) agricultural gentlemen, with massy watch- 
 chains (and bankrupt purses), who have been discussing port 
 and Protection* after an ample dinner at Peele's or Anderton's. 
 On, and up Ludgate the lofty, watching the red and blue 
 lights of the doctors' shops as they are mirrored in the wet 
 pavement ; and thinking, perhaps, that, after all, there may 
 be some good in that early closing movement which has fast- 
 ened the portals of all those magnificent palaces of linen- 
 drapery, and sent those shoals of spruce clerks and assistants 
 forth for health and recreation many, it is to be hoped, to 
 the Literary and Scientific Institute, the class-room, and the 
 singing lesson, and not all (as some kind souls would insinu- 
 ate) to the tap-room or the cigar-shop. On, round the solemn 
 dome of St. Paul's, and by that remarkable thoroughfare on 
 the left hand side, where, to my mind, the odours of a pastry- 
 cook's shop, of a tallow-manufactory, of the defunct, yet 
 promising to be phoenix-like Chapter Coffee House, and all the 
 newly-bound books in Paternoster Eow are irrevocably com- 
 bined and blended. On, by Cheapside, the magnificent, where 
 rows of dazzling gas-reflectors illumine shop-fronts, teeming 
 with yet more dazzling stores of watches, rich jewellery, and 
 bales of silver spoons and forks. There are desolate ragged 
 wretches staring wistfully at the glittering heaps of baubles, the 
 clocks, the tiny ladies' watches rich in enamel and jewels, the 
 repeaters, the chronometers, the levers jewelled in ever so 
 many holes, the trinkets, and chatelains, and ' charms,' and 
 Albert guard-chains, which Mr. John Bennett, a doughty 
 watchmaker he exposes to public admiration, just as they 
 would at the pennyworth of pudding in the window of a 
 cook's shop. Are they speculating on the possibility of a gold 
 watch filling a hungry belly ? or are they, haply, contempla- 
 ting one bold dash through the frail sheet of glass one hasty 
 snatch at the watches, and rings, and bracelets one desperate 
 throw for luxury and riot at the best ; or at the worst, for the 
 comfortable gaol, the warm convict's dress, and the snug cell 
 with its hot- water pipes ? 
 
 Leaving Cheapside, the magnificent; avoiding the omnibuses 
 in the Poultry as best we may ; skirting the huge Mansion 
 
 * Written ere 'Protection,' as an idea, died a natural death, and became 
 a 'shadow of the shadow of Smoke.' 
 
DOWN WHITECHAPEL WAY. 259 
 
 House, where a feeble gleam from an office in the basement 
 suggests that Messrs. John and Daniel Forrester are yet wide 
 awake, while the broad glare of light from the windows in 
 Charlotte Row proclaims jolly civic festivities in the Egyptian 
 Hall ; striking through Cornhill, the wealthy ; crossing Grace- 
 church Street, and suppressing a lingering inclination to take 
 a stroll by the old Flower Pot, and older South Sea House, 
 into old Bishopsgate Street, just to have a vagabond quarter 
 of an hour or so of thought about Baring Brothers, Crosby 
 Hall, Great St. Helen's, Sir Thomas More, and Mr. Ross the 
 hairdresser : Supposing this, I say, our party boldly invades 
 Leadenhall Street. Opposite the India House I must stop for a 
 moment, however. Is there not Billiter Street hard-by, with 
 that never-dying smell of Cashmere shawls and opium chests 
 about the sale-rooms ? Is there not St. Mary Axe, redolent 
 of Hebrew London ? Is there not the great house itself, with 
 all its mighty associations of Clive and Warren Hastings, 
 Nuncomar, and Lally Tollendal, Plassy, Arcot, and Seringa- 
 patam Sheridan, thundering in Westminster Hall on the case 
 of the Begums and the mighty directors, with their millions 
 of subjects, and their palaces in Belgravia and Tyburnia, who 
 were dice but poor hucksters and chapmen of Trichonopoly 
 chains and indigo balls mere buyers and sellers of rice, sugar, 
 and pepper ? But my companions are impatient, and, dropping 
 a hasty tear to the memory of Mr. Toole, the great toastmaster 
 and beadle (dost thou remember him, Eugenio, in that mag- 
 nificent cocked hat and scarlet coat? and Eugenio replies 
 that he lives again in his son) we leave Leadenhall Street 
 the broad for Leadenhall Street the narrow ; and where the 
 tortuous Fenchurch Street also converges, emerge into the 
 open space by Aldgate pump. We have no time to dilate 
 on the antiquity of the pump. A hundred yards to the left, 
 and here we are, not absolutely in Whitechapel itself, but at 
 the entrance of that peculiar and characteristic district, which 
 I take to be bounded by Mile-end gate on the east, and by the 
 establishment of Messrs. Moses and Son on the west. 
 
 First, Moses. Gas, splendour, wealth, boundless and im- 
 measurable, at a glance. Countless stories of gorgeous show- 
 rooms, laden to repletion with rich garments. Gas everywhere. 
 Seven hundred burners, they whisper to me. The tailoring 
 department ; the haberdashery department ; the hat, boots, 
 shawl, outfitting, cutlery department. Hundreds of depart- 
 ments. Legions of ' our young men ' in irreproachable coats, 
 
 s 2 
 
260 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 and neckcloths void of reproach. Corinthian columns, enriched 
 cornices, sculptured panels, arabesque ceilings, massive chande- 
 liers, soft carpets of choice patterns, luxury, elegance, the 
 riches of a world, the merchandise of two, everything that 
 anybody ever could want, from a tin shaving-pot to a Cashmere 
 shawl. Astonishing cheapness wonderful celerity enchant- 
 ing civility ! Great is Moses of the Minories ! Of the Mino- 
 ries ? of everywhere. He pervades Aldgate ; he looms on 
 Whitechapel ; an aerial suspension bridge seems to connect 
 his Minorial palace with his West End Branch. Moses is 
 everywhere. When I came from Weedon the other day, his 
 retainers pelted me with his pamphlets as I quitted the railway 
 station. Moses has wrenched the lyre and the bays from our 
 laureate's hands ; he and his son are the monarchs of Parnassus. 
 His circulars are thrown from balloons and fired out of cannon. 
 I believe they must grow in market gardens somewhere out of 
 town they are so numerous. Of course, Moses is a great 
 public benefactor. 
 
 Crossing the Minories, and keeping on the right-hand side 
 of the road, we are in the very thick of ' Butcher Eow ' at 
 once. A city of meat ! The gas, no longer gleaming through 
 ground-glass globes, or aided by polished reflectors, but flaring 
 from primitive tubes, lights up a long vista of beef, mutton, 
 and veal. Legs, shoulders, loins, ribs, hearts, livers, kidneys, 
 gleam in all the gaudy panoply of scarlet and white on every 
 side. ' Buy, buy, buy !' resounds shrilly through the greasy, 
 tobacco-laden, gas-rarefied air. There are eloquent butchers, 
 who rival Orator Henley in their encomia on the legs and 
 briskets they expose ; insinuating butchers, who wheedle the 
 softer sex into purchasing, with sly jokes and well-turned 
 -compliments ; dignified butchers (mostly plethoric, double- 
 chirmed men, in top-boots, and doubtless wealthy), who seem 
 to think that the mere appearance of their meat, and of them- 
 selves, is sufficient to insure custom, and seldom condescend 
 to. mutter more than an occasional 'Buy!' Then, there are 
 bold butchers vehement rogues, in stained frocks who utter 
 frantic shouts of 'Buy, buy, buy!' ever and anon making a 
 ferocious sally into the street, and seizing some unlucky 
 wight, who buys a leg of mutton or a bullock's heart, nolens 
 vokns ! 
 
 Bless the women ! how they love marketing ! Here they 
 are by scores. Pretty faces, ugly faces, young and old, chaf- 
 fering, simpering, and scolding vehemently. Now, it is the 
 
DOWN WHITECHAPEL WAY. 261 
 
 portly matron housekeeper, may be, to some wealthy, retired 
 old bachelor ; she awes the boldest butcher, and makes even 
 the dignified one incline in his top-boots. And here is the 
 newly-married artisan's wife a fresh, rosy-cheeked girl, 
 delightfully ignorant of housekeeping, though delighted with 
 its responsibilities charmingly diffident as to what she shall 
 buy, and placing implicit, and it is to be hoped, not misplaced, 
 confidence in the insinuating butcher, who could, I verily 
 believe, persuade her that a pig's fry is a saddle of mutton. 
 Poor thing ! she is anxious to be at home and get Tom's 
 supper ready for him; and as for Tom, the sooner he gets 
 away from the public-house, where his wages are paid him 
 every Saturday night, the better it will be for his wife and 
 for him, too, I opine. There are but few male purchasers of 
 butchers' meat. Stay, here is one a little, rosy man, in 
 deep black, and with a very big basket, and holding by the 
 hand a little rosy girl, in black as deep as his. He is a widower, 
 I dare say, and the little girl his daughter. Plow will it be, 
 I wonder, with that couple, a dozen years hence ? Will the 
 little girl grow big enough to go to market by herself, while 
 father smokes his pipe at home ? or, will father marry again, 
 and a shrewish stepmother ill-treat the girl, till she runs away 
 
 and Well well ! we have other matters besides Butcher 
 
 Eow to attend to. We can but spare a glance at that gaunt 
 old man, with the bristly beard and the red eyelids, who is 
 nervously fingering, while he endeavours to beat down the 
 price of those sorry scraps of meat yonder. His history is 
 plain enough to read, and is printed in three letters on his 
 face. G. I. N. 
 
 On the pavement of this Butcher Row, we have another 
 market, and a grand one too. Not confined, however, to the 
 sale of any one particular article, but diversified in an eminent 
 degree. Half-way over the kerbstone and the gutter, is an 
 apparently interminable line of ' standings ' and 4 pitches/ 
 consisting of trucks, barrows, baskets, and boards on tressels, 
 laden with almost every imaginable kind of small merchan- 
 dise. Oysters, vegetables, fruit, combs, prints in inverted 
 umbrellas, ballads, cakes, sweetstuff, fried fish, artificial 
 flowers (!), chairs, brushes and brooms, soap, candles, crockery- 
 ware, ironmongery, cheese, walking-sticks, looking-glasses, 
 frying-pans, bibles, waste-paper, toys, nuts, and fire-wood. 
 These form but a tithe of the contents of this Whitechapel 
 Bezesteen. Each stall is illuminated, and each in its own 
 
262 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 peculiar manner. Some of the vendors are careless, and their 
 lamps are but primitive, consisting of a rushlight stuck in a 
 lump of clay, or a turnip cut in half. But there is a degree 
 of luxury in not a few ; ' Holliday's lamps,' green paper shades, 
 4 fishtail ' burners, and, occasionally, camphine lamps, being 
 freely exhibited. I don't think you could collect together, in 
 any given place in Europe, a much queerer assortment than 
 the sellers of the articles exposed, were it not the buyers 
 thereof. Here are brawny costermongers by dozens, in the 
 orthodox corduroys, fur caps, and ' king's man. ' handkerchiefs. 
 Lungs of leather have they, marvellous eloquence, also, in 
 praising carrots, turnips, and red herrings. Here, too, are 
 street mechanics, manufacturers of the articles they sell, and 
 striving with might and main to sell them ; and you will find 
 very few, or rather, no Irish among this class. I see women 
 among the street sellers, as I move along some, poor widow 
 souls some, who have grown old in street trading some, 
 little puny tottering things, sobbing and shivering as they 
 sell. The buyers are of all descriptions, from the middle to 
 the very lowest class, inclusive. Euddy mechanics, with 
 their wives on their arms, and some sallow and shabby, reel- 
 ing to and from the gin-shops. Decent married women, and 
 comely servant girls, with latch-keys and market-baskets. 
 Beggars, by dozens. Slatternly, frowsy, drabs of women, 
 wrangling with wrinkled crones, and bating down the price 
 of a bunch of carrots fiercely. Blackguard boys, with painted 
 faces, tumbling head over heels in the mud. Bulky costers, 
 whose day's work is over, or who do not care to work at all. 
 Grimy dustmen, newly emancipated from the laystall. The 
 bare-headed, or battered- bonneted members of the class called 
 (and truly) unfortunate, haunt the other side of the road. 
 There is too much light and noise here for them. 
 
 But the noise ! the yelling, screeching, howling, swearing, 
 laughing, fighting saturnalia ; the combination of commerce, 
 fun, frolic, cheating, almsgiving, thieving, and devilry; the 
 Geneva-laden tobacco-charged atmosphere ! The thieves, now 
 pursuing their vocation, by boldly snatching joints of meat 
 from the hooks, or articles from the stalls ; now, peacefully, 
 basket in hand, making their Saturday night's marketing (for 
 even thieves must eat). The short pipes, the thick sticks, the 
 mildewed umbrellas, the dirty faces, the ragged coats ! Let 
 us turn into the gin-shop here, for a moment. 
 
 It is a remarkably lofty, though not very spacious, edifice 
 
DOWN WHITECHAPEL WAY. 263 
 
 the area, both, before and behind the bar, being somewhat 
 narrow. There are enormous tubs of gin, marked with an 
 almost fabulous number of gallons each ; and there are compo- 
 site columns, and mirrors, and handsome clocks, and ormolu 
 candelabra, in the approved Seven Dials style. But the com- 
 pany are diiferent. They have not the steady, methodical, 
 dram-drinking system of the Seven Dials, Drury Lane, and 
 Holborn gin-shop habitues-, the tremulous deposition of the 
 required three halfpence ; the slow, measured, draining of the 
 glass ; the smack of the lips, and quick passing of the hand 
 over the mouth, followed by the speedy exit of the regular 
 dram-drinker, who takes his ' drain ' and is off, even if he be 
 in again in a short time. These TVhitechapel gin-drinkers 
 brawl and screech horribly. Blows are freely exchanged, and 
 sometimes pewter measures fly through the air like Shrapnell 
 shells. The stuff itself, which in the western gin-shops goes 
 generally by the name of ' blue ruin ' or ' short,' is here called 
 indifferently, ' tape/ ' max,' ' duke,' ' gatter,' and ' jacky.' 
 Two more peculiarities I observe also. One is, that there are 
 no spruce barmaids, or smiling landladies stalwart men in 
 white aprons supply their place. The second is, that there 
 are a multiplicity of doors, many more than would at first 
 seem necessary, and for ever on the swing ; but the utility of 
 which is speedily demonstrated to me by the simultaneous 
 ejection of three ' obstropelous ' Irish labourers, by three of 
 the stalwart barmen. 
 
 The trucks and barrows, the fried fish and artificial flowers, 
 are not quite so abundant when we have passed a thorough- 
 fare called Somerset Street. They become even more scarce 
 when we see, on the other side of the road, two stone posts, or 
 obelisks on a small scale, marking at once the boundaries of 
 the City, and the commencement of that renowned thorough- 
 fare now politely called Middlesex Street, but known to Europe 
 in general, and the nobility and gentry connected with the 
 trade in old clothes in particular, as Petticoat Lane. It is no 
 use going down there this Saturday, for the Hebrew com- 
 munity, who form its chief delight and ornament, are all 
 enjoying their * shobbhouse,' and we shall meet with them 
 elsewhere. We will, if you please, cross over, leaving the 
 kerbstone market (which only exists on one side), and allured 
 by the notes of an execrably played fiddle, enter one of those 
 dazzling halls of delight, called a ' penny gaff.' 
 
 The 'gaff* throws out no plausible puffs, no mendacious 
 
264 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 placards, respecting the entertainment to be found therein. 
 The public take the genuineness of the 'gaff' for granted, 
 and enter by dozens. The ' gaff' has been a shop a simple 
 shop with a back parlour to it, and has been converted into 
 a hall of delight, by the very simple process of knocking out 
 the shop front, and knocking down the partition between the 
 shop and parlour. The gas-fittings yet remain, and even the 
 original counters, which are converted into 4 reserved seats,* 
 on which, for the outlay of twopence, as many costers, thieves, 
 Jew-boys, and young ladies, as can fight for a place, are sitting, 
 standing, or lounging. For the common herd the ol TTO\\OL 
 the conditio Vivendi is simply the payment of one penny, for 
 which they get standing-room in what are somewhat vaguely 
 termed the ' stalls/ plainly speaking, the body of the shop. 
 The proscenium is marked by two gas ' battens ' or pipes, 
 perforated with holes for burners, traversing the room hori- 
 zontally, above and below. There are some monstrous en- 
 gravings, in vile frames, suspended from the walls, some 
 vilely coloured plaster casts, and a stuffed monstrosity or two 
 in glass cases. The place is abominably dirty, and the odour 
 of the company generally, and of the shag tobacco they are 
 smoking, is powerful. 
 
 A capital house though, to-night : a bumper, indeed. Such 
 a bumper, in fact, that they have been obliged to place benches 
 on the stage (two planks on tressels), on which some of the 
 candidates for the reserved seats are accommodated. As I enter, 
 a gentleman in a fustian suit deliberately walks across the 
 stage and lights his pipe at the footlights ; while a neighbour 
 of mine of the Jewish persuasion, who smells fearfully of fried 
 fish, dexterously throws a cotton handkerchief, containing 
 some savoury condiment from the stalls to the reserved seats, 
 where it is caught by a lady whom he addresses by the title 
 of 4 Bermondsey Bet. J Bet is, perhaps, a stranger in these 
 parts, and my Hebrew friend wishes to show her that White- 
 chapel can assert its character for hospitality. 
 
 Silence for the manager, if you please ! who comes for- 
 ward with an elaborate bow, and a white hat in his hand, to 
 address the audience. A slight disturbance has occurred, it 
 appears, in the course of the evening : the Impresario com- 
 plains bitterly of the 4 mackinations ' of certain parties ' next 
 door,' who seek to injure him by creating an uproar, after he 
 has gone to the expense of engaging ' four good actors ' for the? 
 express amusement of the British public. The * next door ' 
 
DOWN WHITECHAPEL WAY. 265 
 
 parties are, it would seem, the proprietors of an adjacent 
 public-house, who have sought to seduce away the supporters 
 of the * gaff,' by vaunting the superior qualities of their cream 
 gin, a cuckoo clock, and the 4 largest cheroots in the world for 
 a penny.' 
 
 Order is restored, and the performances commence. * Mr, 
 and Mrs. Stitcher/ a buffo duet of exquisite comicality, is 
 announced. Mr. Stitcher is a tailor, attired in the recognised 
 costume of a tailor on the stage, though, I must confess, I 
 never saw it off. He has nankeen pantaloons, a red nightcap 
 a redder nose, and a cravat with enormous bows. Mrs. 
 Stitcher is * made up/ to represent a slatternly shrew, and 
 she looks it all over. They sing a verse apiece ; they sing a 
 verse together; they quarrel, fight, and make it up again. 
 The audience are delighted. Mr. S. reproaches Mrs. S. with 
 the possession of a private gin-bottle ; Mrs. S. inveighs 
 against the hideous turpitude of Mr. S. for pawning three 
 pillow-cases to purchase beer. The audience are in ecstacies. 
 A sturdy coalheaver in the ' stalls ' slaps his thigh with de- 
 light. It is so real. Ugh ! terribly real ; let us come away, 
 even though murmurs run through the stalls that * The 
 Baker's Shop ' is to be sung. I see, as we edge away to the 
 door, a young lady in a cotton velvet spencer, bare arms, and 
 a short white calico skirt, advance to the foot-lights. I sup- 
 pose she is the Fornarina, who is to enchant the dilettanti 
 with the flowery song in question. 
 
 We are still in Whitechapei High Street ; but in a wider 
 part. The kerbstone market has ceased ; .and the head 
 quarters of commerce are in the shops. Wonderful shops, 
 these ! Grocers who dazzle their customers with marvellous 
 Chinese paintings, and surmount the elaborate vessels (Pro- 
 perties for a Pantomime) containing their teas and sugars with 
 startling acrostics pungent conundrums. Is it in imagina- 
 tion only, or in reality, that I see, perched above these 
 groceries, an imp a fantastic imp, whose head-dress is shaped 
 like a retort, who has a Lancet in his girdle, and a micro- 
 scope in his hand, and on whose brow is written ' Analysis ? J 
 that when I read the placards relative to ' Fine young 
 Hyson/ ' Well-flavoured Pekoe/ 4 Strong family Souchong/ 
 4 Imperial Gunpowder/ this imp, putting his thumb to his 
 nose, and spreading his fingers out demoniacally, whispers, 
 ' Sloe-leaves, China-clay, Prussian-blue, yellow-ochre, gum, 
 tragacanth, garbage, poison ?' that, pointing to Muscovado, 
 
266 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 and Tine West India/ and 'superfine lump,' he mutters, 
 ' Sand, chalk, poison ?' that, when I talk of cocoa, he screams, 
 4 Venetian-red, and desiccated manure ?' that, when I allude 
 to coffee, he grins mocking gibes of ' burnt beans, chicory, 
 poison ?' that he dances from the grocer's to the baker's, next 
 door, and executes maniacal gambadoes on the quartern loaves 
 and French rolls, uttering yells about chalk, alum, and dead 
 men's bones ? that he draws chalk and horses' brains from 
 the dairyman's milk ; and horse-flesh, and worse offal still, 
 from sausages ? that he shows me everywhere fraud, adultera- 
 tion, and poison ! Avaunt, imp ! I begin to think that there is 
 nothing real in the eating and drinking line that nothing is 
 but what is not that all beer is cocculus Indicus all gin, 
 turpentine, in this delusive Whitechapel. And not in White- 
 chapel alone. Art thou immaculate, Shoreditch? Art thou 
 blameless, Borough ? Canst thou place thy hand on thy waist- 
 coat, Oxford Street, the aristocratic, and say thy tea knows no 
 4 facing or glazing,' thy sugar no potato starch, thy beer no 
 doctoring ? 
 
 But one of my friends is clamorous for beer ; and, to avoid 
 adulteration, we eschew the delusive main thoroughfare for a 
 moment and strike into a maze of little, unsavoury back- 
 streets, between Whitechapel Church and Goodman's Fields. 
 Here is a beer-shop a little, blinking, wall-eyed edifice, with 
 red curtains in the window, and a bar squeezed up in one 
 corner, as though it were ashamed of itself. From the door 
 of the tap-room which we open, comes forth a* thick, compact 
 body of smoke. There are, perhaps, twenty people in the 
 room, and they are all smoking like limekilns. From a 
 kiln at the upper extremity, comes forth the well-remembered 
 notes of the old trink-tied, ' Am Ehein, am Ehein.' We are in 
 Vaterland at once. All these are Teutons German sugar- 
 bakers. There are hundreds more of their countrymen in the 
 narrow streets about here, and dozens of low lodging-houses, 
 where the German emigrants are crimped and boarded and 
 robbed. Here, also, live the German buy-a-broom girls. 
 There are little German public-houses, and German bakers, 
 and little shops, where you can get sauer-kraut and potato- 
 salad, just as though you were in Frankfort or Mayence, 
 Dear old Vaterland ! pleasant country of four meals a day, 
 and feather-bed counterpanes agreeable land, where you can 
 drink wine in the morning, and where everybody takes 
 off his hat to everybody else! Though thy cookery is 
 
DOWN WHITECHAPEL WAY. 267 
 
 execrable, and thy innkeepers are robbers, I love thee, 
 Germany, still ! 
 
 My experienced friend, when we have refreshed ourselves 
 at this hostelry, brings us, by a short cut, into Union Street, 
 and so into the broad Whitechapel-road. Here the kerbstone 
 market I have alluded to, crosses the road itself, and stretches, 
 in a straggling, limping sort of way, up to Whitechapel 
 Workhouse. We come here upon another phase of Saturday- 
 night Whitechapel life. The children of Jewry begin to en- 
 compass us, not so much in the way of business ; for though 
 their Sabbath is over, and work is legal though Moses, at 
 the other extremity, is in full swing of money-making activity, 
 yet the majority of the Israelites prefer amusing themselves 
 on a Saturday night. They are peculiar in their amusements, 
 as in everything else. The public-house the mere bar, at 
 least has no charms for them ; but almost all the low coffee- 
 shops you pass are crowded with young Jews, playing domi- 
 noes and draughts ; while in the publics, where tap-rooms are 
 attached, their elders disport themselves with cards, bagatelle, 
 and the excitement of a sing-song meeting. Smoking is 
 universal. Cigars the rule pipes the exception. Hounds- 
 ditch, the Minories, Leman Street, Duke's Place, St. Mary 
 Axe, Bevis Marks, and Whitechapel itself, have all contributed 
 their quota to fill these places of amusement ; and here and 
 there you will see some venerable Israelite, with long beard and 
 strange foreign garb, probably from Tangier or Constantinople, 
 on a visit to his brethren in England. There are legends, 
 too, of obscure places in this vicinity, where what the French 
 call ' grosjeuS or high play, is carried on. In Butcher Eow, 
 likewise, are Jew butchers, where you may see little leaden 
 seals, inscribed with Hebrew characters, appended to the 
 meat, denoting that the animal has been slaughtered according 
 to the directions of the Synagogue. In the daytime you may 
 see long bearded rabbins examining the meat, and testing the 
 knives on their nails. 
 
 What have we here ? ' The grand Panorama of Australia, 
 a series of moving pictures.' Admission, one penny. Just- 
 a-going to begin. Some individuals, dressed as Ethiopian 
 serenaders, hang about the door; and one with the largest 
 shirt-collar I have ever seen, takes my penny, and admits me, 
 with some score or two more, where, though it is 'just a-going 
 to begin/ I and my friends wait a good quarter of an hour. 
 There are two policemen off duty beside me, who are in- 
 
268 GASLIGHT ASTD DAYLIGHT. 
 
 dulging in the dolce far niente, and cracking nuts. There is a 
 decent, civil-spoken silkweaver from Spita] fields, too, whose 
 ancestors, he tells me, came over to England at the time of 
 the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and who has a romanti- 
 cally French name. He has the old Lyons indentures of his 
 ancestors at home, he says. 
 
 We give up the panorama in despair ; and, for aught we 
 know, is ' jest a-going to begin ' at this moment. In our pro- 
 gress towards the Gate, however, we look in at a few more 
 public-houses. Here is a costermonger's house, where the 
 very truck and baskets are brought to the bar. Here is that 
 famous hostelry, where is preserved an oil-painting, contain- 
 ing authentic portraits of three Whitechapel worthies, who 
 once drank one hundred and one pots of beer at one sitting. 
 The name of the captain of this gallant band was ' Old Fish.' 
 Here, again, is a thieves' house thievish all over, from the 
 squint-eyed landlord to the ruffianly customers. Go in at one 
 door, and go out at another ; and don't change more five-pound 
 notes at the bar than you can help, my friend. Here are 
 houses with queer signs ' The Grave Morris,' supposed to 
 be a corruption of some dead-and-gone German Landgrave, 
 and * The Blind Beggar,' close to Mile End Gate. 
 
 Another ' gaif ' on the right-hand side of the road but on 
 a grander scale. The Effingham Saloon, with real boxes, a 
 real pit, and a real gallery ; dreadfully dirty, and with a 
 dirtier audience. No comic singing, but the drama the real, 
 legitimate drama. There is a bold bandit, in buff-boots, call- 
 ing on ' yon blew Ev'n to bring-a down-a re wing on ther 
 taraytor's ed.' There is nothing new in him, nor in the 
 young lady in pink calico, with her back hair down, expressive 
 of affliction. Nor in the Pavilion Theatre over the way, 
 where ' Kugantino the Terrible ' is the stock piece, and where 
 there are more buff-boots, rusty broad-swords, calico-skirts, 
 and back hairs. 
 
 Shops, Gin-palaces, Saloons Saloons, Gin-palaces, Shops ; 
 Costermongers, Thieves, and Beggars Beggars, Thieves, and 
 Costermongers. As we near the Gate, the London Hospital 
 looms heavily on one side, while on the other the bare, bleak 
 walls of Whitechapel Workhouse stretch grimly along, with a 
 woful skirting-board of crouching Irish paupers, who have 
 arrived too late for admission into the Workhouse, and are 
 houseless for the night. 
 
 Going along, and still anxious to see what is to be seen, I 
 
THE MUSICAL WORLD. 269 
 
 look, curiously, at the portraits hanging on the walls of the 
 coffee-houses and bar-parlours. The democratic element is 
 not very strong in Whitechapel, it would seem; for the 
 effigies of Her Majesty and Prince Albert are as a hundred to 
 one of the effigies of the Cuffies and Meaghers of the sword. 
 One portrait, though, I see everywhere ; its multiplications 
 beating all royal, noble, and democratic portraits hollow, and 
 far out-numbering the Dog Billys, and winners of memorable 
 Derbys. In tavern and tap-room, in shop and parlour, I see 
 everywhere the portrait or the bust of Sir ROBERT PEEL. 
 
 Mile End Gate at last, and midnight chimes. There is a 
 4 cheap-jack,' on a rickety platform, and vaunting wares 
 more rickety still, who gets vehemently eloquent as it gets 
 later. But his auditory gradually disperse, and the whole 
 road seems to grow suddenly quiet. Do you know why ? 
 The public -houses are closed. The pie-shops, it is true, yet 
 send forth savoury steams ; but the rain comes down heavily. 
 Therefore, and as I (and I fear you, too, dear reader) have 
 had enough of Whitechapel for one while, let us jump into 
 this last omnibus bound westwards, reflecting that if we 
 have not discovered the North- West Passage, or the source 
 of the Niger, we have beheld a strange country, and some 
 strange phases of life. 
 
 xxiv; 
 
 THE MUSICAL WORLD. 
 
 IT is a world of highly ancient lineage, having existed thou- 
 sands of years ago, 4 ere heaving bellows learned to blow.' 
 Old Timotheus was its master (sub Jove), before divine 
 Cecilia came to invent the vocal frame, and add length to 
 solemn sounds ; to wrest the lyre from Timotheus, or divide 
 the crown with him. He could but raise a mortal to the skies. 
 She drew an angel down. 
 
 Thus far (in somewhat different language) glorious John 
 Dryden in praise of music. I must not tarry to sing the 
 praises of ancient music, for I have not Dr. Burney's big book 
 J3y me : and who knows where or when I should stop if I 
 were to touch upon Orpheus and the beasts, Ulysses and the 
 Syrens, Nebuchadnezzar with his lutes, and harps, and sack- 
 buts, and all kinds of psaltery; or if even I were to get 
 
270 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 middle-aged in music, and tell of the troubadours, trouveres, 
 minne-singers, or glee-maidens ; or more modern yet, and 
 gossip about Stradella, Purcell, Kaymond Lulli and Father 
 Schmidt, Paesiello, Handel, and Doctor Blow : the harmonious 
 blacksmith, Cremona fiddles, and the Haarlem organ? 
 
 The musical world of England of to-day, for to such place 
 and time will I confine myself, contains in itself three worlds 
 the fashionable world of music, the middle-class world, and 
 the country world. 
 
 Fashion first. What so fashionable as the Opera? whose 
 many tiers of boxes glitter with bright lights, and brighter 
 eyes, with youth and beauty, and high birth ; where divinities 
 in diamonds, and divinities in bkie ribbons, hedge kings and 
 queens (poor hedges ! how wofully tired, and ditch waterly dull 
 they look, hedging royalty on one leg, or leaning wearily 
 against chairbacks or brackets) ; where dandies in the stalls, in 
 excruciating white neckcloths, turn their backs to the stage 
 between the acts, and scrutinize the occupants of the grand 
 tier, with their big lorgnettes ; where gray-headed peers and 
 habitues who can remember Nourri and Donzelli, Catalani and 
 Pasta, Armand Vestris and Anatole, crouch in shady pit-boxes, 
 and hear the music with palled ears, and watch the ballet 
 with sated eyes ; where dilettanti in the back rows of the pit 
 (mostly admitted with orders, and cleaned white kid gloves) 
 are so particular in crying Brava when a lady is singing, and 
 Bravi, when a duet is sung ; where honest Tom Snugg, who 
 fancies himself a complete man about town and opera fre- 
 quenter, is so proudly delighted in pointing out, to his friend 
 Nooks, the neophyte, a respectable stockbroker from Camber- 
 well Grove, as the Duke of Tiransydon, or the lady of a 
 Hebrew sheriff's officer, covered with diamonds, as the Dowa- 
 ger Marchioness of Memphis ; where simple-minded English 
 people from the provinces, finding themselves in the amphi- 
 theatre stalls and at the opera for the first time, make des- 
 perate efforts to understand the words of the songs and re- 
 citatives ; and failing signally, appeal to the sixpenny * books 
 of the opera,' and find contusion worse confounded by the 
 librettist of the theatre; who translates Italian into English 
 with about the same facility that French hotel-keepers trans- 
 late their advertisements into the same language ; where olea- 
 ginous foreigners, of the back settlements of the gallery, 
 gloat over every bar of the overture, and every note of the 
 opera, and keep time with their heads, and lick their lips at 
 
THE MUSICAL WORLD. 271 
 
 a florid passage, or a well-executed cadence, and grind their 
 teeth savagely at a note too flat or too sharp, and scowl at you 
 if you cough or sneeze, or move your feet. This English land 
 has not been without its white days its high and glorious 
 festivals. I say has been ; for, alas ! of the opera as agrand, 
 glorious, national, fashionable institution, we may say, as of 
 him whose sword is rust, and whose bones are dust, It was. 
 The Grand Opera exists no more. I know there is an establish- 
 ment in the vicinity of Covent Garden a sumptuous, commo- 
 dious, brilliant, and well-managed theatre, where the best 
 operas are given by the best singers and instrumentalists. 
 But I cannot call it THE Opera. It can never be more to me 
 than Covent Garden Theatre the conquered, but never to be 
 the naturalised domain of Italian music. The ghost of Garrick 
 jostles the-ghost of Farinelli in Bow Street, and from Mr. May, 
 the costumier's shop, in Wellington Street, the indignant voices 
 of Colman', Sheridan, Kenney, and O'Keefe, seem to be crying 
 to Bellini and Donizetti, Meyerbeer and Mozart, ' What do ye 
 here ?' What have the traditions of maestri and macaroni, 
 violins and Yellutis, bassi and' ballet-girls to do with a locality 
 hallowed by the memory of the Great Twin Brethren, the two 
 mighty English theatres of Covent Garden and Drury Lane ? 
 I can fancy, drawn up in shadowy line opposite the grand 
 entrance and sadly watching the carriages disgorging their aris- 
 tocratic tenants, the by-gone worthies of the English stage. 
 Siddonst hrilling, O'Neill melting, Munden exhilarating, Dow- 
 ton convulsing, Kemble awing, Kean astounding, Woffington 
 enchanting, Young soothing, and Macready not dead, haply, 
 nor forgotten, nor unthanked, but gone for all that teaching 
 and elevating, and humanising us. About such a scene might 
 flit the disembodied spirits of the ' 0. P.' row ; of those brave 
 days of old, when people went to wait for the opening of the 
 pit door, at three P.M., and took sandwiches and case bottles 
 with them ; when the engagement or non-engagement of a 
 public favourite weighed as heavily in the balance of town 
 curiosity, as the siege of a fortress, or the capture of a fleet; 
 when Shakspeare's scenes found gorgeoujs reflections in Stan- 
 field's magic mirror ; when actors (though rogues and vaga- 
 bonds by act of parliament) were wonderfully respected and 
 respectable, and lived in competence, and had quiet cosy 
 houses in Bloomsbury and Marylebone, paying rates and taxes, 
 serving on juries, and when they died found no mortuary 
 eulogium in the columns of some slang periodical, but were 
 
272 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 gravely alluded to in the decent large type of a respect- 
 ably small-sized journal, with a fourpenny stamp, as ' at his 
 house in Buskin Street, Mr. So-and-so, many years of the 
 Theatre Eoyal, Covent Garden, and one of the overseers of the 
 parish of Saint Eoscius. Universally lamented. An attached 
 husband and a tender father.' No ! The Opera cannot be in 
 Covent Garden to my mind. The opera should, and can only be 
 in the Haymarket, over against palatial Pall-Mali. Come back 
 then, Mr. Costa, whom I honour, to those cari luoghi. Come 
 back, baton, soufneurs' cavern, loud bassoon, and all. Let us 
 have, once more, the linkman with his silver badge, and the 
 guard of grenadiers (I mind the time when it was a subaltern's 
 guard, and the officer had a free admission to the pit, and 
 lounged tremendous in Fop's Alley in his bearskin and 
 golden epaulettes). Come back to the Haymarket, carriages 
 that stopped the way, and struggling footmen, and crowded 
 crush room ! Come back, and let not the walls of the grand 
 opera be desolate, or the spider weave her web in the yellow 
 satin curtains though I believe they were taken down and 
 sold in the last disasters ! * 
 
 Only one section of the musical world, however, was on view 
 in the audience part of the opera. Its working members were 
 to be found behind the footlights ; nor could you learn much 
 of their private or social habits even there. There are few 
 duller, prosier, more commonplace scenes than the green-room 
 of a theatre ; and the artist's foyer at an opera-house is ordi- 
 narily the dullest of the dull. A prima donna swallowing 
 sherry-negus with an egg in it preparatory to her grand scena ; 
 a basso stretching himself on the cushions of an ottoman, and 
 yawning in an ecstacy of fatigue ; a tenor sulking in a corner 
 because his aria has not been encored ; a baritone suffering 
 from hoarseness, and expectorating and swallowing cough 
 lozenges with distressing pertinacity ; a crowd of mysterious, 
 snuffy, musty old Frenchwomen with handkerchiefs tied round 
 their heads, pottering in corners with second-hand foreigners, 
 who snuff more than they speak, and spit more than they snuff : 
 these are the principal features of an operatic green-room. 
 Yet, in the palmy days of opera-hats and opera-tights, there 
 
 * The Haymarket Opera Her Majesty's Theatre has been born again, 
 and has again died, since I wrote these lines. May the courteous Mr. Lumley 
 be again enabled to inscribe * Resurgam ' on the hatchment, made from 
 an old pass-check, which should properly decorate the architrave of his 
 theatre. 
 
THE MUSICAL WORLD. 273 
 
 were few privileges more valued by the distinguished fre- 
 quenters of the omnibus-box than that of the entree behind the 
 scenes. A door of communication used to exist between the 
 omnibus-box and the penetralia of the coulisses ; and an at- 
 tempt to lock it once caused a riot of the most fashionable de- 
 scription, in the time of manager Laporte, and the demoli- 
 tion of the door itself by a prince of the blood. There are 
 dandies yet who would give not exactly their ears, but still 
 something handsome for the estimable privilege of wander- 
 ing in a dingy ruinous desert of wings and set pieces and cob- 
 webby rafters ; of being hustled and ordered out of the way 
 by carpenters and scene-shifters in their shirt-sleeves ; of 
 stumbling over gas-pipes, tressels, and pewter pots ; and of 
 being uncomfortably jammed up among chairs and tables, 
 supernumeraries bearing spears and banners at one shilling 
 per night, property-men with blazing pans of red and blue 
 fire, and pets of the ballet gossiping the flattest of flat gossip, 
 or intent upon the salutary, but, to a near bystander, rather 
 inconvenient exercise known as ' pumping,' which, for the 
 benefit of the uninitiated, I may mention consists in standing 
 upon one leg, while another pet of the ballet pulls the other 
 leg violently up and down such pumping giving strength 
 and elasticity to the muscles. 
 
 Hie we away, therefore, to where we can see the operatic 
 world to greater advantage. Here is Messrs. Octave and Pic- 
 colo's Music Warehouse. Let us enter and behold. 
 
 In Eegent Street is Messrs. Octave and Piccolo's establish- 
 ment, the great Bourse or High Change of the Ars Musica. 
 Hard by, on one side, is Messrs. Eowdeypoor, Cutchempoor, 
 and Weaverbad's India shawl warehouse, which keeps so many 
 native artists at Delhi and Lahore employed day and night in 
 designing fresh patterns.* Hard by, on the other side, is Miss 
 Bricabrac's great knick-knack shop, where a marquis might 
 ruin himself in the purchase of porte-monnaies, smelling-bottles, 
 tooth-picks, dressing-cases, blotting-books, French clocks, 
 point lace, diamond pens, jewelled penwipers, amethyst card- 
 cases, and watches no bigger than fourpenny-pieces.f About 
 four o'clock during the height of the London season, the road 
 in front of these three shops the shawl-shop, the music-shop, 
 and the knick-knack shop is blockaded by a crowd of carriages, 
 the very study of the armorial bearings on whose panels is as 
 
 * They are bankrupt. f She is dead. 
 
274 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 good as a course of Clarke's Introduction to Heraldry, or Mr. 
 Planche's Pursuivant-at-Arms. The pavement is almost impas- 
 sable for mighty footmen gravely lounging, as it is the wont of 
 mighty footmen to do ; the air is perfumed with pomatum and 
 hair-powder, and the eye dazzled with plush, vivid aiguillettes, 
 and gold lace. 
 
 In Messrs. Octave and Piccolo's shop, among the grand, 
 semi-grand, square, cottage, and cabinet pianofortes, the 
 harmoniums, melodions, accordions, concertinas, and flutinas, 
 the last new ballads, polkas, mazourkas, gems of the last 
 opera, &c., decorated with flaming lithographs in colours ; the 
 shelves groaning beneath music-books and opera scores, and 
 pianoforte exercises, and treatises upon sol-faing ; among 
 Erard's harps, and huge red and yellow concert posters, and 
 plans of the boxes of the opera and seats at the Philharmonic ; 
 among circulars from professors of music, who beg to inform, 
 the nobility, gentry, their friends, and the public that they 
 have just returned from the continent, or have removed their 
 residence to such and such a street, where they have resumed 
 their course of instruction, or have some equally interesting 
 instruction to give ; among portraits of musical celebrities, 
 litographed by the accomplished M. Baugniet, and concert 
 tickets stuck in the frames of looking-glasses ; among all these 
 multifarious objects there circulates a crowd of countesses in 
 lace, yea, and of duchesses oftentimes, together with repre- 
 sentatives of musical wealth (chiefly female) of every degree, 
 from the Princess Perigordowski, who has come to Messrs. 
 Octave and Co. to negotiate engagements with the stars of the 
 Italian stage for her grand ball and concert next week ; from 
 the Dowager Marchioness of Screwdown, who wants some one 
 at Octave's to recommend her a first-rate Italian singing- 
 master, who will teach the juvenile Ladies Harriet and 
 Georgina Skinflint for five shillings a lesson, she having 
 recently dismissed their former instructor, Signer Ravioli, 
 for gross misconduct a pawnbrokers duplicate for some de- 
 grading article of wearing apparel, we believe boots, having 
 fallen from the wretched man's hat, on the occasion of his 
 last visit to Skinflint House ; from these pillars of the titled 
 world to plump, rosy Mrs. Chippendale, who has musical 
 evenings ' in the Alpha Road, and wants a good accompanyist, 
 moderate, a German not preferred. They breathe so hard, 
 and smell so strong of smoke, and have such long hair, Mrs. 
 C. says. Besides, they injure the piano so, and will insist at 
 
THE MUSICAL WOULD. 275 
 
 last upon playing a ' sinfonia/ or a ' motive,' or a ' pensee ' of 
 their own composition, goodness knows how many hundred 
 bars or pages long. Then there is Miss de Greutz, who is 
 long, lean, pale, and spectacled. She is a governess is Miss 
 de Greutz, but has views towards professing singing on an 
 independent footing, and wishes to ascertain Signer Pap- 
 padaggi's terms (he is the singing-master in vogue), for a 
 series of finishing lessons. Pappadaggi will have fifteen 
 shillings a lesson out of her, and bate never a stiver; ' it soud 
 be zi gueeni,' he says ; and valiant Miss de Greutz will hoard 
 up her salary, and trot, in her scanty intervals of leisure, to 
 the signor's palatial residence in Hyde Park Gardens ; and 
 should you some half-holiday afternoon pass the open windows 
 of Belinda House, Bayswater, it is pretty certain that you 
 will hear the undulating of a piano in sore distress (not the 
 jangling one that is the schoolroom piano, where Miss Cripps 
 is massacreing the Huguenots worse than ever they were on 
 St. Bartholomew's day), and some feeble, though highly orna- 
 mental cadenzas, the which you may safely put down as Miss 
 de Greutz's repetition of her last, or preparation for her next 
 lesson. 
 
 You may observe that the gentlefolks, the customers who 
 come here to buy, naturally resort to the counters, and be- 
 siege the obliging assistants ; these urbane persons, who are 
 not in the least like other shop assistants, being singularly 
 courteous, staid, and unobstrusive in demeanour, and not 
 without, at the same time, a reasonable dash of independence, 
 being in most cases sons of partners in the firm, or of wealthy 
 proprietors of other music warehouses, who send them here, 
 as the great restaurateurs in France do their sons, to other 
 restaurants, to acquire a knowledge of the business. They 
 have a hard time of it among their fair customers ; a dozen 
 voices calling at once for works, both vocal and instrumental, 
 in three or four different languages : one lady asking for the 
 'Odessa Polka/ another for the ' Sulina Waltz/ a third for 'Have 
 Faith in one Another ;' a fourth for L'Ange Dechu/ a fifth for 
 an Italian aria, ' Sulla Poppa del mio Brik/ and a sixth for 
 Herr Bompazek's new German ballad, ' Schlick, schlick, 
 schlick.' Yet Messrs. Octave and Piccolo's young men con- 
 trive to supply all these multifarious demands, and take 
 money, and give change, and indulge their customers with 
 commercially scientific and sentimental disquisitions upon 
 the merits of the last new song, and answer which is the 
 
 T 2 
 
276 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 hardest business of all the innumerable questions on subjects 
 as innumerable, addressed to them not only by the customers, 
 but by the professionals who throng the shop. 
 
 The professionals! Where are they? They gesticulate 
 behind harps, or declaim from music-stools, or congregate at 
 the angles of Erard's grands. They may be heard of in the 
 back shop fantastically torturing musical instruments, in the 
 hope, perhaps, that some English marquis, enraptured by 
 their strains, may rush from the titled crowd, and cry, 
 ' Herr, signor,' or * monsieur/ as the case may be, c write me 
 six operas, teach all my family at five guineas per lesson, and 
 at the end of a year, the hand of my daughter, Miss Clarissa, 
 is yours.' They waylay the courteous publishers, Messrs. 
 Octave and Piccolo, in counting-houses at doors every- 
 where. Octave is 'a pleasant man, tall, an undeniable judge 
 of port wine, and rides to the Queen's hounds. Piccolo is a 
 dapper man, who speaks scraps of every European language, 
 and is supposed to have been madly in love, about the year 
 eighteen hundred and twenty-seven, with the great contralto, 
 Madame Eostolati, who married, if you remember, Prince 
 Popadochoff : he who broke the bank at Baden Baden, just 
 before he shot himself at Ems, in the year '33. 
 
 Here is a gentleman just stepped out of a handsome 
 brougham at Octave and Piccolo's door. His hair is auburn, 
 curling and luxuriant ; his beard and moustache ample, and 
 a monument to the genius of his hairdresser ; he is covered 
 with jewellery ; his clothes are of the newest cut, and the 
 most expensive materials. He is perfumed ; the front of his 
 shirt lace and studs is worth twenty guineas, and leaning 
 from the window of his brougham, you can descry a kid- 
 gloved hand, with rings outside the glove, a bird-of-paradise 
 feather, and the head of a King Charles's spaniel. The 
 hair, the beard, the moustache, the jewellery, the shirt, the 
 brougham, the bird of paradise, and the King Charles all 
 belong to Orpheus Basserclyffe, fashionable singer of the clay. 
 
 Snarling people, envious people, crooked-minded people, 
 of course, aver that Basserclyffe roars ; that he sings out of 
 tune ; that he doesn't sing as well as formerly ; that he 
 can't sing at all ; that he has a fine voice, but is no musician ; 
 that he can read at sight well enough, but has no more voice 
 than a jackdaw. What does Basserclyffe care? What do 
 people not say about professionals ? They say Joe Nightin- 
 gale's mother (he preceded Basserclyife as fashionable), kept a 
 
THE MUSICAL WORLD. 277 
 
 coal and potato shed in Bermondsey ; yet he made twenty 
 thousand pounds, and married a baronet's daughter. They say 
 Ap Llewellyn, the harpist's name is not Ap, nor Llewellyn, 
 but Levi, that he is not a Welshman at all, and that he 
 used to play his harp in the streets, sitting on a little stool, 
 while his sister went round with a hat for the coppers. They 
 say that Madame Fioriture, the prima donna, does not know 
 a, note of music, and that old Fripanelli, the worn-out music- 
 master of Tattyboys Rents, has to teach her every part she 
 plays. Let them say on, says Basserclyffe. So that I sing 
 on and sing well, what does it matter ? He is right. If he 
 had sung at the Italian Opera as William, in ' Black-eyed 
 Susan,' was said by Douglas Jerrold to play the fiddle 
 like an angel, there would have been soon found worthy 
 people and astute critics to whisper ' Ah, yes, very sweet, 
 but after all, he's not an Italian ! ' He is too sensible to 
 change his name to Bassercliffi or Basserclifficini. He is 
 content, perfectly content, with making his four or five 
 thousand a year by singing at concerts, public and private, 
 oratorios, festivals, and philharmonic associations, in town 
 and country. It is perfectly indifferent to him at what 
 species of entertainment he gets his fifteen guineas for a 
 song. It may be at the Queen's palace, or in the large 
 room of some vast provincial music hall. I will say this 
 for him, however, that while he will have the fifteen 
 guineas (and quite right), if those who employ him can 
 pay), he will sing gratuitously, and cheerfully, too, where 
 real need exists, and, for the benefit of a distressed any- 
 body, will pipe the full as melodiously as when his 
 notes are exchanged by those of the Governor and Com- 
 pany of the Bank of England. He has a fine house ; he 
 gives grand dinner parties ; he is an exemplary husband and 
 father ; he has no serious care in the world, except for the 
 day when his voice will begin to fail him. ' He is beast like 
 that,' says Bambogetti, the cynic of the musical world, striking 
 the sounding-board of a pianoforte. 
 
 But there has sidled into the shop, and up to the polite 
 Mr. Octave, and held whispered converse with him, which 
 converse has ended in a half shake of the head on Octave's 
 part, a shrug of the shoulder, and a slipping of something 
 into the creature's hand, a dirty, ragged, shameful old man, in 
 a trailing cloak, and with an umbrella that would seem to have 
 the palsy as well as the hand that holds it. This is Graddi. 
 
278 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 About the time that the allied sovereigns visited England, 
 just before the battle of Waterloo, Teodoro Gaddi was the great 
 Italian tenor, the king of tenors, the emperor of tenors. He 
 was more largely paid than Farinelli, and more insolent than 
 Cuzzoni. They talked scandal about queens in connection with 
 Gaddi. Sovereigns sent semi-ambassadors to tempt him to 
 their courts. He sang, and the King's Theatre was in rap- 
 tures. He was the idol of routs, the admired of ladies in chip 
 hats and leg-of-mutton sleeves ; he spent weeks at the country- 
 seats of lords who wore hair-powder and Hessian boots, or 
 high-collared coats and Cossack trousers. He was praised in 
 the ' Courier/ the ' Day,' the ' News,' and the 'Belle Assernblee.' 
 There is no King's Theatre now. There are no routs, leg-of- 
 mutton sleeves, or chip hats left. No ' Couriers' to praise, no 
 ladies to admire,- no lords to invite. There is no Teodoro 
 Gaddi, nothing but old Gaddi, the shabby, broken-down, old 
 beggarman, who hangs about the music-shops and haunts pro- 
 fessional people's houses. If you ask Gaddi the cause of his de- 
 cadence, he lifts up his hands, and says piteously, ' Mafamille, 
 my dear, mafamitte;' but as he notoriously turned all his sons 
 out of doors, and broke his daughters' hearts, you can't exactly 
 believe that story. Gaddi's voice is quite broken and ruined 
 now ; he is immensely old, and pitiably feeble, but he is full 
 of galvanic vitality, and is as shameless a beggar as the Spanish 
 mendicant with the arquebus, that Gil Bias met. If you hap- 
 pen to know Gaddi, it is very probable that, descending your 
 stairs some morning, you will find him, cloak, umbrella, and 
 all, sitting somewhere on the bottom flight. * I have come,' 
 he says, ' I, Gaddi. I die of hunger. I have no charbons, 
 my dear ; give me twopence ;' or, reposing quietly in your 
 bed, you may find the curtains at the bottom thereof drawn 
 on one side, and be aware of Gaddi, and of his voice mum- 
 bling, 'Twopence, charbons, Gaddi. I knew your father, I 
 have supped with Georges Quatre; I, Gaddi.' It is singular 
 that though Gaddi is always complaining of hunger, he is 
 almost as continually eating a pie a large veal pie ; and as 
 he munches, he begs. Tis ten to one that half an hour after 
 you have relieved him, you will meet with a friend who will 
 tell you * old Gaddi called on me this morning, and asked for 
 twopence. He was eating a pie. He said that he was 
 starving, and had no coals, and that he knew my father.' 
 Gaddi has known everybody's father. 
 
 A quiet-looking gentleman with a sallow countenance, and 
 
THE MUSICAL WOULD. 279 
 
 bearing a roll of music in his hand, has entered the music 
 warehouse while we have been considering Gaddi. lie has a 
 profoundly fatigued, worn-out, ennuye expression pervading 
 his whole appearance. His lustreless black hair is listless, so 
 are his small hands, on one of which glisten diamonds of 
 price. His limp hat is negligently thrown rather than 
 posed on the back of his head. He dangles a listless glove, 
 and plays with a limp watch-chain ornamented with dully 
 valuable breloques ; his eyes are half closed, and he } 7 awns 
 wearily. His chief care seems to be for the butt-end of a 
 powerful cigar, which he has left, in deference to English 
 prejudices but evidently with much reluctance, on the railing 
 outside the shop. He casts a lingering look at this remnant 
 through the plate-glass windows, and twiddles his listless 
 fingers as though the beloved weed were yet between his 
 digits. Who may this be? Yv 7 ho but Polpetti, not the great 
 English, nor even only the great Italian, but the great Euro- 
 pean tenor ; the finest Edgardo in the world ; the unrivalled 
 Elviro ; the unapproached Otello ; the pride of the Scala and 
 the Eenice, the Pergola, and the Italiens ; the cynosure of 
 Berlin and Vienna, and St. Petersburg ; the decorated of 
 foreign orders ; the millionnaire ; the Gaddi of to-day. 
 
 So much glory (more than a conqueror's), so much gold 
 (more than a Hebrew banker's), has this listless person 
 earned by his delightful art. I am not about to say that he is 
 overpaid. I would walk ten miles fasting to be present at 
 one opera in which he performs. You cannot resist him. 
 You hang on his notes, and your heart keeps time with them. 
 And when he has finished you must needs clap your hands till 
 they be sore, and yell bravos till you be hoarse, for you can't 
 help it, 
 
 Polpetti will not go the way of Gaddi. He has bought a 
 fine estate in Italy, some say an island, some say a province, 
 whither in a few months he will retire to enjoy the ample 
 fortune he has amassed in strange lands from the banks of 
 the Neva to those of the Thames from the Po to the Potomac 
 from Liverpool to Lisbon. Twenty years since, and Gia- 
 cinto Polpetti was an olive -faced lad, running meanly clad 
 among the vines and olives and staring white houses, and 
 dusty lanes of an Italian county town. He had an uncle, per- 
 haps a snuffy old abbate, fond of garlic, and olives, and sour 
 wine, who wore a rusty soutane, and carried a sky-blue um- 
 brella, and could read nothing but his breviary, and not much 
 
280 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 of that. His uncle's cross old housekeeper may have taught 
 him to read, and at ten he may have been consigned to the 
 shop-board of a tailor, or the farm-house of a vine-grower, till 
 it was discovered that he had a voice and a beautiful voice 
 too which caused his promotion to a badly-washed surplice 
 and the choir of the church ; his vocal duties being varied by 
 swinging a censer and tinkling a bell, and making the various 
 genuflexions which the service of the mass demands. He 
 might have grown up, and gone back to the tailor or the vine- 
 grower, or have degenerated into a sacristan, a dirty monk, 
 with bare feet and a cowl, full of black bread and sausages, or 
 an abbate like his uncle, with a rusty soutane and a sky-blue 
 umbrella, but for a neighbouring magnifico, the Count di Nes- 
 suno-Denaro, who had no money, but considerable influence ; 
 who condescended to patronise him, and procured his admis- 
 sion into the Conservatoire of Milan. A weary time he had 
 of it there. A wearier still when singing for starvation wages 
 at the smaller provincial towns of Italy. A weariest when 
 he fell into the hands of a grasping speculator who ' starred ' 
 him at Paris, and Milan, and Venice, paying him niggardly, 
 and forcing him to work the rich mine of his youthful voice 
 as though the ore would never fail. But he emancipated 
 himself at last, and went to work in earnest for himself. The 
 last ten years have been one long triumph, and Jupiter 
 Success has found in him no unwilling Danae. He will retire 
 with his millions (of francs) to his own village in the sunny 
 South, among the olives, and vines, and staring white houses. 
 He will make his uncle the abbate (who lives still) as rich as 
 an English bishop, and build a mausoleum over the grave of 
 the cross old housekeeper, and lead a jovial, simple-minded, 
 happy life among his old kindred and friends : now exhibiting 
 the diamond cross that the Czar of Eussia gave him, and now 
 the golden snuff-box presented to him by the Kaiser of Austria. 
 Do not let us be too hard upon the ' confounded foreigners ' 
 who come here to sell their crotchets and quavers for as much 
 gold as they will fetch. Only consider how many million 
 pounds sterling a year we make by spinning shirts and weld- 
 ing iron for the confounded foreigners ; how many millions of 
 golden pennies our travelling countrymen turn by cutting 
 canals, and making railroads, steamers, suspension -bridges, in 
 lands where we ourselves are but ' confounded foreigners.' 
 
 If I have dwelt somewhat too lengthily and discursively 
 upon the male illustrations of the musical world, I beg that you 
 
THE MUSICAL WORLD. 281 
 
 will not suppose that the fairer denizens of that harmonious 
 sphere neglect to visit Messrs. Octave and Piccolo's shop. 
 Prime Donne abound, even more than Primj Uomini. Eveiy 
 season produces a score of ladies, Signoras, Madames, Made- 
 moiselles, and Fraus, who are to do great things : who come 
 out and go in with great rapidity. Yonder is Madame Digi- 
 talis. She sings superbly ; but she is fifty, and fat, and ugly. 
 'Bah!' yawn the habitues. 'The Digitalis is passed. She is 
 rococo. Give us something new.' Whereupon starts up 
 Mademoiselle Crimea Okolska from Tartary (said to be a run- 
 away serf of the Czar, and to have been thrice knouted for 
 refusing to sing duets with the Grand Duke Constantine) the 
 new soprano. But Mademoiselle Crimea (she with the purple 
 velvet mantle and primrose bonnet bantering Polpetti in the 
 corner), screams, and sings sharp, and pronounces Italian 
 execrably; and the habitues declare that she won't do, and 
 that she is nothing after all but the same Miss Crirnmins of 
 the Eoyal Academy, who failed in Adelgisa six years ago, and 
 has been abroad to improve and denationalise her name. The 
 rage among the ladies who can sing for being Prime Donne 
 is greater than that among attorneys' clerks for playing Ham- 
 let. Octave and Piccolo are besieged at the commencement 
 of every season by cohorts of foreign ladies, all with the 
 highest recommendations, all of whom have been mentioned 
 in the most enthusiastic terms by M. Berlioz, M. Fetis, and 
 the other great musical oracles of the continent, and all of 
 whom desire ardently to sing at the Philharmonic or before 
 her Majesty. The manager of the opera plays off half a dozen 
 spurious Prime Donne during the months of March and April, 
 keeping the trumps for the height of the season. And not 
 only to the continent is this prima donna rage confined. Staid 
 and decorous English parents hearing their daughter singing 
 ' Wappingold Stairs, 'prettily, send her forthwith to the Eoyal 
 Academy of Music. She comes back and sings florid Italian 
 scenas. ' Send her to Italy,' cry with one voice her relations 
 and friends. To Italy she goes, and from Italy she returns, 
 and comes out at the opera, or at one of the fashionable morn- 
 ing concerts. She sings something with a great deal of orna- 
 ment, but in a very small voice : you may hear the rustling 
 of the music-paper, as she turns the leaves, with far more dis- 
 tinctness than her song. She goes in again, after this coming 
 out, and is heard of next year at the Snagglesgrade Me- 
 chanics' Institution ; and soon afterwards she sensibly mar- 
 
282 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 ries Mr. Solder, the ironmonger, and gives up singing 
 altogether. 
 
 Priina donna upon priina donna never ending, still begin- 
 ning, none of them can oust from their thrones the four or 
 five blue ribbons of melody, who go on from year to year, still 
 electrifying, still enchanting, still amazing us : none of them 
 can touch the Queen : the Semiramis of Song : whose voice 
 no more declines than her beauty, whose beauty than her 
 grace, whose grace than her deep pathos, and soulful declama- 
 tion and glorious delivery. Ah, lovers of music, your aviaries 
 may be full of nightingales and swans, English and foreign, 
 black, white, and pied ; but, believe me, the woods will be 
 voiceless for long, long after the Queen of Song shall have 
 abdicated her throne and loosened the silver cords of her harp 
 of glory. 
 
 For all, however, little Miss Larke, the fair-haired English 
 prima donna, holds her own manfully. Her name is Larke, 
 and she sings like one ; and her voice is as pure as her fame. 
 This brave little woman has run the gauntlet through all the 
 brakes and thickets, and jungles and deserts, where ' devour- 
 ing tygers lie/ of the musical world. Lowliness was her 
 young ambition's ladder, and now that she has attained the 
 topmost round, she does not turn her back on the ladder, 
 
 ' Scorning the base degrees 
 By which she did ascend. So Csssar did ' 
 
 But so does not Miss Larke. She is honourably proud of the 
 position she has gained by her own merits and good conduct ; 
 but she sings with as much equanimity before royalty as she 
 was wont to do :at the Snagglesgrade Institution, and has ever 
 a helping hand for those beneath her who are struggling and 
 weak. There is my darling little Larke by the grand piano- 
 forte, blooming in pink muslin, with a neat morocco music- 
 case in her hand. Mr. Piccolo has a whole list of engage- 
 ments, metropolitan and provincial, for her ; from aristocratic 
 soirees to morning concerts ; and she has a list at home of en- 
 gagements she has herself received, which she must consult 
 before she can accept more. Go on and prosper, little Larke. 
 May your sweet voice last a thousand years ! 
 
 But the crowd thins in Messrs. Octave and Piccolo's shop ; 
 the carriages drive away to the park; the professionals go 
 home to dinner or to dress for- evening concerts ; and as I 
 saunter away, -and listen to the strains of a German band in 
 Beak Street, mingling with the jarring minstrelsy of some 
 
MUSIC IN PAVING-STONES. 283 
 
 Ethiopiana Serenaders in Golden Square, I am obliged to 
 confess that the cursory view I have taken of the -musical 
 world, is but an opuscular one after all that I have but 
 described a worldling having a dozen worlds within it. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 mrsic IN PAVING-STONES. 
 
 IN the Stones of Venice their Sea Stories and Foundations 
 Mr. Buskin could find elaborate theories ; could weave from 
 them fantastic tissues of Art- thought ; could raise upon them 
 cunning superstructures of argument, illustration, dogmatism, 
 and beautiful description. Let me try, if, striking the paving- 
 stones with my iron heel, I cannot elicit some music from 
 them. Let the stones of Begent Street, London, be my Bock 
 Harmonicon, and let me essay to play upon them some few 
 bars more of the musical tune. 
 
 Begent Street is the only boulevard of which London can 
 boast ; and though the eight-storied houses, the shady trees, 
 the gay cafes, the peripatetic journal-mongers, the bustling 
 stalls, the glittering passages, the broad asphalte pavement, 
 which give so pleasant and lively an aspect to that magnificent 
 promenade which extends from the Madeleine, in Paris, to the 
 Bastille though these are wanting, there is sufficient crowd, 
 and bustle, and gaiety, in our Begent Street, sufficient wealth 
 and architectural beauty, to enable it, if not to vie with, at 
 least to compensate a foreigner for his temporary exile from 
 his beloved Boulevard des Italiens. 
 
 Between three and six o'clock every afternoon, celebrities 
 jostle you at every step you take in Begent Street. The 
 celebrities of wealth, nobility, and the mode, do not disdain 
 to descend from their carriages, and tread the flags like 
 ordinary mortals. Science, Literature, and Law, walk arm- 
 in-arm three abreast. Dethroned kings, expatriated generals, 
 proscribed republicans, meet on a neutral ground of politics, 
 and paving-stones. It is pre-eminently in a crowded street 
 that you see that equality which will assert itself at times 
 etiquette, William the Conqueror, and Burke's Beerage and 
 Baronetage, notwithstanding. The Queen of Spain has legs 
 in Begent Street, and uses them. The Duke of Pampotter 
 cannot usurp a larger share of the pavement than the plebeian 
 in a velveteen shooting-jacket who sells lap-dogs. Every 
 
284 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 gent in a Joinville tie, irreproachable boots, and a successful 
 moustache, can be for the nonce the shepherd Paris, and ad- 
 judge the golden apple to the most beautiful bonnet, and the 
 most beautiful face, whether their possessor be a fashionable 
 marchioness or a fashionable milliner. 
 
 Those good friends of ours, the foreigners, who need only 
 to know and visit England to take kindly to its streets, 
 people, viands, liquors, and import of bullion, have taken at 
 least nine points of the law in Regent Street, these twenty 
 years agone. It is refreshing to see these worthy fellows in 
 the most eccentric hats, the wildest pantaloons, the craziest 
 extravagancies of braiding, the most luxuriant beards ; glisten- 
 ing with pomatum, electro-plated jewellery, and boot- varnish ; 
 swelling down Eegent Street, making the air redolent with 
 foreign perfumes and the smoke of foreign cigars ; their wives 
 and daughters giving viva voce lessons in the art of wearing 
 a bonnet, holding up a dress, and scragging the hair off the 
 temples, a V Imperatrice, and all gazing approvingly at the 
 numerous indications which Regent Street presents, of England 
 being the place for foreigners after all, and Regent Street the 
 locality, par excellence, for foreigners to open brilliant shops 
 for the sale of perfumes, gloves, cambric pocket-handkerchiefs, 
 Vanille chocolate, ormolu clocks, Strasburg pies, St. JuJien 
 claret, and patent leather boots. 
 
 Music, above all, hath charms in Regent Street; and its 
 paving-stones unceasingly echo beneath the feet of the denizens 
 of the musical world. Music-masters aad mistresses hurry to 
 and fro from their lessons ; singers to concerts or into Messrs. 
 Octave and Piccolo's music-warehouse; and a considerable 
 number of the stars of the musical hemisphere, walk in this 
 harmonious boulevard, merely to see and to be seen. It is as 
 incumbent on a musical notoriety, on his return from the con- 
 tinent, or the provinces, on the eve or the morrow of a 
 success, to show himself in Regent Street, as for a betting- 
 man to clink his boot-heels upon the nobbly stones of Messrs. 
 Tattersall's yard. Musical reputations have been won and 
 lost in Regent Street ; and the reigning prima donna dares not 
 despise the opinions of its paving-stones. 
 
 What gleams in the distance so snow-white, what is found 
 to be on nearer inspection so elaborately embroidered, so 
 faultlessly plaited, .so free from crease or wrinkle ? What 
 but the shirt of the great German basso ; and who can the 
 great basso be but Bompazek ? 
 
MUSIC IN PAVING-STONES. 285 
 
 No braces disturb the equanimity of that unrivalled shirt, 
 no waistband visits its snowy expanse. In deference to 
 established prejudices, Bompazek wears a coat a coat, mul- 
 berry in colour, lined with watered silk, and marvellously 
 tagged and braided ; but were he entirely a free agent we 
 have no doubt that the sleeves and wristbands, the seams, 
 gussets, and bands, of that shirt of shirts would be made fully 
 manifest to Regent Street. He must grieve that he is not a 
 AVhiteboy and cannot wear his shirt over his clothes ; for the 
 shirt is Bompazek, and Bompazek is the shirt. If ever he 
 had a palace with stained glass windows, he might paraphrase 
 the Cardinal of York's proud motto, and write up, Ego et 
 indusium meum I and my shirt. There is much virtue in a 
 clean shirt a good, fine, well-got-up shirt : showing plenty 
 of collar, front, and wristbands. Many a man has been 
 indebted to his washerwoman, not only in the amount of her 
 little bill, but for subsequent fame and fortune. They say that 
 Tom Gills, who was renowned for wearing the finest collars 
 in Europe, and positively devoted a considerable portion of his 
 time to cutting out models of shirt-collars in pasteboard for the 
 guidance of his registered shirt-maker, obtained his colonial 
 appointment mainly through his collars. I wish myself 
 that colonial appointments were obtained from the virtuous 
 government of this enlightened country for no worse reasons. 
 Should we get on much worse than we do, I wonder, if we 
 chose our governments themselves for their collars ? 
 
 I have said that Bompazek wears not braces. In lieu 
 thereof he is girt with an embroidered belt, a belt thickly 
 sown with rich beads the gift and work, perchance, of some 
 fair Fraulein in Germany, the lady of his love, whom, like 
 the Standard Bearer, he dare not name. Bompazek has a beard 
 that the Emperor Julian, the apostate, he who boasted of his 
 barba longa et populata, would have been proud of. His 
 mouth is of an affable, good-humoured cut ; his blue eye 
 suggests not violence, pride, ambition, but is suggestively 
 eloquent of mild beer and milder pipes. In both does Bom- 
 pazek mildly delight- 
 Yes. This big, barbated, spicated basso, with the beard of 
 a sapeur, the stature of a Colossus, the strength of a Tauriclor, 
 the lungs of a Stentor, is the mildest, meekest, most placable, 
 soft-hearted creature that you can imagine. He is a great 
 friend of little children ; arid though they are frightened at 
 first at his tremendous bass voice, they soon venture to climb 
 
286 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 on liis knees, and play with the breloques of his watch-chain, 
 and make use of his beard for prehensile purposes, and listen 
 to the little lieds he sings them in the biggest voice that ever 
 you heard. He is the victim, milch cow, and bete de 
 souffmme of herds of hungry, ragged, disreputable foreigners, 
 who come to him with torn and greasy passports, and letters 
 of introduction from people he never heard of; who drink 
 his beer, smoke his pipes, eat his suet-puddings, sleep in his 
 drawing-room, borrow his money, wear even his sacred shirts, 
 and call him Dummerkopf for his pains. He is always 
 giving or lending money, singing for nothing, subscribing to 
 charities. He has always some baufre eggzile whose rent he 
 pays, and whose lit is always being taken from under him and 
 redeemed by Bompazek. 
 
 It is reported that Bompazek cannot go back to the Grand 
 Duchy of Schloss-Schinkenstein, his native place, as he was 
 serious implicated in the revolutionary movement of '48 ; and 
 the Grand Duke is furious against him. I cannot for the Kfe 
 of me conceive to what greater extent this big, harmless man 
 could have compromised himself in a political sense than by 
 drinking beer out of a conspirator's glass, or giving a pipe- 
 light to a democrat. Perhaps his beard went against him. It 
 is decidedly the most revolutionary thing about him. 
 
 Bompazek lodges in Great Blenheim Street, where he occu- 
 pies the first-floor, and has irretrievably ruined four carpets 
 with expectorations. His drawing-room and bed-room are 
 one large pipe. The whitewashed ceiling is smoked to a 
 golden colour, the walls are covered with the marks left by 
 lucifer-matches rubbed against them for ignition ; tobacco-ash 
 lurks in the chairs, the keys of the pianoforte, the curtains, 
 and the music-books. The smell of tobacco is overpowering, 
 but not offensive; it has no time to grow stale fresh pipes 
 being continually lighted. When Bompazek says, ' Gom and 
 bipe vid me dis evedig,' you find a table covered with pipes 
 of every imaginable form and size, a bottle of hollands, a huge 
 porcelain jar of tobacco, and an armoury of pewter pots. Six 
 or seven Germans, including Bompazek, range themselves 
 round the fire-place, each man wrapped in a dry blanket of 
 smoke, and gravely spit the fire out ; the loudest sound that 
 is heard being the coughing of Mrs. Pickwinkle, the landlady, 
 and her servant 'Melia in the kitchen below. 
 
 Mrs. Pickwinkle does not object to the smoke or the ex- 
 pectoration. Mr. Bompazek is so good a lodger, and pays so 
 
MUSIC IN PAVING-STONES. 287 
 
 liberally and regularly, says she. But by one of those inex- 
 plicable caprices, peculiar to the feminine organisation, she 
 has taken violent exception to Bompazek's suet-puddings. 
 He is inordinately fond of those indigestible delicacies. So 
 are his friends. He eats them for breakfast, luncheon, dinner, 
 supper, for Bompazek, as befits a true child of Fatherland, is 
 a four-meals-a-day man. So are his friends, the silent men 
 who help to spit the fire out. Mr. Pickwinkle has been on 
 the point several times of giving him warning on this irrita- 
 ting account. She leads 'Melia a dreadful life about the 
 puddings. She explodes on the subject in back-kitchens and 
 areas, on staircases and landings, to friends and neighbours. 
 I called on Bompazek once. He was out, but was expected 
 to return to dinner almost immediately ; Mrs. Pickwinkle was 
 in a fury on the pudding grievance. She took me into his 
 sitting-room, where, on. a table garnished with a cloth burnt 
 in several places by hot tobacco-ash, I found a stew and seven 
 puddings. ' There,' she cried, ' seven mortal puddings for a 
 party as calls himself a Christian ! Now, Mr. Penn, can flesh 
 and blood stand that?' Landladies have curious likings and 
 antipathies. One begged me to suit myself elsewhere, once, 
 because I objected to having four pounds of bacon at a time, 
 and didn't like it streaky. She remarked that she had let 
 lodgings for five -and -twenty year, and wished to know if I 
 considered myself a gentleman. 1 know of a landlady who 
 gave her lodger warning not because he was backward with 
 his rent, nor for keeping late hours, or smoking, or carrying 
 on but because he wore such large buttons. She had bore 
 with it as long as she could, she said, but she was certain 
 them buttons could be no good. 
 
 As Bompazek comes sailing majestically down Eegent 
 Street, you may remark that there hangs upon his arm, talking 
 very loudly and vivaciously, and looking round with a com- 
 placently defiant air, as if to say ' This is Bompazek, the great 
 basso, and I am his friend,' a very little man in a tremen- 
 dously tall hat, which seems perpetually to be on the point of 
 overbalancing him. This is little Saint Sheddle, who, as I 
 have remarked in a former paper, knows, and is intimate with, 
 everybody in the musical world. Saint Sheddle is one of the 
 fifty thousand living enigmas who walk and talk, and wear 
 good hats and. boots, without any ostensible means of ex- 
 istence. Nobody knows how Saint Sheddle lives. He was 
 known as Captain Saint Sheddle at Brighton; as Dr. Saint 
 
288 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 Sheddle at Bath ; and I saw his name myself in the ' Vienna 
 Fremden Blatt,' as Le Cointe de Saint Sheddle, rentier from 
 London. I should not be surprised to hear of him, some of 
 these days, as the Venerable Archdeacon Saint Sheddle in 
 Torquay, or as Shedalli Pasha at Erzroum. 
 
 Meanwhile, Saint Sheddle goes everywhere, and puts his 
 legs under innumerable mahoganies. He walks out in the 
 park with Madame Perigord's children. He fetched home 
 Poskoggi's niece from school in the Avenue Marigny in Paris. 
 He dines with Octave and Piccolo when they entertain the 
 musical stars at Greenwich or Eichmond ; he is at all Papa- 
 daggi's grand Soirees; he is admitted to Lady Tremoloso's 
 musical evenings ; stays whole weeks at her palatial country 
 seat, Chromatic Park, and went to Vienna with the well- 
 known amateur and friend of artists, Sir Peddler Fugue. He 
 is a member of the Jolly Scrapers' Club, a reunion of the 
 members of the principal orchestras, held at the Bass-viol, 
 Vinegar Yard ; it is even reported that he is employed to 
 pawn Madame Garbanati's jewellery when that lady, as it 
 frequently happens, is in difficulties ; and that he writes all 
 Tifferari's letters. It is certain that he has admission to all 
 the green-rooms, tickets for all the concerts, and is intimate 
 with the mysterious Panslavisco. But how does the man 
 live ? What hatter, what bootmaker, what tailor, supplied the 
 habiliments ? Where does the massy gold chain come from ? 
 Is Saint Sheddle something in the wine trade, or the coal 
 trade ? Does he deal in pictures, or sell snuff on commission ? 
 
 The only business operation in which Saint Sheddle was 
 ever positively known to be engaged was when he took the 
 Saint Sepulchre's theatre for the performance of Burmese 
 operas. We all remember how many nights his season lasted, 
 who didn't get their salaries, and what a melancholy failure 
 the whole speculation was. Saint Sheddle ran to Portugal 
 Street as if he had been running a race. Somehow he didn't 
 'go through the court;' the discovery of his multifarious 
 addresses might perhaps have been fatal to him ; but he has 
 been going through ever since. If you speak about debts or 
 difficulties to Saint Sheddle, he says, ' Debts ! pooh, my boy ! 
 Look at me. Five judgments out against me. What's that ? 
 Got my protection in my pocket.' And he shows it you. 
 
 The little man is very popular in the musical world. 
 He negotiates engagements, arranges with music-sellers for 
 the publication of sentimental ballads by the Honourable 
 
MUSIC IN PAVING-STONES. 289 
 
 Miss A , and polkas by captains in the Life Guards ; is 
 
 the general peacemaker, mediator, and go-between of the 
 profession. When Poskoggi, the composer, maddened by the 
 unfounded jealousy of madame his spouse, emptied a plate of 
 macaroni upon the piano, and fled his home and household 
 gods for ever, Saint Sheddle interposed, sought out the 
 unhappy husband at the hotel in Lisle Street, Leicester 
 Square, where he had taken refuge, and was playing billiards 
 with the despair of Napoleon after Waterloo, and reconciled 
 Madame Poskoggi to her ' horsepond ' as she called her hus- 
 band. When Mademoiselle Shaddabacco broke her engage- 
 ment with the management of the Italian Opera, and retired 
 to Dieppe in the sulks, ostensibly because Packerlickey, the 
 manager, refused to pay for the expense of a foot-page to 
 attend to her poodles, but really because Mademoiselle 
 Baracouta, that upstart parvenue that prima donna of yester- 
 day had created a furore in Nabucodonosore ; it was Saint 
 Sheddle who started off to Newhaven by the express-train, 
 crossed the briny ocean, cleared away all difficulties, and 
 brought the Shaddabacco back in triumph. His evidence on 
 the great trial of Packerlickey versus Guffler, on the disputed 
 question of the copyright in the music of the ballet ' Les mille 
 et une Jambes/ was of the greatest value. He has just taken 
 the affairs of Madame Garbanati (who has been living too 
 fast) in hand. When malicious people began to whisper ugly 
 things about Miss Linnet in connection with Captain de 
 Prance of the Harpooners; who but Saint Sheddle went 
 about, defending the young lady everywhere ? Who but he 
 vowed he was present when Miss Linnet boxed the Captain's 
 ears, and when old Linnet, her papa (a worthy man, once a 
 schoolmaster, but too fond of cold rum and water), kicked the 
 captain down stairs ? " Who but he declared, striking a 
 seraphine in Octave's shop, with virtuous vehemence, that he, 
 Saint Sheddle, would call out and fight any man who dared 
 to whisper a syllable against the maligned young lady ? 
 
 Adolphus Butterbrod, Ph. Dr., of Schwindelburg, who has 
 just passed Bompazek with so low a bow, although the basso 
 scarcely acknowledged it, does not like Saint Sheddle : he 
 says he is ' an indriguand.' In days gone by, Butterbrod 
 was confidential friend and agent to Bompazek, and had free 
 right of warren over his pipes, his purse, his puddings, and 
 his shirts; he arranged all the basso's engagements, and 
 haughtily told concert-givers that he had 4 roged ' or raised 
 
 u 
 
290 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 Ms terms. But lie was detected in flagrant delict of conspiring 
 with Tonner von Heidelburg, Bompazek's enemy and rival ; 
 and cotemporary history records that the usually mild 
 Bompazek (the rage of a sheep is terrible) beat the traitor 
 violently with an umbrella, and banished him from the 
 domains of Pickwinkle for ever. Saint Sheddle is Fidus 
 Achates to the big basso now, and the Ph. Dr. would like to 
 do him a good turn if he could. 
 
 Place aux Dames I Koom for the stately lady in black 
 velvet, who meanders gracefully along the pavement. Two 
 smaller cygnets, in sea-green watered-silk and laced trousers, 
 accompany the parent bird. This is Madame Perigord, the 
 renowned contralto, and her youthful daughters. Lesbia 
 Perigord has a beaming eye, a robe of silk velvet, long black 
 ringlets, a chain of gold, a chatelaine, diamond rings, pearly 
 teeth, faultless hands and feet, in little gloves and boots as 
 faultless. Lesbia has a voice of liquid honey and passionate 
 fire, poising itself for a moment on her ruby lips, and flying 
 straightway into her hearers' hearts. Lesbia is a superb 
 creature ; but, oh ! I will content myself with Camberwell 
 and my Norah Creina my gentle, simple Norah Creina, who 
 cannot sing contralto, but can make Irish stew. For Lesbia 
 has a temper. Let me whisper it ; a deuce of a temper. Let 
 me write it on paper and show it to you privately ; a devil of 
 a temper ! I would rather not be Lesbia's sparrow, if I did 
 not think my neck in want of wringing. I would rather not 
 be one of Lesbia's sea-green children, if I preferred the law of 
 kindness to the law of kicks and cuffs. I would rather not be 
 Lesbia's maid, if I valued peace of mind or body; and I 
 would decidedly not be Lesbia's husband upon any considera- 
 tion whatever. 
 
 Madame Perigord was very nearly the death of Piccolo. 
 Piccolo suffered much from rheumatism, and happening casually 
 to mention the matter to the Perigord, she immediately in- 
 sisted on sending to Paris to her doctor, one Mercantori, for a 
 certain marvellous embrocation, which would cure Piccolo 
 instantaneously. It was no use demurring to Mercan tori's 
 preparation. It had cured the Perigord when she was like that 
 (pointing to a sideboard as an emblem of immobility), and ho 
 must take it. Besides, Piccolo is so accustomed to do what he is 
 asked, that had Madame Perigord proposed sending for a white 
 elephant from Siam, and boiling it up into broth as a remedy 
 for rheumatism, it is not improbable that he would have 
 
MUSIC IN PAVING-STONES. 201 
 
 assented to the proposition. So, the famous embrocation (for 
 which Piccolo was to be charged cost price) was sent for from 
 Paris. In the course of the week a deal case of considerable 
 size, addressed to Lord Piccolo, arrived in London at the 
 music-seller's residence, and he was gratified by having to 
 pay one pound nine and sevenpence sterling for carriage. The 
 case, being opened, was found to contain sundry bottles of 
 a dark liquid resembling treacle-beer, several packages of 
 mysterious-looking blue-paper tubes, closely approximating in 
 appearance to the fireworks manufactured by the Chevalier 
 Mortram, and a large pot of pomatum. One of the bottles 
 being opened, emitted such a deadly and charnel-like odour 
 that Mrs. Piccolo, who is rather a strong-minded woman, 
 immediately condemned the whole paraphernalia as rubbish, 
 and sentenced it to perpetual penal servitude in the dusthole : 
 which sentence was as speedily put into execution, but not 
 before a cunning document was found coiled up among the 
 supposititious fireworks. This turned out to be a facture, or 
 invoice, in which Lord Piccolo, of London, was debited to 
 Yicesimo Mercantori, Pharmacien-Droguiste, in the sum of 
 three hundred francs, otherwise, twelve pounds sterling, for 
 goods by him supplied. Mrs. Piccolo went into hysterics. 
 Piccolo was moved to call Doctor Mercantori injurious names ; 
 but, as that learned pharmacien and druggist was some 
 hundreds of miles away, the reproaches cannot have done him 
 much harm. The worst was yet to come. Piccolo was rash 
 enough to remonstrate with the Perigord. Miserable man ! 
 The Perigord incontinently proceeded to demolish him. She 
 abused him in French she abused him in Italian she abused 
 him in English. She wrote him letters in all sorts of languages. 
 She stamped in his music-warehouse and shook the dust from 
 off her feet on the threshold. She sent Girolamo Bastogg], 
 Avocato of Turin, to him, who spoke of la giustizia, and 
 snuffed horribly. She even sent her mother (the Perigord had 
 a mother at that time), a dreadful old female with a red cotton 
 pocket -handkerchief tied round her head, and outrageously 
 snuffy. The old lady's embassy was not fertile in conversa- 
 tion, but it was dreadfully contemptuous. After expressing 
 her opinion that England was a ' fichu pays,' she looked round 
 upon the assembled Piccolo family, said, ' Vous etes toutes des 
 pouah I ' snapped her fingers, expectorated, and vanished. 
 The unhappy Piccolo would only have been too happy to pay 
 the disputed twelve pounds, but Mercantori's demands all 
 
292 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 merged into the grievous wrong that had been done Madame 
 Perigord. She had been touched in her honour, her loyalty, 
 her good faith. She spoke of Piccolo as an infdme, a man of 
 nothing, a music-master, a gredin. She mocked herself of him. 
 
 There is a domestic animal attached to the Perigord's es- 
 tablishment in the capacity of husband : a poor, weak-eyed, 
 weak-minded man, in a long brown coat, who leads a sorry 
 life. He is supposed to have been, in early life, a dancing- 
 master in France ; and Madame married him (it can scarcely 
 be said that he married her) under the impression that he had 
 ' rentes, or income which he had not. He fetches the beer ; 
 he transposes Madame Perigord's music : he folds circulars and 
 seals tickets when she gives a concert. The maid patronises 
 him, and his children do not exactly know what to make 
 of him. They call him c ce drole de papa. 9 His principal 
 consolation is in the society of a very large hairy dog, called 
 Coco, over which he maintains unbending authority, teaching 
 him the manual exercise with much sternness. The satirical 
 say that Madame Perigord's husband dines in the kitchen, 
 and varnishes his wife's boots when she plays male parts. 
 When she goes to Paris, it is reported that she puts him out 
 to board and lodge, at a cookshop in the Marais ; leaving 
 him behind while she visits Brussels or the Ehine with her 
 daughters. It is certain that she made a long operatic tour in 
 the United States, leaving her husband in London, and that, 
 as she forgot to remit him any money, the unhappy man was 
 reduced to great straits. 
 
 Here come a face and a pair of legs I know very well. 
 How do you, Golopin ? Golopin is the first flautist of the 
 day. He is almost a dwarf. He is within a hair's breadth of 
 being humpbacked. He has a very old, large, white head, 
 under which is a little, old, tanned, yellow face. He plays 
 the flute admirably, but in private life he squeaks and 
 scratches himself. Golopin's chiefest reminiscence, greatest 
 glory, most favourite topic of conversation, is the fact that 
 he was once kicked by the Emperor Napoleon. ' In the year 
 nine,' he says, ' I find myself called to play of my instrument 
 at one of the musical entertainments give by the Emperor and 
 King at the Tuileries. Pending the evening, feeling myself 
 attained by an ardent thirst, I retire myself into the saloon at 
 refreshments prepared for the artists. In train to help myself 
 from the buffet, I perceive myself that the ribbon of my shoe 
 had become loose. It was justly then the fashion to wear the 
 
MUSIC IN PAVING-STONES. 293 
 
 cidotte courte of white kerseymere, with silk stockings. I 
 stoop myself down then to adjust my shoe-string, having my 
 back to the door, when I hear itself rolled upon the hinges 
 with a movement of authority. Aussitot I receive a violent 
 kick in the kerseymeres. I recognised the coup du maitre 
 the master kick. Yes ; it was well him, the victor of Auster- 
 litz and Marengo, the crowned of the Pope, the Emperor. I 
 raise myself; I salute ; I make the reverence ; I say, " Sire !" 
 "Ah, M. Golopin," cries the hero, " I demand pardon of you. 
 I took you for a caniche a white poodle dog." I have those 
 kerseymeres still, my friend !' 
 
 Golopin is a worthy little creature, but is very irascible. 
 He boasts of unnumbered persons he has killed in single 
 combat abroad, and specially of a maitre d'armes whom he 
 vanquished with the broadsword. He has great faith in his 
 flute, and generally carries it about with him. At Casserole's 
 restaurant in the Haymarket, one evening, having a violent 
 dispute with Klitzer, the cornet-a-pistonist, who had bantered 
 him into a state of frenzy, he positively struck that big 
 instrumentalist in the face, though he had to jump at least a 
 foot in the air to do so. He dismissed him with these mag- 
 niloquent words, ' Miserable ! You have neither the courage 
 of a bug nor the integrity of a lobster. Had I my instrument 
 with me I would chastise you.' People have been rather 
 chary of bantering Golopin since then. That bounteous, 
 kindly, consistent mother Nature of ours, whom we all abuse, 
 and yet should be so grateful to, scarcely ever fashions a 
 little deformed man but she implants in him a most valorous 
 stomach, a high disdain and sense of injured merit, a noble 
 pugnacity and irascibility that make it dangerous to ridicule 
 and insult him. 
 
 Who is this, that comes riding not on a whirlwind like 
 Mr. Addison's angel (in a Eamilies wig) to direct the storm, 
 but on a peacefully ambling bay pony ? It is the well-known 
 amateur and ami des artistes, Sir Peddler Fugue. See ; he 
 has just stopped his little nag, and bends over the saddle to 
 talk to Trump, the composer. Sir Peddler Fugue is one of 
 a class not peculiar to the musical world, but common to all 
 the artistic professions. There is your fine-art amateur, who 
 pokes about studios, and advises you to kill that light, and 
 scumble that background, and glaze down that little finger ; 
 who has just come from seeing Turpey's grand figure-piece 
 for next year's Exhibition; who knows why the hanging 
 
294 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 committee treated Maul so scurvily, and how much. Pallet- 
 knife is to have for his commission from Slubber, the great 
 Manchester cotton-spinner; and when Chizzle the sculptor 
 will come back from Eome. There is your dramatic amateur, 
 who has the entree to all the green-rooms ; who took Madame 
 Spinosetti to Nice ; paid for little Katty Tentoe's choregraphic 
 education at the Conservatoire ; lent Grogham his Justice 
 Woodcock wig ; lost a few hundreds in the Capsicum Street 
 Theatre (under Pepper's management) ; wrote a very bad 
 farce that was once played somewhere on a benefit night ; and 
 behaved like a father to Miss Haresfoot. There is your 
 literary amateur, who was so good as to read over the proofs 
 of Professor de Eoots's bulky work upon the Integral Calculus 
 (a service handsomely acknowledged by De Koots in his 
 Preface) ; who found the money for the ' Comic Economist,' a 
 humorous illustrated publication, with contributions by the 
 first authors and artists of the day, which had an average 
 circulation of twelve weekly, and lived five weeks ; who 
 edited the letters and remains of Twopenny the poet (poor 
 fellow ! few remains had he to leave save tavern scores, pawn- 
 brokers' duplicates, and unpaid washing bills) ; and who is a 
 member of the Goosequill Club, held at the Homer's Head, 
 Grub Street. There is your musical amateur, the gentleman 
 who ogles Euterpe through his eye-glass ; goes to all the 
 concerts ; hangs about all the music-warehouses ; and is the 
 general friend, socius, and adviser of the artists. They are 
 worthy fellows, mostly, these art amateurs, having little in 
 common with the big-wigged patrons of old, who were wont 
 to be addressed somewhat in this poetic strain : 
 
 Still shall my Muse the nohle Mugmore sing, 
 Friend of the arts and couns'llor of his king, 
 
 and who paid for servile praise with a purse full of gold 
 pieces, just as a provision-merchant would buy a tub of 
 far wholesomer Dorset butter. They do not resemble the 
 ridiculous dilettanti and cognoscenti of the last century, who 
 meddled with artists' private affairs, and wrote them patron- 
 izing letters of advice, and suggested an alteration in a stanza, 
 which spoilt it, and then left their protege's to starve. Thank 
 heaven, Art wants no such patrons now ! The ami des artistes 
 of .whom Sir Peddler Fugue is a type, likes and frequents 
 artistic society for its own sake. 
 
MUSIC IN PAVING-STONES. 295 
 
 Sir Peddler Fugue, Bart., is very long and lean ; and, but 
 for the excellent condition and grooming of his horse, and 
 that ho himself is dressed as a quiet English gentleman, 
 instead of a suit of rusty armour, he would bear no inconsider- 
 able resemblance to that deathless knight of La Mancha who 
 "had a rueful countenance. If, again, it be Quixotic to be 
 good, and brave, and generous, yet withal a little eccentric, 
 somewhat pedantic, and occasionally (when his exquisite 
 taste and finished appreciation of Art get the better of him) a 
 bit of a bore, Sir Peddler Fugue is decidedly of the same 
 mental mould as Cervantes' hero. Sir Peddler has a white 
 moustache, grizzled hair, a chin tuft, and wears such spotless 
 buckskin gloves, such lustrous boots, and has so noble and 
 erect a carriage, that he has several times been mistaken, both 
 at home and abroad, for the sovereign of a German principality. 
 He is a bachelor, and lives in chambers in the Albany, where 
 his sitting-room is hung round with M. Baugniet's lithographs 
 of celebrated musicians, and, I verity believe, with a speci- 
 men of every musical instrument, ancient and modern, under 
 the sun : from David's harp to Mr. Distin's sax-horns : from 
 the lyre that Bruce brought from Abyssinia, to Straduarius's 
 fiddles and Case's concertinas. The baronet plays a little on 
 most of these instruments ; but he chiefly affects a brown old 
 violoncello, with which, in the stillness of the night season, 
 he holds grim and mysterious conferences : the instrument 
 grumbling and groaning then, sotto voce, as if it were the 
 repository of secrets which none might hear but he. Far in 
 the recesses, moreover, of a gloomy street in the undiscovered 
 countries lying between Baker Street and the Edgeware Koad, 
 there is a long, low, green-papered room, not unlike the inside 
 of a fiddle-case. Thither, twice a week, during certain 
 appointed months in the year, Sir Peddler Fugue repairs, 
 preceded by his man-servant, carrying the brown old violon- 
 cello. There he meets a few other amateurs and professionals, 
 reverent men with bald heads and spectacles : Viscount Catte- 
 gat (who elevated Miss Bowyer, the soprano, to the peerage, 
 like a nobleman as he was) ; Francis Tuberose, M.P. (setat. 80), 
 who plays prettily on the viola ; Sir Thomas Keys, that time- 
 honoured music-master, who taught music to the princesses, 
 and was knighted by the revered George the Third himself; 
 and little old Doctor Sharp (Mus. Doc. Oxon.), who wears 
 black smalls and gaiters, bless his heart, and composed a 
 cantata for the Jubilee, goodness knows how many years ago. 
 
296 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 When these rare old boys meet, the wax candles are lighted, 
 pinches from golden snuff-boxes are exchanged, voluminous 
 music scores are produced, and the veterans plunge into a 
 Saturnalia, of which Bach, Beethoven, Mendelsshon, Mozart, 
 are ' the high priests. Scrape away, ye valiant old men f 
 Scrape, ye stout and kind old hearts ! There are resonant 
 echoes to your harmony, far away ; in drowsy little country 
 towns, in remote villages, in German Schlossen, in Italian 
 villas, in hot Indian bungalows, where Lieutenant-Colonel 
 Chutnee, Major Pepperpot, and Mango the surgeon, may be 
 even now scraping tunefully for pure love of art, while 
 dissolute Lieutenant Potts is muddling himself with brandy 
 pawnee, and Ensigns Pockett and Cue are quarrelling over 
 billiards. 
 
 Sir Peddler Fugue lived very long abroad, I believe, before 
 he succeeded to the baronetcy. While in Milan, he composed 
 an opera, of course, the libretto of which was founded on the 
 story of Hector and Andromache, Cephalus and Aurora, or 
 some equally dreary subject. It is said to have been pro- 
 duced at Civita Vecchia with considerable success as the 
 work of the Cavaliere Maestro Pedlero Fugio, Principe 
 Inglese. In Italy, the baronet acquired a habit of speak- 
 ing his native language with such a foreign accent and 
 manner that you are puzzled sometimes to determine his 
 English or Italian extraction. 'Beautiful!' is his favourite 
 expression. ' I have seen the Coggi/ he says ; ' she is 
 B-e-a-u-ti-ful ! Your opera, my dear Tromp, is b-e-a-u-ti-ful. 
 I shall nevare forget the b-e-a-u-tiful cabaletto in the third act. 
 ]STo P Whereupon he lifts his hat in true foreign style, and 
 rides away on his ambling pony, to stop or be stopped by a 
 dozen more professionals with whom he is on terms of 
 intimacy, in his course down Eegent Street. 
 
 Still up and down the paving-stones the celebrities of the 
 Musical World pass ; and, like the fashionable lady of Ban- 
 bury who rode the white horse, and had rings on her fingers 
 and bells on her toes, a man, if he be so minded, can have 
 music wherever he goes. 
 
( 297 ) 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 A LITTLE MORE HARMONY. 
 
 STILL must I hear ! Shall the hoarse peripatetic ballad-singer 
 bawl the creaking couplets of ' The Low-backed Car ' beneath 
 my window ; shall the summer breeze waft the strains of ' Pop 
 Goes the Weasel ' upon my ears, and drive me to confusion, 
 while I am endeavouring to master the difficulties of the 
 Turkish alphabet; shall the passing butcher-boy rattle his 
 bones, and the theological beggar-man torture a psalm-tune 
 into dolorous cadences ; shall the young lady in the apartment 
 next to mine string my nerves into the rigours, while she is 
 practising ' Les Souvenirs de Cracovie,' with that ceaseless 
 verbal accompaniment of one, and two, and three; one, and 
 two, and three ! Shall music in some shape or other resound 
 from the distant costermonger and the proximate street boy ; 
 the brooding swallows sitting upon the eaves, and showing me 
 'their sunny backs' ; the ill-ground organ in the next street; and 
 the beaten tom-tom and execrable caterwauling of Howadjee 
 Lall from Bombay ! To say nothing of the deep-mouthed dog 
 next door ; the parrot at number eight which is always en- 
 deavouring to whistle ' II Segreto,' and always trying back, and 
 never succeeds in accomplishing more of the air than the first 
 three-quarters of a bar ; and Colonel Chumpfist's man-servant 
 over the way, who sings valorously while he cleans his master's 
 boots in the area ! I say, shall all these things be, and I not 
 sing, lest haply my readers think they have already had 
 enough and to spare, of my musical reminiscences ! No : the 
 Musical World shall be again my theme, a little more har- 
 mony my song. 
 
 I will take a morning concert. Say one given in the 
 height of the season by Signor Papadaggi, the famous singing- 
 master. Papadaggi is a little man, but he has done great 
 things. Twenty years ago he came to^England from Leghorn, 
 very poor and humble. He dwelt in the neighbourhood of 
 Golden Square in those days ; smelt of smoke ; was not with- 
 out a strong suspicion of garlic ; had many button-up or 
 
298 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 cloudy linen days, when he slunk rather than walked under 
 the defunct Quadrant Colonnade, and made a tremendous deal 
 of a clean shirt when he mounted one. Papadaggi was very 
 hairy then, and dined off grease, and was hand and glove 
 with Eiffi the bass, and Eaffi the tenor, and Taggragati the 
 piccolo player. He does not know Eiffi nor Eaffi now. He 
 was very down, financially speaking, when Lor Brown, 
 banquier of the City, took him up and into Belgravia. This 
 laid the foundation of Papadaggi's fortune ; but the super- 
 structure was of his own erection. The brightest of his Lamps 
 of Architecture was this he shaved. There was, as you are 
 aware, previous to that momentous question, Why Shave? 
 being asked, an almost insurmountable prejudice among 
 English respectability against beards and moustachoes. These 
 hirsute appendages seemed always connected in the minds 
 of the British Pater- and Mater-familias with dirt, revolu- 
 tion, immorality, poverty, atheism, and non-payment of rent. 
 Every great singer, artist, or musician, who happened to 
 be the rage, might barely be tolerated in wearing a beard, 
 just * as fa captain in the Life Guards or a traveller just 
 returned from the interior of Dahomey might be ; but to the 
 unknown, the poor, the struggling, the ambitious abnega- 
 tion of the razor was fatal. Papadaggi was wise in his gene- 
 ration, and shaved. Not to an utter state of barefacedness, 
 however, for he left his whiskers, which were neatly trimmed 
 into the form of truncated, and lay on his cheeks like black 
 mutton-chops. These whiskers were the making of Papadaggi. 
 He was no longer a confounded foreigner. He went into the best 
 houses, and taught the flower of the British aristocracy and 
 moneyocracy. In the banking world he is amazingly popular. 
 Eoehampton, Putney, and Ham Common, where bankers' 
 villas most do congregate, will hear of no other music-master 
 than Papadaggi. He has long since abandoned the con- 
 foundedly foreign prefix of Signer, and has Mr. I. Papadaggi 
 printed on his cards. When 1 state that he is a director of 
 two assurance companies, has recently been elected a member 
 of the Mousaion Club, and has taken to wearing a white 
 neckcloth in the daytime, the conclusion will easily be 
 arrived at that he has a comfortable balance at his banker's, 
 and is a highly respectable man. 
 
 Papadaggi married an English lady, Miss Hammernell, of 
 Birmingham, and though of the pontifical faith himself, will 
 send his son to Oxford. He has a tremendous house at 
 
A LITTLE MORE HARMONY. 299 
 
 Tybnrnia, with a footman a real footman, in plush and 
 powder. \\ hy did not the paternal Papadaggi, dead in Leghorn 
 yonder, live to see the day? P. the Second and Great is a 
 little man, but he drives a monumental cab drawn by a big 
 brown horse a very horse of Troy that moves with a sort of 
 swelling cadence of motion, as if he were practising Mozart's 
 Bequiein to himself. It is good to see honest Papadaggi 
 behind the big horse ; a regulation tiger hanging on behind, 
 and the music-master's little body gently swaying with the 
 curvetings of his steed.* It is good to hear the thundering 
 knock of the regulation tiger at the door of number six hundred 
 and six A, Plesiosaurus Gardens \Yest, where Papadaggi is 
 about to give three-quarters of an hour's singing lesson for a 
 guinea. It is good to see Papadaggi toddle out of his cab in 
 the lightest of varnished boots, and the brightest of lemon- 
 coloured gloves, and to note the respect with which the golden 
 footmen receive him, and the easy patronage with which he 
 passes them, mounts the stairs, gives his lesson, and lunches 
 with Madame la Comtesse and the youthful ladies. 
 . Once a year, Papadaggi gives his Grand Morning Concert at 
 the Nineveh Booms, Arrow-head Street, Cuneiform Square, in 
 which rooms, the Nineveh Subscription Balls are given balls 
 to which (without unimpeachable vouchers from the leaders of 
 the world) admission is as difficult as of old to the Eleusinian 
 mysteries. In the Nineveh Booms, with their huge tarnished 
 pier-glasses, walls of a pale dirty blue, with cracked stucco 
 ornaments, and faded benches and ottomans : which two last 
 articles of furniture are no strangers to a certain lively 
 insect the pulex superbus, or fashionable fleas our friend's 
 Grand Concert takes place. For some days previous, the door- 
 way of the Nineveh Booms is blockaded, to the profound 
 disgust of the Ameliorated Young Men's Table-turning Asso- 
 ciation, and the Society for the Protection 1 of Stewed-eel 
 Sellers, with gigantic posting boards, in which a weak-minded 
 printer has seemingly gone raving mad in different coloured 
 inks and varieties of eccentric type : howling in large 
 capi tailed prime donne, babbling in fat-lettered instrument- 
 alists, melancholy mad in smaller type respecting Papadaggi's 
 residence and the principal music warehouses where tickets, 
 price half a guinea each (stalls fifteen shillings), may be had, 
 and a plan of the rooms is on view. 
 
 * A.D, 1853. Papadaggi would ride in a neat little brougham now. 
 Private cabriolets are fast becoming numbered among * things departed.' 
 
300 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 I don't think it would be an unpardonable vulgarism to call 
 Papadaggi's poster a stunner. It literally stuns you, so 
 tremendous is its size, so marvellous are the attractions it 
 promises, so brilliant are the celebrities who are to appear. 
 Papadaggi has everybody. The Opera stars; the famous 
 Lurliety, who was a fixed star last season, but has taken it 
 into his head lately to become a meteor ; Basserclyffe ; little 
 Miss Larke ; Nightingale, of course ; Soundinbord Smasherr, 
 the world-renowned Swedish pianist, just returned from 
 America ; Madame Katinka Kralski, who plays tunes nobody 
 can find the beginning or end of, upon a new instrument, the 
 pifferarinium, which has just been patented and completed, at 
 the cost of some thousands of pounds by Piccolo, and which 
 looks very much like a pianoforte turned inside out; Herr 
 Bompazek, the great German basso ; little Klitz, the flautist, 
 who goes everywhere, and whom everybody knows ; and 
 greatest attraction of all, the astonishing Panslavisco, that 
 Mogul of Harpists, that dark mysterious chi]d of genius, 
 whose present popularity exceeds the greatest ever achieved 
 by Paganini, the Whistling Oyster, the Hippopotamus, the 
 Great Ant-eater, or. General Tom Thumb. Besides these, there 
 are multitudes of smaller musical notorieties, native and 
 foreign, vocalists and instrumentalists : from the Misses Gooch, 
 of the Eoyal Academy of Music, the pleasing ballad singers, 
 to hard-working Tom Muffler, who means to do something 
 with the big drum yet. 
 
 I am afraid the beneficiare does not pay many of his artists. 
 You see he is so fashionable, so run after, that it is rather an 
 honour than otherwise to sing for him gratis. The Misses 
 Gooch can truly affirm themselves to be of the nobility's 
 concerts when they go starring round the provinces in the 
 autumn after they have sung for a year or two at P.'s Grand 
 Musical Festival. A great many professionals sing for Papa- 
 daggi through pure friendship and goodwill, for the little 
 man is universally liked and respected. A great many sing 
 because others sing, and a great many more because they 
 want to be heard at any risk. The bird that can sing and 
 won't sing is a ram avis. I never knew a bird that could 
 sing but that would sing, whether his hearers liked it or not ; 
 and I even know a great many birds that can't sing and 
 oughtn't to sing, who will sing. Papadaggi, however, does 
 not get all the professionals gratuitously. Orpheus Basser^ 
 clyffe, with whom fifteen guineas for a song is as much a fixed 
 
A LITTLE MORE HAHMONY. 301 
 
 idea as the cultivation of his garden was with Candide, says, 
 * I'll sing, by all means, but 1 must have the cash, Pap, my 
 boy ;' and Pap pays him : while old Grabbatoni, the renowned 
 performer on the violoncello, contents himself with saying 
 every year as he pockets his eight guineas, ' Next year, mio 
 caro, I play for noting for noting yes!' but, somehow or 
 other, with Grabbatoni that next year never comes. 
 
 We will suppose the momentous day to have arrived, and 
 Papadaggi's Grand Concert to have commenced. The car- 
 riages of the nobility and gentry, and the cabs of the public 
 in general, block up Nineveh Street ; the coachmen doze on 
 their boxes ; the neighbouring public-houses are full of the 
 silken calves and gilt-knobbed sticks of the splendid footmen. 
 Within, the ladies are ranged upon the faded ottomans a 
 beautiful show. There are peeresses, bishopesses, judgesses, 
 bankeresses, baronetesses, stock-brokeresses, and merchant- 
 princesses. Papadaggi has just handed a duchess to a seat ; 
 and is at this moment whispering soft compliments to a 
 cabinet-ministress, with admirable equanimity and self-pos- 
 session. The whiskers are resplendent; the boots shine 
 like patent-leather stars accidentally fallen from Bootes. The 
 room is very full and very hot, and many of the dandies, 
 unable to find seats, lean their all-round collars against walls, 
 so to support their weary frames. A vicious family from 
 Peckham Eye (a mamma, three daughters, an aunt, and a 
 melancholy governess) have fallen upon and utterly routed an 
 imbecile young man in a feeble white neckcloth, who acts as 
 check-taker for the stalls, and who holds a crimson worsted 
 cord across the space between the last ottoman and the wall. 
 The vicious family have only tickets for the back seats ; but, 
 having thoroughly demolished the imbecile young man men- 
 tally, and driven him before them like chaff before the wind, 
 they make a razzia into the stalls, and nearly overthrow a stock 
 broker's colony from Maida Hill, the members of which gather 
 themselves up indignantly, and whisper among themselves 
 desparingly, ' City people !' Old General Jupp, who has sent 
 his family to the concert before him, and has walked down 
 from the Cutcherry Club, has found that he has left his ticket 
 behind him, and has had to pay over again at the doors, and 
 can't find his party, and sits apart in a corner on a cane- 
 bottomed chair, muttering horribly. A meek-eyed young 
 dandy, who has come in cloth boots, with his hair curled (he 
 must be an only son with a taste for music, who fancies he 
 
302 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 can sing second in a quartett), can't find Thrummer, the 
 musical clerk in the Treasury, who sings ' The Wolf ' so 
 capitally, and who promised to point out all the musical cele- 
 brities to him. He cannot, indeed, find anybody that he 
 knows, nor a place anywhere, and is repining secretly on 
 the staircase, where he looks so miserable, that the money- 
 taker, a florid man who officiates as a waiter at the London 
 Tavern o' nights, and sometimes takes a spell in the black 
 work, or undertaking line of business, compassionates him, and 
 is half-inclined, were he not so great a dandy, to offer him 
 some of the beer from the pint pot under his chair. There are 
 a great many foreigners in the concert-room, who come with 
 free admissions, as it is the custom of musical foreigners to 
 do ; two or three critics attached to the morning newspapers, 
 who listen to the songs with a knowing air and their heads 
 on one side, as if they knew perfectly well what the next bar 
 was to be ; and a country gentleman, who has come up to 
 town to attend a meeting of the Ameliorated Young Men's 
 Table-turning Association, and has blundered into Papadaggi's 
 concert-room by mistake, where he sits listening to the per- 
 formances with a bewildered air. 
 
 Papadaggi's concert proceeds swimmingly. To be sure, the 
 order of the programme is not strictly observed the song 
 that should be first frequently coming last, and vice versa. 
 Such misadventures will, however, happen in the best regu- 
 lated morning concerts. Codlinetti, the Italian buffo-singer, 
 who is of a capricious and changeable temperament, suddenly 
 changes the song for which he is put down, to one of an 
 entirely different character : to the indignation of Peddle, 
 who is the accompanyist (presides at the pianoforte we be- 
 lieve is the appropriate words), who is a morose man, and 
 insists upon playing the symphony in the original song ; 
 upon which Codlinetti, under shadow of turning over the 
 music and showing Peddle the proper place., manifests a 
 strong desire to fling him over the orchestra among the 
 duchesses. Fraulein Kinni Stolzappel, the charming warbler 
 of German Lieds, has likewise objected to the unfortunate 
 man's accompaniment to her song, and at the end of a 
 cadence, and in a voice audible even to General Jupp in the 
 corner, has called Peddle ' Pig/ in the German language ; 
 whereat life becomes a burden to Peddle, and as he pounds 
 the keys as though they were his enemies, he devoutly wishes 
 
A LITTLE MOKE HARMONY. 303 
 
 that lie were back in his quiet attic in the Royal Academy of 
 Music, Tenterden Street, Hanover Square. Papadaggi neither 
 plays nor sings. He is too learned to do anything ; but he 
 hovers about the orchestra, and hands singers on and off, and 
 pervades the concert with his whiskers and white neckcloth 
 so that a considerable portion of the applause is meant 
 for Papadaggi, and is by Papadaggi taken unto himself with 
 many bows and smiles. Did you never know people who 
 somehow seem to have a vested interest in the fruits of every- 
 body's labours ? There is scarcely a great picture painted, a 
 book written, a palace built, a good deed done, but it turns 
 out that somebody is -entitled to considerable praise, or must 
 be honourably mentioned in connection with it, though as far 
 as your judgment went he never put a finger to the work, or 
 a stone to the edifice. The number of unknown benefactors 
 and passive great men is astonishing. I see their names in 
 the literary pension-list ; I find Parliament making them 
 grants every session ; I hear their liealths proposed at public 
 dinners, and see them get up, covered with modesty, to 
 return thanks, when they bashfully allude to the things they 
 have been instrumental in carrying out, though for the life of 
 me I can't make out what they ever had to do with anything. 
 What the green-room is to the theatre, the robing-room to 
 the assize court, the vestry to the church ; so is the singers' 
 room to the concert-hall. But, far more elegant, sprightly, 
 and amusing, than the dramatic green-room, is the ' profes- 
 sional room' behind the ragged leaves of the screen at the 
 bottom of the steps of the orchestra at Papadaggi's concert. 
 There are no garish gas-lights here, no tinselled dresses : no 
 rouge, bismuth, jaded faces, pantomime masks no passing 
 carpenters and call-boys : all is fresh, sparkling, and gay. 
 Fresh flowers, rosy bonnets, and rosier faces, cleanest of 
 shirts, smartest of female toilettes, newest of white kid gloves, 
 most odoriferous of scents. I don't pretend to know much 
 about female fashions, though I have occasionally studied 
 that sphinx-like journal the ' Follet ' every flounce in which 
 is an enigma with fear and trembling. I don't pretend to 
 know much about dress ; but I do think that the best dressed 
 ladies in creation are the female singers at a morning concert. 
 They unite the prettiest portions of the English and French 
 styles of costume. They dress their hair exquisitely, and 
 display their little jewelleries inimitably. There is a whole 
 art in making the most of a ring, a brooch, a bracelet. I 
 
304 GASLIGHT AKD DAYLIGHT. 
 
 have seen born ladies covered with, gems, on whom they pro- 
 duced no more elegant effect than a bright brass knocker 
 would on a pigstye door. And, more than all this, my 
 musical belles have the unmistakable appearance of having 
 dressed themselves, and are ten times smarter, neater, prettier 
 for it, scorning the adventitious femme-de-chanibre. There is 
 a table covered with fruit and wine in the singers' room. I 
 regret to see Tom Muffler sitting thereat. Tom is not given 
 to drinking ; but, when drink is given to him, he exceeds. 
 
 Who is that strange wild man lying dislocated over, rather 
 than sitting upon, an ottoman, his long fingers twined to- 
 gether, his eyebrows bent into the form of a horse-shoe, his 
 puissant head bent down ? That is Panslavisco the harpist. 
 The trumpet of fame is braying his name out to all Europe, 
 like an impetuous, inconsiderate trumpet as it is, blowing for 
 dear life to make up for lost time. He is deaf to Fame's 
 trumpet. Fortune Is pelting him with golden marrow-bones. 
 He heeds not Fortune. She has pelted him with bones with- 
 out any gold or marrow in them before now. He stands, and 
 walks, and works, and lives alone : he and his harp, for they 
 are one. The professionals say he is dull. The ladies say 
 he is a brute. The multitude cry ' lo Panslavisce ! Evoe Pan- 
 slavisce!' as they would to Bacchus. He lets them cry on. 
 He plays his harp, and there is silence, and a wild tumult at 
 the end ; and then he receives his money, sees his harp put 
 into a green-baize cover, and carried off by a dun-bearded 
 man as mysterious as his master, and goes away. No con- 
 cert is complete without him. In. town and country he is 
 sure to draw. He has no intimates, no places of resort save 
 a mouldy cigar-shop where he sits as silent, and apparently 
 as immovable, as one of the tobacco-chests and a dreary 
 public- house in a court up Drury Lane, where he drinks 
 large quantities of beer, tacitly. He speaks seldom, and then 
 he does not seem to be quite certain in his mind as to which 
 is his mother-tongue, and his speech is a garbled compromise 
 of many languages. Indeed, nobody knows for certain of 
 what nation he is. Some say he is an Italian, some say he is 
 a German, some say he is a Dane. His harp is of all nations, 
 and speaks all languages. Of course there are grim reports 
 about, of his having killed men, and negotiated a psychical 
 investment in an unholy office. His wealth is put down at a 
 fabulous amount, his crimes as unutterable. Little Miss 
 Larke, who is a brave body, as valorous as the young lady 
 
A LITTLE MOEE HARMONY. 305 
 
 whose virgin smile lighted her safely through the Green Isle, 
 once took courage to ask Panslavisco how he did. ' As well/ 
 he answered, ' as a man can be, who is eating his own liver.' 
 He looks indeed as if he were Prometheus, and, wishing to be 
 alone, had contracted to do the vulture's work vicariously. 
 
 Little Saint Sheddle, who lives no one knows how, but is 
 the very Captain Cook of the musical world, is supposed to 
 be the only man in Europe who has been sufficiently ad- 
 mitted to Panslavisco's intimacy to dine with him. He de- 
 scribes these dinners as if he were telling a ghost story. The 
 table, he says, is garnished with two plates, two pots of 
 porter, and one steak in a dish. Panslavisco cuts the steak 
 into two exact portions ; takes one half, pushes the other 
 half towards Saint Sheddle, and falls-to without saying a 
 word. After dinner he produces a cigar-box and a bottle of 
 Hollands, and smokes and drinks prodigiously, but with little 
 more conversation ; then he will get up and go out, or go to 
 bed, or begin to play his harp wildly all in a speechless 
 manner. ' It's something to say one has dined with him,' 
 whispers Saint Sheddle, ' but it's very queer.' 
 
 Panslavisco lies upon his ottoman, profoundly immobile 
 until it is nearly time for him to play. Then he begins to 
 pat and smooth down his harp, as a man would adjust the 
 girths of a wild horse he was about to ride. His turn in the 
 programme arrives ; the harp is carried into the orchestra ; 
 he follows it ; throws his long sinuous hair back ; sweeps his 
 bony fingers over the strings, and begins to play. A wild 
 horse and his rider are no bad images for him and his harp. 
 He seems to ride upon it : to bestride it as a witch would a 
 broomstick, making the air awful with the melody of a 
 demoniacal Sabbath. He bows his head to the applause when 
 he has done, more as if the blast of a tempest had smote him 
 upon the head and compelled him to bow it, than in reverence. 
 Now he is gone, and the audience begin to breathe again, and 
 whisper- ' Wonderful!' He goes back to the singers' room, 
 drinks one glass of wine, swallows a biscuit as though it were 
 a pill, and falls into a stony sleep upon the ottoman, passive, 
 inert, unstrung, as though he had been broken on a wheel of 
 wild melody. 
 
 This man, with the sinewy vigorous frame worn into rocks 
 and caverns of bone, as if by the volcanic upheaving of his 
 soul within ; with the huge, Medusa-like head ; the swelling 
 veins in his forehead ; the eyes like abysses ; the face seamed, 
 
 x 
 
306 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 and scarred, and worn in tempests of study, hunger, cold, and 
 misery, looks as if lie had newly come from some combat 
 with the demon, and had been victorious, but had suffered 
 horribly in the fray. A dozen years ago Panslavisco had as 
 much genius, and played as learnedly, sweetly, gracefully, 
 boldly, nervously, wildly, as he does now. But he played in 
 a garret, where he had no friends, no fire, no body-linen, no 
 bread, and where his landlady bullied him for his rent. 
 Viragos spuabbling over a disputed right in a wash-tub in a 
 back-slum, have heard as fascinating harmonies through a 
 garret window held up by a bundle of fire-wood, as princesses 
 of the blood hear now in the Nineveh Booms. Panslavisco 
 has taught the harp to butchers' daughters for scraps of meat ; 
 has fiddled in low dancing-rooms, and played the pianoforte 
 at quadrille-parties, for a morsel of bread. Now, they are all 
 come. Fortune, fame, sycophants to admire, beautiful women 
 to smile, lords to say * Come and dine.' They are all too late. 
 They cannot bring back the young wife, dead in a long slow 
 agony ; the little children who faded one by one ; they cannot 
 bring back the time when the man had a heart to love and 
 hope, and was twenty-one years of age. 
 
 But Heaven be good to us all. What have I to do with 
 this, unless to say with Montaigne, ' Que sais-je T If I go to 
 a concert, and pay half a guinea to hear a man play upon a 
 harp, am I to dogmatise upon his inward feelings or his life ? 
 For all I know, Panslavisco's morose, mysterious exterior may 
 be but a fastidious envelope, and he may be, after all, a 
 cheery, happy man. I hope so. 
 
 The last concerted piece in the programme has been per- 
 formed, and the critics go home to write out their opinions 
 on Papadaggi's grand morning concert. Much bonnet-adjust- 
 ing, music-hunting-for, and a little flirtation, take place in 
 the singers' room. The imbecile young man falls savagely 
 upon the remnants of the wine and biscuits, and becomes 
 maudlin in a moment. Papadaggi flits about joyfully with a 
 cash-box, and a slave of the lamp follows him with the check- 
 boxes. The concert is over. Papadaggi asks the stars of the 
 afternoon to come home and dine with him. Some accept ; 
 some plead other engagements. He wakes Panslavisco, and 
 asks him. The harpist does not decline the invitation cate- 
 gorically. He simply says ' Pay me, and let me go.' 
 
 Let me go too. Licet ? 
 
( 307 ) 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 GIBBET STREET. 
 
 THE Ghetto is for the Jews, and the Fanal for the Greek 
 merchants, the Cannebiere for the Marseilles boatmen, and 
 the Montagne Sainte Genevieve for the rag pickers. Holy- 
 well Street is for the old clothes vendors, Chancery Lane for 
 the lawyers, Fifth Avenue for the upper Ten Thousand, 
 and GIBBET STKEET is for the thieves. They reside there, 
 when in town. 
 
 It is an ugly name for a street, and an uglier thing that the 
 street should be a den of robbers; but with the slightest 
 veil of the imaginatively picturesque so as to wound nobody's 
 sensitive feelings it exists. Gibbet Street and the thieves 
 the thieves and Gibbet Street are as manifest and apparent as 
 the sun at noonday. Gibbet Street is just round the corner. It 
 is only five minutes' walk from the office of ' Household Words.'* 
 It is within the precincts of the police-station and the police 
 courts of Bow Street. It is within an easy walk of the 
 wealthy Strand; with its banking-houses, churches, and 
 Exeter Hall. It is not far from the only National Theatre 
 now left to us, where her Majesty's servants are supposed to 
 hold the mirror up to nature nightly; and veluti in specu- 
 lum might be written with more advantage over the en- 
 trance to Gibbet Street, than over the proscenium of the 
 play-house ; for vice and its image are in view there at any 
 hour of the day or night : a comfortable sight to see. Gibbet 
 Street is contiguous to where the lawyers have their chambers, 
 and the high Courts of Equity their sittings ; and a bencher 
 from. Lincoln's Inn might stroll into Gibbet Street in the 
 spare ten minutes before the Hall dinner, and see what nice 
 work is being cut out for the Central Criminal Court there ; 
 while an inhabitant of Gibbet Street, too lazy to thieve that 
 day, might wander into the Inn, and see the Lord High 
 Chancellor sitting, all alive, in his court, and saying that he 
 will take time to consider that little matter which has been 
 under consideration a trifle less than seventeen years.f A 
 
 * A.D. 1855. 
 
 t Such scandalous delays existed when I wrote this paper. Such delays, 
 I am glad to acknowledge, exist, save in very rare cases, no longer. 
 
 x 2 
 
308 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 merry spectacle to view. The Queen herself comes within 
 bowshot of Gibbet Street many times during the fashion- 
 able season, when it pleases her to listen to the warblings of 
 her Eoyal Italian Opera singers. The tips of the blinkers of 
 her satin-skinned horses were seen from Gibbet Street ; the 
 ragged young thieves scampered from it to stare at her em- 
 blazoned coaches ; and, if one of the ethereal footmen trans- 
 ceiidant being in the laced coat, large cocked hat, bouquets, 
 and golden garters had but run the risk of a stray splash 
 or two of mud on his silk stockings, or a stray onion at his 
 powdered head, or a passing violence to his refined nose, he 
 might have spent an odd quarter of an hour with great profit to- 
 himself in Gibbet Street : better, surely, than bemusing him- 
 self with beer at the public-house in Bow Street. He would v 
 have seen many things. Been eased, probably, of his gold 
 headed stick, his handkerchief, his aiguillettes, and his buttons 
 with the crown on them ; and, on his return, he might have 
 told the sergeant flunkey, or the yeoman footpage, or the 
 esquire shoeblack, or the gentleman stable-boy, of the curious 
 places he had visited. The Lord Great Chamberlain might 
 hear of it eventually. It might come to the ears of Majesty at 
 last. For the first time, I wonder ? Is anything of Gibbet 
 Street and its forlorn population known in palatial Pimlico ? 
 Perchance : for hard by that palace, too, there are streets full 
 of dens, and dens full of thieves. Do not Hulk Street arid 
 Handcuff Row, and Dartmoor Terrace and the Great Ticket- 
 of-Leave Broadway, all abut upon Victoria Street, Westmin- 
 ster ; and is not that within sight of the upper windows of 
 the palace of Buckingham ? 
 
 It is plain to me that a thief must live somewhere. He is 
 a man like the rest of us. His head has a cranium, an os 
 frontis, a cerebellum, and an occiput, although it be covered 
 by a fur cap, and decorated with Newgate ' aggerwators/ 
 instead of a shovel hat or a velvet cap with pearls and straw- 
 berry leaves. He is a ragged, cleboshed, vicious, depraved, 
 forsaken, hopeless vagabond ; but he has a heart, and liver, 
 and lungs : he feels the summer's sun and the winter's ice. 
 If you prick him, he bleeds ; if you beat him, he cries out ; if 
 you hang him, he chokes; if you tickle him, he laughs. He 
 requires rest, food, shelter not that I say he deserves them, 
 but he must have them as well as the best of citizens and 
 ratepayers. Ferocity, dishonesty, are not the normal state. 
 
GIBBET STREET. 309 
 
 A lion cannot be always roaring, a bear cannot be always 
 hugging ; and, unless you make of every thief caput lapinum, 
 and shoot him down wherever you find him, he must have his 
 den, his hole, or his corner ; his shinbone of beef, or his slain 
 antelope. Being human, he is also gregarious ; and thus 
 Gibbet Street. If you leave holes, the foxes will come and 
 inhabit them ; if you suffer heaps of rubbish to accumulate, 
 the bats and dragon-flies will make them their habitation ; if 
 you banish the broom from your ceiling corners, the spiders 
 will come a-building there ; if you flush not your sewers, the 
 rats will hold high holiday in them ; and if, to make an end 
 of truisms, you are content to bear with rottenness and dirt in 
 the heart of the city that has no equal, on the skirt of your 
 kingly mantle a torn and muddy fringe ; if your laws sa} r , 
 Dirt, you are an institution, and Vermin, you are vested, and 
 Ignorance, you are our brother ; if you make and keep up, and 
 sweep and garnish a Thieves' Kitchen, with as much care and 
 precaution as if it were a diplomatic mission to Ashantee, or 
 a patent place, or an assistant commissionership, why the 
 thieves will come and live in it. Which is the greatest 
 scandal a house infested with vermin, or the carelessness of 
 the servant who has suffered them to accumulate there ? 
 Gibbet Street is a scandal a burning shame ; but it is not 
 half so scandalous or shameful as the governmental dwellers 
 in Armida's garden, who have suffered the foul weeds to grow 
 up ; who have yawningly constructed succursal forcing-houses 
 for crime and ignorance, and have had a greenhouse in every 
 gaol, and a conservatory in every Gibbet Street. They may 
 say that it is not for them to interfere : some of them interfere 
 to obstruct national education ; others interfere to manufac- 
 ture pet hypocrites in gorgeous gaols. 
 
 I notice that the principal argument of the police before the 
 magistrates when they wish to put down a penny theatre, a 
 penny dancing saloon, concert-hall or beershop, lies in the 
 fact of the place inculpated being a resort for thieves and the 
 worst of characters. Bless me, good Mr. Superintendents and 
 Inspectors, astute and practical as you are, where are the 
 thieves to go ? What are they to do in the small hours ? Is 
 the Clarendon open to them ? W^ould they be welcome at 
 the Sacred Harmonic ? Would Mr. Albert Smith be glad to 
 see them at the Egyptian Hall ? Are their names down 
 for the house dinners at the Garrick or the Carlton? You 
 will have none of them even in your prisons or hulks, 
 
310 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 but you turn them out with tickets of leave as soon as 
 they have imposed on the chaplain with sham repentance ; 
 or as soon as your gamut of reclaiming measures has 
 been drummed over. You empty them on the streets, and 
 then, wall-eyed, moon-struck Society holds up its hands 
 and gapes, because astute Superintendent X., practical In- 
 spector Z., tells you that the thieves are gone back to 
 Gibbet Street ; that they are ' forty thieving like one ' at the 
 corner ; and that they are careering about with life-preservers, 
 chloroform-bottles, crow-bars, and skeleton keys, Where else 
 should they go? Where can they go ? 'Where!' echo the 
 six hundred and fifty-six slumberers in Armida's Garden, 
 waking up from a sodden trance ; ' but what a shocking place 
 this Gibbet Street is ! We shall really have to move for leave 
 to bring in a bill some day to put it down : meanwhile, let us 
 never, no never, give a thought to the practicability of putting 
 down thieves or thieving by moving one finger, by making 
 one snail's footstep towards the discountenance and destruc- 
 tion of the teeming seed from which crime is grown,' seed 
 colported and exposed as openly as the rhododendrons or ra- 
 nunculuses in the little brown paper bags in Co vent Garden 
 Market ; seed that, with our eyes shut, and with a dreamy 
 perseverance in wrong-doing, we continue scattering broad- 
 cast over the fields ; afterwards spending millions in steam- 
 ploughs of penal laws, and patent thrashing-machines of 
 prison discipline, and improved harrows of legislation, and 
 coercive drains, and criminal subsoiling ; all for the furtherance 
 of the goodly gibbet harvest. What is the good of throwing 
 away the cucumber when you have oiled, and vinegared, and 
 peppered, and salted it ? Why don't you smash the cucumber- 
 frames ? Why don't you burn the seed ? Hang me all the 
 thieves in Gibbet Street to-morrow, and the place will be 
 crammed with fresh tenants in a week ; but catch me up the 
 young thieves from the gutter and the doorsteps ; take 
 Jonathan Wild from the breast ; send Mrs. Sheppard to Bride- 
 well, but take hale young Jack out of her arms ; teach and 
 wash me this unkempt vicious colt, and he will run for the 
 Virtue Stakes yet ; take the young child, the little lamb, 
 before the great Jack Sheppard ruddles him and folds him 
 for his own black flock in Hades ; give him some soap instead 
 of whipping him for stealing a cake of brown Windsor ; teach 
 him the Gospel, instead of sending him to the treadmill for 
 haunting chapels and purloining prayer-books out of pews ; 
 
GIBBET STKEET. 311 
 
 put him in the way of filling shop-tills, instead of transport- 
 ing him when he crawls on his hands and knees to empty 
 them ; let him know that he has a body fit and made for some- 
 thing better than to be kicked, bruised, chained, pinched with 
 hunger, clad in rags or prison grey, or mangled with gaoler's 
 cat ; let him know that he has a soul to be saved. In God's 
 name, take care of the children, somebody; and there will 
 soon be an oldest inhabitant in Gibbet Street, and never a 
 new one to succeed him ! * 
 
 It is the thieves that made the place, not the place the 
 thieves. Who offers to build a new Fleet Prison, now arrest 
 on mesne process is abolished ? Is not Traitors' Gate bricked 
 up now that acts of attainder are passed no more ? Would 
 not the Lord Mayor's state-coach be broken up and sold for 
 old rubbish a month after the last Lord Mayoralty ? There 
 would be no need for such a place as Gibbet Street, if there 
 were no thieves to dwell in it ; but so long as you go hammer- 
 ing parchment act-of-parliament-drums, and beating up for 
 recruits for Satan's Light-fingered Brigade, so long will the 
 Gibbet Street barracks be open, and the Gibbet Street billet- 
 ing system flourish. 
 
 Near a shabby market, full of damaged vegetable stuff, 
 hedged in by gin-shops a narrow, slimy, ill-paved, ill-smell- 
 ing, worse-looking street, the majority of the houses private ( ! ) 
 but with a sprinkling of marine- stores, rag-shops, chandlers' 
 and fried-fish warehouses, low-browed, doorless doorways 
 leading to black rotten staircases, or to tainted backyards, 
 where corruption sits on the water-butt, and fever lives like 
 a house-dog in the dust-bin : with shattered windows, the 
 majority of them open with a sort of desperate resolve on the 
 part of the wretched inmates to clutch at least some wander- 
 ing fragment of pure light and air : this is Gibbet Street. 
 Who said (and said wisely, and beautifully too), that a sun- 
 beam passes through pollution unpolluted? It cannot be 
 true, here, in this abandoned place. If a sunbeam could 
 permeate into the den, I verily believe it would be tarnished 
 and would smell foully before it had searched into the abyss 
 of all this vapour of decay. W 7 hat manner of men save 
 thieves, and what manner of women save drudges, bond- 
 servants, yet loving help-mates to their brutal mates, live 
 here? It would be wholesome and profitable for those 
 
 * Keformatories, thank God ! have multiplied in the land since these 
 lines were first penned. 
 
412 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 young ladies and gentlemen who imagine even the modern 
 thief to be a rake, "bejewelled, broad-clothed, with his 
 brougham, his park hack and his seraglio, to come and dwell 
 here in Gibbet Street. Ask the police (when they are as- 
 sured they have a sensible man to deal with, they tell him 
 the plain truth), ask astute Superintendent X., practical 
 Inspector Z., where the swell mob is to be found. They will 
 laugh at you, and tell you that there is no swell mob now. 
 Well-dressed thieves there are, of course ; robbers on a great 
 scale ; well-educated men of the world ; cautious ; who live 
 by themselves, or in twos or threes, and in luxury. But the 
 thief, generically speaking, is an ignorant, coarse, brutalised, 
 simple-minded, spendthrift, in spite of his thievish cunning. 
 He is always hiding his head in the sand, like the imbecile 
 ostrich ; coming back to hide where there is no concealment, 
 in Gibbet Street after a great robbery, and pounced upon 
 immediately by X., the astute, or Z., the practical. The thief 
 is recklessly improvident. His net earnings, like the receipts 
 of an usurer-ridden prodigal, are infinitesimally small in 
 proportion to his gross plunder. The thieves' and leaving 
 shops are his bill-discounters. He gorges tripe, and clods, 
 and stickings. He is drunk with laudanumed beer and 
 turpentined gin. He pays five hundred per cent, excess for 
 his lodging, his raiment, and his food. He is robbed by his 
 comrades ; for there is not always honour among thieves. 
 He is as often obliged to thieve for his daily bread, as for 
 the means of indulging his profligacy. There is no work 
 so hard as thieving. Hours of patient watching, waiting, 
 marching, countermarching, flight, skulking, exposure, and 
 fatigue have to be passed, for often a reward of three-half- 
 pence. The thief's nerves are always strung to the highest 
 degree of tension ; he has no holidays ; he is always running 
 away from somebody ; always seeking or being sought. The 
 thief is as a man afflicted with a mortal disease. Like a 
 person with disease of the heart, who knows that some day 
 he will stagger and fall, the thief knows he has the great 
 convict aneurism ; that the apoplexy of arrest must come 
 upon him. He knows not when. He gets drunk sometimes 
 and forgets the skeleton ; but he knows it must come some 
 day a skeleton with a glazed hat, a number and letter on 
 his collar, and handcuffs in his pocket. 
 
 You need no further picture of Gibbet Street. Walk 
 twenty yards and you can see the place itself the stones, 
 
GIBBET STREET. 313 
 
 the gutters, the rags that hang out like banners ; and the 
 wretched, pale-faced population : some men's faces swollen 
 by liquor, and some women's from bruises, and some women's 
 and men's from both. It is safe enough to go down Gibbet 
 Street in the day-time at least you are safe enough from 
 personal violence. If you are well-dressed, of course you 
 will be robbed ; but, at night, you had better avoid it, though 
 policemen patrol it, and the carriages of the nobility and 
 gentry, who are patronising the theatres, are sometimes 
 stationary at its upper entrance. 
 
 I have been acquainted with this Tartarus these dozen 
 years ; and, although I am a professional town traveller, and 
 have frequented, of malice prepense, the lowest haunts of half a 
 dozen European capitals, I never bestowed much notice upon 
 Gibbet Street. I took it for granted as an abode of thieves, 
 glanced curiously at its low-browed, bull-necked, thick-lipped 
 inhabitants, and buttoned up my coat pockets when I was 
 obliged to pass through it. Lately, however, it so happened, 
 that Gibbet Street and I have been nearer acquaintances ; and, 
 curiously, my more intimate knowledge of this home of dis- 
 honesty has been due to the fine arts. 
 
 My friend Poundbrush that celebrated but unassuming 
 artist paints Grecian temples, Egyptian pyramids, Oriental 
 kiosks, panoramas of the Mediterranean, and bombardments 
 of the Malakhoff tower occupying many thousand leagues of 
 landscape and square feet of canvas at a great atelier or 
 painting -room, spaciously erected for the purpose, in the very 
 thick of Gibbet Street. How Messrs. Doubletie and Coverflats, 
 the accomplished directors of this great scene-painting under- 
 taking, could have selected Gibbet Street as a location for 
 their studio seems, at the first blush, to pass comprehension ; 
 but the rent may have been moderate, or the premises conve- 
 nient, or the situation central ; at any rate there they are 
 with thieves to right of them, thieves to left of them, thieves 
 in front of them ; volleying oaths and ribaldry all day long. 
 
 Under Poimdbrush's auspices I have had many opportu- 
 nities lately of assisting at the At Homes of the Gibbet Street 
 thieves. Their interiors are not by any means difficult of 
 visual access ; for their windows are, as I have said, mostly 
 open. Besides a great portion of their daily business is 
 transacted in the open street. They eat in the street, they 
 drink, fight, smoke, sing, and when they have a chance 
 thieve in the street. A very curious contemplation is pre- 
 
314 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 sented by standing at the window of this studio. Turning 
 your back to the busy painters, who are pursuing a beautiful, 
 humanising art, revelling in fruits and flowers, sunny land- 
 scapes, and stately architecture, and then to turn your eyes 
 upon this human dunghill. What have we done to be 
 brought to this strait ? Look into the black holes of rooms, 
 cast your eyes upon those ragged heaps where the creatures 
 sleep, hear the men curse, and see them strike the wretched, 
 wretched women. 
 
 It was in some of these latter-day contemplations of the 
 thieves in their domesticity in Gibbet Street, that I came to 
 my grand (!) conclusion that the thief is a man and that he 
 must eat and drink and sleep ; and I am gratified to be able to 
 chronicle one little trait of human nature in my human thief, 
 and that, too, of the kindlier sort. At one o'clock, post mere- 
 diem, lately, the waiter from some adjacent cookshop was 
 journeying through Gibbet Street (always a North-west pas- 
 sage of great peril and travail to waiters and potboys), and, in 
 his hands, he bore one of those stately pyramids of pewter- 
 covered dishes of meat and potatoes, which none but waiters 
 can balance, or cookshop keepers send out all hot. A thief 
 passing that way a young thief, probably inexperienced, 
 new to Gibbet Street, who had not yet acquired its code of 
 etiquette followed the waiter dexterously, and was about to 
 tilt the topmost dish from off the pyramid, with a view to 
 upsetting the whole edifice, scattering the viands, and 
 making off with the contents. I trembled for the result. 
 Two or three half-naked boys and a hungry dog of most 
 dishonest appearance, watched the proceedings with anxious 
 eyes. The nefarious purpose had nearly been accomplished, 
 when there issued suddenly from a doorway, a tall robber 
 a black- whiskered Goliath. He, espying the intention of the 
 juvenescent footpad, suddenly cast him into the kennel ; thus 
 allowing the waiter with his savoury cargo to pass safely by : 
 and roughly shaking the youth, cried out, ' What are you 
 up to ? Don't yer know, yer fool ! Them's for Painting 
 Koom!' 
 
 What was this ? Was it reverence for art, or can there be 
 really some honour among thieves, some hidden good in this 
 wretched Gibbet Street? 
 
( 315 ) 
 
 XXYIII. 
 
 STROLLERS AT DUMBLEDOWNDEARY. 
 
 THE strollers. Have not the righteous powers of law, reform, 
 science, and sectarianism been directed for centuries against 
 the strollers? There have been wise Justices in ruffs, and 
 doublets, and trunk-hose, determined to put the strollers 
 down, and most signally failing in so doing, ever since the 
 time of the Spanish Armada ; just as, I dare say, in the mythic 
 time of San Apollo and all the gods and goddesses, the great 
 Justice Midas for all that he was squire, knight of the shire, 
 and custos rotuloruin failed in putting the strollers of his 
 epoch down. Strollers have been declared rogues and vaga- 
 bonds by all sorts of statutes : pulpit thunder and quarter- 
 sessions lightning have been levelled against them times out 
 of number. No matter ; the strollers have a principle of life 
 in them stronger than the whole family of Shallows. Hunted 
 from populous neighbourhoods, and threatened with all those 
 legal perils which attend the dire English crime of being 
 unlicensed, they are surely to be found, after apparently 
 irretrievable extinguishment, cosily ensconced in some quiet 
 little village, the marvel and delight of the unsophisticated, 
 as they have been for ages. 
 
 Here they are, this blessed spring-tide afternoon, in my 
 dear Dumbledowndeary. Their wheels have been new tired, 
 some fresh stitches have been put into the buskin, an addi- 
 tional inch has been added to the cothurnus, and some extra 
 dabs have been given to the scenery ; but here in its entirety 
 is the Thespian waggon at Dumbledowndeary. 
 
 Which Dumbledowndeary, I beg to remark, is thoroughly 
 an out-of-the way place. One of our magnates expresses his 
 opinion that it is left out at all events, you can't find it in 
 many maps of England, and it never rains or snows at the 
 same time it does in other places. There is no mint 
 (I mean the herb, not the Hotel de la Monnaie) in Dum- 
 bledowndeary, no turnip-radishes, no salid-oil, and there 
 are very few carrots. There is no lawyer ; there was one some 
 
316 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 time ago, but he made a most signal failure of it, and died. 
 There is very little clergyman ; for the incumbent couldn't 
 make the place out, so he spends his living of six hundred a 
 year in Hastings, and the cure of souls is done in job-work by 
 a succession of clerical nonentities, of whom very little indeed 
 is seen, between service. There is never any cholera at 
 Dumbledowndeary, and seldom any fever, and so little sick- 
 ness and few accidents, that our doctor's principal amputations 
 are confined to the plants in his greenhouse, and he is fain to 
 eke out his time by taking photographic portraits, for pure 
 love of science, of the inhabitants, to their immense delight : 
 mute inglorious Miltons corning out under the process and on 
 the prepared paper, as speaking likenesses, and ' Cromwells, 
 guiltless of their country's blood,' all generally mild men 
 with sandy whiskers, appearing beneath the influence of 
 collodion and iodine, as the most truculent and black-bearded 
 bravos. We have no crime, and no immorality (to speak of), 
 and our only regret is, that more Londoners do not arrive at 
 our natty railway station; wander in our green lanes and 
 voiceful woods, fill their eyes with the delicious prospect of 
 wood and water and meadow around them ; taste our pub- 
 licans' neat wines, and avail themselves of their commodious 
 stabling, and at last be so delighted with the place as to buy, 
 build, or hire houses, and settle in Dumbledowndeary alto- 
 gether. But I am afraid that those who know of and love this 
 queer, pleasant, little spot, keep the secret to themselves, as 
 those Indians do who are aware of the city of gold in Central 
 America, and tell no stranger, lest the profane vulgar should 
 step in and spoil it. 
 
 Our taste for the drama in Dumbledowndeary, though not 
 often indulged in, is vast. We take trips to town sometimes, 
 and go to the play ; and mighty are the discussions that after- 
 wards take place about the plays we have seen. We have 
 settlers amongst us, hermits long since retired from the busy 
 world, who can remember Siddons, the elder Kean, and Young. 
 These ' shoulder their crutch and show how ' plays were 
 acted. There was a dark man who lodged up the back lane 
 last year, and was supposed to have been formerly a play- 
 actor. It was mooted that he should read Shakspeare in the 
 schoolroom ; and he said he would think about it ; which I 
 suppose he has been doing ever since, for no more came of the 
 proposition. We have frequent bets of fours and sixes of 
 alcoholic fluids, respecting the exact readings of quotations 
 
STROLLERS AT DUMBLEDOWNDEARY. 317 
 
 from the dramatists ; and reference being made to the authors' 
 works themselves, both parties are generally found to be in 
 the wrong. Lastly, though we have no regular theatre (not 
 even the smallest provincial one, within ten miles), we are 
 visited, with tolerable regularity, once a year, by a band of 
 those wandering histrionics called strollers. They omitted to 
 visit us last year, and I grieved ; thinking the dramatic 
 element in Dumbledowndeary was on the decline ; but a few 
 da} 7 s since, walking up street, the time being dinner time, and 
 the object of my journey the fruitless one of procuring a 
 ha'porth of mint, with a view to its conversion into sauce for 
 lamb, I was greeted with the intelligence that the mummers 
 were come. 
 
 The announcement was the more pleasant as it followed 
 close on the heels of another class of amusements with which 
 we have lately been favoured. We have seen a sight in 
 Dumbledowndeary within the last fortnight not unfamiliar, 
 I dare say, to my older and travelled readers, but which to 
 the younger portion must be quite novel and surprising. 
 What do you think of five wild and picturesque foreigners 
 appearing in Dumbledowndeary, coming from no man knows 
 where, and going no man knew whither ; four of them lead- 
 ing two monstrous bears and two hideous wolves, with chains 
 and muzzles, and the fifth man bearing a drum of uncouth 
 make, which he smote continuously! Bears and wolves in 
 England ! They took us back to the time of King Egbert, 
 and the Eoyal Bear, which lived in the Tower, and washed 
 himself in the Kiver Thames. The bears were brown beasts, 
 with that pitiably half-human appearance, which bears have 
 when on their hind-legs, of being distressed mariners in 
 shaggy brown coats and trousers, much too loose for them : 
 the name of one of them was Martin, and a most woe-begone 
 Martin he was, with paws like very dirty driving-gloves, 
 with the fingers coming through, a preposterous muzzle, and 
 a general expression of the most infinite raggedness and 
 wretchedness. He danced, did Martin, and went through the 
 military exercise, and kissed his keeper at the word of com- 
 mand, with oh ! such an unmistakable longing in his coun- 
 tenance to amplify the kiss into a hug, and a gnash, and a 
 tear ! Martin's brother was a young bear Martin the found- 
 ling, perhaps who, whether the major part of his sorrows 
 were yet to come, according to the axiom, or not, seemed to 
 have quite enough of them now, and abandoned himself to 
 
318 GASLIGHT AOT> DAYLIGHT. 
 
 despair in tide dust, at every convenient opportunity, till 
 forced to assume the duopedal attitude by the cudgel of his 
 master. As to the two wolves, they were not performing 
 wolves, nor dancing wolves, nor learned wolves, by any 
 means : they were simply wolves lanky, brindled, savage- 
 looking creatures, whose existence was embittered by an 
 insufficiency of raw flesh, human or otherwise, and by the 
 necessity of wearing a muzzle, and being tugged about by a 
 chain. They viewed the performances of their ursine brethren 
 with profound disgust and contempt : their masters, whom 
 they unwillingly permitted to drag them along, with more 
 disgust still, mingled with fear and loathing. Man delighted 
 them not, nay, nor woman either; the one sole object on 
 which their attention seemed fixed, and to which their desires 
 were directed, lay in the amalgamated legs of the juvenile 
 population of Dumbledowndeary. For those tender, fleshy, 
 tearable, crunchable, howlable-for extremities did their fierce 
 mouths water, their teeth gnash, and their eyeballs glare, 
 ana their bushy tails disport themselves, in a manner horrid 
 to behold. 
 
 If the bears and the wolves, and their strange keepers (the 
 man with the drum was a study in himself) were a source of 
 amusement, imagine what a fertile source of recreation the 
 strollers must have been. As soon as I heard that the mum- 
 mers were come, I lost no time in repairing to the spot 
 where they had set up their theatre. It was not ill-chosen. 
 A green patch of land, with a natural amphitheatre of turf 
 around it, then a path, then another patch, whereon Mr. 
 Clewline, the sail-maker, spreads out his sails like gigantic 
 table-cloths, and pitches them, or waterproofs them, or does 
 something to them with a mysterious compound ; and then 
 the broad shining river with the yachts dancing on its 
 bosom, like trim bits of nautical cabinet-making ; the dusky 
 brick-laden barges with heavy sails, that would seem to be 
 impregnated with brick-dust too, so dusky red are they ; the 
 squat Prussian and Swedish barks waiting at the ballast 
 wharf; the Gravesend steamer puffing and smoking along the 
 channel on the Essex side ; the unobtrusive, yet labouring 
 ant-like little tugs, pilot fishes to great sharks and whales of 
 Yankee liners, and Green's Indiamen and Australian packet- 
 ships, deep in the water with auriferous cargoes. There is 
 one-legged Barker in his little boat, his oars as he feathers 
 glancing in the wet spray and golden sun like priceless 
 
STKOLLERS AT DUMBLEDOWNDEARY. ! 319 
 
 gems, though they are but humble lance wood after all. 
 There is Mr. Thumb, the pilot, shoving off to board and pilot, 
 nolens volens, a homeward-bound ship ; there is a neat little 
 skiff pulling in from a yacht with ladies deep in novel reading 
 and crochet work ; there, opposite to me, in Essex, are flat 
 marsh lands, and flatter meadows, and the white smoke of 
 another train on another railway, and thereabouts, they tell 
 me, lives the wicked contractor who sold the hay which the 
 horses couldn't eat, and which it was very lucky they did not 
 eat, under the circumstances of cold lamb connected with the 
 forage in question ; and here, at my feet, is the grassy patch 
 with the strollers' booth upon it. 
 
 It is a very tumbledown edifice indeed, of old boards and 
 canvas, which have evidently done service in countless grassy 
 patches, to say nothing of fairs, all over England. There is 
 an outer proscenium supported on a platform, about which 
 there can be no mistake, for it simply consists of a few 
 loose boards placed on the body of a van, which evidently 
 serves for the conveyance of the paraphernalia of the company 
 through the country. The proscenium itself, as a work of 
 art, is abominable ; as a curiosity it is laudable. All styles 
 of decoration find representatives on its surface the intensely 
 Prse-Kaphaelite prevailing; for the rules of perspective are 
 wholly set aside, and the avidity of the artist for purity and 
 brilliancy have caused him to throw aside all except the 
 primary colours red, blue, and yellow. There are two 
 lateral doors, which mean nothing, inasmuch as they lead to 
 nothing, and don't open, and upon which knockers in the 
 Louis Quatorze style are planted in bitter mockery. There 
 is a door, left centre, which is of some signification, inasmuch, 
 as it is the box, pit, and gallery entrance, and pay-place. 
 The summit of the proscenium is occupied by those useful 
 domestic animals, the lion and unicorn at issue, as usual, 
 about the possession of the crown, and more frequently, I am 
 afraid, getting more brown bread than white bread or plum 
 cake during the progress of their hostilities ; there are a 
 quantity of flowers painted, which, if novelty of design and 
 strangeness of colour met with their reward, would infallibly 
 carry off the gold medal at Chiswick and all other horti- 
 cultural shows ; and, finally, there are the names of the 
 proprietors of the booth Messrs. Hayes and Walton glaring 
 in red lead, and yellow ochre, and blue verditer. The ' walk 
 up ' process to the booth is apparently effected by an inclined 
 
320 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 plane, witli a few battens nailed across it at irregular intervals 
 an Averims of which the descent will be, I opine, more 
 facile than the ascent. 
 
 There is a side door of ingress, however the stage door, I 
 presume to the Theatre Koyal Dumbledowndeary. Close by 
 it is another van with a hood or tilt a sort of mixture of the 
 Thespian and Kommaney, or Gipsy, very picturesque. There 
 is a ladder leading up to this van or waggon. Between its 
 shafts there is at this moment, smoking his pipe, an individual 
 who, by his smock frock, might be a waggoner ; by his tight- 
 fitting trousers, a stableman ; by his squab oilskin hat, a sailor ; 
 by his broken nose and scarred complexion, a fighting man ; 
 but who, by his wavy black hair (yet bearing the brand of 
 the fillet), his shaven jaw, his stage eye, stage lip, stage step, 
 is unmistakably a Thespian, a stroller, a mummer, if you will. 
 Can this be Hayes ? Walton, perhaps ? No, Walton should 
 be short and stout, and, if I mistake not, bald. He can't be 
 both, may be one, is perchance neither. As I muse, another 
 man who, in his blue frock coat, has a smack of the butcher, 
 crosses him, bearing a pail of water, and enters the stage 
 door. He puzzles me horribly ! What can he want a pail of 
 water for ? Not for ablution that would be too absurd ; 
 not for drinking that were absurder still ; perhaps for some 
 dramatic purpose, for something in the play. Anon conies 
 forth from the booth, a female form, closely draped in a dingy 
 shawl that might have been worn as a toga in one of the 
 comedies of Meander, it looks so old. I cannot see her face ; 
 but, as she climbs into the waggon, I catch a glimpse of a 
 cotton stocking pink ? Well, not very pink ; say lavendered 
 by dirt ; and a red leather brodequin. 'Tis a dancer ; and, 
 as she disappears there protrudes for a second from under the 
 tilt, a human face, and that face is white with chalk, red with 
 paint, and bald, with a cockscomb, and is as the face of a 
 clown, and I get excited. 
 
 So do some eighty or a hundred boys and girls, of various 
 sizes and ages, who are standing, like me, on the turf or 
 gambolling on the turf amphitheatre, some with the intention, 
 as I have, of patronising Hayes and Walton, when their 
 theatre opens. Others, oppressed by that [perpetual want of 
 pence that vexeth public children, contenting themselves 
 with seeing as much as they can of the outside of the show, 
 hopeless of internal admittance. It is very pleasant to see all 
 these happy poor children, not ragged, but in the decent, 
 
STROLLERS AT DUMBLEDOWNDEARY. 321 
 
 homely, common clothes that country children wear ; it is 
 very good to hear this village murmur as 
 
 * The mingling notes come soften* d from below.' 
 I cannot hear j 
 
 'The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung ;' 
 
 swains don't respond or milkmaids sing in these back parts. 
 I cannot hear 
 
 4 The watchdog's voice that bays the whispering wind ;' 
 but I can hear 
 
 * The playful children just let loose from school,' 
 
 the noisy geese gabbling o'er the pool, the sober herd lowing 
 to meet their young, and the loud laugh which speaks (not 
 always, dear Goldsmith) the vacant mind. 
 
 Two sober horses feed quietly by the side of the tilted 
 chariot, while the rest of the landscape is made up by a mis- 
 anthropic donkey, which appears to have given up thistles 
 altogether as gross and sensual luxuries, and browses con- 
 tentedly on chalk and stunted thistles ; and a big brown dog 
 that seems to know everybody, and tumbles everybody, and 
 makes a very fierce pretence of barking and biting, belying 
 his fierceness all the time by the wagging of his tail and the 
 leer on his honest countenance a landscape of happiness and 
 plenty, and quietude and the Queen's peace. 
 
 Of Peace, say I ?* As I watch the strollers' booth, there- 
 comes across the field of the river a little black steamer, with 
 a white funnel, towing a hulkish, outlandish bark, with her 
 mainmast all gone to pieces, with an outlandish flag at her 
 rnizen, and floating proudly above it the English ensign. 
 This is a Eussian prize ; and, as though looking through a 
 camera, you suddenly drew a red slide between the lens 
 and the eye, this field of peace becomes at once a field of 
 war. See, transport No. 42 is just going down river; she 
 is chock full of heavy guns and munitions of war ; yonder 
 little schooner, painted light-blue, a Fruiterer from the 
 Azores, laden with peaceful oranges and lemons, has been 
 chartered by Government for the conveyance of stores to the 
 Black Sea ; transport No. 19 is expected down shortly with 
 artillery horses, and transport No. 70 with hussars and 
 
 * A.D. 1855. 
 
322 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. . 
 
 lancers. I "begin to remember that, within a few miles of 
 my quiet, peaceful, little Dumbledowndeaiy, are the most 
 famous arsenals and dockyards to be found in this mortal 
 world fields of the balls of death laboratories of destructive 
 missiles. But the waters curl and are blue and sparkling, 
 and the tides have their ebb and flow, whether their burdens 
 be peaceful argosies or armed galleys ; and the river-shores 
 remember that they have seen the Danes in the Thames, and 
 the Dutch in the Medway, and the mutiny at the Nore, and 
 that they were none the less green and smiling. 
 
 Messrs. Hayes and Walton do not trouble themselves about 
 the war, save in so far as it affects the price of tallow candles 
 and two-inch rope, or influences the minds of their audiences, 
 leading them (H. and W.) to compose and perform pieces of a 
 war turn or of a military tendency all to suit the popular 
 appetite for the drama pugnacious. Thus, though the piece 
 originally announced for this evening was the Corsican 
 Brothers, or the Fatal Resemblance and the Murdered Twins ; 
 H. and W., finding Dumbledowndeaiy to be partially a down- 
 to-sea-going place, including among its population coast- 
 guardsmen, bargemen, watermen, and fishermen persons all 
 supposed to have a lively interest in the progress of the war 
 changed the drama to the Russian War and the Gallant 
 Turk ; or, Death, the Danube, and the Tartar Bride. 
 
 We have waited a considerable time so considerable, 
 indeed, that Mr. Sprouts the peripatetic fishmonger and pur- 
 veyor of sundries in general, has driven his little truck, drawn 
 by a placid little ass, to the brink of the amphitheatre, and is 
 driving quite a brisk trade in cakes, nuts, apples, oranges, and 
 ginger-beer. We almost feel inclined to ask for bills of the 
 play. 
 
 By-and-by a little cheer directs my attention from the 
 proscenium ; and my spirits are raised to the highest pitch by 
 the appearance on the platform of an Individual. He makes 
 his appearance, curiously, much in the same manner as I have 
 seen Mr. Calcraft make his appearance on a certain dreadful 
 stage in front of one of Her Majesty's gaols, where he does 
 the second tragedy business cautiously advancing to the front 
 and curiously peering into and scanning the populace. But 
 he wears garments far different from the doomster's sables; 
 haying on a pair of gay boots, which I dare swear have been 
 originally ankle-jacks, and are now covered with a coat of red 
 paint ; a pair of ample calico trousers, a broad leathern belt 
 
STROLLERS AT DUMBLEDOWNDEARY. ( 323 
 
 with a large brass buckle (pattern the Miller and his Men 
 size, Grindoff), a velveteen polka jacket with coarse gold lace 
 sewn down all the seams, an imitation point-lace collar, and 
 such a turban ! a wondrous combination of a wide-awake hat 
 with a dirty shawl twisted round it, and streamers of spangled 
 gauze and a broken feather a turban that would make any 
 Cheltenham or Leamington spinster die of envy. This in- 
 dividual, after a cursory but evidently efficient survey of his 
 auditory having reckoned them all up, and divided the pay- 
 ing from the non-paying ones disappears into the place from 
 whence he came ; soon, however, to re-appear with a long 
 green drum, whose bruised parchments attest how long and 
 often it has suffered the discipline of the stick. This drum 
 he discreetly proceeds to sling by a cord to the posts of the 
 proscenium, and deliberately performs a solo upon it a solo 
 that has very little beginning and an elastic end being 
 capable of prolongation ad infinitum ; or of being cut sharp 
 off when necessity requires. 
 
 To him, presently, a man in private clothes, with a trom- 
 bone. Next, a man with a horn, and a troublesome cough, 
 which makes of his horn-blowing one continual catarrh. 
 Next, a young lady in long black ringlets and long white 
 calico ; next, a ditto ditto in red hair braided and short pink 
 calico spangled trousers to match, and blue boots ; next a 
 diminutive child- woman or woman-child, I scarcely know 
 which, who, with her dark eyes and hair and slight figure, 
 would be pretty but for a preternaturally large and con- 
 cave forehead a forehead that seems to argue wrong and 
 mismanagement somewhere beyond the inevitable malforma- 
 tion of nature ; next a magnificent creation full six feet high, 
 with flowing black hair (or wig), a plumed hat, an imitation 
 point-lace collar, a half modern military, half Elizabethan 
 doublet, a fierce sword, trunk hose, buckskin (imitation) 
 tights, and a pair of jack -boots large, high in the thigh, 
 acute in the peaks, lustrous with copal varnish or grease a 
 monarch pair of boots such boots that had you dared dis- 
 place them and they had been Bombastes', he would have had 
 your life in a twinkling in King Artaxomines' time. These 
 boots seem to oppress their wearer with a deep and awful 
 sense of the responsibility they involve. They are perchance 
 the only pair of jack-boots in the company, and to wear them, 
 perhaps, is as precious a favour as it was of old to wear the 
 king's robe of honour. This booted man moves with an 
 
 Y 2 
 
324 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 alternate short step and stride. His eyes are bent down ward y 
 but not in humility they are looking at his boots. He has- 
 no eyes, no ears, no thought apparently for anything beyond 
 those nether casings. I look at him with fear and loathing, 
 mingled with patriotic hatred ; for I seem to recognise in him 
 the Emperor of Eussia, and already suspect him of nefarious 
 designs connected with the Tartar Bride. 
 
 Two more personages appear in succession, and make up 
 the effective strength of the company. There is an old man 
 with feeble legs and a flaxen wig, ill-concealing a stubbly gray 
 head of hair. He wears a gray jerkin with hanging sleeves ; 
 beneath which there is a suspicion of Dirk Hatteraick's pink 
 striped shirt, and hose to match. Besides being the old man 
 of the troupe, physically and dramatically, he is one of the 
 orchestra likewise, and carries a battered old flageolet, of 
 which the music comes out all at wrong holes and produces 
 dismal discord. The last histrionic who makes himself mani- 
 fest, is a little man, who, by his particularly bandy legs, frill, 
 cockscomb and painted face is of the clown, clowny the clown 
 I caught a glimpse of in the waggon ; and who has a habit of 
 rubbing his face continually with a blue pocket-handkerchief 
 rolled up into a very small ball, which, taking his painted 
 face into consideration, is, at the least, inconvenient. The 
 company range themselves on the platform, and there is dead 
 silence in the amphitheatre. You might hear a piece of 
 sweetstuff drop. 
 
 I very soon find that the clown does not belie his appear- 
 ance ; for he advances to the front with the man in the won- 
 derful turban, and is immediately addressed by him as Mr. 
 Merriman and desired to be funny. 
 
 Upon which he at once stands upon his head. Unfor- 
 tunately, however, the boards upon which he stands being loose, 
 it occurs to one of them to stand upon its head likewise, upon 
 the fulcrum and lever principle, and Mr. Merriman is very 
 nearly precipitated down the inclined plane, and into the 
 midst of his admirers. He as suddenly recovers himself, 
 and makes a joke which is none the less happy for not having 
 the remotest connection with the event which has just oc- 
 curred. 
 
 ' Merriman,' says the turbaned Turk, in a jaunty, off-hand 
 manner, < have you ever travelled ?' 
 
 6 All over the world/ answers Merriman. 
 
 4 Have you been in 'Merrikar ?' 
 
STROLLERS AT DUMBLEDOWNDEAIIY. 325 
 
 * No, not there ; I said all over the world, mind.' 
 ' Well, in Afrikar, Europe, 'Stralia ?' 
 
 * No, no, I said the world.' 
 
 4 Well, where 'ave you been ?' 
 
 Mr. Merriman scratches his head as if to refresh his geo- 
 graphical reminiscences, and after a pause, answers, ' I've 
 been in Dumbledowndeary.' 
 
 This is taken as a great joke, and is roared at accordingly. 
 
 4 Merriman,' asks he of the turban again, ' what is non- 
 sense ?' 
 
 4 Why,' to him replies the jocoso, ' to eat vinegar with a 
 fork 's nonsense. To try to stop the tide with a teaspoon 's 
 nonsense. And to try to stop a woman's tongue when she's a 
 talking 's nonsense.' 
 
 This is received as even a more exquisite witticism than 
 the first, and is greeted with much haw-hawing and clapping 
 of hands by the men, and much blushing and giggling by the 
 women. The little folks laugh, as it is their happy privilege 
 to laugh at everything at which they don't cry. 
 
 Merriman is proceeding to make another joke,* when the 
 Turk stops him. 
 
 ' You had better, Merriman,' he says, l hinform the com- 
 pany that this hevening we shall have the honour of pfrom- 
 ming the Eooshian War and the Gallant Turk ; or, Death, the 
 Danube, and the Tartar Bride.' 
 
 Merriman makes the announcement with many deliberate 
 mistakes and transpositions of the original text. 
 
 4 As the pfrommences will be raather long,' the Turk adds 
 by way of rider, ' we will fust 'ave a shut dence on the out- 
 side, and the pfrommences will then krnence in the hinteriar. 
 Hadmission sixpence to boxes, and thruppence to gallery.' 
 
 The * shut dence ' then takes place. But as the space is 
 extremely limited on which its evolutions are performed, the 
 dancers literally walk through the figures. The clown moves 
 his legs a great deal, but his body not much, and is exces- 
 sively active within a confined space. The old man, whose 
 legs move naturally of themselves through feebleness, is para- 
 lytically nimble, and the young lady in white calico is as 
 energetic as she can be under the circumstances. I look at 
 her and the little child-woman with a sort of nervous interest, 
 and observe that they cling to each other, and whisper to- 
 gether, and make much of one another. I imagine some 
 relationship between them, or at least some strong sympathy 
 
326 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 and bond of love and suffering, often stronger, God knows,, 
 than ties of blood. As for the Emperor of Eussia, he feels it 
 plainly beneath the dignity of his boots to dance, and contents 
 himself with an occasional grim bow to his partner. 
 
 There is rather a hitch at the end of the ' shut dence, 5 and to 
 say the truth, rather a long wait before the 4 pfrornmences 
 kmence in the hinteriar.' Perhaps the manager is waiting for 
 the approach of dusk, for it is yet broad daylight ; perhaps 
 (and the noise of some hidden hammers would seem to bear 
 out this view of the question) the arrangements are not yet 
 completed. Meanwhile the solo on the drum is repeated, and 
 an overture by the whole of the orchestra (any tune or time) 
 and then there is another ' shut dence,' performed however 
 without the co-operation of the Emperor, who, probably 
 disgusted at the levity of the proceedings, disappears alto- 
 gether. 
 
 Just then I become sensible of the presence of young 
 Harry Bett, who is commonly known as the Young Squire, 
 and has made up his mind to drain the cup of delirious excite- 
 ment known as Life in Dumbledowndeary to the very dregs. 
 Young Harry has a coat with many pockets, and trousers 
 fitting him much tighter than his skin, and, if the constant 
 perusal of a betting-book made a reading man, would take 
 a double first class at any university. He bets freely,, 
 does young Harry, upon fights, races, hop-harvests, trotting 
 mares, cribbage, boating, ratting, cricketing, and general 
 events. He has brought with him a gallon of beer, in 
 a flat stone bottle, and a quantity of birds'-eye tobacco and 
 short pipes. He is quite an enthusiastic admirer of the minor 
 drama, though in rather a violent and turbulent phase. 
 
 He startles me at first somewhat by addressing the mighty 
 Emperor of .Russia himself by his Christian name, and by 
 making derisive inquiries after his state of health. He alarms 
 me by gallantly offering beer to the lady in white ; by break- 
 ing into the very marrow of Mr. Merriman's witticisms with 
 adze-headed jokes of his own, and by pouring forth to me the 
 details of an irruption he had made into the dressing-room of 
 the company which was the stage of the theatre, indeed 
 and, according to his account, presented an exactly similar 
 appearance to the barn made famous in Hogarth's print. But, 
 when I find that his free-and-easiness is appreciated to the 
 fullest extent ; that Hayes evidently thinks him a bold fellow > 
 and Walton a dashing spirit, I begin to think that I have 
 
STROLLERS AT DUMBLEDOWNDEARY. 327 
 
 been living behind the time somehow, and that life in Dum- 
 bledowndeary is the life for a rackety blade, after all. 
 
 Louder beats the drum, and louder still brays the music 
 through the inspiriting strains of ' Pop goes the "Weasel,* which 
 dashing melody young Harry has called for, and is now sup- 
 posed to be heard for the first time in Dumbledowndeary. 
 Hey for dissipation ! Let us throw aside the conventionalities 
 of society and be gay and rackety with a vengeance. We 
 spurn the inclined plane, with its servile battens nailed 
 across, and enter the Theatre Royal by the side-door, when 
 we immediately assume nine points of the law possession of 
 a front seat supposed to form part of the boxes; young 
 Harry sternly tendering the gallery price, threepence, which 
 after some demur is accepted by the Tartar Bride, who 
 appears to be Argus-eyed ; for though taking money at the 
 gallery door outside, she spies us in the boxes, and is literally 
 down upon us in a twinkling. 
 
 During an interval of from ten to fifteen minutes, some 
 twenty score of our population come tumbling into the 
 theatre. There is nothing but a coarse canvas covering, 
 supported on poles, overhead, rough deal planks on tressels 
 to sit upon, and the bare grass beneath. The theatre is well, 
 not brilliantly, but lighted with somebody's patent gas, 
 which appears to be a remarkably pitchy compound, flaring 
 away in tin cressets. We make ourselves very comfortable, 
 however, with the gallon of beer (which young Harry 
 liberally dispenses to his neighbours), and the tobacco-pipes, 
 while above us rise tiers of seats occupied by brick-makers, 
 ballast-heavers, sand-men, farm-labourers, nursery-maids, 
 decent young women (and in that respect my Dumbledown- 
 deary is a very coronal of jewels of pure water), bargemen, 
 boatmen, preventive men, children, and dogs. You would be 
 puzzled to find a more motley assemblage at any other theatre 
 in England, major or minor. The aristocracy of the place, 
 such as the butcher, the farmers, and two or three worthy 
 landlords, do not hold aloof from the entertainment altogether, 
 but they are bashful, and will drop in by-and-by. 
 
 All in, and all ready to begin in front, at least though 
 by a continued hammering behind all does not seem quite 
 ready there. I Fee Mr. Merriman and the Turk in anxious 
 confabulation over an old hat ; which, from its tinkling when 
 moved, I conjecture must contain coppers. Those coppers 
 must be the receipts, and Merriman and the Moslem must be 
 
328 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 Hayes and Walton. The convex-headed young lady (who is 
 otherwise attired as a coryphee), laboriously brings down the 
 much-enduring drum ; and, placing it before that part of the 
 proscenium where the orchestra should be but is not, grasps 
 the sticks in her tiny little hands and begins battering away 
 at it afresh. I begin to grow very sick of this very long wait, 
 likewise of the continuous strophes of ' Pop goes the Weasel,' 
 which the brass band drones forth; though I am somewhat 
 diverted by the touching resignation with which the flageolet 
 allows the trombone to wipe the mouthpiece of his instrument 
 on his sleeve, and also by a survey of the coat and hat of the 
 trombone himself. That musician is one diamond of grease, 
 and his clothes form perfect facets of oleaginous matter. 
 Young Harry, however, does not find the time hang heavily. 
 He hands the foaming can about at least its substitute, a 
 broken mug he converses familiarly with the ladies of the 
 company who sit familiarly on the front benches till it be their 
 turn to ascend the stage, and he holds earnest parley with some 
 members of the upper gallery who are beguiling the time by 
 pelting us with nut-shells, and broken pipes. Two or three 
 * hallos !' and 'now thens !' accompanied by a strong recom- 
 mendation to ' cheese it ' (i. 0., act of cessation), cause these 
 trifling annoyances to cease. Meanwhile, the theatre is getting 
 fuller. I need not say that the free-list is entirely suspended 
 no ! not entirely : there is one exception the policeman is 
 admitted free. He surveys the assemblage municipally, the 
 proscenium critically, the corps dramatique favourably. The 
 performances have not long commenced before I observe him 
 applauding the Emperor of Eussia enthusiastically. 
 
 With that potentate, who is sitting majestic in his boots 
 immediately before me, and condescendingly partaking of beer 
 with the young Squire, I enter into brief conference. I am 
 somewhat disappointed to find that he is merely a Eussian 
 field-marshal after all, but I still revere his boots. He tells 
 me that I was right in my surmise respecting Hayes and 
 Walton. They are the parties, he says, and very nice parties 
 they are. He apologises for the thinness of the company, 
 saying that it is not yet complete, but that it was very strong 
 at Stepney Fair, where they were doing twenty houses a day. 
 The lady in white is Mrs. Hayes. He thinks Dumbledown- 
 deary a poor place. He anticipates but mediocre business, as 
 the thing isn't known yet, and they havn't as much as sent a 
 
STROLLERS AT DUMBLEDOWNDEARY. 329 
 
 drum about. Do I think that the tradesmen would give a 
 bespeak ? If so, they would have some bills printed, and 
 
 Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle ! A bell, which has been ringing 
 about once in every half minute as a species of sop to the 
 public impatience, now rings to some purpose, and the cur- 
 tain rises. 
 
 The Kussian War! The Tartar Bride! Death and the 
 Danube ! The Gallant Turk ! Yes ; let me see. Azarack 
 (this Turk) is in love with Selima, pronounced Syllabub (lady 
 in white), daughter to Chum-Chum, a Tartar peasant (the old 
 man, and discovered to be a rank Irishman), but is coveted 
 by a Eussian Field-Marshal (Boots). There is an under-plot, 
 treating of the loves of Hilda Chum-Chum's second daughter 
 (Convex) and Wingo, a Wallachian peasant (played by a per- 
 sonage in a costume novel to me, but, if I mistake not, Mr. 
 Merriman in buff boots). The drama is in three acts, aver- 
 aging twelve minutes each. The scene varies between a 
 woodman's hut, a modern drawing-room, and a dungeon, sup- 
 posed to be the palace or castle of Field-Marshal Boots. I 
 think I cannot better sum up the plot than by stating that in 
 act the first there is one murder, two fights, Wingo up the 
 chimney (which catches fire), one imprisonment of Chum- 
 Chum, and three appeals (on her knees) by Selima to Boots, 
 beginning with ' Ear me.' Act the second : three fights, two 
 abductions of Selima, one elopement by Hilda, a torture un- 
 dergone by Chum-Chum, a comic song by Wingo, and innu- 
 merable soliloquies by Boots. Act the third: three fights 
 (one fatal), one ghost, one general reconciliation, and a dance 
 by the characters,; ending with the Triumph of the Turks, and 
 Ruin of the Russians. I need not say that Boots is at last 
 totally discomfited and brought to signal shame, and is drag- 
 ged off, dead, by the toes of those very jack-boots he has done 
 so much, by his ruffianly conduct, to disgrace. I may add 
 that all these events appear to take place in that part of 
 Turkey which borders on Tartary, close to the Danube, where 
 it falls into the Baltic Sea ; that the dialogue is all carried on 
 in the purest vernacular, including such words as * old Bloke/ 
 * blow me,' 'pickles,' 'go to Bermondsey,' and the like; that 
 it is elevated, however, by sundry scraps from 'Othello,' ' Man- 
 fred/ ' Venice Preserved/ and 'Richard the Third/ sprinkled 
 hither and thither like plums in a pudding, and spouted by 
 Boots ; and, to wind up, that there is not one single PI in a 
 right place among the whole company. 
 
330 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 I must confess that, in my vagabond way, I find it all very 
 pleasant notwithstanding ; and that I am charmed with the 
 audience, so charmed with the play, acted out upon the fresh 
 green turf. So I sit through the laughable drama of ' A Day 
 Well Spent ' (not to speak of a variety of intermediate singing 
 and dancing) with great content, and, at parting, promise the 
 ex-Emperor (in private life at once a humble and familiar 
 man) that I will interest myself with the tradesmen for a 
 bespeak next Monday. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 CHEERILY, CHEERILY ! 
 
 IF I had not been in London within the last month, and seen 
 the wondrous tide of emigration setting out from the docks 
 there ; if I had not read in certain journals of the Jeremy 
 Diddler and its teeming cargo ; if I had not passed through the 
 port of Southampton lately, and gazed upon the Hampshire 
 folk singing loud emigratory poeans, and departing by whole 
 tribes for the Diggings, with cradle, mattock, and spade ; if 
 many weeks had passed since at Havre I saw the Grand Bassin 
 crammed choked, with Yankee liners, with emigrant-ships 
 for the States, for California, and for Australia (some of 
 which, I make bold to tell you, in confidence, were in my 
 private opinion no better than tubs) ; if I did not know that 
 Plymouth, and Bristol, and Cork, yea, and the American 
 seaboard far away (wheels within wheels) had each their 
 exodus ; that in remote South Sea islands and Pacific inlets, 
 painted savages were packing up their wardrobes, consisting, 
 I suppose, of a tomahawk and a toothpick, neatly folded in a 
 plantain- leaf ; if I did not know that in swarming Canton 
 and thieving Shanghae, and piratical little mud-and-thatch 
 villages on the Yo-hang-ho and Yang-tse-Kiang, broad-hatted 
 and long-tailed Chinamen were saving up pice and cash for 
 passage-money and gold-digging tools; if I did not know 
 that, from Indus to the Pole, blacks, whites, tawnies, and 
 mulattos, were baking human heads, and polishing skulls, 
 and carving concentric balls, and weaving gorgeous shawls, 
 and curing reindeers' tongues, and fermenting Champagne 
 wine for the Australian market ; that, wherever there were 
 hearts to feel and tongues to express the fierce, raging lust for 
 
CHEERILY, CHEERILY! 331 
 
 gold, the cry was, ' Off, off, and away !' if I did not know 
 this, I say, 1 should be tempted to think that from Liverpool 
 alone the great army of voluntary exiles was setting forth ; 
 that there, and there alone, was the Eed Sea and the host of 
 Israel, with their gold, and silver, and precious stones ; there, 
 the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud ; there, the prospect 
 of wandering in a watery desert not forty, but one hundred 
 days : for, verily, all Liverpool seems to be off. 
 
 * A king stood on the rocky brow 
 That looks o'er seaborn Salamis . . . ' 
 
 But I, poor, penniless plebeian, with never a regal bend in 
 my scutcheon, stand on the stones of mud-born Liverpool ; 
 every stone of whose docks, and every brick of whose ware- 
 houses was wont to be cemented, according to Mr. George 
 Frederick Cooke, ' by the blood and sweat of the enslaved 
 and murdered African ;' and from the brows of Prince's Dock, 
 and Canning Dock, and Bramley Moore Dock from the brows 
 of that unequalled line of basins, reaching from the shore 
 opposite Eastham to below Bootle and Waterloo I gaze on 
 the ' ships by thousands/ and the ' men in nations,' that lie 
 below. 
 
 Oh, cheerily, cheerily ! is the anchor-song, morning, noon, 
 and night in the great docks where the vessels from the coast 
 of Africa lie, which have come home laden with gold-dust, 
 and palm-oil, and elephants' teeth, and which are off again, 
 ere many days, with huge packages of Birmingham hardware 
 and Manchester goods, coral necklaces, and gimcrack orna- 
 ments for Mumbo Jumbo and Ashantee fetishes, slop rifles 
 and cutlasses for the King of Dahomey's amazons. Bright 
 blue or bright green, with brave streaks of white, are these 
 vessels painted hulls, masts, and yards; whether that the 
 rays of the African sun fall less fiercely on them than on a 
 black surface, or whether to dazzle and bewilder the simple 
 savages with harlequin colours, deponent sayeth not. A 
 strong, a very strong odour of palm-oil scents the breeze, 
 pervades the decks, breaks out in a rich oleaginous dew on 
 the apparel and faces of the bystanders. Here is a gruff mate, 
 seated on a water-cask, teaching a parrot to swear, who is all 
 oil clogged and sticky with the luscious product. Talk of 
 the Hull whalers ! what are those train-oil-indued vessels to 
 these greasy ships and greasier men? Gigantic tubs and 
 casks of palm-oil, worth, they tell me, from thirty to forty 
 
332 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 pounds each, are being hoisted on shore, rolled about the 
 quays, gauged by the vicious-looking boring-tools of the 
 Custom-house officers, and carted away in greasy vans. 
 
 Empty casks there are also, and in plenty, which are to be 
 conveyed back to Africa ; then brought home full of oil again. 
 How many voyages have these ill-coopered tubs made since 
 they were hammered up by swarthy, black Kroomen, in some 
 sweltering barracoon on the Guinea coast? \Vhat raging 
 suns, what blustering hurricanes, what soaking deluges of 
 rain, what legions of winged locusts and mosquitoes, must 
 have shone, and blown, and battered against those crazy old 
 staves, since they first held palm-oil ! Coopered, too, by 
 slaves ; worked at to the music of cowhide-whips, or paid for 
 in drams of rum, or lacquered buttons and scraps of red cloth. 
 And yet, consoling thought ! how many thousand pounds of 
 oandles and bars of soap have been made from the yellow 
 grease these casks have held, and how little we reck, seeing 
 them kicking about on this Liverpool quay, of what the 
 Kroomen's cooperage and the greasy sap of the African tree 
 have done for civilization and for Christianity. As I muse, 
 come a flying horde of ragged wretches to scrape with oyster- 
 shells and long nails what portions of coagulated oil yet adhere 
 to the insides of the casks. But a stern dock policeman falls 
 upon them and smites them. 
 
 If you think to cross that bridge leading from one dock to 
 the other, my friend in the bombazine dress, the black 
 triangular bonnet, and the big, flat, chequered basket like 
 a wicker draught-board, you will be disappointed, as I have 
 been. For while I was lingering on the Palm-Oil Quay, 
 underground machinery was at work, strange noises were 
 heard, some cog-wheels moved, and the bridge, gravely part- 
 ing in the middle, disappeared into the dock walls, like a 
 trick in a pantomime. A bold baker made a flying leap on 
 one half, just as the water-parted operation took place ; and 
 he gained the opposite side, somehow, but how I know not, 
 and now stands there exulting, though confessing that it was 
 a * close shave.' A dreary gulf flows between him and me ; 
 but a big ship is coming out of dock, they tell me,' and I 
 must make the best of it, and wait till she has passed, and 
 the bridge is drawn to again. 
 
 A disappointment ! No big ship is here, but a little leg- 
 of-mutton-sailed, squat, grubby barge, full of mercy on us ! 
 chairs and tables. The ' Saucy Sally ' of Lancaster, Flachey, 
 
CHEERILY, CHEERILY! 333 
 
 master. There are chests of drawers for'ard, and four-post 
 bedsteads aft ; and the captain (five feet of tarpaulin, with a 
 yellow oilskin hat, in the midst of which his brown face 
 
 flows like a gigantic blister) commands his crew from a 
 embroke table. The ' Saucy Sally ' is not too proud to remove 
 goods in town and country, and to enact the part of a spring 
 van on the salt seas. Some Hegira from Liverpool to Lan- 
 caster is she favouring now, though I cannot, in connection 
 with the railway and this Pickford and Chaplin and Home 
 era, discover the advantage of the long sea for so short a 
 period of transit. I am reminded of that dear but old- 
 fashioned friend of mine who, to this day, insists on coming 
 from Margate by the hoy! A hoy from Margate in 1859; 
 shade of Charles Lamb ! 
 
 The ' Saucy Sally ' has dropped down into the river, the 
 captain bearing, with phlegmatic composure, some jocose criti- 
 cisms on his singular cargo. But now, following her, comes 
 the big ship in good earnest the 'Zephaniah, AV. Caucus,' of 
 New York, fifteen hundred tons, bound for Port Phillip. It 
 may appear strange to you that an American vessel should 
 carry British emigrants to a British colony, but stranger still 
 will it seem, when I inform you (as I am informed by a 
 politician with an umbrella and a shockingly bad tongue in 
 the way of statistics, behind me) that British vessels can in 
 no wise attempt the carrying trade in the American seaports, 
 and would convey emigrants from New York to San Francisco 
 at their peril. At which the statistical umbrella-carrier gets 
 quite purple and inflamed with indignation against free-trade 
 without reciprocity ; so much so, that I move out of the way, 
 being of the free-trade way of thinking. 
 
 The ' Zephaniah, W. Caucus,' was a large cotton-ship once ; 
 but, no sooner did the exodus to Australia commence than she 
 became suddenly, and without any prior training, one of the 
 Blue Peter line of packet-ships, which, as the whole world 
 knows, are all A. 1's at Lloyd's, are all copper-bottomed and 
 copper-fastened, all carry experienced surgeons, and all offer 
 peculiar and unrivalled accommodation for cabin and steerage 
 passengers. The three-quarter statuette of Z. W. Caucus 
 probably a great transatlantic shipowner, or lawgiver, or 
 speculator in town lots, or orator, or wild-beast tamer, or 
 something famous stands proudly, in wood and whitewash, 
 at the head of the ship, surveying the hawse-holes with the- 
 eye of a monarch, and defying the bowsprit as he would an 
 
334 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 enemy. Looking at him I am fain to confess the very great 
 family likeness between figure-heads generally. They all 
 seem to have been chiselled from the same models, designed 
 in the same train of thought. Caucus, now, with the addition 
 of a cocked hat and epaulettes, and minus an eye or an arm, 
 would be twin-brother to Admiral Nelson, bound to Singapore, 
 close by ; with a complete coat of gold-leaf, a fiercely-curled 
 wig and a spiky crown, he would do excellently well for 
 4 King Odin/ screw-steamer for Odessa ; with an extra leer 
 notched into his face, his whiskers shaved off, and in his 
 hand a cornucopia resembling a horse's nosebag, twisted and 
 filled with turnips, he would pass muster for Peace or Plenty ; 
 while with a black face, a golden crown and bust, and a 
 trebly-gilt kitchen-poker or sceptre, he would be the very 
 spit and fetch of Queen Cleopatra. Distressingly alike are 
 they, these figure-heads, with the same perpetual unmeaning 
 grin in their wooden faces, the same eyes, coats, hair, and 
 noses in salient angles ; the same presumptuous attitudes, as 
 though the forecastle (save the mark !) were not good enough 
 for them, and carrying, all, the same pervading expression of 
 impertinent inanity so much so, that I could almost find it 
 in iny heart to strike them. Among other departments of 
 the Fine Arts as applied to practical uses, figure-heads stand 
 specially in need of reformation; and some day or other, 
 when Sir Edwin Landseer has taken that zoological abomina- 
 tion, the Royal Arms, in hand ; when Mr. Grant or Mr. 
 Thorburn have turned their attention towards the pictorial 
 amelioration of the Marquisses of Granby and Heroes of 
 Waterloo in the possession of the Licensed Victuallers ; the 
 Government will, perhaps, commission Mr. Bailey or Mr. 
 Lough to apply the long-neglected principles of ornamental 
 statuary to the works of our nautical sculptors ; and, rivalling 
 that great benefactor who first reformed our tailors' bills, 
 reform our figure-heads. 
 
 But to the Z. W. Caucus. Her accommodation. Well ; I 
 grant the copper bottom and copper fastenings, the expe- 
 rienced surgeon and the unrivalled cabins, but the steerage, 
 the commonalty's cabins humph ! I look on the deck of 
 the big ship, and I see it alive with fevered, dusty, uncom- 
 fortable emigration at sixteen pounds a head: a desert of 
 heads, and tossing, struggling legs and arms, with an oasis of 
 poop, where the cabin passengers smile blandly from beneath 
 their tegmine fagi, and peer with spy-glasses and lorgnettes at 
 
CHEERILY, CHEERILY! 335 
 
 the crowded fore-deck, as they would at a curious show- 
 Why don't the steerage folk go down below instead of cum- 
 bering tho decks ? is a question you will very naturally ask, 
 and which has been asked, too, several times within the last 
 ten minutes by the captain and his mates, with sundry ener- 
 getic references connected with comparative anatomy, and the 
 invocation of strange deities. Why don't they go below? 
 Well, poor creatures ! do you know what the below is they 
 have to go to, and to live in, for four months ? Erebus mul- 
 tiplied by Nox, divided by Limbo, multiplied again by a 
 chaos of trunks, and casks, and narrow berths, and bruised 
 elbows of pots, pans > kettles, and children's heads, that seem 
 to fulfil the office of the hempen fenders on board steamboats, 
 and to be used to moderate the first sharp collision between 
 two hard surfaces a chaos of slipping, stumbling, swearing, 
 groaning, overcrowding, and no, not fighting. Let us be 
 just to the poor people. There is more law, and justice, and 
 kindly forbearance, and respect for age and feebleness in the 
 steerage of an emigrant ship, than in the Great Hall of Pleas 
 all the year round, with the great door wide open and all the 
 judges ranged. Men find their level here, in these darksome 
 wooden dungeons ; but man's level, gentlemen, is not neces- 
 sarily brutality, and violence, and selfishness. I have seen 
 kindness with never a shirt, and self-denial in rags; and 
 down in noisome, sweltering steerages there is, I will make 
 bold to aver, many a Dorcas ministering barefoot, and many a 
 good Samaritan who has but what he stands upright in. 
 
 Smile away, gentlemen passengers on the poop. You have 
 but to smile, for your passages are paid, and your prospects 
 on arrival in the colony are bright. Smile away, for you 
 will have fresh meat during a great portion of the passage, 
 and preserved provisions during the remainder. For you are 
 those crates of ducks and geese, those festoons of vegetables, 
 those hundredweights of beef, and veal, and mutton, packed 
 in ice. Smile away, for you have cosy, airy little state- 
 rooms, with cheerful holes in the wall for beds, an elegant 
 saloon, an obsequious steward, books, flutes, accordions, 
 cards, dice, and book-learning. You can, if you have a mind, 
 write your memoirs or a novel, during the voyage, compose 
 an opera, study navigation, or learn the key-bugle. If you 
 must be sea-sick, you can retire to your state-rooms and be ill 
 there comfortably and elegantly. But, down in the steerage, 
 how are the poor folk to wile away the weary time ? Fancy 
 
336 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 the honest creatures during the first three days after the 
 Z. W. Caucus has sailed. Everybody ill, everybody groaning, 
 all the women whimpering, all the children crying. Every- 
 thing unpacked, but nothing ' come-at-able.' Heavy trunks, 
 chests of drawers, and washhand-stands, breaking away, and be- 
 coming bulls of upholstery in ship-board china-shops. Knives 
 and forks and plates running wild, and drinking-horns going 
 clean out of their mind. l That'll be it, sir/ says a sailor, 
 who has been ' out foreign, 5 to me ; ' but bless you, when they 
 have been well shaken up for two or three days, they'll settle 
 down comfortably enough.' Ah ! when they have ' settled 
 down/ and are bearing straight away across the great ocean, 
 what dreary days and nights they will pass ! How bitterly 
 grandfather will regret that he is ' no scollard,' and that he 
 didn't 'take to his laming kindly;' and how little boy Ned, 
 who has thriven at school, reading from a torn and yellow 
 copy of the Weekly Blunderer (more prized there than the 
 newest, dampest, third edition of the ' Times ' on London 
 breakfast tables), reading to a delighted gaping audience of 
 graybeards and matrons, babes and sucklings, will become 
 for that and many succeeding days a wonder and a prodigy ! 
 Then, on fine Sunday evenings, they will lean quietly over 
 the bulwarks, and watch the rapid course of the good ship ; 
 or, shading their eyes from the sun's rays, looking wistfully 
 ahead, and speculate where land may be, far, far away be- 
 yond the waste of blue. There will be gay fellows aboard 
 who will sing songs and crack jokes ; there will be story- 
 tellers as indefatigable as that prince of barbers who had the 
 seven brothers ; but, I am afraid also that there will be many 
 score passengers in that narrow steerage who will be in- 
 sufferably bored and wearied by the voyage : who will count 
 the time from breakfast to dinner, and so to supper, and so to 
 bed, wishing the good ship and her passengers, several times 
 during the twenty-four hours, at Jericho. 
 
 Still glides the Z. W. Caucus out of dock, somewhat slowly, 
 for she is heavily laden, and lies deep in the water. A por- 
 tion of her crew are busy at the capstan-bars sallow, Yankee 
 fellows mostly, with elf-locks and red flannel shirts, and tarry 
 trousers. As they pace, they spit; and in the intervals of 
 spitting they sing, or rather moan in chorus a dismal ditty, 
 that hath neither tune nor words, but which means some- 
 thing, I suppose. Anon the strains are wild and fitful, like 
 the wailings of an jEolian harp ; anon they rise to a loud and 
 
CHEEKILY, CHEERILY ! 337 
 
 vcngefnl crescendo, like a Highland coronach. Not all the 
 crew, though, are joining in this mysterious chant; a very 
 considerable portion of them are down below in their berths, 
 sleeping off a surfeit of rum and tobacco ; and not a few will 
 be brought on board, while the Z. W. Caucus is in the river, 
 also affected by rum and tobacco, and affectionately guarded 
 by a boarding-master, or proprietor of a sailors' lodging-house 
 (whom I should be sorry to say was two-fourths crimp and 
 the remainder extortioner), who has the greatest interest in 
 bringing sailors aboard, seeing that he is paid so much a head 
 for them in consideration of certain advances he has made, or 
 is supposed to have made to them, and which are duly 
 deducted from the pay of the unconscious mariner. 
 
 Nearly out of dock, and the commander, Captain Paul W. 
 Blatherwick, of Forty-second Street, New York, who is stand- 
 ing amidships, turns his quid complacently. The captain 
 wears a white hat, with a very broad brim, and an obstinate 
 and rebellious nap, refusing pertinaciously to be brushed or 
 smoothed. He has a shirt of a wonderful and complicated 
 pattern, more like a paperhanging than a Christian shirt, and 
 with a collar which looms large, like the foresail of a yacht. 
 He has a profusion of hair and beard, and very little eyes, and 
 a liberal allowance of broad black ribbon and spy-glass. 
 Captain Blatherwick is part owner as well as commander, and 
 has therefore a paternal interest in his emigrants ; but he is 
 rather pre-occupied just now, for two of his very best hands 
 A. B.'s, stalwart, trusty reefers and steerers are absent ; 
 and although he has searched all the low lodging-houses and 
 all the low taverns in the town, he has been unable to find 
 them. Just, however, as he has made a virtue of necessity, 
 and, giving them up for lost, has shaped a fresh plug of 
 tobacco for his capacious cheek, there is a stir and bustle in 
 the crowd ; its waves heave to and fro, and parting them like 
 a strong steamer, come two men. One has his hammock on 
 his head, large gold ear-rings, and his ' kit ' in his hand. He 
 flies like the nimble stag celebrated in Mr. Handel's Oratorio ; 
 but he is pursued by a Dalilah, a Circe, an enchantress, with 
 a coral necklace, dishevelled hair, and a draggle-tailed dimity 
 bedgown. She clings to his kit ; she embraces his hammock ; 
 she passionately adjures him to leave her, were it only his 
 ear-rings, as a souvenir. But he remembers that England 
 (represented, for the moment, by his Yankee captain) expects 
 every man to do his duty for fifty shillings a month and his 
 
 z 
 
338 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 victuals ; and , shutting his ears to the voice of the charmer, 
 he leaps on board. I say leaps, for there are ten good solid 
 feet of muddy water between the quay edge and the side of 
 the Z. W. Caucus ; yet you have scarcely time to shudder and 
 think he will be drowned, ere he is scrambling among the 
 shrouds, as a playful kitten would skip about, if kittens wore 
 red shirts and ear-rings. His companion is equally rapid in 
 his motions more so, perhaps, for he is impeded by no 
 luggage, and clung to by no Dalilah. He has little wherewith 
 to lure Dalilah ; for, of all the notable equipments with which 
 he landed at George's Dock, fifteen days ago, he has now 
 remaining what think you? a blanket! As I stand here, 
 nothing but a sorry, patched, tattered blanket,' nor shirt, 
 nor shoe, nor rag else. He wraps it about him sternly though, 
 as though it were a toga ; and, with a hurrah of defiance, a 
 yell from the crowd, and a cheer from his shipmates, vaults on 
 board. Then he falls down a ladder, very drunk, and I see 
 him no more. They will be skinned, they will be fleeced, 
 these foolish Jacks. They won't go to the admirable and 
 palatial Sailors' Home. They will go down to Wapping, and 
 Paradise Street, and fall among thieves. "Who is to help them 
 if they won't help themselves ? 
 
 Oh, cheerily, cheerily ! The big ship is fairly out of dock. 
 The ropes are cast off, and she stands down the river, towed 
 along by a steamer ; the poor emigrants crowding the decks, 
 the tops, the yards even, to take their fill of England, home, 
 and beauty, seen for the last time. He who knows all things 
 knows alone if they, or their children, or their children's 
 children, will ever see the beloved land again. 
 
 The bridge will not be down for half an hour yet, for the 
 1 King Odin,' Czernicheff master, screw-steamer for Odessa, 
 is coming out laden with boiler-plates, and to come home again 
 with wheat. She needs no 'tug,' but steams out stolidly on 
 her own end, and with her own screw. There is another 
 Yankee liner at anchor off Egremont, and just on the point of 
 sailing. Shall we slip on board this grimy, uncouth, useful 
 tug-steamer, and board her for a minute ? 
 
 The ' Elizabeth Scradgers/ eight hundred tons, Captain 
 Peleg J. IVhittlestick, is a genuine ' liner.' She is bound for 
 New York, with forty cabin passengers and two hundred 
 steerage ditto. Sixteen guineas are demanded for the after- 
 passage, the sum of two pounds ten is the ticket for the 
 steerage multitude. And such a multitude ! Three-fifths, 
 
CHEERILY, CHEERILY! o39 
 
 Irish, one-fifth Germans, and a timid, irresolute, scared, 
 woe-begone fifth of English, who look as if they had gone to 
 sleep in Liverpool and had been knocked up in the Tower of 
 Babel. A confusion of tongues, a confusion of tubs, a con- 
 fusion of boxes. A flux of barbarous words, a tangle of 
 children settling on bulkheads and ladder-rounds like locusts. 
 And an odour ! ugh ! let us go on deck, whither all the pas- 
 sengers follow us ; for the muster-roll is being called, and as 
 the authorities verify the name and passage-money receipt of 
 each emigrant, the Government Emigration agent ascertains 
 that there are no cases of infectious disease among the pas- 
 sengers ; no lame, halt, and blind ; no paralytics and no bed- 
 ridden dotards. Andy O'Scullabogue of Ballyshandy, County 
 Cork, is turned back for having a trifle of five children ill 
 with a putrid fever. Judith Murphy can by no means be 
 passed, for she is appallingly crippled. Florence M'Shane is 
 sent on shore because he is blind, and Terence Rooney, 
 because his mother has only one leg. These poor wretches 
 have been scrambling and scraping their passage-money 
 together for months. The two pounds ten have come, six- 
 pence by sixpence nay, penny by penny, from the peelings 
 of diseased potatoes ; from the troughs of gaunt, greyhound- 
 like pigs ; down long ladders in hods of mortar, in London or 
 in Dublin ; out of damaged oranges in Saint Giles's and 
 Bethnal Green. They are the economies from relinquished 
 gin glasses and eschewed tobacco ; the savings of denied red 
 herrings, and half rations of potatoes. Some of the emigrants 
 have begged their passage-money; some are about to emi- 
 grate at the expense of the parish, and some have had their 
 passage-money remitted to them from their friends in America. 
 While the ceremony of ' passing ' has been going on on 
 deck, the crew of the vessel have been below, searching for 
 stowaways unfortunate creatures too poor to pay the neces- 
 sary sum, who have concealed themselves in out-of-the-way 
 holes and corners, thinking to escape detection in the general 
 confusion, and to be conveyed across the Atlantic free of 
 expense. But they are mistaken. You must get up very 
 early in the morning if you would essay to get on the blind 
 side of an American sailor ; and not many minutes have 
 elapsed before two ragged women are discovered in some 
 hideous crevice, and a wretched dwarf, clutching a fiddle 
 tinder his shrunken arm, is detected in a cask, his heels 
 upwards, and coiled up into a perfect Gordian knot of de- 
 
 z 2 
 
310 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 formity. I do not exaggerate, and I libel 110 one when I say, 
 that after they have been well hustled and bonnetted on the 
 deck, these forlorn beings are kicked over the side by the 
 chief mate, a gigantic mariner in a tail-coat, raised in Connec- 
 ticut, and with a huge brown fist, so hard, so horny, so corru- 
 gated with knotted veins, that it looks like the fist of that 
 slave-dealer alluded to by the authoress of 'Uncle Tom's 
 Cabin ' as if it ' had grown hard in knocking down niggers.' 
 'For,' says the mate, jerking a jet of tobacco juice and an 
 explanation to me across his shoulder, 4 you must jest ketch 
 'em up sharp, you must, these Irishers, and that's a fact. It's 
 a word and a blow here, and no flies.' And this latter axiom 
 the chief officer religiously carries out in all his dealings with 
 the steerage passengers, anathematizing the eyes of any refrac- 
 tory emigrant for the first offence, and knocking him down 
 like an ox for the second. 
 
 I stumble aft, as well as I can for luggage, human and in- 
 animate, and take a peep into the saloon, where there is a 
 negro steward in a white jacket, and where there are soft 
 carpets, softer couches, gaily-decorated panels, comfortable 
 state-rooms, silken hangings, and a regiment of spittoons 
 carved and gilt in the Louis Quatorze style, and quite gor- 
 geous to behold. A passenger I find below seems so delighted 
 with his bed, that he is continually lying down on it, then 
 jumping up, falling back half a dozen paces on the bright 
 Brussels carpet, and regarding the trim couch with rapt 
 ecstasy rubbing his hands meanwhile with the anticipation 
 of quite a surfeit of luxuries for his sixteen guineas. But a 
 little bird which has accompanied me whispers that the 
 Elizabeth Scradgers will be no sooner out of the river than 
 the bright carpets will be rolled up, and the painted panels un- 
 screwed, and that the silken hangings, and mahogany fittings, 
 and soft couches will disappear, to be replaced by bare boards, 
 and scrubby horsehair, and hard beds the luxuries being re- 
 served for the next departure from port. What else the little 
 bird would tell me I know not, for at this moment comes Cap- 
 tain Pel eg J. Whittlestick from his cabin, with loud and nasal 
 injunction for all strangers to ' clear !' He is as like in voice, 
 person, and dress to the captain of the Z. W. Caucus as two 
 cherries are like each other. The Government Emigration 
 agent, the surgeon, the broker, the captain's friends, and I 
 who write, step on board the tug. ' Cheerily, cheerily, oh!' 
 begins that dismal windlass chorus as the anchor is being 
 
CHEERILY, CHEERILY! 341 
 
 hove up ; the emigrants give a sickly cheer, and another ship- 
 load of humanity is off. 
 
 The mysterious agency which whilom removed the dock 
 bridge from beneath my feet, has slowly ground it (with a 
 rusty grumble as of iron chains in torture) into its place again, 
 and I cross over to the other side. 
 
 Dock upon dock, quays after quays, ' quay berths,' loading 
 and unloading sheds, long lines of bonding warehouses, barrels, 
 bales, boxes, pitch, tar, ropes, preserved provisions, water- 
 casks, and exodus everywhere ! Whole tribes of north-country 
 people, and west-country people, and all sorts of country 
 people, darting off to the Antipodes with an eager, straining 
 rush. As for New York, or Boston, or Philadelphia, those 
 seaports are only considered as being * over the way,' easy 
 trips across the water, to be accomplished with a carpet-bag 
 and a hat-box, and with as little fuss and ceremony as a ride 
 in one of the little ferry steamers that ply between Liverpool 
 and Birkenhead, or Seacombe and Tranmere. Gentlemen go 
 coolly off to Melbourne and Port Phillip in alpaca coats and 
 wide-awakes ; ladies, to Adelaide and Geelong with blue pokes 
 to their bonnets, and lapsful of crochet work as though they 
 were going picnicking. Sunburnt captains, bound for the 
 other side of the world, set off in their shirt-sleeves, and tell 
 their smiling cheerful spouses just to mind the baby, and have 
 dinner ready at four o'clock in about eight months time or so. 
 Oh, cheerily, cheerily ! Cheerily, oh ! A thousand hammers 
 coopering water-casks take up the cry; a thousand shovels 
 shovelling potatoes into the hold for stock re-echo it. Stand 
 out of the way there ! Here is a waggon-load of preserved 
 provisions : mock-turtle soup and stewed mushrooms in tin 
 cases hermetically sealed ; green peas and fresh mint, to be 
 eaten under the line. Make way there for the live stock for 
 the emigrant ship, ' Gold Nugget' sheep, poultry, and a milch 
 cow. Mind yourself! a bullock has broken loose from the 
 ' Jack Eobinson,' for Sydney. He is a patriotic beast : England, 
 with all its faults, he loves it still ; and if he is to be made 
 steaks of, he prefers being eaten on this side the equinoctial 
 line. Stand from under ! a giant crane is hoisting blocks of 
 Wenham Lake ice on board the Melbourne packet 'Bushranger.' 
 They are all pressed for time, they are all going, cheerily, 
 cheerily ; they are all, if you will pardon me the expression, 
 in such a devil of a hurry. 
 
 But the trunks, my dear sir, the trunks ! Can you, sensible, 
 
342 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 cautious, discreet, as I am sure you are, forbear, when you 
 gaze on these trunks, forbear holding your head with your 
 hands, or leaping into the air with a short howl, in sheer 
 frenzy. The trunks ! Eoods, perches, acres of land covered 
 with great sea-chests, trunks, bonnet-boxes, chaise-boxes, 
 portmanteaus, valises, trunks of piebald leather, calf-skin, 
 marble paper, morocco, Kussia leather, oak, mahogany, and 
 plain deal. Avalanches of trunks, with surely sufficient 
 literature pasted inside to set up the schoolmaster abroad in 
 Australia for years to come. As for such small articles as 
 carpet-bags, desks, hat-boxes, writing-cases, and railway rugs, 
 they are as plentiful as ratafia cakes, twenty a penny. Chil- 
 dren of tender years stagger by with trunks ; stalwart porters 
 carry piles of them, as waiters at eating-houses carry the tin 
 dishes and covers. Grim spectres hover about, moaning 
 weird complaints of phantom boxes lost or mislaid, and point 
 with skinny fingers to invisible crockery-ware packed in 
 straw. I come upon the lone female in the bombazine dress 
 and the triangular bonnet. She sits forlorn, ' remote, un- 
 friended, melancholy, slow,' inexpressible misery on her wan 
 face, stranded high and dry on a band-box. Her ' things ' 
 have departed from her ; an oak chest has been shipped bodily 
 for Montevideo, and three mattresses and a palliasse went out 
 to the best of her belief in the ' King Odin.' She is going to 
 Celebes. Now what can this good woman be going to do at 
 Celebes ? I puzzle myself mightily with this question, 
 staring like one distraught at this lone woman, sitting under 
 the dock shed like a Banshee on a band-box, till the edge of a 
 hard-hearted oaken chest coming violently on my toes suffi- 
 ciently admonishes me to mind my own concerns-. 
 
 Still cheerily, cheerily to all parts of the deep waters 
 whither ships go, till I stroll down to a remote quay to change 
 the scene, and see the Irish packets come in. Yet even here 
 'tis but the old song to a somewhat fresher tune, for the mobs 
 of poor Irish who are landed, pell-mell, from the Dublin, 
 and Belfast, and Cork steamers, are off again for America to- 
 morrow or the next day. Tumbling ashore they come 
 ragged, dirty, draggle-tailed, and (to trust their looks) half- 
 starved. Gaunt reapers and bogtrotters in those traditional 
 blue body-coats, leathern smalls, and bell-crowned hats, that 
 seem to be manufactured nowhere save in Ireland ; grizzled 
 old women, bent double with age and infirmity ; children who 
 seem to have sprung up like some crass fungus of decomposi- 
 
CHEEKILY, CHEEKILY! 343 
 
 tion rather than to have been born ; and slatternly girls with 
 shawls huddled over their heads. Some of the men have thick 
 shoes, passably holey ; but three-fourths of the females and all 
 the children have neither shoes nor stockings. Some of the 
 women carry heaps of what, at first sight, you might take 
 for foul rags, but which, moving and crying suddenly, you 
 discover to be babies. Their luggage is on their backs, or 
 in despairingly small and dirty bundles slung on sticks. 
 They have a plurality of nothing save children. They may 
 have money, some of these miserable objects the bare price 
 of their passage to America sewn up in tattered petticoats 
 and sleeve linings ; but, whether they have or not, they have 
 no sooner set foot on the quay than they fall a-begging, 
 tendering the hand for charity mechanically, as a snuff- 
 taker's ringer and thumb would seek his nose. They sit 
 stolidly on posts, or crouch on the bare ground, staring around 
 with vacant listless eyes, as though they had landed in the 
 Moon and didn't know the way to the mountains in it. And, 
 poor souls ! for aught they know of the land they have now 
 set their weary feet upon, they might just as well be in the 
 Moon, I trow. Presently come to them some of their own 
 countrymen in darned coats and patched snialls, keepers of 
 styes called lodging-houses and dens called taverns. To these 
 are they consigned and carried away ; and if they have any- 
 thing to be robbed of, and are robbed, they have, at least, the 
 satisfaction of being robbed by their compatriots. 
 
 These woeful travellers have been gently pushed and 
 hustled on shore by hundreds, and when the last bell-crowned 
 hats have passed the gangway I am about departing, when I 
 am informed that there is yet more live stock to be landed. 
 More ! What more can remain after all this misery and all 
 these rags, and all these walking typhus fever and small-pox 
 hospitals ? 
 
 As I have asked the question, I must answer it. There is 
 a great deal more on the deck of the steamer yet. Pigs more. 
 Cattle more. Sheep more. Stand on the extreme verge of the 
 quay and peep over on the deck of the steamer. Do not turn 
 sick and rush away in horror, but look. Look at this Smithfield* 
 in miniature ; Smithfield, but infinitely more crowded in pro- 
 portion ; Smithfield, but ten times dirtier ; Smithfield, with 
 more cruelty, and wanton neglect, and shameful filth than 
 
 * Fuit. 
 
344 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 you would find any Monday or Friday morning between Cock 
 Lane on the one side and Barbican on the other. Are you a 
 Common Councilman? If so, snuff up the balmy, piggy, 
 beefy, muttony gale with a relish. Are you a slavery aboli- 
 tionist? Look on these beasts so scientifically and geometrically 
 packed for economy of space, that every sheep's leg fits into- 
 its fellow's eye, and every bullock has a sheep between its 
 horns, and you will have a very apt idea of how herrings are 
 packed in a barrel, and how negroes are stowed for the Middle 
 Passage. Are you a statist ? Speculate on the exact amount 
 of suffering, the nice quota of torture, the justly-balanced 
 ratio of maddening thirst these miserable animals undergo 
 during a twelve, a fifteen, or a twenty hours' passage. Are 
 you a plain man with a plain English tongue ? Lift it up, 
 and with a will, against the shameful cruelties of the cattle 
 transit system; against that monstrous inconsistency which 
 can make governments and municipalities Argus-eyed to petty 
 nuisances, and stone blind to these abominations ; which can 
 make mayors, and corporations, and police authorities, strain 
 at the gnat of an orange-woman or a halfpenny candle sold on 
 a Sunday, and swallow this enormous camel. To look at these 
 dumb creatures panting with agony, their tongues hanging 
 out, their eyes dilated, their every muscle throbbing ; stag- 
 gering on their legs, wallowing in filth, too stupified with 
 agony to low, or bleat, or squeak, too sick to move, too cowed 
 to struggle : is enough to rouse a man of adamant. Some of 
 the animals are so wedged and packed together that they are 
 suffocated, and not able even to lie down and die, die standing. 
 Here is a wretched bullock luckier than its fellows, for it 
 has some two inches space on either side of it lying desolate 
 by the funnel, with its eyes piteously turned up, and seeming 
 to entreat slaughter. Nor will slaughter be long in coming ; 
 for the deputed slaughterer, nice in such matters, and knowing 
 to a hair the power of endurance in the beast, kills it just before 
 it would otherwise die. The dead carcase would be unsale- 
 able, or at best would have to be surreptitiously disposed of ; 
 but slaughtered alive, it is genuine imported meat, and fetches 
 its price. 
 
 Cheerily oh, cheerily ! 
 
XXX. 
 
 HOW I WENT TO SEA. 
 
 How many years ago is it, I wonder, when, resenting some 
 boyish grievance, deeply and irrecoverably irate at some 
 fancied injury, wounded and exacerbated in my tenderest feel- 
 ings, I ran away from school with the hard, determined, un- 
 alterable intention of going on the tramp and then going to 
 sea? The curtain has fallen years ago, and the lights have 
 been put out long since, on that portion of my history. The 
 door of the theatre has been long locked and the key lost 
 where that play was acted. Let me break the door open now 
 and clear away the cobwebs. 
 
 About that time there must have been an epidemic, I think, 
 for running away at Mr. Bogryne's establishment, Bolting 
 House, Baling. ' Chivying ' we called it. We had three or 
 four Eton boys among us, who had carried out so well the 
 maxim of Floreat Etona at that classic establishment, that they 
 had flourished clean out of it; and whether it was they 
 missed the daily flogging, (Mr. Bogryne was tender-hearted) 
 or the fagging, or the interminable treadmill on the Gradus ad 
 Parnassum (we were more commercial than classical) they 
 were always running away. One boy ' chivied J in conse- 
 quence of a compulsory small-tooth comb on Wednesday even- 
 ings he wouldn't have minded it, he said, if it had been on 
 Saturdays. Another fled his Alma Mater because he was 
 obliged to eat fat, and another because he could not get fat 
 enough. Spewloe, our biggest boy, who was the greatest 
 fool and the best carpenter of his age I ever knew caught 
 the chivying disease of the Etonians, and was continually ab- 
 sconding. He was always being brought back in a chaise-cart 
 at breakfast-time, and spoiling our breakfast with his shrieks 
 (he was fifteen, and bellowed like a bull) while undergoing 
 punishment. They beat him, and he ran away the more. 
 They took away his clothes, and he ran away the next day in 
 the French master's pantaloons (crimson crossbars on an orange 
 ground), and the knife-boy's jacket. They tried kindness with 
 him, and fed him with large blocks of plum cake and glasses 
 of ginger wine, but still he ran away. They ri vetted a chain 
 on him with a huge wooden, log attached to it, as if he had 
 
346 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 been a donkey; but lie ran off next day, log and all, and was 
 found browsing in a hedge, like an animal as he was. At last 
 they sent for his Uncle, a fierce Being connected with the East 
 Indies, in a blue surtout and white duck trousers ; so starched 
 and stiff and cutting, that his legs looked, as he walked, like 
 a pair of shears. He took Spewloe away ; but what he did 
 with him I know not, for he never revealed the secrets of his 
 prison-house. I saw him again, years afterwards, in a cab, 
 with a tiger ; his foolish face decorated with such tight 
 whiskers and mustachoes, such a tight neckcloth, such tight 
 boots and gloves and stays, that he could scarcely move. I 
 believe he went into the army and to India, to fight the 
 Affghans. I hope they proved less terrible to him than 
 Bogryne, and that he did not run away from them. 
 
 I think, were I to be put upon my affirmation relative to the 
 cause of my running away from Mr. Bogryne's establishment, 
 and going on tramp, that I should place it to the account of 
 the Pie. There was a dreadful pie for dinner every Monday ; 
 a meat pie with a stony crust that did not break ; but split 
 into scaly layers, with horrible lumps of gristle inside, and such 
 strings of sinew (alternated by lumps of flabby fat) as a ghoule 
 might use as a rosary. We called it kitten pie resurrection 
 pie rag pie dead man's pie. We cursed it by night, we 
 cursed it by day : we wouldn't stand it, we said ; we would 
 write to our friends ; we would go to sea. Old Bog^oie (we 
 called him ' old ' as an insulting adjective, as a disparaging 
 adjective, and not at all with reference to the affection and 
 respect due to age) old Bogryne kept Giggleswick the monitor 
 seven hours on a form with the pie before him ; but Giggles- 
 wick held out bravely, and would not taste of the accursed 
 food. He boxed the ears of Clitheroe (whose father supplied 
 the groceries to the establishment, and who was called in con- 
 sequence ' Ginger ') like a sack, for remarking, sneeringly, to 
 the cook, that he (Bogryne) never ate any of the pie himself, 
 and that he knew the reason why. Candyman, my chum, found a 
 tooth in the pie one day a dreadful double-tooth. Who was 
 going to stop in a school where they fed you with double-teeth ? 
 This, combined with the tyranny of the dancing-master, some 
 difficulties connected with the size of the breakfast roll, and 
 others respecting the conjugation of the verb ruTrrw, (for, 
 though we were commercial, we learnt Greek, hang it !), and 
 the confiscation of a favourite hocky stick for which I had 
 given no less a sum than fourpence and a copy of Philip 
 
HOW I WENT TO SEA. 347 
 
 Quarll drove me to desperation. I ' chivied ' with the full 
 intention of walking to Portsmouth, and going to sea. Lord 
 help me ! 
 
 One bright moonlight night I rose stealthily from my bed, 
 dressed, and stole down stairs. I held my breath, and trod 
 softly as I passed dormitory after dormitory; but all slept 
 soundly. The French master who was wont to decorate 
 himself hideously at night with a green handkerchief round 
 his head, and a night-garment emblazoned like the San benito 
 of a victim of the Inquisition gurgled and moaned as I passed 
 his door : but he had a habit of choking himself in his sleep, 
 and I feared him not. Clitheroe, who slept under the last 
 flight of stairs, was snoring like a barrel organ ; and Eunks, 
 his bedfellow, who was the best story-teller in the school, was 
 telling idiotic tales, full of sound and fury signifying nothing, 
 to himself in his slumbers. I crept across the playground 
 cautiously, in the shadow of the wall. The play-shed ; the 
 brick wall against which we were wont to play * fives ; ' the trim 
 little gardens, three feet by four, where we cultivated mustard 
 and cress, and flowering plants which never flowered ; somehow 
 seemed to glance reproachfully at me as I stole out like a 
 thief in the night. The tall gymnastic pole on which we 
 climbed appeared to cast a loving, lingering shadow towards 
 me, as if to bring me back. The sky was so clear, the moon 
 was so bright, and the fleecy clouds were so calm and peaceful 
 as they floated by, that I half repented of my design and began 
 to blubber. But the clock of Baling church striking, called 
 to mind the bell I hated most the ' getting-up bell.' The pie, 
 the tooth, the dancing-master, the diminished roll, and the 
 Greek verb, came trooping up ; and, my unquenchable 
 nautical ardour filling me with daring, I got over the low 
 palings, and dropped into the high road on my way to sea. 
 
 Nobody was in my confidence. Such friends and relatives 
 as I had were far away, and I felt that ' the world was all 
 before me where to choose.' My capital was not extensive. 
 I had jacket, waistcoat, and trousers with the etceteras, half 
 a crown in money, a curiously -bladed knife with a boat-hook 
 and a corkscrew by way of rider, and an accordion. I felt 
 that, with these though, I had the riches of Peru. 
 
 To this day I cannot imagine what the New Police could 
 have been about, that moonlight night, that they did not pounce 
 upon me, many-bladed knife, accordion and all, long before I 
 reached Hyde Park Corner. Nor can I discover why Mr. 
 
348 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 Bogryne pursued me in a chaise-cart and sent foot runners 
 after me up and down all roads save the very one I was 
 walking quietly along. I must have looked so very like a 
 runaway boy. The ink was scarcely dry on my fingers ; the 
 traces of yesterday's ruler were yet fresh on my knuckles ; 
 the dust of the play-ground adhered to my knees. 
 
 A bed next night at a London coffee-shop ; a breakfast and a 
 wild debauch on raspberry tarts and ginger-beer, very soon 
 brought my half-crown to twopence, and I felt a lowness of 
 spirits and the want of stimulants. A penny roll and a saveloy 
 brought me to zero. The accordion was a bed the next night, 
 and a sausage roll by way of breakfast, the next morning. 
 The many-bladed knife produced a mouthful of bread and 
 cheese and half a pint of beer for dinner. Then, having 
 nothing, I felt independent. 
 
 By some strange intuitive education, I felt myself all at once 
 a tramp, and looked at the journey to Portsmouth quite philo- 
 sophically. Curiously, when the produce of the many-bladed 
 knife had been consumed and forgotten, and the want of 
 another repast began to be very unpleasantly remembered ; it 
 never once occurred to me to turn back, to seek assistance from 
 any friend or friend's friend or boy's father with whom I had 
 spent a holiday in London. It never struck me that if employ- 
 ment were to be found at sea, there were docks and ships in 
 London. I was bound for Portsmouth why I know not but 
 bound as irrevocably as though I had a passport made out for 
 that particular seaport, and the route was not by any means to 
 be deviated from. If the London Docks were situated in New 
 York, and if Blackwall were the port of Bombay, they could 
 not, in my mind, have been more unattainable for the purpose 
 of going to sea, than they were, only a mile or so off. I was 
 not afraid of Mr. Bogyrne. I seemed to have done with him 
 ages ago. I had quite finished and settled up accounts with 
 him ; so it appeared to me. He, and the days when I wore 
 clean linen, and was Master Anybody, with a name written in 
 the fly-leaf of a ciphering-book ; with a playbox, and with 
 friends to send me plum cakes and bright five-shilling pieces, 
 were fifty thousand miles away. They loomed in the distance, 
 just as the burning cities might have done to Lot's wife, very 
 dimly indeed. 
 
 It was Saturday afternoon. I well remember loitering some 
 time about Vauxhall, and wondering whether that hot dusty 
 road with the odours of half a dozen bone-boiling establish- 
 
HOW I WENT TO SEA. 349 
 
 ments coursing up and down it like siroccos could be near 
 the fairy establishment where there were always fifty thou- 
 sand additional lamps, and to which young Simms at Bolting 
 House had been marvellous boy ! twice during the Midsum- 
 mer holidays. After listlessly counting the fat sluggish barges 
 on the river, and the tall dusty trees at Nine Elms (there was 
 no railway station there then), I set out walking, doggedly. 
 I caught a glimpse of myself in the polished plate -glass window 
 of a baker's shop, and found myself to be a very black grimy 
 boy. Vagabondism had already set its mark upon me. I 
 looked, so long and so earnestly, in at the baker's window that 
 the baker a lean, spiky Scotchman (whose name, McCorquo- 
 dale, in lean spiky letters above his shop-front, looked like 
 himself), appeared to think I was meditating a bold border 
 foray on his stock in trade, and rushed at me so fiercely round 
 his counter with a bread-tin, that I fled like a young gazelle. 
 I plodded down the Wandsworth road ; blushing very much 
 as I passed people in clean shirts and well-brushed clothes, 
 and pretty servant-maids, dressed out in ribbons like Maypoles, 
 laughing and chattering in the gardens and at the doors of 
 suburban villas. I had a dreadful qualm, too, on meeting a 
 boarding-school for young gentlemen in full force, walking in 
 procession two and two. As I passed the master a stout man 
 genteelly garotted in a white neckcloth, and walking severely 
 with the youngest pupil as if he had him in custody I 
 shivered. Bolting House and Mr. Bogryne loomed, for an 
 instant, not in the distance, but close upon me. Good gracious ! 
 I thought What if there should be some masonic intercourse 
 between preceptors, relative to the recovery of runaways ; 
 some scholastic hue-and-cry; some telegraphic detection of 
 chivying ? But the schoolmaster passed me in silence, merely 
 giving me a glance, and then glancing at his boys, as if he 
 would say, ' See, young gentlemen, the advantage of being 
 boarded, washed, arid educated in an establishment where 
 moral suasion is combined with physical development (' Times,' 
 August 20). If ever you neglect your use of the globes, or 
 sneer at your preceptors, or rebel at pies, you may come, some 
 day, to look like that.' The last and biggest boy, in a checked 
 neckcloth and a stand-up collar, as I made way for him on the 
 pavement, made a face at me. It was so like the face I used 
 to make at the ragged little boys, when Bogryne's pupils went 
 out walking, that I sat down on a dogs'-meat vendor's barrow 
 find cried again. 
 
350 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 By some circuitous route which took me, I think, over 
 Wandsworth Common, and through Boehampton and Putney, 
 I got that evening to Kingston-upon-Thames. The sun was 
 setting, as I leaned over the bridge. I was tired and hungry ; 
 but, dismissing the idea of supper, as something not suffi- 
 ciently within the range of possibility to be discussed, I 
 certainly began to feel anxious concerning bed. Where or 
 how was it to be ? Was it to be barn, or hay-rick, or out- 
 house or simply field, with the grass for a pillow, and the 
 sky for a counterpane ? My thoughts were interrupted by a 
 stranger. 
 
 He was, like myself, a tramp : but, I think I may say 
 without vanity, he was infinitely more hideous to look at. 
 Short and squat and squarely built, he had the neck of a bull 
 and the legs of a bandy tailor. His hands were as the hands 
 of a prizefighter. They were so brown and horny that where 
 the wrists joined on to his arm you might fancy the termina- 
 tion of a pair of leather gloves. His face was burnt, and 
 tanned with exposure to sun and rain to a dull brickdust 
 colour ; purple-red on the cheek-bones and tips of the nose 
 and chin. Both hands and face were inlaid with a curious 
 chequer-work of dirt, warranted to stand the most vigorous 
 application of a scrubbing-brush. His head was close cropped 
 like a blighted stubble-field, and his flabby ears kept watch 
 on either side of it like scarecrows. He had pigs' eyes of 
 no particular colour ; no eyebrows, no beard save a stubbly 
 mildew on his upper lip like unto the mildew on a pot of paste, 
 a 4 bashed ' nose, and a horrible hare-lip. He had an indefinite 
 jacket with some letters a W, I think, and an I branded 
 on one sleeve, a pair of doubtful trousers, and something 
 that was intended for a shirt. None of these were ragged, 
 nor could they be called patched, for they were one patch. 
 Finally, he had a bundle in his hand, a cap like a disc cut 
 out of a door-mat on his head, and something on his feet 
 which I took to be a pair of fawn-coloured slippers, but which 
 I subsequently found to be a coating of hardened mud and dust 
 upon his skin. 
 
 He looked at me for a moment half curiously, half mena- 
 cingly ; and then said, in a shrill falsetto voice that threw me 
 into a violent perspiration : 
 
 4 Where wos you a going to ? J 
 
 I replied, trembling, that I was going to bed. 
 
 4 And where wos you a going to sleep ?' he asked. 
 
HOW I WENT TO SEA. 351 
 
 I said I didn't know. 
 
 He stroked the mildew on his lip and spoke again: 
 
 4 I s'pose now you'd be a young midshipmite ?' 
 
 I am certain that I must have looked more like a young 
 sweep, but I contented myself with saying that I did not 
 belong to His Majesty's service ; yet. 
 
 1 AVhat might you be a doing of, now?' he demanded. 
 
 It was a dreadful peculiarity of this man that when he 
 spoke he scratched himself; and that when he didn't speak 
 he gave his body an angular oscillatory wrench backwards 
 and forwards from the shoulder to the hip, as if he had some- 
 thing to rasp between his jacket and his skin ; which there is 
 no doubt he had. I was so fearful and fascinated by his 
 uncouth gestures that he had to repeat his question twice 
 before I answered : then, not knowing what to describe 
 myself, (for I could not even assume that most ambiguous of 
 all titles, a gentleman), I said, at hazard, that I was a tailor. 
 
 ' Where wos you a going to-morrow ?' 
 
 I said, hesitatingly, to Portsmouth. 
 
 ' Ah ! to Portsmouth,' resumed the man, ' to Portsmouth, 
 surely ! Have you got thruppence ?' 
 
 I replied, humbly, that I hadn't. 
 
 ' No more haven't I,' said the tramp conclusively ; ' not a 
 mag.' 
 
 There ensued an ambiguous, and, to me, somewhat terrifying 
 silence. I feared that my companion was indignant at my 
 poverty, and that, on the principle of having meal if he 
 couldn't get malt, he would have three-pennorth of jacket, 
 or three-pennorth of waistcoat, or three-pennorth of blood. 
 But I was agreeably disappointed ; the villanous counte- 
 nance of my companion cleared up ; and he said condescend- 
 ingly- 
 
 ' I'm a traveller.' 
 
 * And a very evil-looking traveller, too,' I thought. 
 
 4 If you had got thruppence, and I had got thruppence,' he 
 went on to say, ' I knows a crib down yonder where we 
 might a snoozed snug. But if you ain't got nuffin, and I 
 ain't got nuffin,' the traveller continued, quite in a didactic 
 style, ' we must turn in at the Union. Do you know what 
 the Union is ?' 
 
 I had heard of the repeal of the Union, and the Union 
 Jack, and one of our boy's fathers was a member of the 
 Union Club. I had an indistinct notion, too, of an Union 
 
352 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 workhouse ; but my fellow-tramp had some difficulty in 
 explaining to me that the Union was a species of gratuitous 
 hotel ; a caravansary kept by the Poor Law Commissioners for 
 the special relief of the class of travellers known in ordinary 
 parlance as tramps, and in the New Poor Law Act as ' casual 
 paupers ;' and where, in consideration of doing an hour's 
 work in the morning, I could be provided with supper and 
 a bed. 
 
 We walked together to the house of the relieving officer to 
 obtain tickets of admission. The functionary in question 
 lived in a pretty little cottage, with a shining brass door-plate 
 much too large for the door, and a fierce bell ; which, every 
 time it pealed, shook the little house to its every honeysuckle. 
 The parochial magnate was not at home ; but a rosy girl 
 with an illuminated ribbon and a species of petrified oyster as 
 a brooch, and who was his daughter, I suppose came to a 
 little side window in the wall in answer to our summons ; 
 and, scarcely deigning to look at us, handed us the required 
 tickets. Ah me ! A twitch, a transient twitch came over 
 me when I thought that there had been days when Master 
 Somebody in a prodigious lay-down collar and white ducks, 
 had walked with young ladies quite as rosy, with brooches 
 quite as petrified, and had even been called by them, ' a bold 
 boy.' 
 
 Misery, they say, makes a man acquainted with strange 
 bed-fellows ; but shall I ever again, I wonder, sleep in com- 
 pany with such strange characters as shared the trusses of 
 straw, the lump of bread, and slab of Dutch cheese, that night, 
 in the casual ward of Kingston workhouse? There was a 
 hulking fellow in a smock-frock, who had been a navigator, 
 but had fallen drunk into a lime-pit and burnt his eyes out, 
 who was too lazy to beg for himself, and was led about by a 
 ragged, sharp-eyed boy. There were two lads who tramped 
 in company : they had been to sea and were walking from 
 Gosport to London. My fellow, the man with the wrench, 
 had been born a tramp and bred a tramp ; his father was 
 a tramp before him, and I dare say his children are tramps 
 now. 
 
 ' Yer see, 5 he deigned to explain to me, after he had de- 
 spatched his supper, ' I likes change. I summers in the 
 country, and winters in London. There's refuges and " res- 
 sipockles," ' (by which, I presume, he meant receptacles) ' in 
 winter time, and lots of coves as gives yer grub. Then comes 
 
HOW I WENT TO SEA. .V;') 
 
 spring time ; I gets passed to my parish the farther off tbe 
 better, and I gets a penny a mile. When I gets there I goes 
 'cross country, on quite another tack. I knows every Union 
 in England. In some they gives you bread and cheese, and 
 in some broth, and in some skillygolee. In some they gives 
 you breakfast in the morning, and in some they doesn't. You 
 have to work your bed out. Here, Kingston way, you wheels 
 barrows ; at Guildford you pumps ; at Kichmond you breaks 
 stones ; at Farnham you picks oakum ; at Wandsworth they 
 makes you grind corn in a hand-mill till your fingers a'most 
 drops off at yer wristes. At Brighton now, they're a good 
 sort, and only makes you chop up firewood ; but Portsmouth's 
 the place ! You're a young un,' he pursued, looking at me 
 benignantly, ' and green. Now, I'll give you a wrinkle. If 
 you're a-going to Portsmouth, you manage to get there on a 
 Saturday night ; for they keeps you all day Sunday, and they 
 won't let you do no work ; and they gives you the jolliest 
 blow-out of beef and taters as ever passed your breastbone. 
 The taters is like dollops o'meal !' 
 
 With this enthusiastic eulogium on the way in which they 
 managed matters at Portsmouth, the traveller went to sleep 
 not gradually, but with a sudden grunt and jerk backward. 
 The blind navigator and his guide had been snoring valo- 
 rously for half an hour ; and the two sailor lads, after an 
 amicable kicking match for the biggest heap of straw, soon 
 dropped off to sleep, too. There was an unsociable tinker in 
 the corner, who had smuggled in a blacking-bottle full of gin, 
 notwithstanding the personal search of the workhouse porter. 
 He gave no one, however, any of the surreptitious cordial, 
 but muddled himself in silence ; merely throwing out a 
 general apothegm to the auditory that he preferred getting 
 drunk in bed, as ; he hadn't far to fall.' He did get drunk, 
 and he did fall. I was too tired, I think, to sleep ; but none 
 of my companions woke during the night, save an Irish 
 reaper who appeared more destitute than any of us ; but whom 
 I watched, in the dead of the night, tying up some gold and 
 silver in a dirty rag. 
 
 Next morning was Sunday a glorious, sunshiny, bird- 
 singing, tree-waving Sunday. They turned us out at eight 
 o'clock with a meal of hot gruel, and without exacting any 
 work from us. The hereditary tramp and I walked together 
 from Kingston to Esher. The navigator stopped in Kingston, 
 having a genteel begging walk in the environs : and the 
 
 2 A 
 
354 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 Irishman sallied forth. London-ward with a slipshod wife, and 
 a tribe of ragged children, who had slept in the women's 
 casual ward. With them went the two sailor lads ; one of 
 whom, with a rough kindness that would have made me give 
 him a penny if I had possessed one, carried the Irishwoman's 
 sickly baby. 
 
 'Why don't you chuck them ere shoeses off?' asked my 
 friend as we plodded along. ' They wouldn't fetch nothing, 
 to sell, and they're only a bother to walk in, unless you was 
 to put some wet grass in 'em. Look at my trotters,' he con- 
 tinued, pointing to his feet, and tapping the sole of one of 
 them with the blade of his knife, ' they'se as hard as bricks, 
 they is. Go buff-steppered that's the game. 5 
 
 Some remnants of Master Somebody's pride in his neat 
 Bluchers must have lingered about me, for I declined the 
 invitation to walk barefoot. 
 
 ' When'shoes is shoes,' pursued the tramp argumentatively, 
 ' they'se good for those as likes 'em, which I don't ; but when 
 they're " crab-shells," and leaky and gummy in the soles, and 
 lark-heeled the sooner you get shut of 'em the better. There's 
 togs, too,' he pursued, looking with proper pride at his own 
 attire, ' the sooner you peels off them cloth kicksies the better. 
 There ain't no wear in 'em, and they'se no good, if you ain't 
 on the flash lay. My jacket 's Guildford gaol. My trousers is 
 Dartford Union ; and my flannel shirt is the Society for the 
 'Ouseless Poor. When I can't patch 'm no longer, and they 
 gets all alive like, I tears up. Do you know what " tearing " 
 up is ? A course you don't. Well, I goes to a Union a night, 
 and I rips up into bits every mortal bit I has upon me. 
 Then they comes in the morning, and they puts me into a 
 sack, and they puts me in a cart and takes me afore the beak. 
 Tearing up is twenty-one days, and quod meals, which is 
 mind ye reglar, is good for a cove, and freshens him up.' 
 
 Here he sat down on. a milestone; and producing a re- 
 markably neat housewife case, proceeded to overhaul all parts 
 of his apparel with as much care and circumspection as if 
 they had been of purple and fine linen, catching up any stray 
 rents and 'Jacob's ladders' with a grave and deliberate 
 countenance. 
 
 How long this man and I might have kept company I am 
 not prepared to say ; but we soon fell out. He descried, or 
 fancied that he could descry, something in my face that would 
 be sure to attract the sympathies of the benevolent, and 
 
HOW I WENT TO SEA. 355 
 
 loosen their purse-strings ; or, as he phrased it ' nobble tho 
 flats ;' and he urged me with great vehemence, not only to 
 beg pecuniary relief from all passers by, but also to diverge 
 from the high road, and go 'a grub cadging,' i.e., to beg 
 broken victuals at small cottages and gentlemen's lodge-gates. 
 Finding that I was too shamefaced, he felt himself, I suppose, 
 called upon to renounce and repudiate me as unworthy his 
 distinguished company and advice ; and, telling me that I 
 warn't fit for tramping nohow, he departed in great dudgeon 
 down a cross road leading towards Heading. I never saw 
 him again. 
 
 I walked that day very slowly and painfully, for my feet 
 had begun to swell to Guildford. I was very hungry and 
 faint when I arrived, but could not muster courage enough to 
 beg. I had a drink or two of water at public-houses, going 
 along, which was always readily granted ; and I comforted 
 myself from milestone to milestone with the thought of a 
 supper and bed at Guildford, where my ex-mentor had in- 
 formed me there was a ' stunning Union.' But, woeful event ! 
 when I got to Guildford, it was full nine o'clock in the even- 
 ing. The good people of that pleasant market town were 
 taking their walks abroad, after church-service ; good, easy, 
 comfortable, family folk fathers of families sweethearts in 
 loving couples all, doubtless, with cosy suppers to go home 
 to, and snug beds and knowing and caring nothing for one 
 poor, soiled, miserable tramp, toiling along the highway with 
 his fainting spirit just kept breast high by the problematical 
 reversion of a pauper's pallet and a pauper's crust. I soon 
 found out the relieving officer, who gave me my ticket, and 
 told me to look sharp or the Union would be closed ; but I 
 mistook the way, and stumbled through dark lanes, and found 
 myself, weeping piteously and praying incoherently, in quag- 
 mires ; and when I did get at last to the grim, brick, castel- 
 lated Union-house, the gates were closed, and admission to 
 the casual ward was impossible. The porter, a fat, timid 
 man, surveyed me through the grate, and drew back again as 
 by the light of a lantern he scanned my gaunt, hunger- 
 stricken mien. He thrust apiece of bread to me between 
 the bars, and recommended me to seek the relieving officer 
 again, who, he said, would find me a bed. Then, he 
 wished me good night, and retreated into his little lodge or 
 den with the air of a man who has got rid of a troublesome 
 customer. 
 
 2 A 2 
 
356 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 Good night ! It began to rain, and to menace a thunder- 
 storm ; but I sat down in a ditch, and devoured the bread. 
 It was eleven o'clock, and I was wet to the skin ; when by 
 dint of dodging up and down dark lanes, and knocking 
 up against posts, and bruising my shins over mile-stones, I got 
 to the relieving officer's again. 
 
 The relieving officer lived up a steep flight of steps ; and, 
 as I approached the bottom thereof, was peeping out at the 
 door to see what sort of a night it was. He shook his head, 
 either at the dirty aspect of the weather or at that of your 
 humble servant, and was just about closing his door, when I 
 ran up the steps and caught him by the coat-tail. 
 
 'Dear-a deary me !' said the relieving officer, when I had 
 explained my errand to him, ' dear-a deary me !' 
 
 This was perplexing rather than encouraging; and I 
 waited some moments for a more definite communication. 
 But, none came, and the relieving officer kept staring at me 
 with a bewildered expression, twitching nervously at a watch- 
 ribbon meanwhile, and then whirling it round as if he in- 
 tended presently to sling the seals at my head ; but I made 
 bold to tell him what the porter had told me about his find- 
 ing me a bed. 
 
 ' Dear-a deary me !' said the relieving officer again, drop- 
 ping the threatened missiles; but, this time, with a shake of 
 the head that gave solemn significance to his words. ' Where 
 am I to find a bed ?' 
 
 This was a question that 1 could not answer ; nor, ap- 
 parently, could the relieving officer. So he changed the 
 theme. 
 
 ' There isn't such a thing as a bed/ he remarked. 
 
 I don't think that he meant to deny the existence of such a 
 thing as a bed, taken in the light of a bed ; but rather that he 
 intended to convey the impossibility of there being such an 
 institution as a bed for such as I was. 
 
 1 You must go further,' he said. 
 
 * Where further ?' I asked desperately. 
 
 'Oh, I'm sure I can't say,' replied the relieving officer; 
 ' you must go on. Yes,' he repeated with another stare of 
 bewilderment and clutch at his watch appendages, ' go on 
 further there's a good lad.' 
 
 Whatever I may have found inclination to respond to this 
 invitation, was cut short by the relieving officer shutting the 
 door precipitately, and putting up the chain. So I did go on ; 
 
HOW I WENT TO SEA. 357 
 
 but not much further. I wandered down to the banks of the 
 canal, where I found a coal-barge just unladen. It was very 
 hard, and black, and gritty ; but I found out the softest board, 
 and, in that barge, in spite of all the rain and the coal-dust, I 
 slept soundly. 
 
 From Guildford to Farnham next day, through Alton; 
 where, if I remember right, the ale is brewed. My feet were 
 terribly swollen and blistered; but, with a sullen pride I kept 
 to my shoes. I have those shoes to this day in a neat case. 
 Such crabshells ! It was just one o'clock when I walked into 
 Farnham ; but, I was so tired out, that, pending the open- 
 ing of my hotel, the workhouse, I turned into a field, and slept 
 there, under a hedge, until nearly eight o'clock. 
 
 I may remark as a noteworthy feature of the frame of 
 mind I must have been in during my tramp, that although 
 I was a sharp boy, with a taste for art and a keen eye for the 
 beauties of nature, I observed nothing, admired nothing nor 
 smiling landscapes, nor picturesque villages, nor antique 
 churches. I saw, felt, thought, of nothing but of the mortal 
 miles I had to walk. The counties of Surrey and Hampshire 
 were to me but vast deserts of coach-roads, diversified by 
 oases of milestones, with a Mecca or Medina, in the shape of 
 an Union workhouse, at the end of each day's weary travel. 
 I met wayfarers like myself, but they were merely duplicates 
 of the sunburnt tramp, the Irish reaper, and the drunken 
 tinker. There was, now and then, a stray Italian boy, and 
 an Alsatian broom-girl or so ; and once I met a philanthropist 
 in a donkey-cart, who sold apples, onions, pots and pans, red- 
 herrings, Common Prayer Books, and flannel. He gave me a 
 raw red herring if, being already cured, that fishy esculent 
 can be said to be raw. Eaw or cooked, I ate it there and 
 then. 
 
 I never begged. Stout farmers' wives, with good-humoured 
 countenances, threw me a halfpenny sometimes, and one 
 pleasant- spoken gentleman bade me wait till he saw whether 
 he could find sixpence for me. But he had no change, he 
 said; and, bidding me good evening in quite a fatherly 
 manner, rode away on his dapple gray steed. Has he change, 
 now, I wonder ? 
 
 When I woke up I went straight to the workhouse. Farn- 
 ham did not boast an Union, but had a workhouse of the old. 
 school. The master was a pleasant old man, with a large 
 white apron, and gave me a liberal ration of bread and cheese. 
 
358 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 I happened to be the only occupant of the ward that evening ; 
 and, being locked up early, I had time to look about me, and 
 select the cleanest and softest-looking truss of straw. The 
 whitewashed walls were covered with the names of former 
 tramps ; their poetical effusions and their political sentiments 
 were scratched with nails or scrawled in charcoal. John 
 Hind had laboured hard to rhyme ' workhouse ' with ' sor- 
 row ;' but, although he had covered some six feet of wall 
 with his efforts, he had not succeeded. Some anonymous 
 hand had scrawled in desperate Eoman capitals ' God help 
 the poor ;' to which I said ' Amen.' Mr. Jack Bullivant had 
 recorded, in energetic but untranscribable terms, his dis- 
 approval of the quality of the cheese ; and J . Naylor had 
 given vent to his democratic enthusiasm in ' Hurrah for uni ' 
 something which looked like unicorn, but was intended, I 
 fancy, to mean ' universal suffrage.' Chartism was the great 
 wall-cry in those days. Close to the door was the sign 
 manual of 'Paul Sweeny, bound to London with Fore Kids.' 
 Motherless, perhaps. 
 
 There had been one < casual ' in before me ; but he was 
 taken so violently ill immediately after his admission, that he 
 had been removed into another out-house, on to a truckle 
 bed : the rules of the establishment not permitting his being 
 transferred to the infirmary. The poor wretch lay groaning 
 piteously, as I could hear with painful distinctness through 
 the thin wall that separated him from the casual ward. His 
 groans became at last so appalling that they worked me into 
 an agony of terror ; and 1 clung to the locked door (in the 
 centre of which there was a largish grating) and beat against 
 it, to the great disgust and irritation of the porter ; who, with 
 a lantern at the end of a pitchfork, came in to look at the 
 moribund occasionally, and who made a rush at me at last as 
 he would have done at a young bull. ' It's all over with 
 him,' he said to me in remonstrance ; ' so where's the good ? 
 The doctor's gone to a birth ; but we've give him a bottle of 
 stuff till he comes, and made him comfable. So lie down.' 
 
 Whatever the 'stuff 'was doctors' stuff, kitchen stuff, or 
 household stuff the miserable man continued ' moaning of his 
 life out' as the porter said querulously, until it was almost 
 morning. Then the doctor (a pale, over- worked, under-paid 
 young man with tight trousers, and spectacles, always in a 
 chaise and a perspiration) came ; and I heard him tell the 
 porter that the man would ' go off easily.' He presently did. 
 
HOW I WENT TO SEA. 359 
 
 They let me out at eight o'clock sick, dizzy, and terrified. 
 < I told you so,' the porter said with apologetic complacency, 
 'he went off quite " domfable." : This was his epitaph. 
 Who he was or what he was where he came from or whither 
 he was going no man knew, and it was no man's business to 
 inquire. I suppose they put him in the plain deal shell, 
 which I saw the village carpenter tacking together as I turned 
 down the street, and so lowered him under ground. They 
 might have written ' comfable ' on his tombstone, for any 
 purpose a word would serve if they gave paupers tomb- 
 stones ; which they do not. 
 
 But, this poor dead unknown man did me a service. For, 
 whether I was superstitious, or whether my nerves were 
 unstrung, or whether repentance at my obdurate folly came 
 tardily, but came at last, I went no farther on the way to 
 Portsmouth, but thought I wouldn't go to sea, just at present, 
 and tramped manfully back to Ealing, determined to take all 
 Mr. Bogryne could give me, and be thankful. But I did not 
 get what I expected and what I deserved. I found anxious 
 friends just on the point of putting out bills of discovery as 
 for a strayed puppy ; I found a fatted calf already slaughtered 
 kindness, affection, forgiveness, and Home. 
 
 There was but one drawback to my happiness. With some 
 strong preconceived notion of the dreadful company I must 
 have been keeping, and the horrible dens I must have so- 
 journed in, my relations and friends found it to be their 
 bounden duty to wash me continually. When it wasn't Warm 
 bath, it was yellow soap and scrubbing-brushes ; and when it 
 wasn't that, it was foot-bath. I was washed half away. I 
 was considerably chafed, and morally hustled, too, by good 
 pious relatives in the country ; who, for many months after- 
 wards, were for ever sending me thick parcels ; which, see- 
 ing, I thought to be cakes ; which, opening, I found to be 
 tracts. 
 
 I have walked a good deal to and fro on the surface of this 
 globe since then ; but I have never been to sea on similar 
 terms since, any more. 
 
360 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 FASHION. 
 
 WHEN a man applies himself soberly to reflect upon the fitness 
 of things in general, and of their several tendencies towards 
 the great End, of what a whirligig of vanity and inutility of 
 waste and glitter the Great World seems to consist ! All 
 these flounces and furbelows; all this crinoline, bergamot, 
 paste and jewellery, wax-chandlery, Brussels lace and Sevres 
 china; all those jobbed horses, silken squabs, double and 
 triple knocks, tags and embroideries and fripperies of the 
 Heralds' College, what are they good for ? what end do they 
 serve ? All these mountebank bowings and reverences ; these 
 kissings of hands and backing out of rooms of lath and plaster ; 
 these clatterings about streets for the purpose of bandying pieces 
 of engraved pasteboard ; these grinnings to your fellow worm 
 of five feet long across a glass of grape juice ; these bawlings 
 out of names by lacqueys ; these posturings and jumpings, and 
 agonies of etiquette ; and turning day into night and night 
 into day, and eating when we are not hungry, and drinking 
 when we are not thirsty : all these, the life-chords of the 
 Great World, to what end are they ? Who commanded them ? 
 Who promulgated the statutes that regulate them ? If Fashion 
 were a tangible idol with a frontal protuberance and a golden 
 head, squatting on his hams in a pagoda like Juggernaut, wo 
 should not need to wonder at his votaries wearing absurd 
 dresses and passing their lives in the performance of more 
 absurd ceremonies. We might set down the worship to be a 
 delusion ; but we might concede the dresses and the cere- 
 monies to be the offspring of a sincere though mistaken super- 
 stition, and to be typical or symbolic of something. But my 
 lady Azalea, the Queen of the world of Fashion, is a member 
 of the Church of England, as by law established, and she 
 would be indignant if you were to ask her whether she wor- 
 shipped a protuberant idol. Besides, Fashion is not tangible 
 or palpable. No one ever saw Fashion, or drew his (or her ?) 
 portrait, or promulgated the conditions of his (or her ?) creed, 
 or taught what is heterodox or what orthodox ; except one 
 vulgar pretender who wrote a Handbook of Etiquette ; which,, 
 for any authority it was grounded on, might as well have 
 been a handbook to the Bear Garden. 
 
FASHION. 361 
 
 What are the laws of Fashion, and who made them ? Who 
 regulates their absurdities and their proprieties ? It was the 
 height of fashion in Charles the Second's time to display about 
 four inches of white shirt between the waistband and the 
 vest ; now if I were to enter a ball-room with my shirt bulging 
 from the bottom of my waistcoat I should be bowed down 
 stairs. Why should Fashion in sixteen hundred and sixty- 
 three be beauty, and impropriety in eighteen hundred and 
 fifty-nine? Can anything be absurd er than the present 
 chimney-pot hat? Nothing. Yet, if you were to meet me in 
 Eegent Street with a hunting cap, a shovel hat, a sombrero, 
 or a fur porringer like that which Henry of Lancaster wore 
 would you speak to me ? The day after to-morrow velvet 
 skulls, shovel hats, flip-flaps, or rabbit-skin porringers may be 
 the only wear. Why should the bishop have refused to or- 
 dain Oliver Goldsmith, because he wore scarlet breeches? 
 What are wigs, boots, colours, fashionable virtues, fashionable 
 vices, bon ton, high breeding, worth, after all ? Will they save 
 * the sprightliness of youth, the fair cheeks and full eyes of 
 childhood, the vigorousness and strong flexure of the joints, of 
 twenty-five,' from the ' hollowness and deadly paleness, the 
 loathsomeness and horror of a three days' burial ?' Will they 
 avail us one jot in the day when you and I and all the world, 
 ' nobles and learned, kings and priests, the wise and the fool- 
 ish, the rich and the poor, the prevailing tyrant and the op- 
 pressed party shall all appear to receive their symbol ?' Will 
 Fashion and Madame Devy and the Eed-book keep the ' storm 
 from the ship or a wrinkle from the brow, or the plague from 
 a King's house ?' Is the world any better for Fashion, and could 
 it not move towards its end without Fashion, do you think ? 
 
 ' A man/ says a divine I love to quote, * may read a sermon 
 the best and most passionate that ever man preached, if he 
 shall but enter into the supulchre of kings * 
 where our kings have been crowned, their ancestors lie in- 
 terred, and the king must walk over his grandsire's head to 
 take the crown.' Now what a homily might a man read over 
 second-hand court dresses, over a Court Circular, or over a 
 Eed-book two years old ! How sharp one might be upon the 
 miserable vanity of superfluities, and the uselessness of lux- 
 uries. How easily we could do without them. 
 
 * Give but to nature that which nature needs, 
 . :, Man's life is cheap as beast's.' 
 
362 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 You, and I, and the king, could live on sixpence a day, and 
 never go hungry. But after all, in the very midst and flow of 
 this our homilies and this sharpness of our exhortation, comes 
 this thought to make us pause before we go with unwashed 
 faces to live in a tub like Diogenes, or to hide ourselves 
 in a cave, and cover ourselves with the skins of wild beasts, 
 as Jean-Jacques Eousseau talked of doing, or to dig up pig- 
 nuts for food, and shovel gold away as if it were mud, like 
 Timon in the play. For we begin to think how many thousand 
 men and women in England, and how many millions more 
 throughout the world, earn their daily bread by making and 
 vending Fashion's elegant trumpery; gloves, fans, spangles, 
 scents, and bon-bons : how ships, colonies, and commerce, are 
 all mixed up in a curious yet congruous elaboration with 
 these fal-lals : how one end of the chain may be my lady's 
 boudoir and its knick-knacks in Belgravia, and the other end a 
 sloppy ship-dock on the hot strand of the Hooghly ; how the 
 beginnings of a ball supper, with its artificial flowers, its 
 trifles, its barley-sugar temples, its enamelled baskets and 
 ratifia cakes, were the cheerless garret and the heated cellar : 
 how the Immensities of the world its workshops, and marts, 
 and bourses, and chambers of commerce are, after all, only 
 an accumulation of these fashionable littlenesses in bulk; 
 packed into huge bales and casks, registered in ledgers and 
 day-books, and sent and re-sent in strong ships, with bills of 
 lading and charter-parties, to the uttermost ends of the earth. 
 Pause before you condemn Vanity Fair reflect for a minute 
 before you run to the justice's to have its charter taken away. 
 Obadiah Broadbrim has helped to stock it ; conventicles have 
 been built from its profits; the crumbs that fall from its 
 table feed millions of mouths. Nor does the beneficence of 
 Fashion end here. After she has made one set of fortunes at 
 first hand she showers her favours on trade at second-hand. 
 From second-hand court dresses, and from second-hand fashion 
 of all kinds, the moral of Fashion can be more strongly 
 pointed, than from Fashion herself when arrayed in all her 
 glory. 
 
 Let us instance Mrs. Brummus. She is the mysterious 
 female who deals in second-hand ladies' apparel. I look upon 
 Mrs. Brummus's vast silent repository of last season's varie- 
 ties with the awe I have for a family vault ; for the scenery 
 of a worn-out pantomime ; for undertakers' Latin (in oil 
 colours) ; for last year's Belle Assemblee, or for the tailor's 
 
FASHION. 383 
 
 plate of the fashions and the Court Guide for the year 
 eighteen hundred and fifty-eight. 
 
 Mrs. Brurnnms's repository nestles as Milton's fountain did, 
 in ' the navel of a wood/ quite in. the core of a cancer of 
 dingy, second-hand streets and houses. Both Mrs. Brummus 
 and her shop have, moreover, a dingy, faded, secpnd-hand 
 appearance. They remind you of the magnificent allocution 
 of the lady to the quondam dealer in second-hand apparel in 
 Congreve's comedy ; ' You that I took from darning of old 
 lace and washing of old gauze, with a blue-black nose over a 
 chafing-dish full of starved embers, behind a traverse-rag, in 
 a shop no bigger than a bird-cage !' The chafing-dish and 
 the blue-black nose may be gone ; but there is yet a mar- 
 vellous touch of the bird-cage about Mrs. Brummus's shop : 
 there is yet the traverse-rag, the torn lace to be darned, and 
 the old gauze to be washed. 
 
 Enter. Here is the discarded wardrobe of those enchant- 
 ing actresses, those ravishing songtresses, those bewitching 
 dancers, who have so enthralled and delighted Fashion ; who 
 have drawn rapturous plaudits from Fashion's kid-gloved 
 hands ; melting sighs from under Fashion's white waistcoats ; 
 tender glances from Fashion's double-barrelled lorgnettes ; 
 lisps of praise from Fashion's mustachioed lips, when the 
 wearers of those dresses acted, and sang, and danced on Fa- 
 shion's great chalked stage upon that stage where there are 
 more sinks and rises, more drops, flats, borders, set pieces, 
 wings, and floats ; where there are more changes of scene, 
 spangled vanities, more going down graves and vampire^traps ; 
 where there are more music, dancing, gay clothes, red and 
 white paint, hollow hearts and masks for them to wear, than 
 you would find on the stage of the largest playhouse in the 
 world. Suspended and recumbent, folded up, stretched out, 
 singly and in heaps, in Mrs. Brummus's birdcage shop in 
 dimly distant crypts, and parlours, and crannies, and cup- 
 boards, and lumbering old presses, and groaning shelves, 
 are the crimson velvet dresses of duchesses, the ]ace that 
 queens have worn, our grandmothers' brocaded sacks and 
 hoops and high-heeled shoes, fans, feathers, silk stockings, 
 lace pocket-handkerchiefs, scent-bottles, the Brussels lace veil 
 of the bride, the sable bombazine of the widow, embroidered 
 parasols, black velvet mantles, pink satin slips ; blue kid, 
 purple prunella, or white satin shoes ; leg of mutton, bishop, 
 Mameluke sleeves ; robes without bodies and bodies without 
 
364 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 robes, and sleeves without either ; the matron's apron and the 
 opera dancer's skirt. Here is Fashion in undress, without its 
 whalebone, crinoline, false hair, paint, and pearl powder; 
 here she is tawdry, tarnished, helpless, inert, dislocated, like 
 Mr. Punch's company in the deal box, he carries strapped 
 behind his back. 
 
 If there be one article of commerce which Fashion delights 
 in more than another, it is Lace. The rich products of 
 Mechlin, Valenciennes, Brussels, and Liege; the scarcely less 
 valuable wares of Nottingham and Honiton ; the almost price- 
 less remnants of ' old point ' ' beggars' lace ' the lace that 
 Henrietta Maria loved to wear and Vandyck to paint. Not 
 one of Mrs. Brummus's tattered morsels of lace but has 
 its history and its moral. Here is the veil in which poor 
 Clara Kackleton was married to Captain Middleman. They 
 had a grand estate (grandly encumbered) at Ballyragget in 
 the county Galway. Charley Middleman kept hounds and 
 open house ; and his widow lives now in a boarding-house at 
 Tours with her two daughters. Clara's Brussels lace veil was 
 not sold by her lady's maid nor by the bride herself. It was 
 neither lost nor stolen ; but Captain Middleman, formerly of 
 the twenty-fifth Hussars, privately conveyed Mrs. Middleman's 
 veil, together with two ostrich feathers and a carved ivory 
 Chinese fan, to Mrs. Brummus's emporium. He drove the 
 bargain, he pocketed the money, and he lost that same money 
 half an hour afterwards at chicken-hazard, at the Little Nick 
 near Leicester Square. 
 
 A wedding-dress all white satin, lace, and silver sprigs. 
 Methinks I can see it now, glistening and sparkling in the 
 August sun, and rustling and crumpling in the August air, 
 as at the close of the London season its beautiful wearer 
 descends that ugly narrow little staircase, which has been a 
 ladder of delight to so many, a via dolorosa to so many more, 
 and which leads from the vestry-room of St. George's, Ha- 
 nover Square, into Maddox Street. The wearer of the satin 
 dress comes down the shabby steps a wedded bride. She is 
 married to a lord ; a duke has given her away. Fourteen 
 young bridesmaids in white have wept at the responses. Two 
 have fainted, and one has been carried into the vestry, to be 
 sal-volatilised. A nervous clergyman has addressed the bride- 
 expectant as ' Thomas, wilt thou have this man to be thy 
 wedded wife?' The bridegroom has been seized with the 
 usual deadly perturbation, and offered to place the ring on the 
 
FASHION. 365 
 
 finger of tlio pew-opener; and the clerk, while gravely cor- 
 recting the errors of all parties, has viewed the whole proceed- 
 ings with an air of deep misanthropy. At last, somehow or 
 other, the right man has married the right woman ; the pew- 
 opener and beadle have been feed, and the verger remembered ; 
 the clergyman has had his rights and the clerk his dues. 
 The licence has been conned over ; the register has been 
 signed by the bridegroom in character meant to be very- 
 valiant and decided, but in reality very timorous and indis- 
 tinct ; by the bride with no pretence or compromise, but in a 
 simply imbecile and hysterical manner ; by the father of the 
 bride in a neat hand I should like to see at the bottom of a 
 cheque ; and by big General Gwallyor of the Indian army (the 
 additional witness) in a fierce military manner, with a dash 
 at the end like an oath. The little boys have shouted, and 
 the wedding-carriage, with its crimson-vested post-boys and 
 spanking grays, has clattered up ; the policemen have put 
 down an imaginary riot, threatened with their batons the 
 crowd generally, and menaced with arrest one individual 
 lamp-post ; and then, shining out like a star among the silver 
 favours and orange flowers, the snowy dresses and black dress 
 coats, the smiles and tears, comes the bride : God bless her ! 
 Is there a sight more beautiful under heaven than a young 
 bride coming out of church ? Can you forget Sir John Suck- 
 ling's beautiful lines in his ballad upon a wedding ? 
 
 * Her feet beneath her petticoat 
 Like little mice stole in and out, 
 
 As if they feared the light. 
 And then she dances such a way, 
 No sun upon an Easter-day 
 
 Is half so fine a sight.' * 
 
 Now, alas ! my lord is at Florence, my lady is in furnished 
 lodgings in London, and the bride's dress is at Mrs. Brummus's. 
 There was an action at law in the Court of Probate and 
 Matrimonial Causes respecting them not long since ; and 
 numberless suits in ajl sorts of courts are pending between 
 them now. My lord hates my lady, and my lady hates my 
 lord ; and they write abusive letters against each other to 
 their mutual friends. 
 
 Fashion is born, is married, and dies every year, and 
 Fashion is buried in Mrs. Brummus's dusky shop ; she watches 
 
 * Founded on a beautiful old superstition of the English peasantry that 
 the sun dances upon an Easter morning. 
 
366 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 its funeral pyre, and superintends the process of its incinera- 
 tion ; until, phoenix-like, it rises again from its ashes to die 
 again. 
 
 Fashion dies. It is so far like a prince or a rich man that 
 while it lives we dress it up in purple and fine linen, and fall 
 down and worship it, and quarrel with and hate our brothers 
 and sisters, for a smile from our demi-god, for a card for 
 Fashion's balls or the entree to Fashion's back-stairs. But no 
 sooner is the demi-god dead than we utterly desert and 
 forget it. We do not condescend, as in the case of dead 
 humanity, to fold its rottenness in gold and crimson velvet, to 
 build a marble monument above it, sculptured all over with 
 lies ; to state in an inscription that beneath reposed the ashes 
 of such and such a most noble, high, mighty, powerful 
 Prince Fashion, who was a father to his subjects, and a model 
 to his compeers, and was in short the very best Fashion that 
 ever was known, and the first fashionable gentleman in the 
 world. No, we allow the corpse of Fashion to putrefy in the 
 gutter, or to be eaten up by the vultures and the storks, and 
 adjutant birds. There have been kings even treated as cava- 
 lierly. When the luxurious Louis Quinze lay at the point of 
 death, the noise of the courtiers deserting their monarch to pay 
 their respects to the new king elect echoed through the long 
 galleries of Versailles like thunder. When the old king was dead 
 they crammed his miserable body (he died of the most horrible 
 form of small-pox) into a box, and jolted him off in a post- 
 chaise by night to St. Denis, where they flung him into rather 
 than buried him in the sepulchre of his ancestors. So do we act 
 by our dead King Fashion adding even insult to injury ; for, 
 after his death we scoff and jeer at him, and are tremendously 
 satirical upon the ridiculous, hideous, frightful, preposterous 
 fashion that he was. It is my opinion that if Messrs. Banting 
 and Prance were to confine themselves to performing the 
 funerals of Fashion, they would cease to be the fashionable 
 undertakers they are. 
 
 Fashion is greater than king or kai$er when he is alive ; 
 but dead, he is of no more account than a broken egg-shell. 
 Le roi est mort vive le roil Leg-of-mutton sleeves and short 
 waists are dead. Long live tight sleeves and long waists ! 
 
( 367 ) 
 [ XXXII. 
 
 YELLOWKNIGHTS. 
 
 WHEN Roscius was an actor in Rome, I think it highly 
 probable that private theatricals, imitative of the perform- 
 ances of the great dramatic exemplar of the day, were a 
 highly popular amusement among the juvenile Roman aris- 
 tocracy. It is pleasant as well as reasonable to think so. I 
 would have given something to have been able to witness 
 such a celebration in the great city of men ; and that such 
 sights often took place I have very small doubts. That 
 amiable system of classical education under which you and I, 
 my dear Hopkins, were reared, but which our sons, let us 
 hope, will mercifully escape that grand scheme of gram- 
 matical tuition which held chief among its axioms that the 
 mind of youth, like a walnut-tree, must be quickened by 
 blows in its advances to maturity ; that the waters of Helicon 
 were not wholesome unless duly mingled with brine ; and 
 that the birch and the bays were inextricably interwoven in 
 the poetical chaplet that system, I say, taught us (among 
 irreproachable quantities and symmetrical feet) to look upon 
 everything appertaining to Rome and the Romans with some^ 
 thing very much akin to horror ; to regard Plautus as a bugbear 
 and Terence as a tyrant ; to remember ilbthing of Horace but 
 the portrait of his schoolmaster nothing of Virgil but the cruel 
 memory of Juno. But now that a new generation has grown up, 
 and we ourselves (according to an ingenious theory some time 
 propounded) have changed our cuticle, and have had provided 
 for us a new set of viscera, we can afford to look back without 
 bitterness or regret, without fear or trembling, upon the old 
 days of verbum personals and studio grammaticce. Queer days ! 
 They would have flogged us for reading Mr. Macaulay's 
 ' Lays,' and caned us had we looked upon Lempriere, not as 
 a dull book of reference, but as the most charming collection 
 of fairy tales in the world. Now all our gerunds and supines, 
 our dactyls and spondees, our subjects and attributes, our 
 hexameters and pentameters, are mingled in a pleasant jumble 
 of dreamy memories : now that we quite forget what took 
 place in the thirty-sixth Olympiad, and don't know the names 
 
368 GASLIGHT A:N T D DAYLIGHT. 
 
 of the forty tyrants, and can't remember the value of an As or 
 the number of stadia between Eome and Capri (I speak 
 for myself, Hopkins) we can indulge in the fancy that the 
 Komans were not at all times frowning, awful spectres, 
 with hook-noses, laurel-bound brows, and flowing togas, 
 incessantly occupied in crossing the Eubicon, subduing 
 the Iceni, reviewing the tenth legion, striking Medusa- 
 like medals, standing behind chairs with hatchets and 
 bundles of rods, or marching about with S. P. Q. E. stuck on 
 the top of a pole. Cicero pleaded against Verres, but there 
 were other advocates to plead in the cause of a countryman's 
 pig. The geese were not always saving the Capitol ' bo' must 
 have been occasionally said to them, and they eaten with sage 
 and onions sometimes. The Cumsean sybil must have taken 
 a little snack on her tripod from time to time. Maecenas 
 must have made jokes, great Caesar stooped to pun, and stern 
 Brutus played with his children. Yes ; among all this 
 solemn bigwiggery these triumphs, ovations, sacrifices, 
 orations (in which a tremendous amount of false Latin 
 was talked, you may be sure), there must have been a 
 genial, social, homely, comic element among the Eoman 
 citizens. Who shall say that there were not Cockney Eomans 
 who pronounced vir, wir, and dropped the H in Horrida? 
 Who shall say that there were no games at blindinan's-buff, 
 forfeits, and hunt the slipper, on long winter evenings, in the 
 great Consular families ; that there was no kissings under 
 the mistletoe in the entertainments of the Eoman knights; 
 that there were no private theatricals, blithesome, ridi- 
 culous, and innocent, what time Eoscius was an actor in 
 Eome? 
 
 For that matter, I am persuaded that, long before, Thespis's 
 little brothers and sisters performed tragedies in a go-cart, 
 not in socks and buskins, but in socks and pinafores, before 
 their big brother took to the legitimate business in a waggon ; 
 and that Alcibiades got up a private pantomime among his 
 friends, parodying Aristophanes' Knights, with himself 
 (Alcibiades) for clown, Socrates for pantaloon, and Gly cerium 
 for columbine. But confining ourselves to Eome, would you 
 not have delighted to have witnessed some ancient private 
 theatrical entertainment in the now capital of the papal 
 dominions? It is good (confounding chronology) to fancy 
 the largest lamp lit ; the Atrium fitted up, draped with some 
 borrowed togas ; the patres conscripti in the front rows, the 
 
YELLOWKNIGHTS. 369 
 
 conscripti behind, among them, of course, the mother of 
 the Gracchi, thinking the performances of her children the 
 most wonderful that ever were seen, but entertaining no very 
 exalted opinion of the dramatic efforts of Master Marcus 
 Antonius Lepidus, aged nine, or of. that conceited little 
 upstart Fatua Fanna, who would not be allowed to play at 
 all if she were not the niece of the Pontifex Maximus. See 
 .there are the blushing, simpering young Roman virgins, all 
 in fine white linen with silver hems, and their tresses powdered 
 with gold-dust. There is pretty little Livia Ottilia, the great 
 heiress, whose cruel papa wanted her to give up her large 
 fortune towards the expenses of the Punic war, and become a 
 vestal virgin ; but she knew better, and ran off to Brundusium 
 with young Sextus Quintilius. There is demure little Miss 
 Octavia Prima she looks as though spikenard would not 
 melt in her mouth ; who would think, now, that she sticks 
 gold pins into the shoulders of her slaves, and beats her 
 lady's-maid with the crumpling-irons ? There are the young 
 Poman beaux, terrible fellows for fast chariot-driving, wild- 
 beast fighting, gladiator backing : yonder is young Flavins, 
 the president of the Whip Club ; his motto is, Quousque 
 tandem : there, ambergrised, powdered, perfumed, is that 
 veteran toad-eater and tuft-hunter, but pretty poet, Q. Horatius 
 Flaccus ; he will write a charming copy of Sapphics on the 
 occasion, dedicated to his influential patron, the Marquis 
 Maecenas, who will probably ask him to dinner and give him 
 roast pig stuffed with honey, garum, and slave-fed carp. 
 There is Ovidius Naso, who was a fine man once, but now 
 goes among the gay youths by the name of Nosey. He has 
 led a very dissipated life, and will be compelled to fly from 
 his creditors by-and-by, to some remote corner of Asia Minor, 
 attributing, of course, his forced absence to political reasons. 
 There also, among the audience, you may see P. Virgilius 
 Maro, in top-boots and a bottle-green toga. He, too, is a poet, 
 but is a great authority on matters bucolic, breeds cattle, is 
 a magistrate of his county, and president of the Campanian 
 Agricultural Association. There is Curius Dentatus, that 
 conceited fop, who is always showing his white teeth ; and 
 Aulus Gellius, who is a very Othello to his wife ; and 
 Pompeius Crassus, who is considered to be very like his 
 friend Caesar ; and Mark Antony, who has incurred something 
 like odium for his naughty conduct towards Mrs. Mark, and 
 his shameful carryings on with a mulatto lady in Egypt ; and 
 
 2 B 
 
370 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 there is Cato, the censor, who disapproves of theatricals, 
 public and private, in the abstract, turning up his nose in a 
 corner and pretending to read the last number of 4 Sybilline 
 Leaves.' But, mercy on us ! what chronology is this ? Mark 
 Antony, Curius Dentatus, and Cato the censor! As well 
 have Komulus and Eemus with the wolf in for the last scene, 
 Numa Pompilius to give the entertainment, and Horatius 
 Codes to announce that a shell-fish supper is ready. Away, 
 pleasant and most ignorant fancies ! 
 
 The mind of my life is as a cemetery, full of gravestones ; 
 but here and there are gay cenotaphs, airy temples of the 
 composite order, with comic masks sculptured on the pedi- 
 ment, flower-grown tombs, sacred to private theatricals. This- 
 pen shall be a key, and open one of them. 
 
 There was ' Yellowknights.' Yellowknights was the com- 
 modious family mansion of Hipkins Hawes, Esquire, a man 
 of the richest, but of the merriest and the best. He had a 
 prodigious number of daughters, all pretty ; and envious 
 people said that his private theatricals were only baits to lure 
 young men on to matrimonial destruction. He must have 
 been very indiscriminate in his luring, be it as it may, for he 
 was visited by a whole colony of sexagenarian gentlemen 
 living in the vicinity, who cared, I think, much more about 
 his rare old port than his performances, and by a host of 
 children, among whom I can mention one youth, aged eight, 
 who was decidedly not lured by any matrimonial snares with 
 reference to the Miss Haweses, but by a juvenile predilection 
 for plum cake, orange wine, trifle, a glorious grapery, an 
 unrivalled nectarine wall, and a whole Tower armoury of 
 toys, rocking-horses, cricket-bats, electric ducks, regiments of 
 soldiers, and India-rubber balls like balloons. Of course I 
 fell in love with all the Miss Haweses afterwards ; but some- 
 how they all married somebody else. Perhaps my hair didn't 
 curl, so 1 could not come into wedlock with them. Hipkins 
 Hawes took the young men exactly as they came, and as he 
 found them. ' If the fellows,' he was wont to say (he was a 
 plain-spoken man), ' come after my gals, let 'em. If Loo 
 or Bell are sweet upon Jack or Dick, let them come to Hip- 
 kins Hawes and tell him what they mean, and he'll see what 
 to do. Hipkins Hawes knows how many blue beans make 
 five.' Hipkins Hawes did. Though he lived in that grand 
 and commodious mansion Yellowknights, and kept horses, 
 carriages, and footmen, he had formerly rnvrsued no more 
 
YELLOWKNIGHTS. 371 
 
 elevated a calling than that of a coach-builder ; and many and 
 many a holiday afternoon have I spent in gazing at and 
 admiring the wonderful lord mayors 1 and sheriffs' coaches 
 that Hipkins Hawes built at his grand repository in Orchard 
 Street, Portman Square. To be lifted into one of these car- 
 riages, and to sit for a moment on one of those imperial 
 squabs, was to me then the summum bonum of human feli- 
 city. What would I give to be able to feel such a pleasure 
 now! 
 
 We, the family of your informant, were humble neighbours 
 of the wealthy Yellowknights people ; dwelling, indeed, in a 
 detached cottage, where an attempt at gentility was made by 
 the existence of a coach-house and a two-stall stable, but the 
 vehicular accommodation of the first of which was only called 
 into requisition for a child's chaise, and in the second of 
 which trunks, lumber, and odds and ends cumbered the 
 manger, and refused not to abide by the crib. The great 
 mansion and our genteel cottage were both in a small village 
 some five miles from London, with which communication was 
 kept up by a bi-daily stage-coach. I went down to the 
 village the other day by rail. Our genteel habitat had been 
 pulled down bodily, and our two-stall stable occupied perhaps 
 a hundredth part of the ground on which a mighty circular 
 stable for roaring locomotives had been built. Yellowknights 
 where was that commodious mansion? It had been con- 
 verted into a ladies' school no : the South-Southern Branch 
 College for Ladies. Lecturer on physical astronomy, Pro- 
 fessor Charles S. Wain! Hipkins Hawes is Sir Hipkins 
 Hawes, Bart., now, and dwells in a mansion at Tyburnia as 
 big as a barrack. 
 
 But in the old days Hipkins Hawes, the retired coach- 
 builder, was the merriest, most hospitable, charitable soul on 
 the whole suburban country-side. He was always giving 
 balls, suppers, fetes champetres, archery meetings, charades, 
 fancy-dress soirees, and especially private theatricals. The 
 Miss Haweses used to drive to London in carriages and four 
 (it was not considered extravagant to drive four horses then, 
 and I have seen a great duchess, dead and gone, riding in a 
 coach and six), convulse Holy well Street, and throw Vinegar 
 Yard into an uproar, in voyages of discovery after theatrical 
 costumes. They were quite costume-books themselves. I 
 think I must have seen the eldest Miss Hawes as a Bayadere, 
 Lady Macbeth, Columbine (in Turkish trousers), the Fair 
 
 2 B 2 
 
372 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 One with the Golden Locks, Zuleika, Clari the Maid of 
 Milan, Ophelia (a very cheap costume, consisting in the last 
 part merely of a bedgown and back hair), Mrs. Haller, and 
 Flora Macdonald. As to the youngest Miss Hawes, she was 
 so incessantly playing fairies, sylphs, and Ariels, that at this 
 day I can't help picturing her to myself with wings, a silver- 
 foil wand, and a short muslin skirt ; though I know her to be 
 married to Mr. Bearskin (of Bull and Bearskin, stockbrokers) 
 and the mother of six children. Then the young Haweses 
 (males), of whom there was a swarm, all six feet high, in the 
 army, the navy, the Church, Cambridge University, Guy's 
 Hospital, and the Charter House, were continually busy with 
 private theatricals ; painting scenes on the lawn, modelling 
 comic masks in clay, putting the footboy to hard labour in 
 whitewashing, pulling up the dining-room flooring for traps, 
 purloining the sheets and table-cloths for ghosts, blowing up 
 the greenhouse with badly-made fireworks, stifling the ser- 
 vants with premature red fire, and, in fact, as Mrs. Hipkins 
 Hawes said (the only person at Yellowknights who did not 
 approve of private theatricals), 'turning the house out of 
 windows.' She was a weak lady, subject to headaches, and 
 with an expressive but somewhat monotonous formula of 
 reply to every remark, namely, ' stuff and nonsense.' Said 
 the doctor to her, when at last she lay mortally sick, ' I fear, 
 madam, that you are seriously indisposed/ \Vhereupoii, 
 ' Stuff and nonsense !' cried out Mrs. Hipkins Hawes, and 
 died. 
 
 Hipkins Hawes himself did not take any active part in the 
 private theatricals, save paying good round sums for the 
 expenses incurred, and enjoying in a most beaming manner 
 the enjoyments of the children he loved so well. His prin- 
 cipal employment was to sit at the great French windows 
 overlooking the lawn, drink old port, and tell funny stories to 
 young Bearskin, the stockbroker, and to Captain Chuff, who 
 had been a king's messenger, had travelled the wide world 
 over, had a wonderful potato snuff-box, presented to him by 
 the Emperor Alexander's aide-de-camp, and was reported to 
 be a gay man. I never knew any one seem happier, more 
 contented, more at peace with the world and himself than 
 Hipkins Hawes, the retired coach-builder, then a florid, bald- 
 headed, fair, round-bellied proprietor, aged fifty. He would 
 hold the prompt-book during the rehearsals of his children's 
 plays, and make tremendous mistakes in his self-imposed 
 
YELLOWKNIGHTS. 373 
 
 task. He would laugh the loudest at the jokes, and clap his 
 fat hands, and take the little children who had played the 
 fairies on his knee and kiss them. Ah ! those were the days 
 of pipe and tabour, of joy and gladness, of cake and wine ; of 
 the mirror before any of the quicksilver at the back is worn 
 off; of the plated service before whitening and chamois 
 leather have been too often used, and the copper begins to 
 show. We youngsters were frequent guests at bellow- 
 knights, partly, perhaps, because all youth was welcome at 
 that universal children's friend society ; partly because we 
 were considered to be (I say it without vanity woe is me !) 
 a somewhat clever family. I had a brother who was a great 
 chemist, who always had particoloured fingers and stained 
 clothes, who burnt holes in all the blankets with noxious 
 acids, who once nearly blew the front of the house out with 
 some subtle chemical preparation, and who was always trying 
 experiments upon the cat.* I had a brother who had a won- 
 derful genius for drawing ships. He drew so many of them 
 on the margins of his spelling-book, that he quite overlooked 
 the words ending in one or more syllables, or the book itself, 
 and turned out an egregious dunce. I had a brother who 
 made electrical machines out of cardboard and sealing-wax, 
 models of ships that wouldn't swim, and wooden clocks that 
 wouldn't go. His famous and favourite feat, however, was 
 borrowing sixpence of me, which he never gave back. I had 
 a sister she is dead, dear girl! who wrote the neatest, 
 prettiest hand that ever was seen, long, I am sure, before she 
 
 could read. I have one of her books now, ' Lines to , 
 
 Morning, Psalm CIX. } I don't know what I was famous for 
 myself, beyond sore eyes, and an intense love for private 
 theatricals. This last attachment made me useful. I was 
 call-boy, under-prompter, mob (behind the scenes), Sir 
 Jeffery Hudson in the pie, one of the Children in the Wood, 
 Prince Arthur, one of Hop-o'-my-Thumb's brothers, a demon, 
 a fairy, a black footboy, and the Yellow Dwarf. I wonder I 
 never turned actor in after-life : so devoted was I to the 
 drama in those early days. 
 
 Our theatre was the great front drawing-room at Yellow- 
 
 * What an inestimable boon has the invention of photography been to 
 heads of families whose younger branches are addicted to the study of 
 chemistry. You can't well blow a house up with a camera obscura, iodine, 
 collodion, and gallic acid, and you may produce a pretty portrait of some- 
 body. 
 
374 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 knights, our stage, of course, the back drawing-room, the 
 folding-doors making the proscenium. The dining-room was 
 our favourite salle de spectacle; but Hipkins, our host, fond 
 as he was of private theatricals, was fonder still of his dinner, 
 and was not to be cheated out of the enjoyment of his rare 
 old port by the French windows looking out upon the lawn. 
 I think Captain Chuff, Admiral Deadeyes (from the Priory), 
 old Mr. Puffweazle the retired solicitor, and others of his 
 port-wine friends, coincided in this view of matters : it was 
 the more annoying to us, as the dining-room was garnished by 
 two massive Corinthian pillars, and looked exactly like a real 
 stage proscenium. 
 
 We did the best with what we had though, the drawing- 
 rooms, and famously with those. Crowded audiences we used 
 to have in those cheerful apartments, deaf old ladies in the 
 front row, groups of happy children everywhere, and a grin- 
 ning background of servants ' to see how Miss Louisa do take 
 her part to be sure!' I need not enter into a minute criti- 
 cism of our performances. We played everything, tragedy, 
 comedy, farce, burlesque, and opera (all the Miss Haweses 
 played and sang). I am afraid 1 was not much of an actor 
 myself I was so small and weak ; but not to be egotistical, 
 I imagine that I did once make something like a sensation as 
 the physician's head in Za-ze-zi-zo-zu. 
 
 I think if I had built coaches enough (mentally or bodily) 
 to be very rich, that I should like to have a commodious 
 family mansion, where my sons and daughters could play 
 their private theatricals out. I am sure I would not grudge 
 them the use of the dining-room, but would build a commo- 
 dious summer-house on the lawn, where I could sip my old 
 port wine. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 THE SPORTING WORLD. 
 
 I TAKE it for granted that you are not a ' sporting man.' I 
 take it for granted that you own no race-horses, yachts, or 
 ratting terriers ; that you have not ' backed the Slasher for a 
 ' fiver";' and that you 'have' nothing on any 'event.' I 
 take it for granted that you are not prepared to bring forward 
 a novice to run the Hampshire Stag ; that you are not one of 
 
THE SPORTING WORLD. 375 
 
 the contributors to the correspondents' column of * Bell's Life,' 
 anxiously awaiting a reply to your cribbage query last week, 
 and feverish to know whether ' A. wins ;' and, lastly, that 
 though you may have a sufficient zest for the amenities of 
 social intercourse, you are not to be 'heard of at the bar of 
 any sporting public-house, where you ' will be happy to see 
 your friends.' 
 
 I propose to read * Bell's Life ' a very honestly and re- 
 spectably conducted weekly paper with you, but I do not 
 propose to read it in that spirit. There are thousands who 
 read it as what it is a sporting print, giving reliable infor- 
 mation on all sporting subjects. It is the chronicle of what 
 is called the Sporting World. A human eye never asleep 
 (nunquam dormio), and six columns of advertisements greet 
 us in the front page. Instanter we become denizens if not 
 habitues of the ^porting world. Have we horses ? here are 
 saddles, bridles, harness, harness-paste, unrivalled nosebands, 
 inimitably rowelled spurs, and patent * bits,' to counterfeit the 
 marks appended to which is felony. Have we dogs ? inven- 
 tive tradesmen tempt us to purchase kennels, collars, dog- 
 whips and specifics against the distemper and hydrophobia. 
 
 We are invited to peruse works on the dog, works on the 
 horse, works on the management and treatment of every 
 animal of which man having exhausted the use and employ- 
 ment has condescended to make the means or the end of the 
 hydra-headed amusement known as ' sporting/ Foxes to 
 replenish the hunting preserves, which by the too zealous 
 ardour of their Nimrods have become denuded of their 
 odoriferous vermin, are advertised in company with stud 
 grooms who can bleed, sling and fire horses, and whippers-in 
 who can be highly recommended. One gentleman wants 
 twenty couple of deer to give a sylvan relish to the dells and 
 glades of his park ; another has some prime ferrets to dispose 
 of ' Well up to trap ;' a third wants to sell two bloodhounds ; 
 a fourth to purchase some Cochin China fowls, and a real 
 Javanese bantam or two. Then there is a Siberian wolf and 
 her cubs to be sold a bargain by an amateur ' who has no 
 further occasion for them ' (we should fancy not) ; and who, 
 apparently puzzled as to whether they are ' sporting ' animals 
 or not, and consequently entitled to the freedom of ' Bell's 
 Life,' is perplexingly ambiguous in his description : hinting, 
 at the commencement, that they would be ' suitable for a 
 nobleman fond of zoology,' but subsiding, eventually, into a 
 
376 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 vague alternative, 4 or would do for a menagerie.' They 
 would be suitable there, I opine ; but are not exactly the sort 
 of quadrupeds I should like to make drawing-room pets of, 
 or to win in a raffle. 
 
 Soon, however, a thoroughly sporting announcement comes- 
 blazoned forth in conspicuous type. ' To be sold at Tatter- 
 sail's, five-and-twenty couple and a half of fox-hounds, the 
 property of a gentleman relinquishing hunting.' Good; or 
 has hunting relinquished the gentleman : which is it ? Shall 
 I mind my own business and take the sale as a sale and 
 nothing but a sale, or shall I be malicious and surmise that 
 the gentleman has ridden, neck or nothing, after the five-and- 
 twenty couple and a half of fox-hounds till he and they have- 
 clean outridden and lost scent of the fox, and have started 
 another species of vermin called the * constable,' which pur- 
 suing, the gentleman has managed to outrun, and has ended 
 by riding ' over hounds ?' He has gone to the dogs, and his 
 dogs have gone to Tattersall's. Who can this gentleman re- 
 linquishing hunting be ? Not the Honourable Billy Buff, third 
 son of Lord Eiffington of Eaff Hall, Eowdyshire, surely. Not 
 that gay scion of aristocracy that frolicsome pilaster (if I 
 may call him so) of the state whilom of ten successive regi- 
 ments of cavalry, all 4 crack ' ones, out of which he was ten 
 times moved to exchange or sell by ten successive colonels. 
 Not Billy Buff, who was the worthy and emulous associate of 
 the Earl of Mohawk, of Sir Wrench Nocker, Bart., and of'that 
 gay foreign spark, the Eussian Count Bellpulloff, who laid a 
 wager of fifty to one with Lord Tommy Plantagenet (called 
 4 facer ' Plantagenet from his fondness for the ring), that he 
 would, while returning from the Derby on the summit of a 
 4 drag,' fish off four old ladies' false fronts by means of a salmon 
 hook affixed to the end of a tandem whip within twenty 
 minutes, but happening, just on turning the quarter, to hook 
 a fierce butcher under the chin by mistake lost his wager. 
 The fifty was in five-pound notes, and Bellpulloff offered to 
 make them peasants of the Ukraine (he had fifty thousand 
 sheep and five thousand serfs on his paternal estate Tcharcshi- 
 Bellpullofforgorod) if Tommy would bet again, but the ' facer * 
 wouldn't. Not Billy Buff, the scourge and terror of the police, 
 the Gordian knot and worse than sphynx-like enigma to sitting 
 magistrates, the possessor of a museum in his chambers in 
 Great Turk Street, consisting solely of purloined goods 
 articles of vice rather than of vertu : fifty brass plates in- 
 
THE SPORTING WORLD. 377 
 
 scribed with, the name of Smith; a gamut of knockers on 
 which he could play 4 God save the Queen ;' miles of bell- 
 wire ; ill-gotten area railings like stands of spikes ; brewers' 
 sign-boards enough to set up fifty publicans ; good women 
 without heads ; goldbeaters' naked arms brandishing their 
 auriferous hammers fiercely, as though they would like to be 
 at their ravisher ; glovers' stiff fingered hands, little dustpans, 
 original teapots, golden canisters, pounds of candles, sugar- 
 loaves, and scarlet cocked hats and Hessian boots, adorned 
 moreover with gold, and of gigantic proportions. Not this 
 Billy : the Billy who positively had two of his front teeth 
 knocked out in order to be able to imitate a peculiar whistle 
 he had heard among the refined denizens of Old Street, St. 
 Luke's ; who made it his proud boast and self-glorification, 
 that calling one morning on a friend who lived in an entresol 
 in Eegent Street, and in a house otherwise occupied as a 
 fashionable millinery establishment, he did then and there, in 
 the absence of the fair workwomen at dinner, sit upon and 
 utterly spoil and crush flat twenty-seven new bonnets, all 
 ready trimmed, ordered, and wanted for the Chiswick Horti- 
 cultural fete next day, whereby Mademoiselle Guipure (the 
 millinery firm was Gimp, Guipure, and Gingham, and they 
 went bankrupt last year) was driven to a state bordering on 
 frenzy, and was only appeased by a cheque for a large amount. 
 Yet Billy this Billy kept hounds, I know, and the old half- 
 couple has a pleasant savour of his old familiar eccentricity. 
 After that duel of his with Captain Trigghair of the Guards ; 
 after the two consecutive fevers he caught at Pau in the 
 Pyrenees; and, notably, after that ugly wrestling-match in 
 the coffee-room of Flimmer's Hotel, where Jack Langham 
 (eight feet in height, and known as the ' baby ') threw him, 
 whereby he cut his hand open, and got rather more of the 
 sand off the floor and a splintered Champagne glass or two 
 into the wound than was pleasant Billy sowed his wild oats, 
 sold his museum, and, marrying old Mrs. McMack (widow of 
 General McMack, H.E.I.C.S., who died at Brighton of the 
 modification of the East India Company's charter and an 
 excess of curry), retired to Budgerow Park, near Godown, 
 Dawkshire, fully determined to subside into a country gentle- 
 man. We heard of him at first as exceedingly devoted to 
 Mrs. McMack (late), whose five poodle-dogs he much delighted 
 to array in martial attire, and to instruct in the manual exer- 
 cise : indeed there was a report in town that each poodle 
 
378 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 slept in a four-post bed, and that Billy went round for the 
 candlesticks. But the Honourable Mrs. Buff (late McMack) 
 took to sitting under the Keverend Lachrymose Snivel, of St. 
 Mobe's Chapel (belonging to the primitive Weepers' connec- 
 tion), an ecclesiastic of such a watery and tearful nature and 
 aqueous of doctrine, that his ministry, combined with an over- 
 zealous attachment to the abstinence-from-any-food-save- water- 
 melon system, and the hydropathic system, prompting her, as 
 did this latter, to the hankering after strange pumps, and 
 taking long journeys in quest of artesian wells of extraordinary 
 repute, eventually brought on dropsy, of which she died. 
 Then Billy took to hunting his part of the country, and keep- 
 ing hounds and the rest of it. I never had a day with him, 
 for, goodness help me ! I ride like a tailor's goose ; but those 
 who have ridden with the Dawkshire hounds, of which Billy 
 was master, assure me that he did the thing in first-rate style ; 
 that he had a kennel built for his hounds in the cinque-cento or 
 renaissance style of architecture, which, coupled with the fact 
 of the dogs very nearly eating a whipper-in one night, made 
 Billy quite fashionable among the gentlemen of the country 
 side. He it was also, I believe, who made that sublime re- 
 sponse to an indignant farmer, who reproached him with 
 riding through a turnip-field, on the ground that it was always 
 customary to 'ware turnips to whom says Billy, ' How the 
 deuce was I to know they were turnips, unless you stuck a 
 boiled leg of mutton in the middle of 'em ?' But, alas ! I 
 heard one day that Billy had been * carrying on shameful ;' 
 next, that he was ' shaky ;' next, that he was { wanted ;' finally, 
 that he was * done up ;' and now who shall say that my sur- 
 mise is chimerical, if I conjecture that the five-and-twenty 
 couple, and a half of fox-hounds, to be sold at Tattersall's, 
 might once have formed the pack of the Honourable Billy 
 Bulf, Lord Kifnngton's third son ? 
 
 Poor Billy Buff! sorrowful, sold-up scion of aristocracy, 
 where art thou now, I wonder? Hast thou gone down to 
 to the cities of refuge that are in Belgium ? to sly little Spa, 
 nestling among quasi-Prussian trees ; to ' pale Brussels ;' or 
 gaunt, grim, silent Ghent? Or art thou at Kissingen, or 
 Wiesbaden, or Aix, making wry faces at some ill-smelling, 
 rusty-keys-tasting brunnen ; or at Homburg, pricking on a 
 limp printed card how many times rouge has turned up ; or 
 at Boulogne, wistfully peering at the white cliifs of Albion 
 through a telescope ; or at the prison of Clichy in Paris, 
 
THE SPORTING WORLD. 379 
 
 otherwise known as the Hotel des Haricots ; or art thou lan- 
 guishing at the suit of a Gasthof-keeper in the Constablerward 
 of some petty German principality ? Certain I am, that if in 
 this country, thou wilt never be at Tattersall's to see thy 
 hounds sold. The memories would come rushing over thee ; 
 it would be too much for thee to contemplate Flora and 
 Hector, that ran so evenly together, and that carried their 
 tails so bravely parallel, that, at a side view, they looked like 
 one dog. Nor unmoved could st thou view Blucher, the deep- 
 mouthed hound, and Sandy, the old liver-patched fellow that 
 knew every move on Eeyiiard's board, and the half couple 
 that young dog that would give tongue, for all a fierce whip- 
 per-in nearly cut the dumb brute in two with his double thong. 
 Ah ! ' the southerly winds and the cloudy skies ' that pro- 
 claimed thy hunting mornings : where are they now ? Where 
 are the gay young bucks from London, with bran-new scarlet 
 and leathers, the chefs (Tceuvres of Nugee, or Crellin, or Buck- 
 master : the lads that took the astonishing leaps o'er hedges, 
 and ditches, and stone walls, when bright eyes were looking 
 at them, and went round by gates and gaps, like sensible 
 fellows, when bright eyes were somewhere else ? They are 
 gone like the smoke of the cigars they puffed as they rode to 
 cover ; like the mighty breakfasts they consumed at Budgerow 
 House at thy expense ; like the mightier dinners and libations 
 they achieved at ditto ditto, when the chase was over, and the 
 fox was caught. Who will realise tableaux vivants of Luke 
 Clennell's picture of a hunting dinner now ? who will preside 
 at joyous banquets in thy great dining-room, and stir up 
 the punch-bowl (nasty fellow !) with the fox's brush, and 
 give ' Torn Moody,' and fall first beneath the table among 
 black bottles and unsteady top-boots? The ancient hunts- 
 man has transferred his stained scarlet frock and grog- 
 blossomed countenance to another master ; they are going to 
 build an Agapemone, or a Sanatorium, or a Puseyite convent 
 on the ruins of thy renaissance kennel ; the very ragged boy 
 that followed barefoot, in his torn red jacket, thy hounds, and 
 begged for coppers because he was in at the death ; the pepper- 
 and-salt farmer, who began by swearing at the fox and then 
 mounted his cob and followed it ; the parson on his big brown 
 horse ; the staring red-haired children ; the old dames that 
 hobbled out from cottages ; the bumpkins with heads of hair 
 that looked like thatch, who put their hands beside their 
 mouths, and yelled a rustic Tally ho ! as the hunt swept by : 
 
380 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 where are they now? Ichabod, Ichabod enough. We have 
 all been sold up more or less, at some time or another. We 
 have all been bankrupt, or insolvent, or have compounded 
 with our creditors, in friendship, love, hopes, ambition, truth. 
 Some of us, too, have paid but little, very little, in the pound. 
 From dogs to horses. Tattersall's again ; but this time the 
 spirited auctioneers leave but little room to surmise. Thir- 
 teen racers to be sold. All from irreproachable dams and 
 by aristocratic sires. The Beauty, by Candlebox, out of 
 Sophronisba, brother to Columbine, sire to Rhodomontade, to 
 be sold by auction : with all his engagements. With him 
 are other horses and mares, all of equally illustrious descent. 
 Some have won plates in canters, and others cups in hand- 
 gallops, and others again have walked over the course for 
 purses full of sovereigns. All are to be sold : with their en- 
 gagements. It does not require vision quite as acute as that 
 necessary for seeing through a millstone to discern who the 
 gentleman going abroad is. I think Sir Gybbe Roarer knows 
 him : Sir G. Roarer, Bart., whose horse, Ramoneur, won the 
 Sooty bridge sweepstakes. Sir G-. R., Bart., whose filly, 
 Spagnoletta, was scratched just before the St. Rowels, last 
 year. The same Baronet who started Polly for the Pine- 
 apple stakes, and is supposed to have given Jack Bellyband, 
 his jockey, instructions not to win, he having laid against 
 himself considerably ; but Jack having drunk too much 
 champagne, forgot himself and did win, to the Baronet's 
 wrath and consternation. Sir G. R. had a share in the horse 
 which started for what was it ? the Bumblebury Cup, 
 entered under a certain name was it Theodosius ? and as 
 of a certain age, but which was subsequently discovered to 
 be a horse called Toby, two years older. Can Sir Gybbe 
 Roarer, Bart., be the gentleman who is going abroad? I 
 think he is. He is always going abroad, and selling his 
 horses and buying fresh ones : with their engagements. He 
 stands to win a pretty sum on the next French steeple- 
 chase : I hope he may get it. Sir Gybbe Roarer dresses very 
 like his groom, and has a hoarse voice and an intensely shiny 
 hat. When he wins he treats everybody with champagne, 
 beggars included, and throws red-hot halfpence out of hotel 
 windows ; when he loses, he horsewhips his servants and 
 swears. There is but one book to him in the world, his 
 betting-book, for he wants no Racing Calendar ; he is that in 
 himself. He has a penchant for yachting sometimes, between 
 
THE SPOUTING WOELD. 381 
 
 Ascot and the Leger. His yacht is called the Handicap. 
 Will he ever go to the Levant in her, I wonder ? 
 
 Supposing that, looking at ' Bell's Life ' as you and I do 
 not as a mere chronicle of sporting occurrences, a calendar for 
 reference and information, but as a curiously accurate, though 
 perhaps unconscious mirror of what, from the amusement of 
 the mass of the people, has come to be the engrossing busi- 
 ness and occupation of a very considerable section of that 
 people, we ponder a moment over Sir Gybbe Eoarer's race- 
 horses, stepping-down in the spirit, if you like, to Tattersall's 
 yard, where they are to be sold. 
 
 Here they are, slender symmetrical creatures with satin 
 coats, with trim and polished hoofs, with plaited manes, with 
 tails so neatly cropped that not one hair is longer than 
 another. Full of blood, full of bone, full of mettle and action, 
 almost supernaturally speedy of foot, patient, brave, and 
 generous in spirit : high-mettled racers, in fact. Now, to 
 what cunning knave can it first have occurred to build on 
 these beautiful, generous animals a superstructure of fraud 
 and knavery, and low chicanery ? Why should a horse be 
 used as the corner-stone of the Temple of Eoguery ? And 
 why, more than this, should these few stone-weight of horse- 
 flesh be capable of producing the mighty effects they do upon 
 the manners and morals of a great nation ? The Beauty, 
 Sophronisba, Columbine : they are not war-horses ; their 
 necks are not clothed with thunder ; they say not among the 
 captains, 'Ha! ha!' yet, on them has hung, and will hang 
 again, the lives and fortunes, not of scores but of hundreds, 
 not of hundreds, but of thousands and tens of thousands. A 
 wrinkle in the satin coat, of Sophronisba ; a pail of water in- 
 advertently or maliciously administered to Columbine ; an ill- 
 hammered nail in Ehodomontade's shoe ; these are sufficient 
 to send clerks and shop-boys to the hulks, to bring happy 
 households to beggary and shame, and solid mercantile firms 
 down by tlje run. Sophronisba, Columbine, Ehodomontade. 
 though they know it not, have swallowed up the patrimony of 
 widows and orphans ; on their speed or tardiness depend 
 tedious law-suits ; interminable mazes of litigation in Chancery 
 can be unravelled by their hoofs. They are powerful all 
 unconsciously for more good and evil than ever was stowed 
 away in all Pandora's box. If Sophronisba runs for the 
 Cup, Charley Lyle will marry the heiress. If Columbine is 
 scratched for the Trebor Handicap, young Bob Sabbertash 
 
382 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 must sell his commission in the Twenty-sixth Hussars. Stars 
 and garters, wealth and honours, life and death, hang on the 
 blind fiat of these horses. 
 
 And this is ' Bell's Life ' (called in the sporting world ' The 
 Life '), and this is man's life, too ! 
 
 Great things are wrought from small beginnings, and 
 mighty edifices stand upon comparatively slender founda- 
 tions. According to Hindoo theology, the world stands on 
 an elephant's back which again stands on a tortoise ; though 
 what that stands on is not yet decided by the learned Pundits 
 of the unchanging East. So, on the slender fetlocks and 
 pasterns of these bay and chesnut horses in Tattersall's sale- 
 yard are erected the Great National festivals of the English 
 people the acknowledged British holidays : holidays for the 
 due and catholic enjoyment of which grave legislative bodies 
 suspend their sittings, dinner-parties of the loftiest and most 
 solemn haut ton are postponed, and courtly Ms dansantes put 
 off. There was a professor of music I knew who was ruined 
 through having fixed his morning concert to take place on the 
 Derby Day. 
 
 The Derby Day ! who would think these quiet, meek-eyed 
 scions of the hippie race were the alls-in-all, the cynosures, 
 the alphas and omegas of that momentous day ? Yet so they 
 are. Closely shrouded in checked or gaily-bordered horse- 
 cloths as jealously veiled from the prying public eye as was 
 ever favourite Odalisque of Osmanli Pacha of three tails as on 
 Sunday morning they take their long-expected, much-talked- 
 of gallops jealous and anxious eyes watch their every move- 
 ment ; a falter is eagerly foreshadowed as the forerunner of a 
 ' scratch/ a stumble as the inevitable precursor of a string- 
 halt, an over-vigorous whinny impetuously translated as a 
 cold, fatal to next Wednesday's start. Headers of ' Bell's 
 Life/ how you pluck at your long waistcoats ; how you twitch 
 at the brims of your low-crowned hats ; how many entries 
 and re-entries, and erasures and pencil-smudgings are made 
 in those note-books of yours, with the patent metallic leaves 
 and the everlasting pencils and all on the ups and downs, the 
 on-goings and short-comings of these unconscious four-legged 
 creatures. Early on the Wednesday morning, Newman and 
 Quartermaine's retainers are as busy as hives of bees multi- 
 plied by infinity. Pails of water resembling (in an inverse 
 degree) the casks of the Danaides, inasmuch as they are always 
 being emptied, and are never empty dash refreshing streams 
 
THE SPORTING WORLD. 383 
 
 against wheels numerous enough to furnish, it would seem, 
 clock-work for the world. Strange barouches, unheard-of 
 britzkas, phaetons that should properly have been sequestrated 
 in the Greenyard of oblivion, or broken up in the coach fac- 
 tory of forgetfulness long since, suddenly start up from remote 
 coach-houses : their wheels screaming horribly ; their boxes 
 anxious for the accommodating man who ' does not mind sitting 
 there the least in the world,' and who always manages to get 
 more champagne than anybody else ; their boots panting for 
 hampers of choice provisions, always securely tied up, and 
 alwaj^s dropping sprinklings of lobster salad and raised pie 
 on the road in the ' Hop-o'my-thumb ' manner mad, in a 
 word, to be down to the Derby, and to run their poles through 
 adverse carriage panels. Small, weazen, silver-haired men 
 who have vegetated during the winter in ' watering-houses,' 
 and down strawy mews, where the coachmen's wives live, 
 who take in washing, and the fifth footman dwells over the 
 harness-room when he's out of place these patriarchs of the 
 saddle emerge in a weird and elf-like manner from stable- 
 doors : their rheumatism-bowed frames swathed in crimson 
 silk jackets, white cords on their shrunken legs, gamboge tops 
 on their spindle-shanks, and great, white, fluffy hats, a world 
 too large for them, on their poor bald heads calling them- 
 selves, save us, Postboys cracking their knotty whips with 
 senile valour, and calling to Jim to c ]et his head go/ and to 
 Tom to ' take a squint at the mare's off foot.' And they get 
 into the saddle, these rare old boys ! And they hold up their 
 whips warningly to their fellow boys when there is a ' dead 
 lock ' between Cheam and Sutton ; and they untie hampers, 
 and eat pies innumerable, and get very drunk indeed ; yet 
 drive home safely, and return the 'chaff' measured out to 
 them with interest. 
 
 The Derby Day ; do I require the limits of this paper to 
 describe it thoroughly ? Say, rather, a volume say, rather, 
 the space occupied by the c Encyclopaedia Britannica,' or Mr. 
 Alison's ' History of Europe.' The rushing, roaring, riving, 
 rending, raving railway station full of the million of pas- 
 sengers, who, taking first-class tickets, are glad to leap into 
 third-class carriages ; the fifty thousand, who, wishing to go 
 to Epsom, are compulsorily conveyed (howling the while) to 
 Brighton or Dover instead. The twenty thousand that say 
 that it is a shame and that they will write to the ' Times/ 
 ogether with the ten thousand that do write, and don't get 
 
384 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 their letters inserted. The hundreds that lose their handker- 
 chiefs, watches, and temper. The two or three benign men 
 who haven't anything on the race, and say that really, all 
 things considered, the Company have done as well as could 
 reasonably be expected for the public as if any one expected 
 anything in reason on the Derby Day ! The road with the 
 solemn drags full of, and surmounted by, solemn guardsmen 
 hearses of the Household Cavalry. The open carriages, close 
 carriages, chaises, carts, omnibusses, stage coaches full of 
 familiar faces. Everybody there, on the rail and on the road, 
 on the Derby Day. The House of Lords, and the House of 
 Commons, the Bar, the Bench, the Army, the Navy, and the 
 Desk ; May Fair and Kag Fair, Park Lane and Petticoat Lane, 
 the Chapel Eoyal and Whitechapel, Saint James's and Saint 
 Giles's. Give me a pen plucked from the wing of a roc (the 
 most gigantic bird known, I think) ; give me a scroll of 
 papyrus as long as the documents in a Chancery suit ; give 
 me a river for an ink-bottle, and then I should be scant of 
 space to describe the road that leads to the course, the hill, the 
 grand stand, the gipsies, the Ethiopian serenaders, the clouds 
 of horsemen, like Bedouins of the desert, flying towards 
 Tattenham. Corner ; the correct cards that never are correct ; 
 the dog that always gets on the course and never can get off 
 again, and that creates as much amusement in his agony as 
 though he had been Mr. Merryman. The all-absorbing, 
 thrilling, soul-riveting race. The 'Now they 're off!' 'Now 
 they're coming round!' 'Here they come!' 'Black cap!' 
 'Blue cap!' ' Green Jacket !' 'Bed jacket!' ' Eed jacket it 
 is, hurrah !' followed by the magic numbers at the grand 
 stand, the flight of the pigeons, and the changing of hands of 
 unnumbered thousand pounds. The throwing at the sticks. 
 The chickens, the salads, the fillings of young bodies with old 
 wine, the repasts on wheels, and hobnobbings over splinter- 
 bars. The broken glasses, cracked heads, rumpled bonnets, 
 flushed faces. The road home ! The Cock at Button, and a 
 ' quiet ' cup of tea there. The chaffing, the abuse, the indict- 
 able language. The satirical crowd on Kennington Common. 
 The Derby Day, in a word : and all for what ? Where are the 
 causes to these most mighty effects. Look around, student of 
 ' Bell's Life,' and see them in the slender race-horses, the stud 
 of a gentleman going abroad, to be sold without reserve. 
 
 Change we the theme, for of horseflesh you must have had 
 more than enough. Else, had I space besides and time, I 
 
THE SPORTING WORLD. 385 
 
 would touch upon the fatidici vati, the sporting prophets, already 
 touched upon elsewhere. Else, should you hear strange stories 
 of stables, and nobbled horses, and rare feats of jockey- 
 ship. Else, would I introduce you, * Bell's Life ' reading 
 neophyte, to one of these same jockeys, a weary, haggard, 
 slouching little man, all mummified in baggy great-coats, and 
 drinking brandy and water tremulously a very different 
 spectacle from the trim, natty, spruce little jock, with the 
 snowy leathers and the lustrous tops and the rainbow jacket, 
 who is in earnest confab with his owner before the race ; or, 
 after it, and after winning, is cheered enthusiastically up and 
 down the course, or who leans indolently over the balcony of 
 the Grand Stand, flacking his horsewhip to shake hands with 
 lords. But ' Bell's Life,' my friend, has as many phases as 
 human life has, and we must hurry to another. 
 
 The King! Fights to come ! Not many, thank Heaven 
 thank reading, writing, and arithmetic ; and yet, one, two, 
 three columns are devoted to the Ring. Jack Nimmo and the 
 Grotto Passage Pet, for fifty pounds a side. The Nottingham 
 Bruiser and Bandy Starling, at catch weight, for ten pounds a 
 side. Tom Knucldes will fight Ned Lumsden (the Butcher) 
 for twenty pounds, and his money is ready at Mr. Fibbs's, the 
 Knowledge Box, Chancery Lane. Toby Nutts, of Birmingham, 
 is surprised that the Sheffield Toddler has not made good the 
 last deposit ; he is to be heard of at the Bunch of Fives, 
 Rampant Horse Street, Norwich. Tass Cokerconk writes to 
 correct an error that has crept into your valuable paper, as I 
 did not strike foul, and being at present out of town (Tass is 
 wanted for a little matter of hocussing and card-sharping), and 
 so on. We are delighted to see that our old friend, Frisky 
 Wappem, is to be found every other evening at Jemmy Crab's, 
 the Leg of Mutton Fist, Bell Alley, where he gives lessons in 
 the noble art of self-defence to noblemen and gentlemen. N.B. 
 Gloves provided. Sparring by the pick of the fancy ; and 
 every alternate evening devoted to harmony by first-rate pro- 
 fessionals. 
 
 I take it for granted that you have never seen a prize fight. 
 I hope you never will ; yet, conscientiously pelligrinising as 
 we are through ' Bell's Life,' I don't think I shall be wrong in 
 showing you one, in the spirit as a scarecrow and an example. 
 
 The fight between Lurky Snaggs and Dan Pepper the 
 Kiddy. A steam-boat ' The Pride of the River' has been 
 chartered for the momentous occasion, for the fight is to take 
 
 2 c 
 
386 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 place at some to the uninitiated carefully-concealed place 
 on the Kent or Essex shore. A trip by rail was at first con- 
 templated : a railway company, with an ardour and enthusiasm 
 for the P. E. which did them honour, having offered handsome 
 terms and every accommodation in the way of special trains ; 
 but old Sol Abrams, the Nestor of the liing, reminded the 
 promoters of the cheerful exhibition that a county magistrate, 
 determined to stop the fight, might balk their battle-ground 
 from station to station, and send for reinforcements of ' bobbies,' 
 or policemen, by the great tale-teller, the electric telegraph. 
 So the river was decided on. The steamer has been freighted 
 with bottled stout, wines, spirits, cigars, captains' biscuits, and 
 sandwiches ; and, at an early hour, she receives a motley bevy 
 of passengers all, however, respectable in the Thurtellian or 
 gig-keeping sense of respectability, for they have all paid a 
 guinea for their voyage and back. Several nobs, several first- 
 rate men, several City men all peculiar and distinct varieties 
 of the genus sporting man, but on which I cannot stay to 
 descant now are present ; and I am compelled to acknowledge 
 the presence of many, very many of the gentlemen we met last 
 night the chained and ringed dandies the bucks who know 
 where Brixton is, and who sits at Bow Street on Monday 
 mornings. Take care of your pockets, oh ! my 3 7 oung student 
 
 of ' Bell's Life/ for, of all the out-and-out thieves 
 
 There are some temporary difficulties, occupying, indeed, 
 a considerable portion of the forenoon, before a battle-ground 
 can be finally selected. In one parish a fierce county 
 magistrate sallies forth against the Fancy, with the whole of 
 the posse comitatus he has been able to muster at his heels ; in 
 another, a detachment of the rural police puts them to rout, 
 with the loss of a considerable portion of their baggage. At 
 last, a sweet little slip of waste land, skirted on one side by a 
 towing-path and on the other by a brickfield, is selected, and 
 possession taken, without molestation. There is a slight dis- 
 turbance at first with a drunken horse-chaunter and a sporting 
 blacksmith, who persist in offering to fight Snaggs and Pepper 
 themselves for any number of pots of ale. These, however, 
 are speedily disposed of the horse-chaunter by being settled 
 off-hand by three facers and a crack under the left ear, and sent 
 home in a cart with his bloody sconce wrapped round with 
 one of the staring shawls ; the blacksmith by being tilted into 
 a wet ditch, and left to get sober at his leisure. Then, 
 business begins in right earnest. Sundry vans, omnibuses, 
 
TILE SPORTING WORLD. 387 
 
 and knowing-looking livery-stable breaks have been following 
 the course of the steamboat down the river ; together with a 
 locust crowd of chaise-carts, dog-carts, Hansom cabs, and a 
 few private cabriolets one with the smallest tiger and the 
 largest gray mare to be found probably in England, and con- 
 taining the ^Maecenas of the King, rather pink about the eyes, 
 and yellow about the cheek-bones from last night <s champagne. 
 An amateur trotting-match or two has been got up on the 
 road, and Jack Cowcabbidge, the nobby greengrocer, of the 
 Old Kent Road, has broken the knees of Handsome Charley's 
 mare Peppermint, for which Charley swears that he will pull 
 him.' All these vehicles cluster together in a widish outer 
 ring, having sundry scouts or videttes posted, to give notice of 
 the approach of inimical forces ; and, in addition, there are 
 several .horsemen, hovering on the skirts of the ring, well- 
 mounted gentlemen in garb, and apparently half interested 
 and delighted with the prospect of the sport, and half ashamed 
 to be seen in such company. Old Squire Nobsticks, of 
 Nobstick Hall, close by, has come in spite of his gout in a 
 roomy velocipede, and navigates into the inner ring amid the 
 cheers of the Fancy. He never misses a fight. This inner 
 ring I speak of is now formed. The stakes are firmly driven 
 into the turf, the ropes passed through circular orifices in their 
 tops, and all made snug and comfortable. Now, Monsieur 
 Tyro, if you please, button up all your pockets, and essay not 
 to enter the inner ring, for the swell mobsmen will stone you 
 from it if you do, and hustle and rifle you as you come out. 
 Stand on the top of this hackney cab, and you will be enabled 
 to view the proceedings with greater ease and comfort. None 
 but the veterans of the Fancy and the Maecenases (?) of the 
 Eing have the privilege of sitting on {hTgrassT close to the 
 ropes. 
 
 * "Tis distance lends enchantment to the view/ 
 
 The heroes peel, and, divesting themselves of the grubby or 
 chrysalis-like covering of great-coats and wrap-rascals, appear 
 in the bright butterfly bravery of denuded torsos, white 
 drawers and stockings, flaring waist-handkerchiefs and sparrow- 
 bill shoes. We have no time to ponder on the magnificent 
 muscular development of these men's chests and arms. The 
 bottleholders are at their respective corners, with their bottles 
 and sponges; the referee stands watch in hand (I hope he 
 'will not lose it ere the fight be done) ; the swell mobsmen 
 
 2 c 2 
 
338 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 make a desperate rush, at anything they can lay hands on; 
 and these two men proceed to pound each other's bodies. 
 
 I could describe the scene that follows, but cui bono? 
 Content yourself with fancying who first drew claret ; how 
 often the referee cried time : who got down whom at the 
 ropes; who put out cleverly with his left; whose face bore 
 severe marks of punishment, hit out wildly, hung like a mass 
 of butcher's meat on his second's knee ; and, failing at last to 
 come up to time, fell down senseless on the turf, caused the 
 sponge to be thrown up, and victory to be declared for his 
 opponent. What need is there for me to state who officiated 
 for Snaggs, and who did the needful for the Kiddy ; how there 
 was a savage foray on this latter 's party by the Nottingham 
 Soughs ; how there was a cry of ' Foul !' and how the swell 
 mobsmen robbed right and left, hitting wildly meanwhile, till 
 the Maecenas of the Ring fleeing from before them fell into 
 the ditch a-top of the tinker, and had an after-fight or fancy 
 epilogue with him ? We have had enough of it. 
 
 And I am not half through ' Bell's Life ' yet, though you 
 must be as weary of it and of me as ever was Mariana in the 
 Moated Grange. But, as I said before, ' Bell's Life ' is as the 
 life of man, and how am I to despatch so important a subject 
 in a dozen columns? Come we, however, to close quarters, 
 and make an end on't. 
 
 There is the column devoted to pedestrianism including 
 walking, running, and leaping matches. Tyros as we may be 
 in sporting matters, there are few of us but have occasionally 
 met an individual in short cotton drawers and a linen jacket, 
 with a printed handkerchief twisted round his head, after the 
 manner of the French poissardes, walking manfully along* a 
 suburban turnpike road ; his left arm kept on a level with his 
 sternum, or breast bone, and his right hand clutching a short 
 stick walking for a wager. Or who has not seen the bold 
 runner, skimming along the Queen's highway, with nimble 
 legs and a stern and unmoved countenance, amid the clamours 
 of riff-raff boys and the cheers of his supporters. 
 
 And fishing : fly, salmon, and jack ? And wrestling ? And 
 ' cocking ' (hid slily in an out-of-the-way corner, but existing 
 and practised for all that). And quoits, and bowls? And 
 cricket ? And aquatics (yachting and sculling) ? And change- 
 ringing ? And the mysterious game of Nurr and spell, goff, 
 skating, hockey, quarter-staff, single-stick, fencing, dog-fancy- 
 ing, pigeon - shooting, sparrow - shooting, archery, chess, 
 
THE SPOKTING WOULD. 381) 
 
 draughts, billiards, ratting, otter-hunting? Have I nothing 
 to say on all these subjects ? I have, indeed, and to spare ; 
 but, knowing that I could never finish were I once to begin, 
 I will eschew the temptation and say nothing. These are 
 bound up with us, these sports and pastimes they are bone 
 of our bone, and flesh of our flesh they are crackling cinders 
 at almost every Englishman's fireside. 
 
 One word, and an end. Of the phases of sporting life I have 
 endeavoured to delineate, all offer some repulsive and humilia- 
 ting traits. In these feeble sketches of some of the sports and 
 pastimes of some of the English people, I have been compelled 
 to bring into my canvas degraded human beings to delineate 
 base passions and appetites to become the limner and 
 biographer of scoundrels and dens. It may appear to some 
 that I have been incoherent and fantastical that I have 
 sinned, like the painter in Horace, by joining horses' necks to 
 human heads, 
 
 The various 
 O'er limbs o: 
 
 -and wildly spread 
 
 plumage of the feather* d kind 
 >f different beasts absurdly joined/ 
 
 Yet those who know the section of the world I have touched 
 upon, know too, and will acknowledge, that to all the manly 
 English sports that find a record in ' Bell's Life ' round all 
 these fine sturdy oaks with their broad chests and brawny 
 arms there are obscene parasites and creepers of chicanery, 
 roguery, and ruffian blackguardism dead leaves of low gamb- 
 ling and vulgar debauchery rotten limbs of intemperance, 
 knavery, and violence. The potato fields of English sports 
 are afflicted with something worse than a potato blight, an 
 insect more deadly than the aphis vastator : by the betting 
 blight : the foul scorpion of betting-shops, and racing-sweeps, 
 and public-house tossing-matches. 
 
 I hope I have not said a word in ridicule or deprecation of 
 the athletic sports of England the sports that send our lads 
 (from Eton to charity schools) forth to do yeomen's service all 
 over the globe. Nor can I end this Paper without recognising 
 the hopeful good that education, steam, cheap printing, cheap 
 pictures, and cheap schools have done towards discouraging 
 and discountenancing that brutal and savage wantonness in 
 our sports, which was, until very lately, a scandal and dis- 
 grace to us as a nation. Every Englishman who numbers 
 more than forty summers, can remember what formed the 
 
390 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 staple objects of amusement among the people in his youth. 
 Bull-baiting, bear-baiting, duck-hunting, floating a cat in a 
 bowl pursued by dogs; fastening two cats together by their tails, 
 and then swinging them across a horizontal pole to see which 
 should first kill the other ; tying a cat and an owl together 
 and throwing them into the water to fight it out ; cock-fight- 
 ing (before lords in drawing-rooms, sometimes the birds 
 being provided with silver spurs) ; ratting ; and, as a climax 
 of filthy savagery, worrying matches by men against bull-dogs, 
 the man being on his knees having his hands tied behind him ! 
 These sports, thank Heaven ! are nearly extinct among us, and 
 though, from time to time, we hear of brutes indulging in 
 nooks and corners in such miscalled sports, we look at them 
 as ruffianly anachronisms, post-dated vagabonds who should 
 have lived in the days when the Eoman ladies made it a sport 
 to thrust golden pins into the flesh of their female slaves, or 
 when it was the pastime of the British people, from the sabbath 
 before Palm Sunday to the last hour of the Tuesday before 
 Easter, to stone and beat Jews. Yet we are not quite spotless 
 in our sports, yet. 
 
 XXXIY. 
 
 WHERE ARE THEY? 
 
 I HAVE no desire to trench on the province or interfere with 
 the circulation of the numerous compendious little works, the 
 authors of which are so desirous to know Who's Who? What's 
 What? or Which is Which ? in eighteen hundred and fifty- 
 three, four, five, or nine. I hope that the result of their 
 inquiries will be eminently satisfactory to them; and that 
 they will allow me to confine myself to the speculative query, 
 * Where are they?' 
 
 Yes ; where are they ? Whom ?' you may ask. I answer 
 People. People who do and are doing the most extra- 
 ordinary things around us daily and hourly ; but with whom, 
 our whole life long, we seem forbidden to come in contact, 
 and regarding whose whereabouts we must needs be per- 
 petually perplexed. They must be somewhere, these People, 
 yet we never saw them, never shall see them, perhaps ; we 
 may have sate next them at dinner yesterday, ridden in the 
 same omnibus, occupied the next seat in the pit, the same pew 
 at church, jostled against them in the City, five minutes ago, 
 
WHERE ARE THEY? 391 
 
 yefc we are no wiser, and must ramble up and down the world 
 till our span be accomplished, and our ramblirlgs ended, still 
 bootlessly repeating the query, ' Where are they ?' 
 
 A chief cause for our distressing uncertainty as to where 
 the people we are in search of are to be found, lies in the dis- 
 agreeable uniformity of costume prevalent in the present day. 
 We are worse off than were we placed as observers in some 
 savage country where the inhabitants wore no clothes at all ; 
 for there, at least, the Chief might be recognised by the extra 
 quantity of paint he adorned himself with ; and we might in 
 time become sufficiently initiated in the mysteries of tattoo to 
 tell the Medicine man from the Peon, the young Warrior from 
 the Old Brave. But may I ask how are we to tell any one man 
 from another (our own immediate acquaintances excepted) by 
 his dress alone. The millionnaire may be walking past us in 
 an intense state of shabbiness, and the spendthrift may hustle 
 us half into the gutter in all the bravery of ' heavy-swelldom,' 
 cane and jewellery. There is a Judge, I have heard, who 
 dresses like the frequenter of race-courses ; I have had pointed 
 out to me a Peer of the Realm whom I should have taken for 
 a waiter at a City chop-house ; and I know an actor a very 
 humorous and jocular comedian indeed who looks like a 
 professed member of the Society of Jesuits. Really, what 
 with the moustache movement, the beard movement, the 
 detective police, the cheap clothing establishments, the shirt- 
 collar mania, the introduction and wearing, by peaceful 
 business every-day men, of the wildest and most incon- 
 gruously picturesque garments such as ponchos, togas, vi- 
 cunas, siphonias, Inverness wrappers, &c. nobody knows 
 who or what anybody else is ; and the father may go searching 
 for his children, and the child for his parent, and the wife for 
 her husband, all echoing and re-echoing, like Montaigne with 
 his Que-sais-je ? the one frivolous and vexatious, yet re- 
 condite interrogation, ' Where are they?' 
 
 Of course the public enunciation of this demand will lead 
 to the reception of some tons of letters by Messrs. Chapman 
 and Hall, from parties anxious to give full information of 
 ' where ' they are. They will be astonished that 1 have been 
 so long ignorant of their whereabouts ; and my ' Where are 
 they ?' will be quite swamped and put to shame by a chorus of 
 c We are here ; we are there ; we are every where.' None 
 will abstain from communicating their local habitations and 
 names save those who have some strong private and personal 
 
392 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 reasons for keeping it a dead secret, where they are at all. 
 Meanwhile, pending the communicativeness of the one class, 
 and the reticence of the other, where are they all, neverthe- 
 less? 
 
 Where, for instance, are the vast majority of the advertisers 
 and the people that are advertised for ? and, more than that, 
 what sort of people can they be ? The ' Times ' is full of such 
 subjects for speculation ; and I dare say the clerks who receive 
 the advertisements themselves, and the compositors who set 
 them up, and the press-readers who revise them, often pause 
 in the midst of their task to wonder where the seekers and 
 the sought may be. Where is the * gentleman who witnessed 
 the brutal assault ' on the other gentleman getting out of a 
 Chelsea omnibus on Tuesday the twenty-second instant, and 
 who would confer an inestimable favour if he would look in at 
 No. 3, Muggleston Street, Pimlico ? Will he ever confer this 
 inestimable favour, this gentleman? Alas, we may search the 
 reports of the police courts and the Middlesex Sessions for 
 months, years, and find no sign of him ! The assaulter and 
 the assaulted, the lawyers and the witnesses, may all have 
 settled their little business long since. Lawyers may have 
 been instructed, and they in their turn may have instructed 
 counsel, costs may have been incurred, charged, taxed, paid, 
 not paid, sued for; the aggrieved party may at this very 
 moment be expiating his rash desire to obtain justice, in 
 Whitecross Street or the Queen's Bench; the villain who 
 committed the gross assault may be coolly puffing his cigar 
 on the deck of the ' Lively Dolphin/ bound for Melbourne ; the 
 gentleman who witnessed the affray may be (without the 
 slightest cognizance of the other's propinquity) sailing with 
 him on the salt sea, or in another ship on the same sea,, 
 twin cherries on one stalk of coral for a shark to gnaw, or 
 lying near him at the bottom of the sea itself; the lawyers 
 may be dead, their daughters dowered with, or their sons 
 spending, the Costs ; the Pimlico omnibus may be broken to 
 pieces or burnt, or we may be hailing it at this very moment- 
 The affair may have taken all, or any, or none of these turns. 
 How do we know ? what do we know ? Nothing ! And we 
 have not even a definite knowledge of * nothing ' nothingness 
 
 the neant even. What is nothing ? Is it not a ? but soft. 
 
 Where is the party who called on Messrs. Euggles and 
 Fuggles in the course of last September, and who is requested 
 to call again ? What did he call for ? Was it to tell Buggies. 
 
WHERE ARE THEY? o9o 
 
 that lie was his long-lost son, supposed to have gone down 
 with all hands on board the * Chowder-Ally/ outward-bound 
 East Indiaman, twenty years ago ? Was it to ask Euggles and 
 Fuggles if they had heard anything of his (whose ?) long-lost 
 daughter, supposed to have gone down with all hands in the 
 4 Mango/ homeward-bound West-Indiaman, ten years since ? 
 Was it merely to pull Euggles's nose or to call Fuggles a liar ; 
 and do Euggles and Fuggles desire to see him again in order 
 to serve him with a notice of action, or to confess that they 
 were in the wrong, and tender him the hand of reconciliation ; 
 or to ask him to dinner, commend a poisoned chalice to his 
 lips, present him with a service of plate, or smite him beneath 
 the fifth rib ? Where is he, finally ? Eeading the Times ' at 
 this very moment, perhaps, and in his anxiety to learn the 
 latest news from the East, deliberately skipping the advertise- 
 ments ; troubled with a short memory, maybe, and with the 
 paragraph beneath his eyes, quite forgetting Euggles and 
 Fuggles's names, and that he ever called on them at all ; or, 
 fully mindful of his September visit, but determined to see 
 Euggles and friend at Jeddo, in Japan, before he trusts himself 
 within twenty miles of their house again. Perhaps, my dear 
 reader, you may be the party who called, and when this meets 
 your eye, will rush off to Euggles's incontinent, or to Peele's 
 Coffee-house, to consult the files of the ' Times' for the date of 
 the- advertisement or without a moment's delay, will proceed 
 to put the breadth of the British Channel nay, the Atlantic 
 nay, the Southern Pacific Ocean between Euggles, Fuggles, 
 and yourself. 
 
 Where are the 'descendants (if any) of Jean Baptiste- 
 Pierre Jouvin, who was supposed to have been a French 
 Huguenot refugee in London, about the year sixteen hun- 
 dred and eighty?' Wherever can the individual be, who 
 seeks to find out descendants from so remote a stock? Is 
 he Methusaleh, Sir Barnard Burke, the wandering Jew, 
 Isaac Laquedem, or the laborious historian of the Eevo- 
 cation of the Edict of Nantes seeking to verify some docu- 
 ment, to elicit some fact, to authenticate some date? Or is 
 there perchance some Jouvin yet alive, a Protestant and a 
 Frenchman, anxious to learn tidings of his old Huguenot 
 ancestor a rich Jouvin, a pious Jouvin, a kindly Jouvin, 
 yearning to share his riches and his love with some one bear- 
 ing his name, and descended from the race that suffered pro 
 Fide in the bad days of old ? Or does the advertisement 
 
39i GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 emanate dreadful thought ! from some wily Jesuit, or fierce 
 Inquisitor's great grandson cherishing ancestral bigotry and 
 traditional hatred actuated by fanatical hostility towards 
 Huguenot-ism in general and Jouvin in particular, and thirst- 
 ing to decoy him into some private Inquisition, there to tor- 
 ture him on a private rack or burn him at a private stake. 
 Where are the descendants (if any) of J. B. P. Jouvin ? Have 
 they kept their father's name, and Faith, and trade, and do 
 they yet ply the shuttle and weave the rich silks in gloomy 
 Spitalfields ? Uncertainty, uncertainty ! There may be 
 Jouvins yet, but they may have re-emigrated degenerated 
 their very name may have become corrupted. One may be 
 by this time an Irishman say Father O'Jowler, consigning 
 (in oratory) Protestants to torment, and on the little steps of 
 his little altar fiercely denouncing the British Government, 
 the Saxon race, and the theory of the earth's movement. 
 One Jouvin may have emigrated to America, and in process 
 of time transmuted himself into Colonel Gracchus Juvvins, 
 that fierce pro-slavery Senator and (prior to his bankruptcy 
 and ' absquatulation ' from the State of New York) ardent 
 Free Soiler. There may be descendants of Jouvin in Eng- 
 land, debased into Joggins, and, all unconscious that their 
 ancestors were silk-weavers in Spitalfields, be keeping coal 
 and potato-sheds in Whitechapel. 
 
 Where on earth are the people who send conscience-money 
 to the Chancellor of the Exchequer ? Did you ever per- 
 sonally know any one who so sent cash or halves of bank 
 notes to Downing Street? Who takes the conscience-money 
 in the hall-porter, a money-taking clerk specially appointed 
 for the purpose ? Does the hall-porter wink ? does the clerk 
 lay his finger to his nose as the conscientious anonymous 
 thrusts the precious envelope into their hand, and rushes 
 through the rubbish into Fludyer Street or is the con- 
 science-money all sent by post? Can you point out to me 
 one single gentleman with a white waistcoat, a broad-brimmed 
 hat, and a watch and seals, and say ' There goes T. J., or 
 L. B., who sent the Chancellor of the Exchequer fifty pounds 
 yesterday on account of taxes unpaid?* Yet these men 
 making restitution must be somewhere or other. What are 
 they like ? I have a fanciful theory founded on what basis 
 I am, I confess, quite at a loss to tell that the majority of 
 these men troubled with a conscience are men with white 
 waistcoats, broad-brimmed hats, watches and seals ; further- 
 
WHERE ARE THEY? 395 
 
 more, that they all wear low shoes, and take snuff from mas- 
 sive golden boxes. They are all immensely rich, of course ; 
 and the conscience-dockets in their cheque-books are mingled 
 with numerous others relating to donations to charitable 
 institutions, police-court poor-boxes, and cases of real distress. 
 I can fancy the entries in their diaries running somewhat 
 thus : ' Attended board-meeting of orphan sympathisers at 
 noon ; relieved the destitute at half-past twelve ; gave away 
 soup-tickets at one ; flannels and coals at two ; drew cheque 
 for fifty pounds, and enclosed it to the Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer as conscience-money at three.' I wonder how 
 long after they have defrauded the revenue to any consider- 
 able extent their conscience begins to prick them, and how 
 long they battle with conscience, and hocuss him, and 
 smother him, and refuse to listen to his still small voice. I 
 wonder when it is they are at last persuaded to make restitu- 
 tion, and how they do it whether with the ineffable felicity 
 of well-doing, or with the uneasy satisfaction of atoning by a 
 partial disgorgement for a grievous roguery, or with the 
 tremour of detection, or the sullenness of self-reproach, or 
 the horror of despair. Are the conscience-money senders, 
 after all, not the white- waistcoated, low-shoed men I have 
 figured to myself, but hard, stern, gaunt, grisly lawyers, 
 bill-discounters, bailiffs to great landlords, speculators, guar- 
 dians, committee men, trustees, and the like? Are they 
 suddenly overtaken with such a sharp and quick remorse for 
 the injuries they have inflicted on those over whom they have 
 power, or who have trusted in them, for the widows they 
 have been hard upon, and the orphans whose noses they have 
 ground, that in sheer tremour and agony of mind they with 
 their trembling hands adjust the salves of gold and plasters 
 of bank-notes to the hidden sores of their hearts, and in a 
 desperate hurry send tens and twenties and fifties all over the 
 country ; this to the widows' almshouse and this to the 
 orphan's asylum ; this to the water company for unpaid 
 water-rate ; this to the gas company for the falsified meter ; 
 this to the railway company for having travelled in first-class 
 carriages with second-class tickets, or exceeded the allowed 
 quantity of luggage, or smoked in defiance of the bye-laws ; 
 this to the Exchequer in part compensation of the abused 
 commissioners and defrauded collectors of income-tax? 
 Whether I am at all right or all wrong in these surmisings, 
 I imagine the payments of conscience-money are generally 
 
396 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 payments on account on very small account of the sums 
 due to individuals or to Government. I think if I had ten 
 thousand a year, and a great many shares in a great many 
 mines and railways, all purchased at a considerable discount, 
 and all quoted, now, at a considerable premium ; if I had a 
 large house and many servants, and my aunt in Somerset- 
 shire had disinherited my disreputable brother Bob in my 
 favour ; if my brother Ned's children (he failed, poor fellow, 
 shortly after I retired from the firm) were in a charity-school, 
 and Ned's widow (her dowry started us in business) taking in 
 needlework, if my last little ventures in slaves in Cuba, and 
 Brummagen guns in Caffraria, and bowie-knives in Arkansas, 
 and rum, brandy, and abdominous idols on the Guinea coast- 
 had all been very successful, I think, now and then, when I 
 had begun to think that I was getting old, and that I had 
 been a hard man, or that I had the gout, or a fit of indiges- 
 tion, or the blues, that I could send the halves of a few 
 notes to the Chancellor of the Exchequer as conscience- 
 money: reading the announcement of the enclosure in the 
 next morning's ' Times ' would help down my tea and toast 
 a little. I think, too, that I should like to see my name in a 
 few subscribers' lists, and committee lists, and stewards for 
 public dinner lists. 
 
 Where are the people who advertise children's cauls for 
 sale ? And where, more difficult to find still, are the people 
 who buy them ay, and give ten guineas for them ? It ha& 
 occurred to me, sometimes, wandering through London, to 
 lose my way, and in some unknown street in some little 
 known neighbourhood to come suddenly upon a dingy shop, 
 in the window of which was the announcement : ' A child's 
 caul to be sold here.' But I never had courage to enter. I 
 never had courage to ask to inspect the weird article, possess- 
 ing, according to popular superstition, more occultly nautical 
 powers than the famed egg-shells in which, unless broken 
 by the cautious egg-spoon at the morning breakfast-table, the 
 unholy witches sail about in yachting expeditions on their 
 hideous sabbath. I had never the courage to wait till the 
 unknown customer with the ten guineas arrived. He does 
 arrive, I believe, to this day ; but where he is I know not, 
 neither where are the cauls or the children that are born 
 with them. I wasn't born with a caul. The places where 
 they are on sale are published in the advertisement, but don't 
 believe that the original proprietors of the cauls come from 
 
WHERE ARE THEY? 397 
 
 or live there. The only place where I could imagine a 
 child's caul to be indigenous, would be at a herbalist's, than 
 which, with the solitary exception of a ladies' second-hand 
 warehouse, I do not know a more mysterious and cloudy 
 establishment. 
 
 There are two classes who, though their whereabouts is 
 wrapped in much mystery, I am not very curious about. 
 These are the writers of the cypher or puzzle advertisements, 
 commencing somewhat in this style : 
 
 ' Fxm5obtlmztyivk6oZithhho8tmqgllpTT55gglolYi9.' ; 
 
 And secondly, the monogrammatical advertisers : the * Pick- 
 ackifaxes,' 'Boot-jacks,' 'No hearth-rug/ 'How about X.?' 
 and gentlemen adopting that style of literature. I don't 
 think that much good would result to us or to anybody if 
 we knew where those worthies were. Besides, they, and the 
 makers of appointments, and the sayers of soft sayings and 
 the talkers of drivelling nonsense in a newspaper, with forty 
 thousand subscribers, and goodness knows how many million 
 readers, enter into the category I mean to descant upon some 
 of these days when I ask, Where are the Donkeys that are 
 not on Hampstead Heath, Brighton Cliff, Smithfield Monday 
 Market not in costermongers' shallow broom -carts, or the 
 Pound? 
 
 Where are all the c perpetual commissioners for witnessing 
 the deeds to be executed by married women?' The Lord 
 Chancellor is as perpetually appointing them ; they have all 
 ourious names and addresses ; but where are they? I never 
 saw a perpetual commissioner ; I never knew a married 
 woman who was doomed to go through the awful ordeal of 
 executing a deed and having it witnessed by one of these 
 dread beings. Are they perpetually sitting, these commis- 
 sioners? Do they never leave off witnessing the deeds I 
 never saw? There is one Hugh Harmer Hollowpenny, 
 dwelling at Bettwys-y-boyd, in Wales. Fancy a commis- 
 missioner having to sit perpetually at Bettwys-y-boyd, to 
 witness the execution of the deeds never, under any circum- 
 stances whatever, executed by the married women of that ilk ! 
 
 Where are three -fourths of the barristers who are called to 
 the bar ? Do they practise ; do they earn anything ; does any- 
 body ever see anything of them ? Are they born barristers of 
 seven years' standing : or how do they like standing so long ? 
 
 The gentlemen who have commissions signed by the Lord- 
 
398 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 Lieutenant, where are they? Where is the Court of Lieu- 
 tenancy of London, and who belongs to it? I have seen 
 a deputy-lieutenant at a levee, but I want to know where 
 lie is when he is at home ; what he is lieutenant over, and 
 why, and all about it ? 
 
 I don't care where the dissolute Initials are. My private 
 opinion is, that if they are foolish enough to run away from 
 home, their parents are well rid of them. I have more 
 curiosity to know where the people are who are to call in 
 Bedford Row or Southampton Buildings, or Lincoln's Inn, 
 in order that they may hear something to their advantage. 
 I wonder what it is ! My curiosity is checked by the know- 
 ledge that it will not be by any means to my advantage to 
 find out; yet selfishness notwithstanding, I can't give up 
 reading this portion of the ' Times ' every morning, lest there 
 should be by chance a stray notice hinting that a call on my 
 part somewhere in the neighbourhood of the inns of court 
 would be advantageous to me, or that there are some odd 
 thousands of unclaimed stock or hundreds of unclaimed 
 dividends standing in my name in the books of the Bank 
 of England. 
 
 Where are the cases of real distress, the people who write 
 the appeals to the benevolent, the daughters of beneficed 
 clergymen, the widows of distinguished officers ? I should 
 like to know how many of these cases are indeed in real dis- 
 tress, and how many are as near as first cousins to the honour- 
 able society of begging-letter writers. 
 
 Where are the ' Lord Mayor's swordbearer's young man/ 
 and the ' Lord Mayor's trumpeter's young man,' and the 
 ' water-bailiff's young man,' when not officially engaged, and 
 what are they like when not officially clothed? I wonder 
 whether I ever dined at Greenwich with the water-bailiff's 
 young man. Where are the yeomen of the guard, and the 
 marshalmen, and the sergeant trumpeters, and the pursuivants- 
 at-arms, when there are no coronation or marriage processions, 
 no openings of the House, no state visits to the Opera. Do 
 they wear in private life those resplendent crimson and gold 
 doublets, those symmetrical trunk hose, those historical but 
 hideous little hats with the red and white roses ?* Where are 
 
 * Of even this costume, as worn at least by the Tower Yeomen, the ques- 
 tion may now be asked * Where is it?' Time ed ix rerum has shouldered 
 the doublet from Tower Hill, and the Beefeaters' dress will soon bo 
 reckoned altogether, I fear, among * Things departed.' 
 
WHERE ARE THEY? 399 
 
 they ? Where are the innumerable mourning-coaches in long 
 clothes r that followed the Duke of Wellington's funeral ? If 
 there were another state funeral, would they come out again ? 
 Where are all the thousands of Ladies of Glasgow, Abstain- 
 ers of Lambeth, and Members of the Primitive Church of Ber- 
 mondsey, who sign their so many thousand names to petitions 
 for the redress of almost every imaginable worldly grievance, 
 laid on the tables of the Houses of Parliament almost every 
 night in the session ? Where are the people who get up those 
 petitions, and the people who write them ? And tell me, oh 
 tell me more than all, where are those petitions themselves at 
 this present time ? 
 
 Where are they ? And who answers where ? And where, 
 by-the-by, are all the echoes that have been perpetually an- 
 swering where, ever since people began to make frothy 
 speeches ? Where, again, are the people who read frothy 
 speeches when they are made and reported ? Where are the 
 * perhaps too partial friends ' who have persuaded so many 
 authors to publish? Did they know what they were at when 
 they took those courses ? Where are nine-tenths of the books 
 so persuaded into existence? Do the friends read them until 
 
 they are all imbecile together ? W 7 here is the Blank, this 
 
 who has been the subject of all those verses ? What does 
 Blank think of them ? Js he as tired of them as I am, or as 
 you are of me ? 
 
 Still, where are they? Where are, or is, that noun of 
 multitude signifying many, the Public? What sort of a 
 public is it ? Is it the ' enlightened British,' the ' impatient- 
 of-taxation,' the ' generous,' the ' impartial,' the ' discrimina- 
 ting/ the ' indignant,' the ' exacting,' the ' ungrateful ?' Have 
 these publics any consanguinity with the ' many-headed mon- 
 ster,' the 'mob,' the 'swinish multitude,' the 'masses,' the 
 ' populace,' the ' million?' Has this public anything to do with 
 the Eepublic, and how much? Is this the public which has 
 so loud a Voice, and so strong an Opinion upon public topics, 
 and a Public Service for the advantage of which all our states- 
 men are so particularly anxious ? Where is this highly- 
 favoured, highly-privileged, much-cared-for, much belauded, 
 much abused, always talked of, never seen public ? I observe 
 that it is never present when it is the subject of a joke at the 
 theatre ; which is always perceived to be a hit at some other 
 public richly deserving it, and not present. Is the public com- 
 posed of the two or three thousand weak-minded individuals 
 
400 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 who take Billierson's Liver Pills, and Muley Moloch's Trea- 
 sures of the Oasis, and Tirnour the Tartar's Medicated Cream ? 
 Are the people who read the Eeverend Boanerges Bluderbuss's 
 Wickedness of Washing proved by Prophecy the public ? Is 
 it the public that believes in the Mission, and Divinity, and 
 Angelic Nature of Thomas Towser, ex-shoemaker and prophet, 
 who renounces cleanliness and predicts the speedy destruction 
 of the world and the advent of the Millenium every Thursday 
 and every Sunday throughout the year, at the east end of 
 London ? 
 
 I should like to be informed, if you have no objection, 
 where are the rogues who put red lead into my cayenne pep- 
 per, Venetian red, fuller's earth, and bad starch into my cocoa ; 
 chicory, burnt beans, and chopped hay into my coffee ; Prus- 
 sian blue, gummed and varnished sloe-leaves, emerald green, 
 and bits of birch brooms in my tea ; chalk, water, calves' and 
 horses' brains into my milk ; alum, gypsum, and dead men's 
 bones into my bread ; sand and clay into my sugar ; cabbage- 
 leaves, lettuce-leaves, hay, and brown paper into my tobacco 
 and cigars ; glass into my snuff ; devil's dust, rotten thread, 
 and evil odours into my clothes ; cotton into my silk handker- 
 chiefs ; cast iron into my razors ; charcoal into my lead pen- 
 cils ; bad brandy, sloe-juice, and logwood into my port wine ; 
 turpentine, mastic, and water into my gin ; pyroligneous and 
 oxalic acids into my pickle jar; ground sealing-wax and 
 pounded sprats into my anchovy sauce ; treacle, salt, cocculus 
 indicus, and laudanum into my porter ; dogs, cats, and horses 
 into my sausages ; and drowned puppies and kittens into my 
 mutton pies. Where are they, the great tribe of Adulterators ? 
 the scoundrels who put villanous nastinesses into wholesome 
 food ? Mr. Accum may have warned us that there is ' death 
 in the pot ;' the ' Lancet ' may have sent forth its commissioners 
 to analyse samples of teas and sugars ; a miscreant may be de- 
 tected once in four years or so, filling up cases of preserved 
 meat with the vilest offal, and neatly packing the interior of 
 forage trusses of hay with shavings, stones, and dead lambs ; 
 these hang-dogs who have in their muderous frauds endea- 
 voured to send out death and disease with the fleets and 
 armies of England may have their names gibbeted (in a quiet, 
 gentlemanly manner) once or twice in a session during a lan- 
 guid debate in the golden House of Lords ; but where are 
 they ? There is another public whose whereabout I am 
 exceedingly anxious to find out, the virtuously ' indignant ' 
 
WHERE ARE THEY? 401 
 
 public, the public that applauds so vehemently in the gal- 
 leries of criminal courts, that ' with difficulty are restrained 
 from tearing to pieces ' notorious criminals, on their emerging 
 from Bow Street after their examination and committal for 
 trial. Now, nothing would please me so much as to introduce 
 this public, the virtuous and indignant public, to the villanous 
 and adulterating public ; and 'gin a public, meet a public 
 putting red lead into pepper, or sloe-leaves into tea, or offal 
 into hay and 'gin a public beat a public, and kick a public, 
 and pelt a public, it seems to me that the two publics would be 
 very appropriately brought together. 
 
 Where are the people who 'go about saying things?' / 
 never go about saying things about other people ; yet other 
 people are always going about saying things about me. They 
 say (I merely adduce myself as an embodiment of Anybody) 
 that I have a wife alive in Bermuda, and that I ill-treat the 
 Mrs. Present Writer, alive and resident with me in England, 
 dreadfully. They say I don't pay my rent, and that I have 
 invested fifty-five thousand pounds in the French funds. 
 They say that my plate is all pawned, and that bailiffs in 
 livery wait at my table. They say that I am about to invade 
 England with ninety thousand men next week; and that I 
 was here, disguised as a Lascar crossing-sweeper, last Tues- 
 day, reconnoitring. They say I have taken to drinking ; 
 that I can't paint any more pictures; that I have written 
 myself out; that I lost four thousand pounds on the last 
 Chester Cup ; that I have exercised a sinister influence over 
 the foreign policy of the country, opened despatch- boxes, and 
 tampered with despatches. They say I eat an ounce and a 
 half of opium every day, and that Blims wrote my last 
 pamphlet on Electoral Eeform. They say I am about to 
 become lessee of Her Majesty's Theatre ; that I set my house 
 on fire ten years ago ; that I am the ' Septimus Brown ' who 
 was taken into custody in the last gambling-house razzia ; 
 that I have shares in the Turkish loan, and the Eussian rail- 
 ways ; that I have presented a gold snuff-box to the ex-beadle 
 of St. Clement Danes ; that I murdered my aunt, my cousin, 
 and my brother-in-law years before the commission of the 
 crime for which I am now condemned to death ; that I am an 
 atheist ; that I am a Jesuit ; that my father was hanged ; that 
 I am illicitly related to royalty; that I am to be the new 
 governor of Yellow Jack Island ; and that I cut Thistlewood's 
 head off. Now, where are the people who say all these things 
 
 2 D 
 
402 GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT. 
 
 about me, about you, about kings, queens, princes, and 
 chandlers'-shop keepers ? You don't ' go about ' saying such 
 things ; I don't go about saying them ; yet somebody goes 
 about saying them. Where is your somebody and my some- 
 body? Where are they? 
 
 Where are the Parties in the City to whom your money- 
 lender is always obliged to apply to obtain the money he 
 lends you ? Where is the party who does not like the last 
 name on the bill, and would prefer an additional name? 
 Where is the Other Party, the only implacable party, who 
 won't hear of any delay in your being sued, sold up, and 
 arrested ? Where is the Third Party, who is always obliged to 
 be consulted, ' squared,' spoken to ; who always holds the 
 bill, and won't give it up ; who was so unfortunately present 
 when your friend wished to mention that little matter pri- 
 vately to the other party, and who consequently prevented 
 its satisfactory adjustment ? Where is he ? I ask again, 
 where is he ? Where are they ? Everybody ! 
 
 Where is the ' gentleman ' who has called for us during our 
 absence from home ; but who returns no more than the hat, 
 umbrella, and thermometer which he is supposed to have 
 taken from the entrance hall ? Where is the gentleman for 
 whom the silk-lined overcoat, or the patent leather boots were 
 made, but whom they did not fit ; which is the sole reason of 
 their being offered to us at so reduced a rate ? Where is that 
 unflinching friend of the auctioneer, the gentleman who has 
 such a number and such a variety of articles of property 
 from ready-furnished freehold shooting boxes, to copies of 
 Luther's Bible and who is always going abroad, or is lately 
 deceased ? Where is the lady who is always relinquishing 
 housekeeping, and is so strenuously anxious to recommend 
 her late cook or housekeeper? Whereabouts, I wonder, are 
 the two pounds per week which can with facility be realised 
 by painting on papier-mache, or by ornamental leather- work ? 
 or by the accomplishment easy of acquirement and ' connected 
 with the Crystal Palace ?' Where is the fortune that is so 
 liberally offered for five shillings? Where are the smart 
 young men who want a hat ? Where are all the bad writers 
 whom the professors of penmanship in six lessons are so 
 anxious to improve? Where are the fifty thousand cures 
 warranted to have been effected by De Pompadour's Flour of 
 Haricoes? Where are all the wonderfully afflicted people 
 who suffered such excruciating agonies for several years, and 
 
WHERE ARE THEY? 403 
 
 were at last relieved and cured by two boxes of the pills, or 
 two bottles of the mixture ; and who order, in a postscript, 
 four dozen of each to be sent to them immediaiely, for which 
 they enclose postage stamps? Where are the gentlemen of 
 good education, who offer five hundred thanks for Government 
 appointments, legally transferable? Where are the other 
 gentlemen who have the Government appointments, and do 
 transfer them legally, and accept the thanks, and keep the 
 inviolable secrecy which is always to be observed, and where, 
 WHERE, I say, are the Government appointments which are 
 ' legally transferable ' ? 
 
 \Vhere are the First-Kate Men, the Eich City Men, the 
 Twenty Thousand Pound Men, who are sure to ' come into ' 
 every new project the moment it is fairly launched ? Where 
 are the buyers of all those eligible investments the partakers 
 (for five hundred pounds down) in fortune-making patents for 
 articles in universal demand? Whereabouts in the daily, 
 evening, or weekly papers, am I to find the enthusiastically 
 laudatory criticisms of new novels (such as ' A delightful 
 work.' Times. 'The best novel of the day.' Chronicle. 'An 
 admirable book.' Examiner. ' Worthy of Fielding.' Globe) 
 appended to the booksellers' advertisements? Where are the 
 purchasers of the cerulean neck-ties with crimson and gold 
 bars, the death's-head shirts, the pea-green gloves that we see 
 displayed in hosiers' shops ? Where are the libraries which 
 would be incomplete without nearly all the new books criti- 
 cised in the weekly papers ? and which, of course, have got 
 them? Where are those hereditary bondsmen, who to free 
 themselves must strike the blow; where is the blow to be 
 struck, and how are the bondsmen to strike it ? 
 
 One question more, and I have done. Where are all the 
 people whom we are to know some of these days ? Where is 
 the dear friend to whom, ten years hence, we shall recount 
 what an atrocious villain our dear friend of to-day turned out 
 to be ? Where are they all hidden the new connections we 
 shall form, quite forgetting our present ties of blood and 
 friendship ? Where are the wives unknown, uncourted yet ; 
 the children unborn, unthought of, who are to delight or 
 grieve us ? Where are the after-years that may come, and 
 where is all that they may, and all that we already know they 
 must, bring ? 
 
 THE END. 
 
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