Punch: Punch (17.1849)

134

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

A GOOD EXCUSE.

" Now, MY little Man, tell me-fob a penny—WHY Don't you

wash your face."

" Lor, bless you !—We never has no water down our court."

THE OLD HOUSE AND THE NEW.

(a voice erom church street and church court, bloomsbury.)

Is it a street or kennel ? Foul sludge and fetid stream,

That from a chain of mantling pools send up a choky steam:

Walls black with soot,and bright with grease; low doorways; entries dim;

And out of every window, pale faces, gaunt and grim.

Crouching at every door-way, under each foot of wall,
Bundles of ragged squalor, wives, husbands, children small;
Unreverenced age, grey-headed youth, man with his manhood cowed,
Woman without her womanhood, haggard and fierce and loud.

I moved, I marked, I marvelled, each sense of me assailed'
By sounds, shows, stinks, that hearing, sight, and smell at once regaled—
Suffering and sin here held their own—bad but relieved by worse,
The ear turned, eager, from the cry, to hearken to the curse.

I had stept from out a thoroughfare—an artery that rolled

One of the London human streams—the streams that run with gold;

I had but twenty steps to take, another stream to find,

Rolling as rich and rapid, with waves of human kind.

And between these ceaseless currents that speak to thought and sight,

Of knowledge, arts, and wisdom, religion, riches, right,

Lieth this hideous delta, this sad and savage place,

In its wants, as in its wickedness, lower than lowest race.

That stream still rolleth onward—for blessing must not stay;
The grave, the good, the wealthy, the wise pass on their way;
Here on the river margin no fringe of green doth lie,
The tide goes rolling, rolling, and the desert howls hard by.

I paused upon the border—but it was midnight then.
And the great streams no longer poured their daily tide of men ;
And, save the watchlight and the wail of those with sick or dead,
Even that misery was at rest—that wretchedness a-bed.

I heard a voice upon the air, which a Church Street house did utter,
With a gujn of sighs right redolent of cess-pool, trap, and gutter,
Whereto from out a spruce snug house in New Church Court hard by,
With no more of self-complacence a voice did make reply.

Quoth the Old House—"Here must I stand, 'mid sewerage-mud, and
smells;

The cess-pool water saps my bricks, and poisoneth my wells ;

Plague takes its lodging in my rooms, where every inch of floor,
Triple-tenanted already, wants not that grim guest the more.

My rafters creak beneath the weight of ignorance they bear ;
My old walls shake with all they see of sickness, crime, and care :
While Vestrymen and Guardians, Health Boards, and Boards of Sewers,
Are wrangling round my wretchedness about their several cures.

Whitewash my ceilings, flush my drains, or ventilate my rooms ;
Do something—all or any—aught but this strife, that dooms
My helpless, hopeless inmates to the first red plague that falls
Upon the prostrate squalor crowded within my walls.

For you, my decent neighbour, you're cleansed outside and in;
Your miserable lodgers are turned out, kith and kin :
And when our parish Solons bring strangers here to view
Our sanitary progress, they proudly point to you.

What did you do, Church Court, to win a fate so changed from mine ?
We both were foul, yet in your spruce new stucco coat you shine ;
While 1, besides the misery that was, and is my own,
Must help to bear the wretchedness from off your shoulders thrown."

" Envy me not," quoth the New House, "old friend, although 'tis true
That I have cast mine ancient slough, and show a front span-new.
Such loads as you and I have borne may not be flung away,
As they cart off the rubbish of our shells, within a day.

'Tis true that I am clean to sight; its gig between my rows
Respectability may drive, nor hold its decent nose ;
That Competence now stands erect, where Beggary crouched before •
That Misery, rent and reckless, squats no longer at my door.

But hollow all this decent show : ill doth the dwelling fare,
From squalor purged, that selfishness may find free quarters there ;
They have swept the human offal out of my shelter—true,
But 'twas to pile the festering heap higher, old friend, in you.

There's not one wretchedness the less for all my smiling face ;
There's not one grain of filth the less, for all this well-swept place •,
There's not a plague the fewer for all my clean-flushed drains;
My scavengering and sewerage is worse than wasted pains.

They've drained the stream that, ran through me, to dam it high in you;
They've swept out my old lodgers, to furnish you with new ;
The Plagues that Parish Boards crow o'er as vanquished, only scoff,
And write up on their recent homes, ' Removed to two doors off.'

They issue from compacter haunts, the stronger for compression,
And though their residence no more, I still am their possession :
Each ill, as I was, swept away, a new ill crop arouses,
Until the public may exclaim, ' A plague o' both your houses !' "

"AROUSE YE THEN, MY MERRY MERRY MEN."

Conslderablb excitement has prevailed within the last few days in
Trafalgar Square, by a movement of a most unexpected and unusual
character. About a week since a surly old man and an obstinate hobble-
dehoy, furnishing an apt illustration of " crabbed age and youth," were
seen advancing to the foot of the Nelson Column, and having fumbled
for some time about the base, they succeeded in elevating a piece of
canvas, or an old sheet—there are speculations in favour of both views
of the material—to the height of the pedestal. Some alarm was created
among the inhabitants that the dismal-looking texture might possibly be
the standard of Cochrane again about to be raised in the neighbourhood,
and the blank and dirty aspect of the affair went very far towards favour-
ing the supposition.

Upon inquiry being made, it turned out that the proceedings that had
caused so much uneasiness were preliminary to the investing of the
Column with the base relief, a style of out-door relief, the want of which
has for some time indicated our national poverty. We have heard that
the reason of the delay in finishing the four lions, whose absence has been
so much commented on, arises from a vague hope of the sculptor that
he shall persuade the British Lion to give him a sitting.

Gems from John O'Connell's New Book.

Parliamentary Impressions and Recollections of John O'Connell, Es(^ M.P. during
a career from 1832 to 1848.

I recollect that I made a disagreeable Parliamentary impression when-
ever I rose to speak.

I recollect that I promised to die on the floor of the House, but I've
an impression that I didn't.

My impression is that I didn't make much impression upon anybody's
mind, at any time, on any subject.