DOI issue:
September 13, 1884
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.17757#0133
126 PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. [September 13, 1884
GENUINE ENTHUSIASTS.
Watching the Finale of a Lawn-Tennis Tournament in the Teeth of a cold East Wind.
And these are their dwellings, those fortunate swains !
What tumble-down sheds ! What defacements and stains!
What an obvious absence of cisterns and drains !
The windows how shaky, how broken the panes !
The whole how uncleanly and squalid !
That full fetid dusthole, that sink choked with slime,
Are worthy St. Pancras. The foul haunts of crime
In Southwark scarce show more of filth, stench, and grime,
Or faces more pinched or more pallid.
Those staircases shaky, those mouldering floors,
Those damp rotting roofs and those hingeless old doors,
Remind one of “ Goldgrubber’s Rents.”
But they call the sweet neighbourhood Paradise Green,
And it isn't a slum, for some pigstyes are seen,
And Town cannot boast of their scents.
The churchyard and cowshed are here cheek by jowl,
Or else broken rain-pipe and soot-cumbered cowl,
And piles of old refuse ill-favoured and foul
Might make a Town-dweller suppose
It was Horrible London he gazed on, and not
The scene of the gay rural labourer’s lot,
For plainly he could not distinguish the spot
From the festering slum that is Babylon’s blot
By the verdict of eye or of nose.
And here, in the midst of these sights and these scents,
The Marquis of Carabas gathers his rents,
How happy the Marquis should be !
For what more delightful than doing one’s duty
By humble retainers midst health, joy, and beauty,
Pure pleasure and pastoral glee ?
Seems quite mediaeval and nice, does it not F
And rather reminds one of dear Walter Scott,
Of the feudal and proudly paternal. _
And only to think that the same sort of thing
Might so general be ; that glad rustics might sing
In security sweet ’neath Nobility’s wing,
To Lord Manners’ delight, if the Radical ring
All the ways of the right Good Old Times would not fling
Into “ Progress’s ” cauldron infernal!
A DAY IN THE COUNTRY.
[From a Fresh Point of View.)
A Day in the Country! 0 phrase full of cheer
For the Town-dweller tired, at this time of the year!
Well, supposing we make the experiment!
Pheugh ! What a blaze Father Phoebus sends down!
It will parch up the Thames, and bake everything brown
Near the terrible flags of that horrible Town ;
But, where we are going, the veriest clown
In freshness may dwell, in green herbage may drown.
For—of course—rural parts must sustain their renown
For healthiness, beauty, and merriment.
The whiff of—the whiff of the—well, when you think of it,
It smells like a sewer to one on the brink of it.
It cannot be that though, of course.
For indeed did our stout rural labourers dwell
In the midst of this very peculiar smell,
Their pull over Town ’twere not easy to tell.
Where are we, and what is its source ?
A hamlet—(that odour is sickly and faint)—
That a Goldsmith might sing or a Constable paint,
The dwelling of labouring swains.
It is hard by the gates of a Nobleman’s Hall,
Near a Park’s noble spread and a river’s bright fall.
Who would not be a gay agricultural “thrall,”
To inherit such obvious gains ?
For, of course—(just a sniff of Cologne, if you please !)—
In the midst of the meadows, the hedges, and trees,
Of the flower-scents borne by a health-giving breeze,
’Neath the fatherly sway of a Noble at ease,
The swains must be happy as larks,
And regard with compassion the wretched slum-dwellers
Whose pitiful tale has had so many tellers ;
Grim Babylon’s legions of buyers and sellers,
Who knowing their London, like so many Wellers,
For music have Costerdom’s howlers and yellers,
For greenness the Squares and the Parks.
GENUINE ENTHUSIASTS.
Watching the Finale of a Lawn-Tennis Tournament in the Teeth of a cold East Wind.
And these are their dwellings, those fortunate swains !
What tumble-down sheds ! What defacements and stains!
What an obvious absence of cisterns and drains !
The windows how shaky, how broken the panes !
The whole how uncleanly and squalid !
That full fetid dusthole, that sink choked with slime,
Are worthy St. Pancras. The foul haunts of crime
In Southwark scarce show more of filth, stench, and grime,
Or faces more pinched or more pallid.
Those staircases shaky, those mouldering floors,
Those damp rotting roofs and those hingeless old doors,
Remind one of “ Goldgrubber’s Rents.”
But they call the sweet neighbourhood Paradise Green,
And it isn't a slum, for some pigstyes are seen,
And Town cannot boast of their scents.
The churchyard and cowshed are here cheek by jowl,
Or else broken rain-pipe and soot-cumbered cowl,
And piles of old refuse ill-favoured and foul
Might make a Town-dweller suppose
It was Horrible London he gazed on, and not
The scene of the gay rural labourer’s lot,
For plainly he could not distinguish the spot
From the festering slum that is Babylon’s blot
By the verdict of eye or of nose.
And here, in the midst of these sights and these scents,
The Marquis of Carabas gathers his rents,
How happy the Marquis should be !
For what more delightful than doing one’s duty
By humble retainers midst health, joy, and beauty,
Pure pleasure and pastoral glee ?
Seems quite mediaeval and nice, does it not F
And rather reminds one of dear Walter Scott,
Of the feudal and proudly paternal. _
And only to think that the same sort of thing
Might so general be ; that glad rustics might sing
In security sweet ’neath Nobility’s wing,
To Lord Manners’ delight, if the Radical ring
All the ways of the right Good Old Times would not fling
Into “ Progress’s ” cauldron infernal!
A DAY IN THE COUNTRY.
[From a Fresh Point of View.)
A Day in the Country! 0 phrase full of cheer
For the Town-dweller tired, at this time of the year!
Well, supposing we make the experiment!
Pheugh ! What a blaze Father Phoebus sends down!
It will parch up the Thames, and bake everything brown
Near the terrible flags of that horrible Town ;
But, where we are going, the veriest clown
In freshness may dwell, in green herbage may drown.
For—of course—rural parts must sustain their renown
For healthiness, beauty, and merriment.
The whiff of—the whiff of the—well, when you think of it,
It smells like a sewer to one on the brink of it.
It cannot be that though, of course.
For indeed did our stout rural labourers dwell
In the midst of this very peculiar smell,
Their pull over Town ’twere not easy to tell.
Where are we, and what is its source ?
A hamlet—(that odour is sickly and faint)—
That a Goldsmith might sing or a Constable paint,
The dwelling of labouring swains.
It is hard by the gates of a Nobleman’s Hall,
Near a Park’s noble spread and a river’s bright fall.
Who would not be a gay agricultural “thrall,”
To inherit such obvious gains ?
For, of course—(just a sniff of Cologne, if you please !)—
In the midst of the meadows, the hedges, and trees,
Of the flower-scents borne by a health-giving breeze,
’Neath the fatherly sway of a Noble at ease,
The swains must be happy as larks,
And regard with compassion the wretched slum-dwellers
Whose pitiful tale has had so many tellers ;
Grim Babylon’s legions of buyers and sellers,
Who knowing their London, like so many Wellers,
For music have Costerdom’s howlers and yellers,
For greenness the Squares and the Parks.