Punch or The London charivari (3.1842)

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

THE PENNY-A-LINER.

HE rearing his fortunes (such as they are)
upon misfortunes ; spinning out his days by
the sudden termination of those of a neigh-
bour; boarding and lodging upon accidents
and offences ; finding fire from an inunda-
tion, and light from a source whence " the
vital spark had fled ;" what a juggling para-
dox, what a strange career is the life of a
penny-a-liner ! He seeth his way through
the world best when the fogs of November
come on ; and when a gentleman disappear-
ed under water, it keeps the penny-a-liner
above it. He breakfasts on a " curious co-
incidence ;" dines on a murder ; is enabled to have his glass of
:grog because a reputable householder hath quaffed one of laudanum ;
•and by the help of a conflagration which burns a street down, the in-
habitants out, and everything else up, he passeth his " other shirt"
through the unwonted ceremony of a wash-tub.

Mark him as he passeth along the Strand—the coat is seedy, but
it fits close, and yet—to the hunchback Bean doth he owe it—the

trousers, are they not relics of-? and the four-and-nine goss

above, and the high-lows below, would still have been reposing

where they had their birth, had not the doings of the miscreant--

•summoned them from their parent shelves.

A thunder-storm '•'visits" the metropolis, and thus the penny-a-
liner is enabled to visit Gravesend—on the way a "catastrophe" is
unelted into a bottle of stout, and a something "strange but true" is
the cause from which a plate of cold meat resulteth.

When the wind blows a hurricane, the devil is proverbially busy ;
'but the penny-a-liner outstrips him. He knoweth by unfailing instinct
where a stack of chimneys have fallen ; and as soon as the removal
■of three tons of rubbish allows him a view of an old lady's head with
-a fractured skull he pulls out his note-book, and questioneth her
minutely as to her name, what she was doing, and how she felt when
the chimneys came through the roof.

A vague whisper of a railway accident is heard, and straight the
penny-a-liner is thrown, in his own words, into a " state of the greatest
excitement.'' Visions of " further particulars," of "another account"
msh upon him. He thinks upon indefinitely adjourned coroners

Mr. S., in a speech glowing with eloquence, replete with information,
and as argumentative as brilliant, triumphantly established," &c,
&c, &c.

Sweet are the uses of adversity,"

—or, at least, the uses to which adversity is put by the penny-a-liner
Some misguided wretch commits an offence of the first magnitude
" Poor good-for-nothing miscreant!" quoth the innocent public.
" Good-for-nothing, indeed I" echoes the penny-a-liner—" good for
three quarters of a column, I should say 1"

" What was done at the inquest yesterday, Jack ?" " Oh, thirty
lines only—a regular do. Walked from Chelsea to the Commercial
Road in the rain, and back, and spent twice what I made, on the way,
in grog."

But, gentle reader, after all, think not too ill of the craft. They
undergo much labour of the body, and some of the mind. Theirs is
a hard and a precarious life—a life of unremitting exertion and deep
anxiety; and many there be among them, with spirits ground down
with toil, and sick with hope deferred, who might well become a
loftier sphere. They commit faults indeed; but they must eat—their
wives and children must eat. Do not, then, think too ill of them, and
let not your lip habitually curl when the name is mentioned of that
unfortunate class yclept Penny-a-Liners.

MISS TICKLETOBY'S LECTURES ON
ENGLISH HISTORY.

edward i.-the scots and their claims.

SHUTTING HIS EYES TO THE CONSEQUENCES.

With the increasing glare of a fire his prospects brighten. Another
liouse catches—an oilman's—back ! What a blaze ! He can pay
the tailor uow surely—Ha ! what did you say ? a gent broke his neck
out at the two-pair back ! Hooraay, independent for a fortnight—run
for a pot of half-and-half!

A meeting of a ward or a parish is called to consider some topic
of popular interest of the day. The penny-a-liner is there, of course.
Two of the leading morning papers (equally of course) take up differ-
ent views of the momentous subject, and the penny-a-liner inditeth
two separate and veracious accounts. Thus they begin.

For the Times.

" A gathering of the riff-raff of the classic vicinitudes of Finsbury
and Moorfields, for the laudable purpose of spouting and hastening to
sedition, came off last night in a low public-house, called the Magpie
and Stump. The principal orator (!) was (as we understood) a person
named Johnson Jackson Smith, who in a long and rambling tirade,
destitute of sense and grammar, and proving nothing but the igno-
rance of the speaker, endeavoured to argue," &c. &c. &c.

Foi- the Chronicle.

■' A numerous and highly-respectable meeting of the influential
inhabitants of "Binsbury and Moorfields was held last night, for the
purpose of hearing an eloquent exposure of the evils and fallacies of
the Fudge system, by that indefatigable, able, and celebrated advo-
cate of the rights of the people, Johnson Jackson Smith, Esquire

COTCHMEN, my dears, you know
are my antipathy, and I had at one
time thought, in these lectures, of so
demolishingthe reputation of William
Wallace, that historians would never
more have dared to speak about him,
and the numbers who hear me, the
millions who read me in Punch, the
countless myriads who in future ages
will refer to that work when we,young
, ,,,.„.,_ , aud old, are no more, would have seen

anq teste, and his heart is glad. ^Mi^H^lK ^ j at once that the exploits ascribed to

him were fabulous for the most part,
and his character as doubtful as his
history.

Some late writers have been vers
hard upon him. Dr. Lingard, espe-
cially, has fallen foul of his claims
to be a hero ; and another author, Mr.
Keightley, has been to the full as severe, quoting sentences
from the old chroniclers strongly defamatory of Wallace's
character. One of these calls him, " quidam latro publicus," a certain
common thief; another, writing his family, says he was "ex infima
genu procreatus"—sprung from the lowest of the low; but these
writers, it must be remembered, were of the English nation and way
of thinking. Washington was similarly abused during the American
war ; and I make no doubt that some of my darlings, who read the
English newspapers, have seen exactly the same epithets applied to
Mr. Daniel O'Connell.

It is easy to call names in this way, but let us, my beloved young
friends, be more charitable ; in the case of these Scots especially,
for if we take Wallace from them, what hero do we leave to the poor
creatures ? Sir Walter Scott has, to be sure, invented a few good
Scotchmen in his novels, and perhaps their actions, and those of
Wallace, are equally true.

But even supposing that he did come of a low stock,—that he was
a freebooter once, it is clear that he came to command the Scotch
armies, that he was for a short time Regent of the kingdom—so much
the more creditable to him then was it, that, by his skill and valour,
he overcame those brave and disciplined troops that were sent against
him, and raised himself to the position he occupied for a while over
the heads of a powerful, ignorant, cowardly, sordid, treacherous,
selfish nobility, such as that of the Scots was.

Even poor John Baliol made one or two attempts to rescue his
crown from tke domineering Edward, but these nobles, though they
conspired against the English king, were the first to truckle down to
him when he came to assert what he called his right; and the proof
of their time-serving conduct is, that King Edward forgave every