The Vicar. "And were you at the Ball last Night, Mrs. Ramsbottom?"
Mrs. R. "Oh, yes; I was Shampooing Eight Young Ladies there!"
Mr. Alfred Austin, in his new poem, Fortunatus, the Pessimist, has hit upon a new notion, to say nothing of a novel rhyme. Sings he:—
"When the foal and brood-mare hinny,
And in every cut-down spinney
Lady's-Smocks grow mauve and mauver,
Then the Winter days are over."
This opens a polychromatic vista to the New Poetry. Technical Art comes to the aid of the elder Muses. The products of gas-tar alone should greatly regenerate a something time-worn poetic phraseology. As thus:—
When the poet, Mr. Pennyline,
Is inspired by beauteous Aniline,
Products chemical and gas-tarry
Give the modern Muse new mastery.
Mauve may chime with love, and mauver
Form a decent rhyme to lover;
While (and if not, why not?) mauvest
Antiphonetic proves to lovest.
(Verse erotic always sports
Tricksily with longs and shorts.
Verbal votaries of Venus
Are an arbitrary genus,
And as arrogant as Howells
In their dealings with the vowels.
Love, move, rove, linked in a sonnet,
Pass for rhymes; the best have done it!)
Then again there is Magenta!
Surely science never sent a
Handier rhyme to—well, polenta,
Or (for Cockney Muses) Mentor!
The poetic sense auricular
Can't afford to be particular.
Rags of rhymes, mere assonances,
Now must serve. Pegasus prances,
Like a Buffalo Bill buck-jumper,
When you have a "regular stumper"
(Such as "silver") do not care about
Perfect rhyming; "there or thereabout"
Is the Muse's maxim now.
You may get (bards have, I trow)
Rhyme's last minimum irreducible,
From dye-vat, retort, or crucible.
Verily (as Touchstone says), "I'll rhyme you so, eight years together, dinners and suppers, and sleeping hours excepted." And if it is "the right butterwoman's rate to market," or "the very false gallop of verses," it is at any rate good enough for a long-eared public or a postulant for the Laureateship.
Monday.—Extremely awkward—the entire British Fleet have come ashore; and, as it is impossible to move them on account of their enormous tonnage, this will entail a loss of £24,000,000,000!
Tuesday.—Troubles never come singly! The French, taking advantage of the temporary suspension of our naval operations, have declared war. This means the utter ruin of the bathing season, not only at Herne Bay, but Southend, and the Isle of Thanet.
Wednesday.—As I expected! The French Fleet are coming up towards London. They are sure to pepper us as they pass. As every gun carries several hundred miles, I do not see how books can be uninterruptedly issued from and returned to the Circulating Library.
Thursday.—Our first slice of luck! The entire French Fleet during the mist last night came into collision with the Nore Light, and sank immediately. I was surprised at their sparing the Reculvers and the local bathing-machines, but now the mystery is explained.
Friday.—Just learned that the great gun of Paris, which carries forty-four thousand miles, is to be tried for the first time to-morrow. It would have been used earlier, had it not been necessary to raise a foreign loan to supply funds to load it. Trust it won't be laid in our direction. This war has already caused the Insurance Companies to double their charges! Too bad!
Saturday.—All's well that ends well. Hostilities are at an end. This morning all the glass in the windows were broken at 8 o'clock. Ten minutes later the Champs Elysées was deposited half a mile from Birchington. We now know that the great Paris gun burst on its first discharge, and France exists no longer as a country, but as a "geographical expression" is deposited in various parts of Europe.
REAL AND IDEAL.—"A Really Hard-Headed Man"—the Iron-skulled individual now exhibiting at the Aquarium. If his will is as iron as his head, what a despot he would be! If France is tired of her Republic, she might try the Iron-Headed Man as a ruler. There is the chance, of course, that he might turn out a numskull, and be only King Log, after all.
["Do the poor make the slums, or the slums make the poor?"—Henry Lazarus, in "Landlordism."]
Is it the poor wot makes the Slums, or the Slums wot makes the poor?
Well, that's the question, Guv'nor, and I've 'eared it arsked afore,
And the arnser ain't so easy, if you wants to be O.K.
Don't suppose as I can settle it, but I'll have my little say.
My old friend Mister Lazarus, now, he ups and sez, sez he,
The great Ground Landlord is the great prime cause. "Yah! fiddlededee!"
Cries the House-Farmer; "Slums is Slums, acos the Poor is Pigs!"
"You try 'em, friend philanthropist! They'll play you proper rigs."
Yus, there's two sides to heverythink, wus luck! That's where we're fogged.
Passiges like foul pigstyes, gents, and backyards like black bogs,
Banisters broke for firewood, and smashed winders stuffed with rags,
These make the sniffers slate the poor, Perticular if they're wags.
Well, gents, you know, it's this way. Just you fancy yerselves born
In a back-slum like Ragman's Rents. 'Old 'ard, don't larf with scorn!
Some on us is born there, yer know; it might ha' bin your luck,
If yer mother'd bin a boozer, and yer father'd got the chuck.
Of course yourn was respectable; mine wosn't; there's the diff.!
Ah! things like this ain't settled by a snort or by a sniff.
Jest fancy hopening yer eyes fust time in a dark dive,
Or a sky-parlour where a plarnt o' musk won't keep alive.
Emagine, if yer washups can, some ten foot square o' room,
With a stror-heap in one corner, and a "dip" to light the gloom;
With the walls dirt-streaked with damp-lines, outside, a drunken din,
And hinside, a whiff of sewer-gas in a hatmosphere of gin.
Some on you carn't emagine there's sech 'orrors on the earth;
But there are, you bet your buttons. Who'd select 'em for their birth?
Not you, not me, not no one, if you asked 'em, I expect;
But yer place o' birth yer see, gents' jest the thing yer carn't select.
If you're born where streets is narrer, and where rooms is werry small,
Where you've damp sludge for a ceiling, rotting plarster for a wall;
Where yer carn't eat, sleep, wash yerselves, or lay up when you're sick,
Without tumbling one o'er tother, wy, yer sinks, gents, pooty quick.
Sinks! Yes, when wot yer lives in is a sink, or somethink wus;
With a drunkard for a mother, and some neighbour for a nuss;
With the gutter for yer playground, and a 'ome from which yer shrink,
Can you wonder that poor Slum-birds is give o'er to Dirt and Drink.
Ah! them two D's goes together. Just you plant some orty Queen
In a rookery, in her kidhood, and then tell her to keep clean,
Wash 'er face, and mend 'er garments,—wich they're mostly sewed-up rags,—
In six months she'd be a scare-crow, 'ands like sut, and 'air all jags.
Wot yer washups don't quite tumble to's the fack as like breeds like.
If you would himprove Slum-dwellers, at the Slum you fust must strike.
Give us small dark 'oles to dwell in, and you must be jolly green
If you think folks bred in dirt like, are a-going to keep 'em clean.
When the sewer-rats take to sweetening and lime-washing their foul 'oles,
And bright light and disinfectants are the fads of skunks and moles,
Then poor souls in cellar-dwellings and in jerry-builders' dens,
Will be smart as young canaries and as clean as clucking hens.
Nocky Spriggings guyed me proper, in his chuckly sorter style,
With his thumb 'ooked orful hartful, and his chickaleary smile.
"Jim," sez he, "wot price your jabber? Do yer think the blooming blokes
Cares a cuss for me and you, Jim, any more than for our mokes?
"Shut yer face, you pattering josser! Dirt and Drink is good for Rents!
If the Poor wos clean and sober, where 'ud be their cent-per-cents?
If it's Public 'Ouse 'gainst Wash 'Ouse, if it's Slumland wersus Swipes,
I am on for booze and backy 'stead o' drains and water-pipes.
"You may be too jolly clean, Jim, and a precious sight too light,
Were's the good to scrub yer skin orf! And if when a cove gits tight,
Or would give his donah wot-for on the Q.T. wot a lark
If there weren't no 'andy alleys, nor no corners snug and dark.
"If the Public—and the Slops—wos always fly to wot we done,
'Long o' widened streets and gas-light, wy we'd 'ave no blooming fun.
Lagged for larrupping yer missus, nailed for boozing till yer nod?
Wy, you jabbering young Juggins, we should always be in quod!"
'Ard nut is Nocky Spriggings—of the sort as make the slums,
'Cos there ain't much chance for cleanness, or for comfort, when he comes.
He's as 'appy in the dirt, gents, as a blowfly or a 'og;
Or poor Paddy in his tater-patch alongside of a bog;
He'd chop up 'is doors and winders for a fire to 'ot his lush,
Don't care a 'ang for decency, and never raised a blush.
But, arter my hexperience—and I've 'ad some down our court—
I believe that—fair at bottom—it's the Slum as makes his sort.
Anyways I'm pooty certain, if we'd got more light and space,
And were not jammed up together in a filthy, ill-drained place;
If the sunlight could but see us, and the public and the cops,
There would be less booze and bashing, fewer drabs and drinking-shops.
Aye, and fewer Nocky Spriggingses! I don't go for to say
As it's all along o' Landlords, who'd rent 'ell, if 'twould but pay;
But I've noticed you find fewest mice where there are lots of cats,
And where there ain't no rat-holes, well—yer won't spot many rats!
The enormous crowd cheered again and again. It was furious. The enthusiasm spread from throng to throng, until a mighty chorus filled every portion of the land. And there was indeed reason for the rejoicing. Had not the great Arctic Explorer come home? Had he not been to the North Pole and back? At that very moment were not a couple of steam-tugs drawing his wooden vessel towards his native shore? It was indeed a moment for congratulation—not only personal but national, nay cosmopolitan. The victory of art over nature belonged to more than a country, it belonged to the world!
And the tugs came closer and closer, and the cheers grew louder and louder. Then the vessel bearing the Explorer was near at hand. The crowd joyously jumped into the water, and raising him on their shoulders, bore him triumphantly to land.
How they welcomed him! How they seized his hands and kissed them! How they cried and called him "Master," and "Victor," and "Hero!" It was a scene never to be forgotten!
When the excitement had somewhat subsided, they began to ask him questions. At last one of them wished to know how he contrived to find the North Pole and get back in safety?
"You intended to drift?" said they. "Great and glorious hero, victorious victor, triumphant explorer, did you do this?"
"I did," was the reply.
"And tell us what was your method of obtaining the knowledge you now possess? Oh, great chief, how did you manage it?"
Then came the answer—
"By sitting still, and doing nothing!"
And now it being dark, they separated to illuminate their homes in honour of the fresh industry—an industry admirably adapted to that great and contented class of the community, the Unemployed!
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