From the windows poles stretched out, on which blankets, petticoats, and linen were drying; and so numerous were they, that they reminded me of the flags hung out at a Paris fête. Some of the sheets had patches as big as trap-doors let into their centres; and the blankets were—many of them—as full of holes as a pigeon-house.
As I entered the court, a “row” was going on; and from a first-floor window a lady, whose hair sadly wanted brushing, was haranguing a crowd beneath, throwing her arms about like a drowning man, and in her excitement thrusting her body half out of her temporary rostrum as energetically as I have seen Punch lean over his theatre.
“The willin dragged her,” she shouted, “by the hair of her head, at least three yards into the court—the willin! and then he kicked her, and the blood was on his boot.”
It was a sweep who had been behaving in this cowardly manner; but still he had his defenders in the women around him. One with very shiny hair, and an Indian kerchief round her neck, answered the lady in the window, by calling her a “d——d old cat;” whilst the sweep’s wife rushed about, clapping her hands together as quickly as if she was applauding at a theatre, and styled somebody or other “an old wagabones as she wouldn’t dirty her hands to fight with.”
This “row” had the effect of drawing all the lodgers to the windows—their heads popping out as suddenly as dogs from their kennels in a fancier’s yard.
The Boy-Sweepers’ Room.
The room where the boys lodged was scarcely bigger than a coach-house; and so low was the ceiling, that a fly-paper suspended from a clothes-line was on a level with my head, and had to be carefully avoided when I moved about.
One corner of the apartment was completely filled up by a big four-post bedstead, which fitted into a kind of recess as perfectly as if it had been built to order.
The old woman who kept this lodging had endeavoured to give it a homely look of comfort, by hanging little black-framed pictures, scarcely bigger than pocket-books, on the walls. Most of these were sacred subjects, with large yellow glories round the heads; though between the drawing representing the bleeding heart of Christ, and the Saviour bearing the Cross, was an illustration of a red-waistcoated sailor smoking his pipe. The Adoration of the Shepherds, again, was matched on the other side of the fireplace by a portrait of Daniel O’Connell.
A chest of drawers was covered over with a green baize cloth, on which books, shelves, and clean glasses were tidily set out.