Yet these poor people are not naturally dirty. From many of the windows you see their tattered garments hanging out to dry, though, from the colour, you have a difficulty in persuading yourself that they have ever been washed, and come to the conclusion that they are only hung there to be aired. The colour is not their fault; such an atmosphere would turn a root of milk-white daisies to the hue of parchment in a month, if it were possible that they could live so long in those breathless and airless alleys, where not a green leaf has grown for years.
Sometimes little Jack, or his half-clothed sister, when playing about the room (for children play even here), catch the end of the prop on which the rags are suspended, when down comes the whole washing into the gutter; and, unless the poor washerwoman is pretty nimble in looking after them, the first dishonest passer-by will be likely enough to pick up the whole wardrobe, and to see what it weighs at the nearest rag-shop. They have not the means of keeping themselves clean; like the Israelites of old, they cannot complete the task without the straw; and in many places what little water there was, has, like other conveniences, been cut off while the new buildings were proceeding. Baths and wash-houses will no doubt in time supply these deficiencies; but until they are opened, we suppose the inhabitants must be left to shift for themselves as they best can, for the “improvements” as they are called have subjected many of the people in this poor neighbourhood to such privations as they never before experienced.
Let us lift up the flap of this cellar, and see what is going on below; for that gleam of fire, or candlelight, shews that these underground regions are inhabited—that the habits of the ancient Britons are not wholly abandoned, but that the descendants of those old burrowers of hill and rock have but changed the twilight of their dry caverns for the damp and darkness of these sewer-like habitations. Here we behold another human hive busily preparing for dinner, although it is so late in the day; for, like our wealthy merchants, they must get through whatever business they may chance to have on hand before they have (the means or) time to eat. Saw you ever such a medley as is now frizzling in that capacious frying-pan? Parings of a loin of mutton, two beef sausages, a thin rasher of pickled pork, ditto of bacon, the scrag-end of a neck of mutton, a piece of beef-skirt, a small steak, and a kidney. That old fellow with the wooden leg quite enjoys the job of cooking, and has got a jug of water in readiness to make “gravy” for the whole community, who have clubbed towards the contents of the frying-pan. Those who sit on the unboarded and unpaved floor beside the wall, and who look on so wistfully, have nothing to cook—nothing to eat; they paid the last penny or twopence they possessed to be allowed to sleep on the floor of that cellar until morning. When those dinners or suppers are over, the broken table, the bottomless chairs, and old butter-tubs which are used for seats, will be set aside, and the whole of the naked cellar strewn over with straw or shavings, on which they may (if they can)
“Look round and take their rest.”
And right glad will those foodless and moneyless creatures be when all the cooking and eating, in which they cannot become partakers, ceases, and when, amid sound asleep on the unboarded and unpaved floor, some kindly vision may come through the mysterious murmurs of the night, and
“Cloy the hungry edge of appetite
By bare imaginations of a feast.”
In wet weather the inhabitants of these subterranean dwellings sometimes stand peeping through the open cellar-lights at the feet which pass over the pavement; and, while doing so, their faces are spotted like leopards with the mud. They seem as if they were ever looking at other people’s steps instead of taking heed of their own ways. Happy might they be if, like the long-tailed field-mouse, they could, in their burrows, store up provisions for the winter, while in summer they nibbled the herbage or fed on the acorns which fell from the broad hoary oak, quenching their thirst at the woodland brook; and, like the old barbarians who first landed on our island shore, have no care, beyond what they should eat and drink, about the morrow. Yet even they have something to be proud of; for they have only to issue out of their black and breathless courts through the breezy thoroughfares which open into Oxford-street, and there the same window, which the dandy shopman in the “white choker” and neat black suit “dressed” to allure the wealthier classes, is open for their inspection; and more than one merry laugh have we heard while passing by, as some half-drunken Pat pictured his (far-from-sober) Biddy in a long Cashmere shawl and bonnet, plumed with the bird of paradise.
Sometimes you may see one of the inhabitants halting outside the huckster’s shop, and endeavouring to squeeze a penny out of the sixpence (which has to purchase tea, sugar, bread, butter, tobacco, and a candle) for gin; and so accommodating are some of these shopkeepers, that they make halfpenny-worths of every thing they sell, and are ready to cut either a candle or a penny-loaf in two with the same knife.
We well remember passing through the Rookery of St. Giles’s when the work of demolition first commenced; when those who had found no other residence were allowed to remain until the workmen began to pull the houses down. Many of the inhabitants who were then old were born in those tumble-down houses, then doomed to stand no longer. There they had tended the sick couch, and through those dilapidated doorways carried out their dead; smiles and tears had brightened and fallen in those apartments, which to them bore the endearing name of home. We looked up, and through the broken lattices saw the faces of little children—dirty images of innocence—dear to the hearts of their poor mothers. And many houses similar to these are still standing in St. Giles’s, with leaning door-posts and windows all awry; some propped up with beams, on which they rest, as if they had a stitch in their sides, and had placed their hands there to relieve the pain. Many of the door-posts are worn smooth and bright, through the idle loungers, who have rubbed and rested against them while smoking and looking out into the streets, hour after hour, and day after day,—men who seem to have no business upon earth, having to smoke and sleep, and when they awake, to smoke and lean against the self-same doorways until it is time to sleep again. On the steps, and on the edges of the pavement, or at the entrance of those unexplored courts, withered old women sit with folded arms scowling at you as you pass, and proclaiming by their looks that you are an intruder. And fortunate may a decently-clad man consider himself if he meets with nothing more serious than black looks while passing through the still dangerous neighbourhood of St. Giles’s.
All are not idle, be it remembered, who frequent such haunts as these; many have seen “better days,” and only fell because they possessed not fortitude enough to struggle against unfortunate circumstances. Others had never been taught any trade, and when they lost such situations as ten thousands were capable of taking, they never raised their heads again, although they went many a weary day, week, and month afterwards in quest of employment, returning at night to sleep in such dens as we have here described, sick and sad at heart. At length their attire became too shabby for their admission into respectable houses only to ask for employment, and then they sank with a kind of sullen recklessness amid the filth and squalor of St. Giles’s, and from that wretched state never emerged again. But these are the exceptions; the majority of the inhabitants are “to the manner born.”