“In old days of the King Arthur,
Of which the Britons speak great wonder;
When all the land was filled full of faery—
The Elf-Queen, with her jolly company,
That danced full oft in many a green mead.”
Wife of Bath’s Tale.
What a change! to look up the ascent which led to that old London-bridge, with its Traitor’s-gate and ghastly heads grinning above the vaulted gateway, and the scene that now meets the eye! Living heads piled high on moving omnibuses, and journeying in every direction, for twopenny or threepenny fares; steamboats passing from east to west, and carrying passengers for one halfpenny per head; such changes has the old square tower of St. Saviour’s overlooked—such things has the wonder-working hand of man accomplished. And yet the world is believed by many to be still in its infancy; that two more centuries will see mankind as far advanced and improved as the last two have placed us in the lead of our forefathers. That the London of the present day will then be as great a matter of curiosity to some future antiquary as old London-bridge and the ancient borough of Southwark is to us; that others will follow and exclaim as we do now:
“The race of yore,
Who danced our infancy upon their knee,
And told our marvelling boyhood legends store
Of their strange ventures happ’d by land or sea,
How are they blotted from the things that be.”—Scott.
CHAPTER XVIII.
STREET AMUSEMENTS.
For our part we look on these street performers with a very lenient eye, knowing that they are struggling to live in the best way they can, and that their humble endeavours to please afford amusement to thousands. Look how the little urchins run at the first sound of Punch’s well-known voice; what a pattering there is of shod and unshod feet from every court and alley in the neighbourhood as soon as his “chuck, chuck, churee” is heard, startling the silence of the street! They whip up their marbles, and start off with their pegtops half wound to get a front place; for the hardened old rogue was a favourite with their forefathers, and they are never weary of seeing him bang Judy with his truncheon. They have a keen relish for his rather coarse jokes—the only objectionable point in this old exhibition. How they dance round an Italian boy with his organ, forgetting all their poverty and hunger for the moment, while some little rascal, the raggedest in the group, keeps excellent time with his castanets, which are four bare bones placed between the fingers of each hand, and rattled over his head with laughter and delight, while he thinks himself the chief contributor to the amusement.
But Punch and Judy are the chief characters in our sketch. Punch was a different performance in our youthful days: then he went out, got drunk, came home and quarrelled with his wife; from words they got to blows, and there used to be a tremendous fight between them, and sorry we are to say the drunken old rascal swore dreadfully. At last he struck Judy a tremendous blow with his truncheon, and she fell down senseless, as if dead. Then the conscience of the hump-backed villain smote him, and he wept and wailed over her, until at last the doctor came, felt her pulse, and pronounced her dead. Punch was inconsolable for her loss, pronounced the doctor a quack, and then they went at it. Oh, what a fight that was between Punch and the Doctor! but the man of physic fell beneath the truncheon of the hooked-nosed old blackguard, and appeared as if dead. Punch was next tried, and knocked the judge off the bench for finding him guilty of murder, and sentencing him to be hanged. Then the gallows was brought out, and you made sure that the old villain’s career of crime was ended; but not a bit of it; like Mat Prior’s thief, he
“Now fitted the halter, now traversed the cart,
And often took leave, but was loth to depart.”