Picturesque Sketches of London, Past and Present

by Thomas Miller

amusements; and when we see him looking sorrowful, we fancy that we can read his thoughts, can imagine that his memory has wandered far away, to where he hung upon his “old ancestral trees” by his prehensile tail, before the days of his captivity, chattering to his brother monkeys, who could comprehend every word he uttered, or pelting his venerable old grandfather with nuts from the topmost bough of the highest tree that waved amid his native forest. Heigho! The longer we look the more do we feel convinced that we in a thousand ways resemble him, for we are all of us more or less monkeys. Mary Howitt says that he gambolled about and played the very devil in the ark, without bestowing a thought on the wind and rain that blew and beat on the roof; and no one living can contradict her.

But what have we here? A caravan, and a wonderful fat boy in it: charge for admission, one halfpenny. What dodging they have to elude the police—pulling up at the end of every street, if it be only for five minutes—for the fat boy must be fed: were he to get thin, the whole establishment would be ruined. All, saving himself, are thin, the horse almost a skeleton. We can picture the fat fellow crying out that he is falling off pounds if his dinner is delayed an hour behind the usual time—and what a running about there must be to supply him with food! He looks a lazy rascal—a human hog. Dwarfs also, in our eyes, always look spiteful,—little morsels of humanity that would pinch and bite us, if they dare. And well they may be: we should feel so ourselves were we caught, imprisoned, and shewn to all comers at sixpence or threepence a head.

Look at that little girl in the spangled frock; she is brought out like another Samson, to make sport for the Philistines. How prettily she dances on that board—four feet by three! Through dirt and wet she is compelled to trudge; for she and that unsailor-like fellow, who dances the sailor’s hornpipe, have to supply the whole party with bread. He who drums and pipes also contributes his share. The other two shout, and go round to the crowd, hat in hand, to obtain what they can. Sometimes a similar party is accompanied by a tumbler,—a man whose feet appear to be of no other use to him than to kick them about in the air,—who can walk best on his hands,—and who, we fancy, must be many years in wearing out a pair of shoes. Into what shapes does he twist his body! He seems lithe as a serpent—must have been born without a spine—is all skin—all angles—the spokes of a wheel—a worm rolling in salt—a monkey’s tail that has been thrust into the fire. One would hardly be surprised to see such a limber elf jump clean out of his skin, rattle his bare bones like castanets for a few seconds to amuse us, then slip into his hide again, with less trouble than we could put on our coat.

The next are the balancers,—from a feather to a fir-tree, nothing comes amiss. That fellow will balance a sword on his naked chin with the point downward; you look under his throat, and expect to see it come through every minute, and are greatly disappointed to behold it spinning round without making an incision. Now he takes a ladder, high enough to reach a second-floor window, and up it goes on his chin, as if it were no heavier than the straw he has just thrown down. Mercy on us! whatever is he going to do with that little boy in the harlequin dress? See, the daring child steps from the balancer’s shoulder to the ladder: higher the little fellow goes, slowly, cautiously—the ladder still on the man’s chin. It looks dangerous, and (self-preservation) you begin to think that if the ladder were to fall, it would be much safer to stand a few feet farther back.

The Stilt-dancers are not so common in our London streets as they were a few years ago, when they came popping up suddenly at our first-floor windows, and startled us in some occupation which we had no wish to be overlooked,—perchance trying on a peruke, so well-made, that all our friends gave us credit for wearing our own hair. Then, perhaps, they understood not a single word of English; and if you bade them go to Old Harry and shake themselves, they still kept smiling and smirking at you through the window, until their immovable goodnature overcome your slight anger, and you sent them away quite happy, and perfectly unconscious that you had given utterance to one angry word. We also miss the pipe and tabor, and those droll back-kneed fellows the dancing-dogs: these the new police act have driven away, or they are only to be met with in the far-off country.

To what different objects the telescope is now turned from what Horace Walpole describes witnessing, when the heads of unfortunate rebels were placed on Temple Bar: for a penny we may peep at the mountains in the moon, or hear a poor but intelligent man describe the wonders of the

“Spacious firmament on high,”

instead of paying to peep at those mangled and goary heads—a great improvement on those old barbarous street-sights. White mice and guinea-pigs are still to be met with as “plentiful as blackberries” in the yellow month of October; and from the sound of hurdy-gurdies and the droning of bagpipes, who has not prayed to be delivered? while from our hearts we pity those poor white-haired, pink-eyed mortals, who go winking and blinking hand in hand along the crowded pavements, gazed at in wonder even by the swarthy Lascars, who are ever thrusting tracts in our faces.

Nor must we forget the “chummies,” with their Jack-in-the-green, who, instead of sooty garments, cover in May their “innocent blackness” with spangles and tinsel. How Jack reels and staggers in the midst of his green portable arbour towards the close of the day! lurching aside like the massy trunk of a tree buried in ivy, which you expect every minute to fall; reminding us of Orpheus, and the life he put into the timber toes of the hoary old oaks when the forest trees stood bough linked with bough as they danced a merry reel, making all their green array of leaves to tremble again. Merrily does the “Sweepess,” or “Jackess” of the green, jingle her bright brass ladle before the doors; and freely is the produce of that day spent in gin, until the drinking and fighting is ended, when, disrobed of their tinselled trappings, they snore happily on a couch of soft soot.