The next specimen is perhaps a 'swell' out at elbows, a seedy and somewhat ragged remnant of a very questionable kind of gentility—a gentility engendered in 'coal-holes' and 'cider-cellars,' in 'shades,' and such-like midnight 'kens'—suckled with brandy and water and port-wine negus, and fed with deviled kidneys and toasted cheese. He has run to the end of his tether, is cleaned out even to the last disposable shred of his once well-stocked wardrobe; and after fifty high-flying and desperate resolves, and twice fifty mean and sneaking devices to victimise those who have the misfortune to be assailable by him, 'to this complexion he has come at last.' He has made a track across the road, rather a slovenly disturbance of the mud than a clearance of it; and having finished his performance in a style to indicate that he is a stranger to the business, being born to better things, he rears himself with front erect and arms a-kimbo, with one foot advanced after the approved statuesque model, and exhibits a face of scornful brass to an unsympathising world, before whom he stands a monument of neglected merit, and whom he doubtless expects to overwhelm with unutterable shame for their abominable treatment of a man and a brother—and a gentleman to boot. This sort of exhibition never lasts long, it being a kind of standing-dish for which the public have very little relish in this practical age. The 'swell' sweeper generally subsides in a week or two, and vanishes from the stage, on which, however ornamental, he is of very little use.
The occasional sweeper is much oftener a poor countryman, who has wandered to London in search of employment, and, finding nothing else, has spent his last fourpence in the purchase of a besom, with which he hopes to earn a crust. Here his want of experience in town is very much against him. You may know him instantly from the old habitué of the streets: he plants himself in the very thick and throng of the most crowded thoroughfare—the rapids, so to speak, of the human current—where he is of no earthly use, but, on the contrary, very much in the way, and where, while everybody wishes him at Jericho, he wonders that nobody gives him a copper; or he undertakes impossible things, such as the sweeping of the whole width of Charing Cross from east to west, between the equestrian statue and Nelson's Pillar, where, if he sweep the whole, he can't collect, and if he collect, he can't sweep, and he breaks his heart and his back too in a fruitless vocation. He picks up experience in time; but he is pretty sure to find a better trade before he has learned to cultivate that of a crossing-sweeper to perfection.—Many of these occasional hands are Hindoos, Lascars, or Orientals of some sort, whose dark skins, contrasted with their white and scarlet drapery, render them conspicuous objects in a crowd; and from this cause they probably derive an extra profit, as they can scarcely be passed by without notice. The sudden promotion of one of this class, who was hailed by the Nepaulese ambassador as he stood, broom in hand, in St Paul's Churchyard, and engaged as dragoman to the embassy, will be in the recollection of the reader. It would be impossible to embrace in our category even a tithe of the various characters who figure in London as occasional sweepers. A broom is the last resort of neglected and unemployed industry, as well as of sudden and unfriended ill-fortune—the sanctuary to which a thousand victims fly from the fiends of want and starvation. The broken-down tradesman, the artisan out of work, the decayed gentleman, the ruined gambler, the starving scholar—each and all we have indubitably seen brooming the muddy ways for the chance of a half-penny or a penny. It is not very long since we were addressed in Water Street, Blackfriars, by a middle-aged man in a garb of seedy black, who handled his broom like one who played upon a strange instrument, and who, wearing the words pauper et pedester written on a card stuck in his hat-band, told us, in good colloquial Latin, a tale of such horrifying misery and destitution, that we shrink from recording it here. We must pass on to the next on our list, who is—
No. 4, the Lucus-a-non, or a sweeper who never sweeps.—This fellow is a vagabond of the first-water, or of the first-mud rather. His stock in trade is an old worn-out broom-stump, which he has shouldered for these seven years past, and with which he has never displaced a pound of soil in the whole period. He abominates work with such a crowning intensity, that the very pretence of it is a torture to him. He is a beggar without a beggar's humbleness; and a thief, moreover, without a thief's hardihood. He crawls lazily about the public ways, and begs under the banner of his broom, which constitutes his protection against the police. He will collect alms at a crossing which he would not cleanse to save himself from starvation; or he will take up a position at one which a morning sweeper has deserted for the day, and glean the sorry remnants of another man's harvest. He is as insensible to shame as to the assaults of the weather; he will watch you picking your way through the mire over which he stands sentinel, and then impudently demand payment for the performance of a function which he never dreams of exercising; or he will stand in your path in the middle of the splashy channel, and pester you with whining supplications, while he kicks the mire over your garments, and bars your passage to the pavement. He is worth nothing, not even the short notice we have taken of him, or the trouble of a whipping, which he ought to get, instead of the coins that he contrives to extract from the heedless generosity of the public.
No. 5 is the Sunday Sweeper.—This neat, dapper, and cleanly variety of the genus besom, is usually a young fellow, who, pursuing some humble and ill-paid occupation during the week, ekes out his modest salary by labouring with the broom on the Sunday. He has his regular 'place of worship,' one entrance of which he monopolises every Sabbath morning. Long before the church-going bell rings out the general invitation, he is on the spot, sweeping a series of paths all radiating from the church or chapel door to the different points of the compass. The business he has cut out for himself is no sinecure; he does his work so effectually, that you marvel at the achievement, and doubt if the floor of your dwelling be cleaner. Then he is himself as clean as a new pin, and wears a flower in his button-hole, and a smile on his face, and thanks you so becomingly, and bows so gracefully, that you cannot help wishing him a better office; and of course, to prove the sincerity of your wish, you pay him at a better rate. When the congregation are all met, and the service is commenced, he is religious enough, or knowing enough, to walk stealthily in, and set himself upon the poor bench, where he sits quietly, well behaved and attentive to the end; for which very proper conduct he is pretty sure to meet an additional reward during the exit of the assembly, as they defile past him at the gate when all is over. In the afternoon, he is off to the immediate precinct of some park or public promenade; and selecting a well-frequented approach to the general rendezvous, will cleanse and purify the crossing or pathway in his own peculiar and elaborate style, vastly to the admiration of the gaily-dressed pedestrians, and it is to be supposed, to his own profit. Besides this really clever and enterprising genius, there is a numerous tribe of a very different description, who must sally forth literally by the thousand every Sunday morning when the weather is fine, and who take possession of every gate, stile, and wicket, throughout the widespread suburban districts of the metropolis in all directions. They are of both sexes and all ages; and go where you will, it is impossible to go through a gate, or get over a stile, without the proffer of their assistance, for which, of course, you are expected to pay, whether you use it or not. Some of these fellows have a truly ruffianly aspect, and waylay you in secluded lanes and narrow pathways; and carrying a broom-stump, which looks marvellously like a bludgeon, no doubt often levy upon the apprehensions of a timorous pedestrian a contribution which his charity would not be so blind as to bestow. The whole of this tribe constitute a monster-nuisance, which ought to be abated by the exertions of the police.
No. 6 are the deformed, maimed, and crippled sweepers, of whom there is a considerable number constantly at work, and, to do them justice, they appear by no means the least energetic of the brotherhood. Nature frequently compensates bodily defects by the bestowal of a vigorous temperament. The sweeper of one leg or one arm, or the poor cripple who, but for the support of his broom, would be crawling on all-fours, is as active, industrious, and efficient as the best man on the road; and he takes a pride in the proof of his prowess, surveying his work when it is finished with a complacency too evident to escape notice. He considers, perhaps, that he has an extra claim upon the public on account of the afflictions he has undergone, and we imagine that such claim must be pretty extensively allowed: we know no other mode of accounting for the fact, that now and then one of these supposed maimed or halt performers turns out to be an impostor, who, considering a broken limb, or something tantamount to that, essential to the success of his broom, concocts an impromptu fracture or amputation to serve his purpose. Some few years ago, a lively, sailor-looking fellow appeared as a one-handed sweeper in a genteel square on the Surrey side of the water. The right sleeve of his jacket waved emptily in the wind, but he flourished his left arm so vigorously in the air, and completed the gyration of his weapon, when it stuck fast in the mud, so manfully by the impulse of his right leg, that he became quite a popular favourite, and won 'copper opinions from all sorts of men,' to say nothing of a shower of sixpences from the ladies in the square. Unfortunately for the continuance of his prosperity, a gentleman intimate with one of his numerous patronesses, while musing in the twilight at an upstairs window, saw the fellow enter his cottage after his day's work, release his right arm from the durance in which it had lain beneath his jacket for ten or twelve hours, and immediately put the power of the long-imprisoned limb to the test by belabouring his wife with it. That same night every tenant in the square was made acquainted with the disguised arm, and the use for which it was reserved, and the ingenious performer was the next morning delivered over to the police. The law, however, allows a man to dispose of his limbs as he chooses; and as the delinquent was never proved to have said that he had lost an arm; and as he urged that one arm being enough for the profession he had embraced, he considered he had a right to reserve the other until he had occasion for it—he was allowed to go about his business.
No. 7, and the last in our classification, are the Female Sweepers.—It is singular, that among these we rarely if ever meet with young women, properly so called. The calling of a crossing-sweeper, so far as it is carried on by females, is almost entirely divided between children or young girls, and women above the age of forty. The children are a very wandering and fickle race, rarely staying for many weeks together in a single spot. This love of change must militate much against their success, as they lose the advantage of the charitable interest they would excite in persons accustomed to meet them regularly in their walks. They are not, however, generally dependent upon the produce of their own labours for a living, being for the most part the children of parents in extremely low circumstances, who send them forth with a broom to pick up a few halfpence to assist in the daily provision for the family. The older women, on the other hand, of whom there is a pretty stout staff scattered throughout the metropolis, are too much impressed with the importance of adhering constantly to one spot, capriciously to change their position. They would dread to lose a connection they have been many years in forming, and they will even cling to it after it has ceased to be a thoroughfare through the opening of a new route, unless they can discover the direction their patrons have taken. When a poor old creature, who has braved the rheumatism for thirty years or so, finds she can stand it no longer, we have known her induct a successor into her office by attending her for a fortnight or more, and introducing the new-comer to the friendly regard of her old patrons. The exceptions to these two classes of the old and the very juvenile, will be found to consist mostly of young widows left with the charge of an infant family more or less numerous. Some few of these there are, and they meet with that considerate reception from the public which their distressing cases demand. The spectacle of a young mother, with an infant on one arm muffled up from the driving rain, while she plies a broom single-handed, is one which never appeals in vain to a London public. With a keen eye for imposture, and a general inclination to suspect it, the Londoner has yet compassion, and coin, too, to bestow upon a deserving object. It is these poor widows who, by rearing their orphaned offspring to wield the broom, supplement the ranks of the professional sweepers. They become the heads of sweeping families, who in time leave the maternal wing, and shift for themselves. We might point to one whom we have encountered almost daily for the last ten years. In 1841, she was left a widow with three small children, the eldest under four, and the youngest in arms. Clad in deep mourning, she took up a position at an angular crossing of a square, and was allowed to accommodate the two elder children upon some matting spread upon the steps of a door. With the infant in one arm, she plied her broom with the other, and held out a small white hand for the reception of such charity as the passers-by might choose to bestow. The children grew up strong and hearty, in spite of their exposure to the weather at all seasons. All three of them are at the present moment sweepers in the same line of route, at no great distance from the mother, who, during the whole period, has scarcely abandoned her post for a single day. Ten years' companionship with sun and wind, and frost and rain, have doubled her apparent age, but her figure still shews the outline of gentility, and her face yet wears the aspect and expression of better days. We have frequently met the four returning home together in the deepening twilight, the elder boy carrying the four brooms strapped together on his shoulder.
The sweeper does better at holiday seasons than at any other time. If he is blessed with a post for a companion, he decks it with a flower or sprig of green, and sweeps a clear stage round it, which is said to be a difficult exploit, though we have never tried it. At Christmas, he expects a double fee from his old patrons, and gets it too, and a substantial slice of plum-pudding from the old lady in the first floor opposite. He decks the entrance to his walk with laurel and holly, in honour of the day, and of his company, who walk under a triumphal arch of green, got up for that occasion only. He is sure of a good collection on that day, and he goes home with his pocket heavy and his heart light, and treats himself to a pot of old ale, warmed over a fire kindled with his old broom, and sipped sparingly to the melody of a good old song about the good old times, when crossing-sweepers grew rich, and bequeathed fortunes to their patrons.