Rather late in an autumn afternoon, in Battersea-fields, I saw one of these girls by herself; she was seated, with her brooms on her lap, in a bit of scenery, which, from Weirotter’s etchings and other prints, I have always fancied resembled a view in the Low Countries: it is an old windmill, near the “Red-house,” with some low buildings among willows, on the bank of the Thames, thrown up to keep the river from overflowing a marshy flat. To my imagination, she was fixed to that spot in a reverie on her “vader-land.[177]” She gazed on the strait line of stunted trees, as if it were the line of beauty; and from the motion of her lips, and the enthusiasm of her look, I deemed she was reciting a passage from a poet of her native country. Elevation of feeling, in one of these poor girls, was hardly to be looked for; and yet I know not why I should have excluded it, as not appertaining to their character, except from their seeming intentness on thrift alone. They are cleanly, frugal, and no wasters of time; and that they are capable of sentiment, I state on the authority of my imagining concerning this poor girl; whereon, too, I pledge myself not to have been mistaken, for the language of the heart is universal—and hers discoursed to mine; though from the situation wherein I stood, she saw me not. I was not, nor could I be, in love with her—I was in love with human nature.
The “brooms” are one entire piece of wood; the sweeping part being slivered from the handle, and the shavings neatly turned over and bound round into the form of a besom. They are bought to dust curtains and hangings with; but good housewives have another use for them; one of them dipt in fair water, sprinkles the dried clothes in the laundry, for the process of ironing, infinitely better than the hand; it distributes the water more equally and more quickly.
“Buy a Broom?!!”
There is a print with this inscription. It is a caricature representation of Mr. Brougham, with his barrister’s wig, in the dress of a broom girl, and for its likeness of that gentleman, and the play on his name, it is amazingly popular; especially since he contended for a man’s right to his own personal appearance, in the case of Abernethy v. The Lancet, before the chancellor. Mr. Brougham’s good-humoured allusion to his own countenance, was taken by the auditors in court, to relate particularly to his portrait in this print, called “Buy a Broom?” It is certainly as good as “The Great Bell of Lincoln’s-inn,” and two or three other prints of gentlemen eminent at the chancery-bar, sketched and etched, apparently, by the same happy hand at a thorough likeness.
FLORAL DIRECTORY.
Horned Poppy. Chelidonium glaucum.
Dedicated to St. Marina.
[177] Vader-land, a word signifying country, but infinitely more expressive; it was first adopted by Lord Byron into our language; he englishes it “Fatherland.”