[395] Miss Plumptre.
October 24.
An October Sunday Morning in Cockneyshire.
For the Every-Day Book.
“Vat’s the time, Villiam?”
“Kevarter arter seven.”
The “Mirror of the Months” seems to reflect every object to the reader’s eye; but not having read more of that work than by extract, in the Every-Day Book, I think an addendum, par hazard, may not be without truth and interest.
Rise early,—be abroad,—and after you have inspired sufficient fog to keep you coughing all day, you will see Jewboys and girls with their fathers and mothers veering forth from the purlieus of Houndsditch with sweetmeats, “ten a penny!” which information is sung, or said, ten thousand times before sunset. Now Irishmen, (except there be a fight in Copenhagen fields,) and women, are hurrying to and from mass, and the poorest creatures sit near the chapels, with all their own infants, and those of others, to excite pity, and call down the morning smile of charity.—Now newsboys come along the Strand with damp sheets of intelligence folded under their arms in a greasy, dirty piece of thick (once) brown paper, or a suitable envelope of leather. Now water-cress women, or rather girls, with chubby babies hanging on one arm, and a flat basket suspended from the shoulder by a strap, stand at their station-post, near the pump, at a corner of the street.[396] Now mechanics in aprons, with unshorn, unwashed faces, take their birds, dogs, and pipes, towards the fields, which, with difficulty, they find. Now the foot and horse-guards are preparing for parade in the parks—coaches are being loaded by passengers, dressed for “a few miles out of town”—the doors of liquor-shops are in motion—prayers at St. Paul’s and Westminster are responded by choristers,—crowds of the lower orders create discord by the interference of the officious street-keeper—and the “Angel” and “Elephant and Castle” are surrounded by jaunty company, arriving and departing with horses reeking before the short- and long-stage coaches.—Now the pious missionary drops religious tracts in the local stands of hackney coachmen, and paths leading to the metropolis.—Now nuts and walnuts slip-shelled are heaped in a basket with some dozens of the finest cracked, placed at the top, as specimens of the whole:—bullace, bilberries, sliced cocoa-nuts, apples, pears, damsons, blackberries, and oranges are glossed and piled for sale so imposingly, that no eye can escape them.—Now fruiterers’ and druggists’ windows, like six days’ mourning, are half shuttered.—Now the basket and bell pass your house with muffins and crumpets.[397]—Placards are hung from newsvenders’, at whose taking appearances, gossips stand to learn the fate of empires, during the lapse of hebdomadal warfare.—Now beggars carry the broom, and the great thoroughfares are in motion, and geese and game are sent to the rich, and the poor cheapen at the daring butcher’s shop, for a scrag of mutton to keep company in the pot with the carrots and turnips.—Now the Israelites’ little sheds are clothed with apparel, near which “a Jew’s eye” is watching to catch the wants of the necessitous that purchase at second-hand.—Now eels are sold in sand at the bridges, and steam-boats loiter about wharfs and stairs to take up stray people for Richmond and the Eel-pie house.—The pedestrian advocate now unbags his sticks and spreads them in array against a quiet, but public wall.—Chesnuts are just coming in, and biscuits and cordials are handed amongst the coldstreams relieving guard at Old Palace Yard, where the bands play favourite pieces enclosed by ranks and files of military men, and crowds of all classes and orders.—Now the bells are chiming for church,—dissenters and methodists are hastening to worship—baker’s counters are being covered with laden dishes and platters—quakers are silently seated in their meetings,—and a few sailors are surveying the stupendous dome of St. Paul’s, under which the cathedral service is performing on the inside of closed iron gates.—Now the beadle searches public-houses with the blinds let down.—Now winter patterns, great coats, tippets, muffs, cloaks and pelisses are worn, and many a thinly-clad carmelite shivers along the streets. With many variations, the “Sunday Morning” passes away; and then artizans are returning from their rustication, and servants are waiting with cloths on their arms for the treasures of the oven—people are seeking home from divine worship with appetites and purple noses—‘beer’ is echoed in every circle,—and post meridian assumes new features, as gravities and gaieties, in proportion to the weather, influence the cosmopolitan thermometer.
*, *, P.