Tho’ not a pig’s, the hawbuck’s glory,
When rustic games and merriment prevail--
But here’s my story:
Once on a time--no matter when--
A knot of very charitable men
Set up a Philanthropical Society,
Professing on a certain plan,
To benefit the race of man,
And in particular that dark variety,
Which some suppose inferior--as in vermin,
The sable is to ermine,
As smut to flour, as coal to alabaster,
As crows to swans, as soot to driven snow,
As blacking, or as ink to “milk below,”
Or yet a better simile, to show,
As ragman’s dolls to images in plaster!
However, as is usual in our city,
They had a sort of managing Committee
A board of grave responsible Directors--
A Secretary, good at pen and ink--
A Treasurer, of course, to keep the chink,
And quite an army of collectors!
Not merely male, but female duns,
Young, old, and middle-aged--of all degrees--
With many of those persevering ones,
Who mite by mite would beg a cheese!
And what might be their aim?
To rescue Afric’s sable sons from fetters--
To save their bodies from the burning shame
Of branding with hot letters--
Their shoulders from the cowhide’s bloody strokes,
Their necks from iron yokes?
To end or mitigate the ills of slavery,
The Planter’s avarice, the Driver’s knavery?
To school the heathen Negroes and enlighten ’em,
To polish up and brighten ’em,
And make them worthy of eternal bliss?
Why, no--the simple end and aim was this--
Reading a well-known proverb much amiss--
To wash and whiten ’em!
They look’d so ugly in their sable hides:
So dark, so dingy, like a grubby lot
Of sooty sweeps, or colliers, and besides,
However the poor elves
Might wash themselves,
Nobody knew if they were clean or not--
On Nature’s fairness they were quite a blot!
Not to forget more serious complaints
That even while they join’d in pious hymn,
So black they were and grim,
In face and limb,
They look’d like Devils, though they sang like Saints!
The thing was undeniable!
They wanted washing! not that slight ablution
To which the skin of the White Man is liable,
Merely removing transient pollution--
But good, hard, honest, energetic rubbing
And scrubbing,
Sousing each sooty frame from heels to head
With stiff, strong, saponaceous lather,
And pails of water--hottish rather,
But not so boiling as to turn ’em red!
So spoke the philanthropic man
Who laid, and hatch’d, and nursed the plan--
And oh! to view its glorious consummation!
The brooms and mops,
The tubs and slops,
The baths and brushes in full operation!
To see each Crow, or Jim, or John,
Go in a raven and come out a swan!
While fair as Cavendishes, Vanes, and Russels,
Black Venus rises from the soapy surge,
And all the little Niggerlings emerge
As lily-white as mussels.
Sweet was the vision--but alas!
However in prospectus bright and sunny,
To bring such visionary scenes to pass
One thing was requisite, and that was--money;
Money, that pays the laundress and her bills,
For socks and collars, shirts and frills,
Cravats and kerchiefs--money, without which
The negroes must remain as dark as pitch;
A thing to make all Christians sad and shivery,
To think of millions of immortal souls
Dwelling in bodies black as coals,
And living--so to speak--in Satan’s livery!
Money--the root of evil,--dross, and stuff!
But oh! how happy ought the rich to feel,
Whose means enable them to give enough
To blanch an African from head to heel!
How blessed--yea, thrice blessed--to subscribe
Enough to scour a tribe!
While he whose fortune was at best a brittle one,
Although he gave but pence, how sweet to know
He helped to bleach a Hottentot’s great toe,
Or little one!
Moved by this logic (or appall’d)
To persons of a certain turn so proper,
The money came when call’d,
In silver, gold, and copper,
Presents from “Friends to blacks,” or foes to whites,
“Trifles,” and “offerings,” and “widow’s mites,”
Plump legacies, and yearly benefactions,
With other gifts
And charitable lifts,
Printed in lists and quarterly transactions.
As thus--Elisha Brettel,
An iron kettle.
The Dowager Lady Scannel,
A piece of flannel.
Rebecca Pope,
A bar of soap.
The Misses Howels,
Half-a-dozen towels.
The Master Rush’s,
Two scrubbing-brushes.
Mr. T. Groom,
A stable broom,
And Mrs. Grubb,
A tub.
Great were the sums collected!
And great results in consequence expected.
But somehow, in the teeth of all endeavour,
According to reports
At yearly courts,
The blacks, confound them! were as black as ever!
Yes! spite of all the water sous’d aloft,
Soap, plain and mottled, hard and soft,
Soda and pearlash, huckaback and sand,
Brooms, brushes, palm of hand,
And scourers in the office strong and clever,
In spite of all the tubbing, rubbing, scrubbing,
The routing and the grubbing,
The blacks, confound them! were as black as ever!
In fact in his perennial speech,
The Chairman own’d the niggers did not bleach,
As he had hoped,
From being washed and soaped,
A circumstance he named with grief and pity;
But still he had the happiness to say,
For self and the Committee,
By persevering in the present way
And scrubbing at the Blacks from day to day,
Although he could not promise perfect white,
From certain symptoms that had come to light,
He hoped in time to get them gray!
Lull’d by this vague assurance,
The friends and patrons of the sable tribe
Continued to subscribe,
And waited, waited on with much endurance--
Many a frugal sister, thrifty daughter--
Many a stinted widow, pinching mother--
With income by the tax made somewhat shorter,
Still paid implicitly her crown per quarter,
Only to hear as ev’ry year came round,
That Mr. Treasurer had spent her pound;
And as she loved her sable brother,
That Mr. Treasurer must have another!
But, spite of pounds or guineas,
Instead of giving any hint
Of turning to a neutral tint,
The plaguy negroes and their piccaninnies
Were still the colour of the bird that caws--
Only some very aged souls
Showing a little gray upon their polls,
Like daws!
However, nothing dashed
By such repeated failures, or abashed,
The Court still met;--the Chairman and Directors,
The Secretary, good at pen and ink,
The worthy Treasurer, who kept the chink,
And all the cash Collectors;
With hundreds of that class, so kindly credulous,
Without whose help, no charlatan alive,
Or Bubble Company could hope to thrive,
Or busy Chevalier, however sedulous--
Those good and easy innocents in fact,
Who willingly receiving chaff for corn,
As pointed out by Butler’s tact,
Still find a secret pleasure in the act
Of being pluck’d and shorn!
However, in long hundreds there they were,
Thronging the hot, and close, and dusty court,
To hear once more addresses from the Chair,
And regular Report.
Alas! concluding in the usual strain,
That what with everlasting wear and tear,
The scrubbing-brushes hadn’t got a hair--
The brooms--mere stumps--would never serve again--
The soap was gone, the flannels all in shreds,
The towels worn to threads,
The tubs and pails too shatter’d to be mended--
And what was added with a deal of pain,
But as accounts correctly would explain,
Tho’ thirty thousand pounds had been expended--
The Blackamoors had still been wash’d in vain!
“In fact, the negroes were as black as ink,
Yet, still as the Committee dared to think,
And hoped the proposition was not rash,
A rather free expenditure of cash--”
But ere the prospect could be made more sunny--
Up jump’d a little, lemon-coloured man,
And with an eager stammer, thus began,
In angry earnest, though it sounded funny:
“What! More subscriptions! No--no--no,--not I!
You have had time--time--time enough to try!
They WON’T come white! then why--why--why--why--why
More money?”
“Why!” said the Chairman, with an accent bland,
And gentle waving of his dexter hand,
“Why must we have more dross, and dirt, and dust,
More filthy lucre, in a word, more gold--
The why, sir, very easily is told,
Because Humanity declares we must!
We’ve scrubb’d the negroes till we’ve nearly killed ’em,
And finding that we cannot wash them white,
But still their nigritude offends the sight,
_We mean to gild ’em_?”
A DISCOVERY IN ASTRONOMY.
One day--I had it from a hasty mouth,
Accustom’d to make many blunders daily,
And therefore will not name, precisely, South,
Herschell, or Baily--
But one of those great men who watch the skies,
With all their rolling, winking eyes,
Was looking at that Orb whose ancient God
Was patron of the Ode, and Song, and Sonnet,
When thus he musing cried--“It’s very odd
That no Astronomer of all the squad
Can tell the nature of those spots upon it!
“Lord, master!” muttered John, a liveried elf,
“To wonder so at spots upon the sun!
I’ll tell you what he’s done--
_Freckled himself_!”
THE SAUSAGE MAKER’S GHOST.
A LONDON LEGEND.
Somewhere in Leather Lane--
I wonder that it was not Mincing,
And for this reason most convincing,
That Mr. Brain
Dealt in those well-minced cartridges of meat
Some people like to eat--
However, all such quibbles overstepping,
In Leather Lane he lived; and drove a trade
In porcine sausages, though London made,
Call’d “Epping.”
Right brisk was the demand,
Seldom his goods stay’d long on hand,
For out of all adjacent courts and lanes,
Young Irish ladies and their swains--
Such soups of girls and broths of boys!--
Sought his delicious chains,
Preferr’d to all polonies, saveloys,
And other foreign toys--
The mere chance passengers
Who saw his “sassengers,”
Of sweetness undeniable,
So sleek, so mottled, and so “friable,”
Stepp’d in, forgetting ev’ry other thought,
And bought.
Meanwhile a constant thumping
Was heard, a sort of subterranean chumping--
Incessant was the noise!
But though he had a foreman and assistant,
With all the tools consistent,
(Besides a wife and two fine chopping boys)
His means were not yet vast enough
For chopping fast enough
To meet the call from streets, and lanes, and passages,
For first-chop “sassages.”
However, Mr. Brain
Was none of those dull men and slow,
Who, flying bird-like by a railway train,
Sigh for the heavy mails of long ago;
He did not set his face ‘gainst innovations
For rapid operations,
And therefore in a kind of waking dream
Listen’d to some hot-water sprite that hinted
To have his meat chopp’d, as the Times was printed,
By steam!
Accordingly in happy hour,
A bran-new Engine went to work
Chopping up pounds on pounds of pork
With all the energy of Two-Horse-Power,
And wonderful celerity--
[Illustration: THE JUDGES OF A-SIZE.]
[Illustration: LONG COMMONS AND SHORT COMMONS.]
When lo! when ev’rything to hope responded,
Whether his head was turn’d by his prosperity,
Whether he had some sly intrigue, in verity,
The man absconded!
His anxious Wife in vain
Placarded Leather Lane,
And all the suburbs with descriptive bills,
Such as are issued when from homes and tills
Clerks, dogs, cats, lunatics, and children roam;
Besides advertisements in all the journals,
Or weeklies or diurnals,
Beginning “LEFT HIS HOME”--
The sausage-maker, spite of white and black,
Never came back.
Never, alive!--But on the seventh night,
Just when the yawning grave its dead releases,
Filling his bedded wife with sore affright
In walk’d his grisly Sprite,
In fifty thousand pieces!
“O Mary!” so it seem’d
In hollow melancholy tone to say,
Whilst thro’ its airy shape the moonlight gleam’d
With scarcely dimmer ray--
“O Mary! let your hopes no longer flatter,
Prepare at once to drink of sorrow’s cup--
It ain’t no use to mince the matter--
The Engine’s chopp’d me up!”
TO JOSEPH HUME, ESQ., M.P.
“I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.”
Oh, Mr. Hume, thy name
Is travelling post upon the road to fame,
With four fast horses and two sharp postilions;
Thy reputation
Has friends by numeration,
Units, Tens, Hundreds, Thousands, Millions.
Whenever public men together dine,
They drink to thee
With three times three--
That’s nine.
And oft a votary proposes then
To add unto the cheering one cheer more--
Nine and One are Ten;
Or somebody, for thy honour still more keen,
Insists on four times four--
Sixteen!
In Parliament no star shines more or bigger,
And yet thou dost not care to cut a figure;
Equally art thou eloquent and able,
Whether in showing how to serve the nation
Or laying its petitions on the Table
Of Multiplication.
In motion thou art second unto none,
Though fortune on thy motions seems to frown,
For though you set a number down
You seldom carry one.
Great at speech thou art, though some folks cough,
But thou art greatest at a _paring_ off.
But never blench,
Although in stirring up corruption’s worms
You make some factions
Vulgar as certain fractions,
Almost reduced unto their lowest terms.
Go on, reform, diminish, and retrench;
Go on, for ridicule not caring;
Sift on from one to nine with all their noughts,
And make state cyphers eat up their own orts,
And only in thy saving be unsparing;
At soldiers’ uniforms make awful rackets,
Don’t trim though, but untrim their jackets.
Allow the tin mines no tin tax,
Cut off the Great Seal’s wax!
Dock all the dock-yards, lower masts and sails,
Search foot by foot the Infantry’s amounts,
Look into all the Cavalry’s accounts,
And crop their horses’ tails.
Look well to Woolwich and each Money-vote,
Examine all the cannons’ charges well,
And those who found th’ Artillery compel
To forge twelve-pounders for a five-pound note.
Watch Sandhurst too, its debts and its Cadets--
Those Military pets.
Take army--no, take Leggy Tailors
Down to the Fleet, for no one but a nincum
Out of our nation’s narrow income
Would furnish such wide trousers to the Sailors.
Next take, to wonder him,
The Master of the Horse’s horse from under him;
Retrench from those who tend on Royal ills
Wherewith to gild their pills.
And tell the Stag-hound’s Master he must keep
The deer, &c., cheap.
Close as new brooms
Scrub the Bed Chamber Grooms;
Abridge the Master of the Ceremonies
Of his very monies;
In short, at every salary have a pull,
And when folks come for pay
On quarter-day,
Stop half and make them give receipts in full.
Oh, Mr. Hume, don’t drink,
Or eat, or sleep, a wink,
Till you have argued over each reduction:
Let it be food to you, repose and suction;
Though you should make more motions by one half
Than any telegraph,
Item by item all these things enforce,
Be on your legs till lame, and talk till hoarse;
Have lozenges--mind, Dawson’s--in your pocket,
And swing your arms till aching in their socket;
Or if awake you cannot keep,
Talk of retrenchment in your sleep;
Expose each Peachum, and show up each Lockit--
Go down to the M.P.’s before you sup,
And while they’re sitting blow them up,
As Guy Fawkes could not do with all his nous;
But now we live in different Novembers,
And safely you may walk into the House,
First split its ears and then divide its members!
TO ADMIRAL GAMBIER, G.C.B.
“Well, if you reclaim such as Hood, your Society will deserve the
thanks of the country.”--_Temperance Society’s Herald_, vol. 1, No.
1, p. 8.
“My father, when last I from Guinea
Came home with abundance of wealth,
Said, ‘Jack, never be such a ninny
As to drink--’ says I, ‘Father, your health?’”
_Nothing like Grog._
Oh! Admiral Gam--I dare not mention _bier_
In such a temperate ear--
Oh! Admiral Gam--an admiral of the Blue,
Of course to read the Navy List aright,
For strictly shunning wine of either hue,
You can’t be Admiral of the Red or White:--
Oh, Admiral Gam! consider ere you call
On merry Englishmen to wash their throttles
With water only; and to break their bottles,
To stick, for fear of trespass, on the wall
Of Exeter Hall!
Consider, I beseech, the contrariety
Of cutting off our brandy, gin, and rum,
And then, by tracts, inviting us to come
And “_mix_ in your society!”
In giving rules to dine, or sup, or lunch,
Consider Nature’s ends before you league us
To strip the Isle of Rum of all its punch--
To dock the Isle of Mull of all its negus--
Or doom--to suit your milk and water view--
The Isle of Skye to nothing but sky-blue!
Consider--for appearance’ sake--consider
The sorry figure of a spirit-ridder,
Going on this crusade against the suttler;
A sort of Hudibras--without a Butler!
Consider--ere you break the ardent spirits
Of father, mother, brother, sister, daughter;
What are your beverage’s washy merits?
Gin may be low--but I have known low-water!
Consider well, before you thus deliver,
With such authority, your sloppy cannon;
Should British tars taste nothing but the _river_,
Because the _Chesapeake_ once fought the _Shannon_!
Consider, too--before all Eau-de-vie,
Schiedam, or other drinkers, you rebut--
To bite a bitten dog all curs agree;
But who would cut a man because he’s _cut_?
Consider--ere you bid the poor to fill
Their murmuring stomach with the “murmuring rill”--
Consider that their streams are not like ours,
Reflecting heaven, and margined by sweet flowers;
On their dark pools by day no sun reclines,
By night no Jupiter, no Venus shines;
Consider life’s sour taste, that bids them mix
Their rum with Acheron, or Gin with Styx;
If you must pour out water to the poor, oh!
Let it be _aqua d’ oro_!
Consider--ere as furious as a griffin,
Against a glass of grog you make such work,
A man may like a stiff’un,
And yet not be a Burke!
Consider, too, before you bid all skinkers
Turn water-drinkers,
What sort of fluid fills their native rivers;
Their Mudiboos, and Niles, and Guadalquivirs.
How should you like, yourself, in glass or mug,
The Bog--the Bug--
The Maine--the Weser--or that freezer, Neva?
Nay, take the very rill of classic ground--
Lord Byron found
Even Castaly better for Geneva.
Consider--if, to vote Reform’s arrears,
His Majesty should please to make you peers,
Your titles would be very far from trumps,
To figure in a book of blue and red:--
The Duke of Draw-well--what a name to dread!
Marquis of Main-pipe! Earl New-River-Head!
And Temperance’s chief, the Prince of Pumps!
TO SPENCER PERCEVAL, ESQ., M.P.
Oh, Mr. Spencer!
I mean no offence, sir--
Retrencher of each trencher--man or woman’s;
Maker of days of ember,
Eloquent Member
Of the House of Com--I mean to say short commons--
Thou Long Tom Coffin singing out, “Hold Fast”--
Avast!
Oh, Mr. Perceval! I’ll bet a dollar, a
Great growth of Cholera,
And new deaths reckon’d,
Will mark thy Lenten twenty-first and second.
The best of our physicians, when they con it,
Depose the malady is in the air:
Oh, Mr. Spencer! if the ill _is_ there,
Why should you bid the people live upon it?
Why should you make discourses against courses,
While doctors, though they bid us rub and chafe,
Declare, of all resources,
The man is safest who gets in the safe?
And yet you bid poor suicidal sinners
Discard their dinners,
Thoughtless how Heaven above will look upon’t,
For man to die so wantonly of want!
By way of a variety,
Think of the ineffectual piety
Of London’s Bishop, at St. Faith’s or Bride’s,
Lecturing such chamelion insides,
Only to find
He’s preaching to the wind.
Whatever others do,--or don’t,
I cannot--dare not--must not fast, and won’t,
Unless by night your day you let me keep,
And _fast_ asleep;
My constitution can’t obey such censors:
I must have meat
Three times a-day to eat;
My health’s of such a sort,--
To say the truth, in short,
The _coats_ of my stomach are not _Spencers_!
TO MISS KELLY.
ON HER OPENING THE STRAND THEATRE.
O Betty--I beg pardon--Fanny K.
(I was just thinking of your Betty Finnikin)--
Permit me this to say,
In quite a friendly way--
I like your theatre, though but a minnikin;
For though small stages Kean dislikes to spout on,
Renounce me if I don’t agree with Dowton,
The Minors are the Passions’ proper schools
For me, I never can
Find wisdom in the plan
That keeps large reservoirs for little Pooles.
I like your boxes where the audience sit
A family circle; and your little pit;
I like your little stage, where you discuss
Your pleasant bill of fare,
And show us passengers so rich and rare,
Your little stage seems quite an omnibus.
I like exceedingly your Parthian dame,
Dimly remembering dramatic codgers,
The ghost of Memory--the shade of Fame!--
Lord! what a housekeeper for Mr. Rogers!
I like your savage, of a one-horse power;
And Terence, done in Irish from the Latin;
And Sally--quite a kitchen-garden flower;
And Mrs. Drake, serene in sky-blue satin!
I like your girl as speechless as a mummy--
It shows you can play dummy!--
I like your boy, deprived of every gleam
Of light for ever--a benighted being!
And really think--though Irish it may seem--
Your blindness is worth seeing.
I like your Governess; and there’s a striking
Tale of Two Brothers, that sets tears a-flowing--
But I’m not going
All through the bill to tell you of my liking.
Suffice it, Fanny Kelly! with your art
So much in love, like others I have grown,
I really mean myself to take a part
In “Free and Easy”--at my own bespeak--
And shall three times a week
Drop in and make your pretty house my own!
TO DOCTOR HAHNEMANN.
THE HOMŒOPATHIST.
Well, Doctor,
Great concoctor
Of medicines to help in man’s distress;
Diluting down the strong to meek,
And making even the weak more weak,
“Fine by degrees, and beautifully less”--
Founder of a new system economic,
To druggists anything but comic;
Framed the whole race of Ollapods to fret,
At profits, like thy doses, very small;
To put all Doctors’ Boys in evil case,
Thrown out of bread, of physic, and of place,--
And show us old Apothecaries’ Hall
“To Let.”
How fare thy Patients? are they dead or living,
Or, well as can expected be, with such
A style of practice, liberally giving
“A sum of more to that which had too much?”
Dost thou preserve the human frame, or turf it?
Do thorough draughts cure thorough colds or not?
Do fevers yield to anything that’s hot?
Or hearty dinners neutralise a surfeit?
Is’t good advice for gastronomic ills,
When Indigestion’s face with pain is crumpling,
To cry “Discard those Peristaltic Pills,
Take a hard dumpling!”
Tell me, thou German Cousin,
And tell me honestly without a diddle,
Does an attenuated dose of rosin
Act as a _tonic_ on the old _Scotch fiddle_?
Tell me, when Anhalt-Coethen babies wriggle,
Like eels just caught by sniggle,
Martyrs to some acidity internal,
That gives them pangs infernal,
Meanwhile the lip grows black, the eye enlarges;
Say, comes there all at once a cherub-calm,
Thanks to that soothing homœopathic balm,
The half of half, of half, a drop of “_varges_?”
Suppose, for instance, upon Leipzig’s plain,
A soldier pillowed on a heap of slain,
In urgent want both of a priest and proctor;
When lo! there comes a man in green and red,
A featherless cocked-hat adorns his head,
In short a Saxon military doctor--
Would he, indeed, on the right treatment fix,
To cure a horrid gaping wound,
Made by a ball that weighed a pound,
If he well peppered it with number six?
Suppose a felon doomed to swing
Within a _rope_,
Might friends not hope
To cure him with a _string_?
Suppose his breath arrived at a full stop,
The shades of death in a black cloud before him,
Would a quintillionth dose of the New Drop
Restore him?
Fancy a man gone rabid from a bite,
Snapping to left and right,
And giving tongue like one of Sebright’s hounds,
Terrific sounds,
The pallid neighbourhood with horror cowing,
To hit the proper homœopathic mark;
Now, might not “the last taste in life” of _bark_,
Stop his _bow-wow-ing_?
Nay, with a well-known remedy to fit him,
Would he not mend, if with all proper care,
He took “_a hair
Of the dog that bit him_?”
Picture a man--we’ll say a Dutch Meinheer--
In evident emotion,
Bent o’er the bulwark of the Batavier,
Owning those symptoms queer--
Some feel in a _Sick Transit_ o’er the ocean,
Can anything in life be more pathetic
Than when he turns to us his wretched face?--
But would it mend his case
To be decillionth-dosed
With something like the ghost
Of an emetic?
Lo! now a darkened room!
Look through the dreary gloom,
And see that coverlet of wildest form,
Tost like the billows in a storm,
Where ever and anon, with groans, emerges
A ghastly head!
While two impatient arms still beat the bed,
Like a strong swimmer’s struggling with the surges;
There Life and Death are on their battle-plain,
With many a mortal ecstasy of pain--
What shall support the body in its trial,
Cool the hot blood, wild dream, and parching skin,
And tame the raging malady within--
A sniff of Next-to-Nothing in a phial?