"Gin, cursed fiend! with fury fraught,
Makes human race a prey;
It enters by a deadly draught,
And steals our life away.
"Virtue and Truth, driv'n to despair,
Its rage compels to fly;
But cherishes with hellish care,
Theft, murder, perjury.
"Damn'd cup! that on the vitals preys,
That liquid fire contains;
Which madness to the heart conveys,
And rolls it thro' the veins."
[Illustration: GIN LANE.]
From contemplating the health, happiness, and mirth flowing from
a moderate use of a wholesome and natural beverage, we turn to
this nauseous contrast, which displays human nature in its most
degraded and disgusting state. The retailer of gin and ballads,[42]
who sits upon the steps with a bottle in one hand and a glass in
the other, is horribly fine. Having bartered away his waistcoat,
shirt, and stockings, and drank until he is in a state of total
insensibility; pale, wan, and emaciated, he is a perfect skeleton. A
few steps higher is a debased counterpart of Lazarus, taking snuff;
thoroughly intoxicated, and negligent of the infant at her breast,
it falls over the rail into an area, and dies an innocent victim to
the baneful vice of its depraved parent. Another of the fair sex
has drank herself to sleep. As an emblem of her disposition being
slothful, a snail is crawling from the wall to her arm. Close to her
we discover one of the lords of the creation gnawing a bare bone,
which a bull-dog, equally ravenous, endeavours to snatch from his
mouth. A working carpenter is depositing his coat and saw with a
pawnbroker. A tattered female offers her culinary utensils at the
same shrine: among them we discover a tea-kettle pawned to procure
money to purchase gin.[43] An old woman, having drank until she is
unable to walk, is put into a wheel-barrow, and in that situation
a lad solaces her with another glass. With the same poisonous and
destructive compound, a mother in the corner drenches her child.
Near her are two charity-girls of St. Giles', pledging each other
in the same corroding compound. The scene is completed by a quarrel
between two drunken mendicants, both of whom appear in the character
of cripples. While one of them uses his crutch as a quarterstaff,
the other with great goodwill aims a stool, on which he usually
sat, at the head of his adversary. This, with a crowd waiting for
their drams at a distiller's door, completes the catalogue of the
_quick_. Of the _dead_ there are two, besides an unfortunate child
whom a drunken madman has impaled upon a spit.[44] One a barber, who,
having probably drank gin until he has lost his reason, has suspended
himself by a rope in his own ruinous garret; the other a beautiful
woman, whom by direction of the parish beadle two men are depositing
in a shell. From her wasted and emaciated appearance, we may fairly
infer she also fell a martyr to this destructive and poisonous
liquid. On the side of her coffin is a child lamenting the loss of
its parent.
The large pewter measure hung over a cellar, on which is engraved
"Gin Royal," was once a common sign; the inscription on this cave of
despair, "Drunk for a penny, dead drunk for twopence, clean straw
for nothing," is worthy observation; it exhibits the state of our
metropolis at that period.
The scene of this horrible devastation is laid in a place which was a
few years since properly enough called the Ruins of St. Giles'.[45]
Except the pawnbroker's, distiller's, and undertaker's, the houses
are literally ruins! These doorkeepers to Famine, Disease, and Death,
living by the calamities of others, are in a flourishing state.[46]
Mr. Hogarth seems to have received the first idea of these two prints
from a pair by Peter Breughel (frequently called _Breughel d'enfer_),
which exhibit a similar contrast. In the one entitled "La Grosse"
are a number of comely and well-fed personages; in the other, which
is baptized "La Maigre Cuisine," the characters are meagre and
wasted: seated on a straw mat are a mother and child, which very much
resemble the wretched female we see upon the steps in the print under
consideration.
To the perspective little attention is paid, but the characters are
admirably discriminated. The emaciated retailer of gin is well drawn.
The woman with a snuff-box has all the mawkish marks of debasement
and drunkenness. The man gnawing a bone, a dog tearing it from him,
and the pawnbroker, have countenances in an equal degree hungry and
rapacious.
A print entitled the "Gin Drinkers," which bears strong marks of
being one of Hogarth's early productions, may perhaps have been the
first thought on which this print was built.
On the subject of these plates was published a catchpenny compilation
from Reynolds' "God's Revenge against Murder," entitled "_A
Dissertation on Mr. Hogarth's six prints--'Gin Lane,' 'Beer Street,'
and the 'Four Stages of Cruelty.'_"