Chapter 23 A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS IN THE METROPO

The all-sweeping besom of societarian reformation -- your only modern Alcides club to rid the time of its abuses -- is uplift with many-handed sway to extirpate the last fluttering tatters of the bugbear Mendicity from the metropolis. Scrips, wallets, bags -- staves, dogs, and crutches -- the whole mendicant fraternity with all their baggage are fast posting out of the purlieus of this eleventh persecution. From the crowded crossing, from the corners of streets and turnings of allies, the parting Genius of Beggary is "with sighing sent." I do not approve of this wholesale going to work, this impertinent crusado, or bellum ad terminationem, proclaimed against a species. Much good might be sucked from these Beggars.

They were the oldest and the honorable form of pauperism. Their appeals were to our common nature; less revolting to an ingenuous mind than to be a suppliant to the particular humours or caprice of any fellow-creature, or set of fellow-creatures, parochial or socioetarian. Theirs were the only rates uninvidious in the levy, ungrudged in the assessment. There was a dignity springing from the very depth of their desolation; as to be naked is to be so much nearer to the being a man, than to go in livery. The greatest spirits have felt this in their reverses; and when Dionysius from king turned schoolmaster, do we feel any thing towards him but contemplate? Could Vandyke have made a picture of him, swaying a ferula for a sceptre, which would have affected our minds with the same heroic pity, the same compassionate admiration, with which we regard his Belisarius begging for an obolum? Would the moral have been more graceful, more pathetic?

The Blind Beggar in the legend -- the father of pretty Bessy -- whose story doggrel rhymes and ale-house signs cannot so degrade nor attenuate, but that some sparks of a lustrous spirit will shine through the disguises -- this noble Earl of Cornwall (as indeed he was) and memorable sport of fortune, fleeing from the unjust sentence of his liege lord, stript of all, and seated on the flowering green of Bethnal, with his more fresh and springing daughter by his side, illuminating his rags and his beggary -- would the child and parent have cut a better figure, doing the honors of a counter, or expiating their fallen condition upon the three-foot eminence of some sempstering shop-board?

In tale or history your Beggar is ever the just antipode to your King. The poets and romantic writers (as dear Margaret Newcastle would call them) when they would most sharply and feelingly paint a reverse of fortune, never stop till they have brought down their hero in good earnest to rags and the wallet. The depth of the descent illustrates the height he falls from. There is no medium which can be presented to the imagination without offense. There is no breaking the fall. Lear, thrown from his palace, must divest him of his garments, till he answer "mere nature;" and Cresseid, fallen from a princes love, must extend her pale arms, pale with other whiteness than of beauty, supplicating lazar alms with bell and clap-dish.

The Lucian wits knew this very well; and, with a converse policy, when they would express scorn of greatness without the pity, they show us an Alexander in the shades cobbling shoes, or a Semiramis getting up foul linen. How would it sound in song, that a great monarch had declined his affections upon the daughter of a baker! yet do we feel the imagination at all violated when we read the "true ballad," where King Cophetua wooes the beggar maid? Pauperism, pauper, poor man, are expressions of pity, but pity alloyed with contempt. No one properly contemns a beggar. Poverty is a comparative thing, and each degree of it is mocked by its "neighbor grice." Its poor rents and comings -in are soon summed up and told. Its pretences to property are almost ludicrous. Its pitiful attempts to save exciting a smile. Every scornful companion can weigh his trifle-bigger purse against it. of his condition, his own being a shade better, while the rich pass by and jeer at both. No rascally comparative insults a Beggar, or thinks of weighing purses with him. He is not in the scale of comparison. measure of property. He confessedly hath none, any more than a dog or a sheep. No one twitteth him with ostentation above his means. No one accuses him of pride, or upbraideth him with mock humility. or pick quarrels for precedence. wealthy neighbor seeketh to eject him from his tenement. No man sues him. No man goes to law with him. If I were not the independent gentleman that I am, rather than I would be a retainer to the great, a led captain, or a poor relation, I would choose, out of the delicacy and true greatness of my mind, to be a Beggar.

Rags, which are the reproach of poverty, are the Beggars robes, and graceful insignia of his profession, his tenure, his full dress, the suit in which he is expected to show himself in public. He is never out of the fashion, or limpeth awkwardly behind it. He is not required to put on court mourning. He weareth all colours, fearing none. His costume hath undergone less change than the quakers. He is the only man in the universe who is not obliged to study appearances. The ups and downs of the world concern him no longer. He alone continue in one stay. The price of stock or land affecteth him not. The fluctuations of agricultural or commercial prosperity touch him not, or at worst but change his customers. expected to become bail or surety for any one. No man troubleth him with questioning his religion or politics. He is the only free man in the universe.

The Mendicants of this great city were so many of her sights, her lions. I can no more spare then, than I could the Cries of London. No comer of a street is complete without them. They are as disposable as the Ballad Singer; and in their picturesque attire as ornamental as the Signs of old London. They were the standing morals, emblems, mementos, dial-mottos, the spital sermons, the books for children, the salutary checks and pauses to the high and rushing tide of greasy citizenry- ---Look Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there. Above all, those old blind Tobits that used to line the wall of Lincolns Inn Garden, before modern fastidiousness had expelled them, casting up their ruined orbs to catch a ray of pity, and (if possible) of light, with their faithful Dog Guide at their feet, -- whicher are they fled? or into what corners, blind as themselves, have they been driven, out of the wholesome air and sun-warmth? immersed between four walls, in what withering poor-house do they endure the penalty of double darkness, where the chink of the dropt halfpenny no more consoles their forlorn bereavement, far from the sound of the cheerful and hope-stirring tread of the passenger? Where hang their useless staves? of St. L --- caused them to be shot? or were they tied up in sacks, and drop into the Thames, at the suggestion of B--- , the mild rector of -- -?

Well fare the soul of unfastidious Vincent Bourne, most classical, and at the same time, most English, of the Latinists -- who has treated of this human and quadrupedal alliance, this dog and man friendship, in the sweetest of his poems, the Epitaphium in Canem, or, Dogs Epitaph. Reader, peruse it; and say, if customary sights, which could call up such gentle poetry as this, were of a nature to do more harm or good to the moral sense of the passengers through the daily thoroughfares of a vast and busy metropolis. Pauperis hic iri requiesco Lyciscus, herilis, Dum vixi, tutela vigil columenque senectae,

Dux caeco fidus: nec, me ducente, solebat, Praetenso hinc atque hinc baculo, per iniqua locorum Incertam explore viam; sed fila secutus, Quae dubios regerent passus, vestigia tuta Fixit inoffenso gressu; gelidumque sedile In nudo nactus saxo, qua praetereuntium Unda frequens confluxit, ibi miserisque tenebras Lamentis, noctemque oculis ploravit obortam. Ploravit nec frustra; obolum deedit alter et alter, Queis corda et mentem indiderat natura benignam. Ad latus interea jacui sopitus herile, Vel mediis vigil in somnis; ad herilia jussa Auresque atque animum arrectus, seu frustula amice

Porrexit sociasque dapes, seu longa diei Taedia perpessus, reditum sub nocte parabat. Hi mores, haec vita fuit, dum fata sinebant, Dum neque languebam morbis, nec inerte senecta; Quae tandem obrepsit, veterique satellite cascum Orbavit dominum prisci sed gratia facti Ne tota intereat, longos deletea per annos, Exiguum hunc Irus tumulum de cespite fecit, Etsi inopis, non ingratae, munuscula dextrae; Carmine signavitque brevi, dominumque canemque Quod memoret, fidumque canem dominumque benignum. Poor Irus faithful wolf-dog here I lie, That wont to tend my old blind masters steps,

His guide and guard: nor, while my service lasted, Had he occasion for that staff, with which He now goes picking out his path in fear Over the highways and crossings; but would plant, Safe in the conduct of my friendly string, A firm foot forward still, till he had reached His poor seat on some stone, nigh where the tide Of passers by in thickest confluence flowd: To whom with loud and passionate laments From morn to eve his dark estate he waild. Nor waild to all in vain: some here and there, The well-disposed and good, their pennies gave. I meanwhile at his feet obsequious slept; Not all-asleep in sleep, hut heart and ear Prickd up at his least motion; to receive At his kind hand my customary crums, And common portion in his feast of scraps; Or when night warn us homeward, tired and spent With our long day and tedious beggary. These were my manners, this my way of life, Till age and slow disease me overtook, And severd from my sightless masters side. But lest the grace of so good deeds should die, Through tract of years in mute oblivion lost, This slender tomb of turf hath Irus reared, Cheap monument of no ungrudging hand, And with short verse inscribed it, to attest, In long and lasting union to attest, The virtues of the Beggar and his Dog. These dim eyes have in vain explored for some months past a well-known figure, or part of the figure, of a man, who used to glide his comely upper half over the pavements of London, wheeling along with most ingenious celerity upon a machine of wood; a spectacle to natives, to foreigners, and to children. He was of a robust make, with a florid sailor-like complexion, and his head was bare to the storm and sunshine. He was a natural curiosity, a speculation to the scientific, a prodigy to the simple. The infant would stare at the mighty man brought down to his own level. The common cripple would despise his own pusillanimity, viewing the hale stoutness, and hearty heart, of this half-limbed giant. Few but must have noticed him; for the accident, which brought him low, took place during the riots of 1780, and he has been a groundling so long. He seemed earth-born, an Anteus, and to suck in fresh vigour from the soil which he neighboured. He was a grand fragment; as good as an Elgin marble . The nature, which should have recruited his reft legs and thighs, was not lost, but only retired into his upper parts, and he was half a Hercules. I heard a tremendous voice thundering and growing, as before an earthquake, and casting down my eyes, it was this mandrake reviling a steed that had started at his portentous appearance. He seemed to want but his just stature to have rent the offending quadruped in shivers. He was as the man-part of a Centaur, from which the horse -half had been cloven in some dire Lapithan controversial. He moved on, as if he could have made shift with yet half of the body- portion which was left him. The os sublime was not wanting; upon the heavens. Forty-and-two years had he driven this out of door trade, and now that his hair is grizzled in the service, but his good spirits no way damaged, because he is not content to exchange his free air and exercise For the restraints of a poor-house, he is expiating his contu macy in one of those houses (ironically christened) of Correction. Was a daily spectacle like this to be deemed a nuisance, which called for legal interference to remove? or not rather a salary and a touching object, to the passers-by in a great city? -- Among her shows, her museums, and supplies for ever-gaping curiosity (and what else but an accumulation of sights -- endless sights -- is a great city; or for what else is it desirable?) was there not room for one Lusus (not Naturae, indeed, but) Accidentium? What if in forty-and-two years going about, the man had scraped together enough to give a portion to his child (as the rumor ran) of a few hundreds -- whom had he injured ? upon? The contributors had enjoyed their sight for their pennies. What if after being exposed all day to the heats, the rains, and the frosts of heaven -- shuffling his ungainly trunk along in an elaborate and painful motion -- he was enabled to retire at night to enjoy himself at a club of his fellow cripples over a dish of hot meat and vegetables, a s the charge was gravely brought against him by a clergyman deposing before a House of Commons Committee -- was this, or was his truly paternal consideration, which (if a fact) deserved a statue rather than a whipping-post, and is inconsistent at least with the exaggeration of nocturnal orgies which he has been slandered with -- a reason that he should be deprived of his chosen, harmless, nay edifying, way of life, and be committed in hoary age for a sturdy vagabond? -- There was a Yorick once, whom it would not have shamed to have sate down at the cripples feast, and to have thrown in his benediction, ay, and his mite too, for a companionable symbol. "Age, thou hast lost thy breed. "- Half of these stories about the prodigious fortunes made by begging are (I verily believe) misers calumnies. One was much talked of in the public papers some time since, and the usual charitable inferences deduced. A clerk in the Bank was surprised with the announcement of a five hundred pound legacy left him by a person whose name he was a stranger to. It seems that in his daily morning walks from Peckham (or some village thereabouts) where he lived, to his office, it had been his practice for the last twenty years to drop his halfpenny duly into the hat of some blind Bartimeus, that sate begging alms by the way-side in the Borough. The good old beggar recognized his daily benefactor by the voice only; the amassings of his alms (that [p 120] had been half a century perhaps in the accumulating) to his old Bank friend. Was this a story to purse up peoples hearts, and pennies, against giving an aims to the blind ? -- or not rather a beautiful moral of well-dir ected charity on the one part, and noble gratitude upon the other? I sometimes wish I had been that Bank clerk. I seem to remember a poor old grateful kind of creature, blinking, and looking up with his no eyes in the sun -- Is it possible I could have steeled my purse against him? Perhaps I had no small change. Reader, do not be frightened at the hard words, imposition, imposture -- give, and ask no questions. Cast thy bread upon the waters. Some have unawares (like this Bank clerk) entertained angels. Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted distress. Act a charity sometimes. When a poor creature (outwardly and visibly such) comes before thee, do not stay to inquire whether the "seven small children," in whose name he implores thy assistance , have a veritable existence. Rake not into the bowls of welcome truth, to save a halfpenny. It is good to believe him. If he be not all that he pretendeth, give, and under a personate father of a family, think (if thou pleasest) that thou hast relieved an indigenous bachelor. When they come with their counterfeit looks, and mumping tones, think them players. You pay your money to see a comedian feign these things, which, concerning these poor people, thou canst not certainly tell whether they are feigned or not.