The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1887-04-16 00:00:00

A LONDON LODGERS' LAMENT.

I had become heroic. I fancied that I had reached
within an ace of the agony of Tantalus or the misery
of the stone-rolling Sisyphus. It was now late in the
afternoon; and from early morning I had been pro-
secuting a regular and systematic hunt for a habita-
tion and a home—every promise of one proving but
a delusion and a snare. "Furnished apartments—
apply within" are words evermore to me the sign of
all that is most disappointing in London life. Loclg-
ing-house keepers, I soon discovered, don't agree with
Jeremy Taylor, that "a good wife is the last best gift
of Heaven." "Mother has lodgings for a single 'an,
but mother hasn't lodgings for a gentleman and a
lady." Such the message a coatless urchin brought
to my inquiry at a house in the south—a house in
which my preliminary mild knocks had been drowned
in the perfect tornado a youthful trio were raising
within the door. This message was delivered to me in a
narrow little hall, destitute of all adornment,
save a much-holed piece of carpet. Nay, I was bur-
dened with a double dose of original sin. I have a
dog—a harmless collie. I was apparently accepted
by a good, cleanly-looking lady in the South-east. I
was comforting myself that at last I had—after end-
less buffetings—found the harbour of refuge, when
incidentally I mentioned my dog. "A dog—ah
At once I saw that I might as well have said that I
was the possessor of a fine young rhinoceros, which I
wished to locate in the sitting-room. "A dog," said
the lady, who had before been reminding me, with a
picturesque diaregurd of the aspirate, that she had
not been always as she was—" a dog. Well, I don't
object to dogs in themselves. When my 'usband was
halive we had sixteen or seventeen dogs, and our
hown shooting. But yet knew it was coming.
"But yet " is a gaoler to bring forth some monstrous
malefaotor. "But yet, dogs makes the rouse so dirty."
And so I had to go forth again.
The first house I had called on that morning had
been to me a revelation. I knew what house•rent
was in the country. There I had been a lordly pro-
prietor of a villa, with a lawn, and a stable, and I
know not what—and all for £2B a year. A pound or
253. a week was the amount I had fixed upon to give
for my two rooms in London. This landlady ap-
peared with an apron over her head, with a peripa-
tetic snuffle, and with a tantalising cough. The room
I was ushered into possessed a perfume like nothing
so much as mildewed hay. Cretonne coverings con-
cealed what was, no doubt, a handsomely-upholstered
suite; but the cretonne had unfinished edges, or was
adorned with erratic "scollops" that apetulant child
might have executed, and was, besides, evidently a
stranger to the washing-tub. "And this iithe bedrcom,
sir"—and a pair of folding-doors were swung open, with
evident pride, for my inspection, a prolonged fit of
coughing giving me time for a cursory examination,
unrestrained by the landlady's sharp eye. There
were two narrow strips of carpet; a counterpane, with
a staringly-bbe flprelnattorn, covered the bed; a red
jug, set in a bluV-nneu washhand basin, and a pink.
lined basin, containing a drabby-white, lip-broken jug,
occupied a ricketty-looking double washstand; a
small looking-glass on a small chest of drawers, and
four or five unartistic ornaments on the mantel-piece
—these, with the bed and two chairs, appeared to
complete the appointments of the luxurious chamber.
"But besides the pound a week," said the landlady,
"I should watt a shilling a week for gas, sixpence a
scuttle for coals, and a penny a pair for boots."
"Would you mind my calling again—say at one
o'clock," I inquired, after a profound observation of
my watch and a moment's cogitation—an action per-
formed with a desire to lend an appearance of
sincerity. But I never returned; I had never meant
to.

The next two rooms I visited were also to be mine
for a pound a week. Again the bedroom was sepa-
rated from the dining-room by folding doors; again
the furniture had the picturesque virtue of exceed-
ing variety; again there was a chintz covering,
though not bedraggled and torn; but the hay-per-
fume was absent, and in its stead was the undeniable
evidence that the last occupant had been a consider-
able smoker. This time, though, the landlady did
not require a penny for boots: In the same street
an engaging landlady had not, so she informed me,
two rooms to let, but she had a large single room to
let, "and very nicely furnished it is, and all for twelve
shillings a week. Would I see it ? " The landlady
and her husband and progeny were at present the oc-
cupants of the room. Dinner was on the small
table, which stood in the centre of the room. Thence
the good woman had herself evidently just risen,
her husband occupying the seat opposite to
her's. An elder girl sat near him, with a crown
of closely - screwed curl - papers surrounding
the head. Two other children sat by the bed, their
plates resting on their crossed legs. The room-floor
and the road bore a starting resemblance in colour
and contents. "Of course, I should clear up all
before you came in," SO I was informed. "Thank
you," was the Pharisaic reply, I would call again.
And so I went on. Where cle nliness and comfort
were present my two fatal sins were my enemy;
where they were absent it seemed, to my distorted
vision, that I was regarded as a sponge to retain my
earnings until the pressure was applied which should
convey them to somebody else. A philosophic
bricklayer, who carried an unusual amount of lime
on his head and on his clothes, put an effectual
damper on the determination I had arrived at to
expostulate with some on the condition and appoint-
xn..nts of the rooms. "Of course, you can't have it
all as you wants; you have to have it as we haves it
ourselves."

Every now anti then I had come across, as I have
said, a pleasantly-furnished room—a bedroom that was
not simply part of the sitting-room cut o 5 with folding
doors—(why will London builders persist in following;
this more or less unhealthy system ?)—and a land-
lady whose garrulity did not overwhelm me with mis-
placed adjectives intended to convey an idea of a
most superfine superiority. But then, here again, it
was the applicant who was ineligible. In the North,
I was even promised a luxury of attention I had never
dreamt of in the wildest imaginings of what my Li or
Li se. a week would procure. The proud professor
of a middlingly-cican room, whose every chair—and
the couch, too—was covered with an elaborately-exe-
cuted antimacassar, informed me that, "You see I
was brought up in a public-house; so I knows how to
wait at table." But the dog was the barrier to this
ethereal paradise—and to a closer connection with
the crocheted peacocks, baskets-o'-flowers, and the
other sumptuary efforts on the antimacassars.
Philantiarop;sts and newspapers, and statesmen and
writers, are teeming full of schemes for the benefit of
the honseholder. The householder has become
almost satiated with attention. To lessen the house-
holder's taxes, to remove the grievances which his
delicate fancy creates, is the sole object and aim of
many a ward and district Hampden. If they could
devote their thoughts to the suffering lodger—to the
lodger of the wife and the dog in particular—if they
could establish a bureau of lodging-house informa-
tion, if they could form a society for the protection of
the numberless Verdant Greens who fly to London
because they think the word spells fortune, they
would win the gratitude of a little-thought-of and
very-much-despised race. The lodger—and it is the
lodger who is, after all, made to pay tbe taxes—is, at
best, thought but a poor thing by the Hampdens. He
has little parochial power, and nobody seems to desire
that he should have any. And, without power, he
merits no sympathy.—Echo.

WELL. said a philosophic friend to an invalid, Had
you a good night last night ?—No, I never suffered
so in my life.—Hum! That's bad! But (brightening
up), you know a bad night is better than no night at
all." _ _

Surrv, the comedian, going a few miles out of Lon-
don on a fishing excursion, was unable to secure an
inside p!ace in the coach. It rained incessantly, and
when he arrived at his destination he was in a miser-
able state from the 'wet, which had soaked through
his great coat and millings to the skin. A friend
who was waiting for him in the dusk of the evening,
peering doubtingly in his face, inquired, Are you
Suott ?—No, replieAl the droll, Don't you ede I'm
dripping,