being in influence and authority infinitely
below the parish beadle. There was a chimney on
fire once at number twelve, and with immense
difficulty an engine was lifted into the Rents,
but all claims of the Fire Brigade were
laughed to scorn, and the boys of the Rents
made such a fierce attack on the engine, and
manifested so keen a desire to detain it as a
hostage, that the helmeted men with the
hatchets were glad to make their escape as
best they could.

The first peculiarity that will strike you on
entering the Rents is the tallness of the
houses. The blackness of their fronts and
the dinginess of their windows will not
appear to you as so uncommon, being a
characteristic of Blitsom Street, Turk's Lane, and
the whole of the neighbourhood. But, Tattyboys
houses are very tall indeed, as if, being
set so closely together, and being prevented
by conservative tendencies from spreading
beyond the limits of the Rents, they had
grown taller instead, and added unto
themselves stories instead of wings. I can't say
much, either, for their picturesque aspect.
Old as the Rents are, they are not romantically
old. Here are no lean-to roofs, no
carved gables, no overhanging lintels, no
dormer or lattice windows. The houses are all
alike—all tall, grimy, all with mathematical
dirty windows, flights of steps (quite innocent
of the modern frivolities of washing
and hearthstoning), tall narrow doors, and
areas with hideous railings. One
uncompromisingly tasteless yet terrible mould was
evidently made in the first instance for all
the lion's head knockers: one disproportioned
spear-head and tassel for all the railings. I
can imagine the first Tattyboys, a stern man
of inflexible uniformity of conduct and
purpose, saying grimly to his builder: " Build
me a Rents of so many houses, on such and
such a model," and the obedient builder
turning out so many houses like so many
bricks, or so many bullets from a mould, or
pins from a wire, and saying, " There, Tattyboys,
there are your Rents." Then new,
painted, swept, garnished, with the
mathematical windows all glistening in one
sunbeam, the same lion's head knockers grinning
on the same doors, the regularity of Tattyboys
Rents must have been distressing:
the houses must all have been as like each
other as the beaux in wigs and cocked hats,
and the belles in hoops and hair powder,
who lived when Tattyboys Rents were built;
but age, poverty, and dirt, have given as
much variety of expression to these houses
now, as hair, whiskers, wrinkles, and scars
give to the human face divine. Some of
the lion-headed knockers are gone, and many
of the spear-headed railings. Some of the
tall doors stand continually open, drooping
gracefully on one hinge. The plain fronts
of the houses are chequered by lively
cartoons, pictorially representing the domestic
mangle, the friendly cow that yields fresh
milk daily for our nourishment, the household
goods that can be removed (by spring
vans) in town or country; the enlivening
ginger beer which is the favourite beverage
(according to the cartoon) of the British Field
Marshal, and the lady in the Bloomer
costume. Variety is given to the windows by
many of their panes being broken, or patched
with parti-coloured paper and textile fabrics;
and by many of the windows themselves being
open the major part of the day, disclosing
heads and shoulders of various conformations,
with a foreground of tobacco pipes and a
background of shirt-sleeves. Pails, brooms,
and multifarious odds and ends, take off from
the uniformity of the areas, while the area
gates (where there are any left) swing cheerfully
to and fro. Groups of laughing children
bespangle the pavement, and diversify the
door-steps; and liveliness, colour, form, are
given to the houses and the inhabitants by
dirt, linen on poles, half-torn-off placards,
domestic fowls, dogs, decayed vegetables,
oyster tubs, pewter pots, broken shutters,
torn blinds, ragged door-mats, lidless kettles,
bottomless saucepans, shattered plates, bits
of frayed rope, and cats whose race is run,
and whose last tile has been squatted on.

Tattyboys originally intended the houses
in his Rents to be all private mansions. Of
that there can be no doubt: else, why the
areas, why the doorsteps and the lion-headed
knockers? But, that mutability of time and
fashion which has converted the monastery of
the Crutched Friars into a nest of sugar-brokers'
counting-houses, and the Palace of Henry
the Eighth and Cardinal Wolsey into a
hairdresser's shop, has dealt as hardly with the
private houses in Tattyboys Rents. The
shopkeeping element has not yet wholly
destroyed the aristocratic aspect of the place;
still, in very many instances, petty commerce
has set up its petty wares in the front-parlour
windows, and the chapman has built
his counters and shelves on the ground-floors
of gentility.

I have spoken so often of Tattyboys
Rents, that the question might aptly be asked,
Who was Tattyboys? When did it occur
to him to build Rents? By what fortunate
inheritance, what adventitious accession of
wealth, what prosperous result of astute
speculations, was he enabled to give his
name to, and derive quarterly rents from, the
two blocks of houses christened after him ?
So dense is the obscurity that surrounds all
the antecedents of the locality, that I do not
even know the sex of the primary Tattyboys.

The estates, titles, muniments, and manorial
rights (whatever they may be) of the clan
Tattyboys are at present enjoyed by a black
beaver bonnet and black silk cloak of
antediluvian design and antemundane rustiness,
supposed to contain Miss Tattyboys. I say
supposed, for though the cloak and the
bonnet are patent in the Rents on certain
periodical occasions, the ancient female (she