'BRENTFORD, TEDIOUS TOWN' 59 



Now, if Brentford is certainly not tedious nowa- 

 days, it is unquestionably as dirty as ever. If you 

 would know the true, poignant, inner meaning of 

 tediousness, you must make acquaintance, say, with 

 Gower Street on a winter's day ; a typical street of 

 suburban villas, each ' villa ' as like its neighbour as 

 one new sixpence is to another ; or the Cromwell 

 Eoad at any time or under any conditions. Then 

 you will have known tedium. At Brentford, however, 

 all is life, movement, dirt, and balmy odours from a 

 quarter of a mile of roadside gasworks. The bargees 

 and lio;htermen of this riverside town are swearino- 

 picturesquely at one another all day, while the gas- 

 men, the hands at the waterworks, and the railway- 

 men join in occasionally. Sometimes the profanity 

 so cheerfully bandied about leads to a fight, but not 

 often, because when a bargee addresses his dearest 

 friend by a string of epithets that might make a 

 typical old-time stage-manager blush, it is all taken 

 as a token of friendship. These are the shiblioleths of 

 the place. 



When, however. Gay alludes to the ' white-legged 

 chickens,' for which, he says, Brentford was known, 

 we are at a loss to identify the breed. That kind of 

 chicken must long since have given up the attempt 

 to be white-legged, and have changed, by process of 

 evolution, into some less easily soiled variety. For 

 the dirt of Brentford is always there. It only varies 

 in kind. In times of drouo-ht it makes itself obvious 

 in clouds of black dust, composed of powdered coals 

 and clinkers ; and when a day of rain has laid this 

 plague, it is forthwith re-incarnated in the shape of 



