Lo, then, the poor laundress, all wretched she stands,
Instead of a counterpane wringing her hands! 
All haggard and pinch’d, going down in life’s vale,
With no fagot for burning, like Allan-a-dale! 
No smoke from her flue—­and no steam from her pane,
There once she watch’d heaven, fearing God and the rain—­
Or gaz’d o’er her bleach-field so fairly engross’d,
Till the lines wander’d idle from pillar to post! 
Ah, where are the playful young pinners—­ah, where
The harlequin quilts that cut capers in air—­
The brisk waltzing stockings—­the white and the black,
That danced on the tight-rope, or swung on the slack—­
The light sylph-like garments, so tenderly pinn’d,
That blew into shape, and embodied the wind! 
There was white on the grass—­there was white on the spray—­
Her garden—­it looked like a garden of May! 
But now all is dark—­not a shirt’s on a shrub—­
You’ve ruin’d her prospects in life, Mr. Scrub! 
You’ve ruin’d her custom—­now families drop her—­
From her silver reduc’d—­nay, reduc’d from her copper! 
The last of her washing is done at her eye,
One poor little kerchief that never gets dry! 
From mere lack of linen she can’t lay a cloth,
And boils neither barley nor alkaline broth,—­
But her children come round her as victuals grow scant,
And recall, with foul faces, the source of their want—­
When she thinks of their poor little mouths to be fed,
And then thinks of her trade that is utterly dead,
And even its pearlashes laid in the grave—­
Whilst her tub is a dry rotting, stave after stave,
And the greatest of Coopers, ev’n he that they dub
Sir Astley, can’t bind up her heart or her tub,—­
Need you wonder she curses your bones, Mr. Scrub! 
Need you wonder, when steam has depriv’d her of bread,
If she prays that the evil may visit your head—­
Nay, scald all the heads of your Washing Committee,—­
If she wishes you all the soot blacks of the city—­
In short, not to mention all plagues without number,
If she wishes you all in the Wash at the Humber!

Ah, perhaps, in some moment of drowth and despair,
When her linen got scarce, and her washing grew rare—­
When the sum of her suds might be summ’d in a bowl,
And the rusty cold iron quite enter’d her soul—­
When, perhaps, the last glance of her wandering eye
Had caught “the Cock Laundresses’ Coach” going by,
Or her lines that hung idle, to waste the fine weather,
And she thought of her wrongs and her rights both together,
In a lather of passion that froth’d as it rose,
Too angry for grammar, too lofty for prose,
On her sheet—­if a sheet were still left her—­to write,
Some remonstrance like this then, perchance, saw the light—­

LETTER OF REMONSTRANCE

FROM BRIDGET JONES

TO THE NOBLEMEN AND GENTLEMEN FORMING THE WASHING COMMITTEE.