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 drought 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 seas of oily black mud. The poet Thomson might have written yesterday--
E’en so, through Brentford town, a town of mud;
while Dr. Johnson adds his weighty testimony, for when a contemporary, a native of Glasgow, was praising Glasgow to him, the Doctor cut his eloquence with the query: ‘Pray, sir, have you ever seen Brentford?’ Here was sarcasm indeed! Happily, however, the Glaswegian had _not_ seen Brentford, and so was not in a position to appreciate the retort. But Boswell, who, ubiquitous man, was of course present, knew, and told the Doctor this was shocking. ‘Why, then, sir,’ rejoined Johnson, ‘_you_ have never seen Brentford!’
Then, when we have all this delightful testimony as to Brentford’s dirt, comes Shenstone, the melancholy poet who ‘found his warmest welcome at an inn,’ to testify as to the character of its inhabitants. ‘No persons,’ says he, ‘more solicitous about the preservation of rank than those who have no rank at all. Observe the humours of a country christening; and you will find no court in Christendom so ceremonious as “the quality” of Brentford.’
Despite these criticisms, it must be acknowledged that Brentford is a town of high interest. Its filthy gasworks, its waterworks, its docks have not sufficed to sweep away the old-fashioned appearance of the place. It may, in fact, be safely said that no other such truly picturesque town as Brentford exists near London. This will not long remain true of it, for, even now, new buildings are here and there taking the place of the old. For one thing, Brentford has a quite remarkable number of old inns, and the great stableyards and courtyards of other old coaching hostelries which themselves have disappeared. This was, in fact, the end of the first stage out of London in the coaching era, and the beginning of the last stage in; and in consequence, as befitted a town on the great highway to the West, had ample accommodation, both for man and beast. One of these old yards, indeed,--Red Lion Inn Yard--is historic, for it is traditionally the spot where Edmund Ironside, the king, was murdered by the Danes in 1016, after he had defeated them here. The most famous, however, of all the Brentford inns, the _Three Pigeons_, was brutally demolished many years ago, although it had associations with Shakespeare and ‘rare’ Ben Jonson. The ‘Tumbledown Dick,’ another vanished hostelry, whose sign was a satire on the nerveless rule and swift overthrow of the Protector’s son, Richard Cromwell, was a well-known house; while the names of some of the old yards--Green Dragon Yard and Catherine Wheel Yard--are reminiscent of once-popular signs.