IX

HISTORY OF HUDGE AND GUDGE

There is, let us say, a certain filthy rookery in Hoxton,
dripping with disease and honeycombed with crime and promiscuity.
There are, let us say, two noble and courageous young men,
of pure intentions and (if you prefer it) noble birth; let us call
them Hudge and Gudge. Hudge, let us say, is of a bustling sort;
he points out that the people must at all costs be got out
of this den; he subscribes and collects money, but he finds
(despite the large financial interests of the Hudges) that the thing
will have to be done on the cheap if it is to be done on the spot.
Her therefore, runs up a row of tall bare tenements like beehives;
and soon has all the poor people bundled into their little
brick cells, which are certainly better than their old quarters,
in so far as they are weather proof, well ventilated and supplied
with clean water. But Gudge has a more delicate nature.
He feels a nameless something lacking in the little brick boxes;
he raises numberless objections; he even assails the celebrated
Hudge Report, with the Gudge Minority Report; and by the end
of a year or so has come to telling Hudge heatedly that the people
were much happier where they were before. As the people preserve
in both places precisely the same air of dazed amiability,
it is very difficult to find out which is right. But at least
one might safely say that no people ever liked stench or starvation
as such, but only some peculiar pleasures en tangled with them.
Not so feels the sensitive Gudge. Long before the final quarrel
(Hudge v. Gudge and Another), Gudge has succeeded in persuading
himself that slums and stinks are really very nice things;