Original Penny Readings: A Series of Short Sketches

I have heard an old workman say how many bricks he’d lay in a day in his best times, and it was a precious many; and I’ve seen old Johnny Mawley lay ’em too, and he’d have been just the chap to suit some of our London men, who look sour at you if you lay into the work tight. Old Johnny used to build little walls and pigsties down in Lincolnshire, and had his boy, young Johnny, with him. There the old chap would be tapping and pottering about over his work, with no necessity for him to stand still till the mortar set at the bottom, for fear of the building giving way or growing top-heavy – there he’d be, with the work getting well set as he went on; for after getting one brick in its place and the mortar cleared off, he’d drawl out very slowly, as he stood looking at his job – “Johnny, lad, wilt thou bring me another brick?” And Johnny used to bring him another brick; and old Johnny would lay it; and work never got scarce through him.

Men are so precious frightened of interfering with one another. I s’pose it’s all right; but it seems so queer for the plasterer to knock off because a bit of beading wants nailing on or taking off, and the carpenter has to be fetched to do it, when half a dozen taps of the hammer would have set all right. Bricklayer’s setting a stove, and he can’t turn a screw, but must have the smith; whilst the carpenter knocks off because a bit of brick wants chipping out of the wall; and so they go on; and so I go on grumbling at it, and fault-finding. But the most I grumble at is this – the number of public-houses there is about London waiting with their easily-swinging doors to trap men. There’s no occasion to knock; just lean against the door, and open it comes; and there’s the grandly fitted-up place, and a smart barman or barmaid to wait on you, and all so nice, and attractive, and sticky, that there’s no getting away again; so that it seems like one of those catch-’em-alives as the fellows used to sell about the streets – and we poor people the flies.

Nice trade that must be, and paying; to see the glitter and gloss they puts on, and the showy places they build in the most miserable spots – gilt, and paint, and gas, and all in style. And then the boards and notices! “Double brown stout, 3 pence per pot in your own jugs; sparkling champagne ales; Devonshire cider; cordial gin, and compounds; Jamaica rum;” while at one place there was a chap had up in his window “Cwrw o’ Cymru,” which must be an uncommon nice drink, I should think; but I never had any of it, whatever it is. But how one fellow does tempt another into these places, and how the money does go there – money that ought to be taken home; and it isn’t like any other kind of business: say you want a coffee-shop, or a baker’s, you’ll have two or three streets, perhaps, to go down to find one; but there’s always a public at the corner all ready. And, you see, with some men it is like it was with a mate of mine – Fred Brown – easy-going, good-hearted chap.

“Come and have half a pint, Fred,” one’d say to him; and then Fred would shake his head, and be going on, till they began to banter him a bit, when he’d go in and have his half-pint same as lots of us do, and no great harm neither; but then this beer used to make him thirsty for more, and then more, and more, when the end of it used to be that what with treating, and one thing and another, Fred used to go home less seven or eight shillings in his pocket, and all of a stagger, to make his wife miserable, and the little things of children stare to see him look such a brute.

I lost sight of the poor chap for about five years; and then, when we met, I shouldn’t have known him if he hadn’t spoken in a rough, husky voice, while his face looked bloated and pasty.

“Can’t help it, mate,” he’d say. “Can’t eat now, and if it warn’t for the drop o’ drink I couldn’t live.”

Strange words them for a young man of five-and-thirty; but I believe they were true, and he almost lived upon beer and gin. But I thought it couldn’t last long, and living as I did close by him, and often dropping into his miserable room, I knew how matters went with him; and at last he was down and unable to go to work.

Fortunately for him, in spite of all trouble, his wife had kept the club money paid up, or they would have been in a queer fix, for they were proper badly off, as you could see at a glance when you went in: ragged scrap or two of carpet, half worn-out chairs, ricketty table, and very dirty-looking old bedstead in the same room, while where his poor wife and children managed to creep of nights I don’t know. Second floor back room it was, and when I got up there his wife made me a sign not to make a noise, for he was asleep; and she was doing all she could to hush the baby in her arms.

Poor woman! only a few years ago healthy, bright-eyed, and good-looking; but now only half-dressed, sunken-cheeked, and pale, as numbers of other poor neglected wives we see every day in the streets. Two more children were playing on the floor, while another lay with arms round its father’s neck, and there, just peeping at me above Fred’s rough black whiskers, were the two bright eyes.

I hadn’t been there long before he woke; and then in that half-hour that followed I saw sorrow, misery, and horrors enough to make any man thoughtful for the rest of his life. A strong, able workman, with his mind completely overthrown by drink, imagining all sorts of strange creatures were in the room and thronging about his bed, while every time he recognised those about him came the constant demand for drink – for the stuff that had brought him down to what he was. His poor wife was that beat out, that I promised to come back and sit up with him that night, so that she could go and lie down at a neighbour’s; and about half-past nine I went back, and soon after there I was alone with poor Fred, and him lying in a sort of dose.

It’s not a nice thing to do, sitting up, in any case, for you get creepy, and nervous, and fidgetty; but when it’s with a man who is off his mind, why, it’s ten times worse; and there I sat with my eyes fixed upon the bed, hour after hour, half afraid lest the poor fellow should get out, or be up to any mad tricks.

I suppose it was about two o’clock, and when all was about still in the streets – not even the rumble of a cab to be heard – when somehow or another things seemed to get misty and dim; the bed seemed to be rising and falling, while poor Fred’s head was as if it had swelled up, and kept coming closer to me, and then went back; and then I could see nothing at all.

I woke up with a start, and a horrible feeling on me that there was something wrong; then came the sound of trampling overhead, while at the same moment the light gave a flickering leap, and went out.

I knew the matches were on the table, and after knocking over something I found them lying open; but it was the barley-water jug I had upset, and the matches were dripping wet. Trembling and confused, I stood for a moment not knowing what to do, and then felt my way towards the bed, with the horrid dread upon me that poor Fred might spring at me and strangle me in the dark. Something seemed to tell me that he wasn’t in the bed, and therefore I expected he would be crouching down and waiting to spring at me; and in my fancy I thought I could see it all – the struggle for the mastery, and him getting me down, so that I could not cry for help.

The confusion must have had something to do with it; but at all events there was I quite unnerved and shaken, as I lightly touched the bed and found all the clothes in a heap; while further search showed me that there was no one there. Then I heard again the trampling noise overhead and hurried towards the door, with both hands stretched out; when, in the dark, one went on either side of the open door, and I struck my forehead a violent blow. There was no time, though, to mind that, for I knew something was wrong upstairs, and that Fred must be at the bottom of it; so, hurrying up, I was soon at the door of the back attic, where, though it was shut, I heard enough to make me shove it open with my shoulder and dash in; for a sound came out as of two savage beasts worrying each other, and then, by the dim light from the open window, I could see two men scuffling upon the floor, while a woman sat on the bed crouched up, and holding a baby to her breast – evidently too frightened to move.

As I dashed in, one of the men leaped up, and was through the window in a moment; and then, on going quickly up and leaning out, I could see it was Fred, standing right upon the parapet above the lead gutter, when my heart seemed to quite stand still, as I leaned there, expecting every moment to see the poor fellow fall on to the flags beneath – four stories; for he would have gone right into the basement yard at the back.

Just then some one touched me; and looking sharp round, there was the scared face of the lodger, and he whispered, “He was a-trying to get out, when I woke up and seized him. He’s a’most choked me.”

That was a strange, wild time, as I stood there wondering what was best to be done; and do what I would I could hardly summon up the courage to go after him, though I knew it was only through my neglect that he had escaped from his room, and therefore I was bound to do something.

I tried calling him at first; but the only effect that had was to make him begin muttering and walking backwards and forwards upon that giddy parapet, so that it quite chilled one’s blood; for, though used enough to scaffolds at proper time and place, there was something horrid in engaging in a struggle with one who was no better than a madman, on such a roof as this.

But I did not stop thinking, or I should never have done what I did, which was to get out into the gutter and walk cautiously up to the poor fellow.

There – it took only a moment or two – not more, and then he bounded on to me, and we too were struggling together and rocking backwards and forwards all those feet above the ground, with certain death on one side if I slipped, or he proved too strong for me. Now we swayed this way, now that, and wet with the sweat of terror, I could feel myself weaker every moment; and the very thought of what would come at last was too horrid to bear. Once I got him back against the sloping roof, and my spirits revived; but the next moment he leaped up, as though of watch-spring, and had me down on my back upon the stone parapet, and head and shoulders over the horrid pit beneath.

I could not cry out, but felt tongue and lips parched, while, with the strength of despair, I clutched his neck, and gazed with startled looks into his wild, glowering, half-shut eyes. He was muttering and talking the whole time, and every moment as I grew weaker, I could feel that I was being forced over the parapet. How many seconds it took I can’t say, but it seemed to me like an hour till the time when I felt that all hope was past, and I shut my eyes that I might not see myself fall. There seemed no hope – nothing but death before me, as I lay there, with my flesh seeming to creep, and me unable to give a cry for help.

All at once, though, the clutch upon me grew feeble; then it ceased altogether; and I saw poor Fred dragged away backwards; but it was some few moments before I dared try to move, when, shivering in every limb, I rolled myself off the stone parapet, and lay in a half swoon in the gutter.

But the danger was over now; for two of the lodgers had dragged the poor fellow back into the attic by his legs, and after a sharp struggle he was securely tied down to the bed; but it was some time before I could work on the top of a house again without getting nervous and upset.

Chapter Ten.

Dining with Cabby

“Where to dine at any time,” says the advertisement, as though such a thing as money was quite out of the question, and so many men did not depend upon the hospitality of their old friend Duke Humphrey. Spite of cattle disease and trichine terrors, the human stomach – be it beneath an educated brain, or appertaining to Bill Sykes, of the Somers Town Brill – the human stomach will act upon the mind, and cause it to long after the flesh-pots. Il faut manger– as a matter of course, the more moderately the better! and as the Spartans held up the drunken Helot for their youth to shun, why do we not have a double-barrelled statue of Banting erected in our streets – a “look on this picture and on this” style of article, showing the beauties of temperance and moderation – the keeping a tight rein upon gastronomic desires, as opposed to gluttony and feasting.

When you can dine, how many temptations are offered, as, urged on by the vacuum which, above all, fond Nature abhors, you stand chinking your coin and considering. You are in London, say; and you stand and ponder. Club? No. Invites? Not one. Where shall it be – at the first-class hotel or the shilling ordinary? Fish with Simpson? Whitebait with Lovegrove? With Bibra? With Rudkin? A steak at the Cock? A snack at the Rainbow? Sawyer! Sawyer! Suggestive of snags and America, and tremendous gorges? Shall it be the London? Shall we mount above the great stationer’s – the Partridge and Cozens – suggestive names for a hungry man – impulsive as to the first, and making him think of a cozy dinner after a long tramp in the stubble – checking as to the second. “Call me cousin, but do not cozen me,” says somebody somewhere, and most likely the quotation is not correct, but then we hunger and are athirst. No; we will dine in London, but not in “The London.” Westward, ho! Strand, Circus, Quadrant, up the great street where rent is said to swallow the tradesman’s profit; where the throng is great in the season, while out of the season the dog-fancier pockets his pups, and migrates to the far east. Now down this street to the left.

The student of human nature is like the proverbial traveller – he sees strange things; and, what is more, he gets into queer company. To study human nature in its happiest moments, study it over its dinner – be it the three courses and a dessert, preceded by removes, partaken of in Belgravia, Berkleyria, or Transgibbetia; the public feed at a great tavern, with a real MP in the chair, and all the delicacies of the season upon the table, with toasts, speeches, cheers, reporters, and a long and particular account to follow in the morning paper; the dinner at the club, à la Sprouts – a nubbly potato from a can, peppered with gingery dust; the meal brought in a basin, “kivered” with a plate, tied up in a blue cotton “wipe,” and partaken of perchance upon the bricks waiting for piling in father’s hod when he has had his “wittles”; or the three-halfpenny saveloy and “penny buster,” forming in combination the delicacy popularly known as a “dustman’s sandwich,” and said, in connection with porter, to form a large portion of that gentleman’s sustenance; each, every, either of these dinners gives a certain glow to the countenance of the recipient and undoubtedly it will be found that human nature will be at its best about feeding-time.

Listen, then, and know all ye of the softer sex; and if you want anything out of this same human nature, wait till the corn is planted, and then look out for your harvest.

Knowing all this, and how mollifying is the influence of food, we should prefer the interval following his last anthropophagia in our visit to the cannibal; and, therefore, urged by a desire to see our enemy of the badge at his best, we walk down “this street to the left,” and somewhere about half-way down we find a perennial fountain in the shape of an iron post with a hole in its side by which to wind it up. There are some squat, tubby-looking little pails in a row; while close by stands a shiny-hatted straw-bit besprinkled Triton blowing his pipe. The water looks cool and limpid, but hard by is the gin – a trap within an open door. Gin and water – a potent mixture; but in this case the master takes the gin, and the horse the water. The horses look hot and stuffy this sunshiny day, as they stand with their cabs in a row down the long street, nose-bagged and contemplative, but they evidently find considerable enjoyment in banging their chaff-holding receptacles against the back of the cab in front, or resting them upon spring or wheel.

But where are the drivers – the supplanters of the Jehu, the jarvey of hackney-coach days – the men who place a bit in the mouths of their steeds, but prefer a sup in their own – the men who guide and rein them in their course and check the prancings of their hoofs – where are they? At their best. Cabby dineth! Dine we with him.

Up this shady little street, and into this shady shop – none the cooler for it though; while phew! the steam! Six, ten, fifteen hams in the window; legs, loins, shoulders, all sorts of mutton; beef joints by the dozen; and all hanging ready for to-morrow’s consumption. And to-day’s?

“This way, sir; room in that box to the left.”

We enter that box to the left, and find the “room” very small, and also that we are elbowed by the people “Pegging away” at their dinner; while, if we closed our eyes for a moment, we should be ready to take oath that we were neither in the shop of Rimmel, Hendrie, nor Atkinson. But, sinking the sentimental, and setting aside the too great smell of kitchen when a hot cinder has quenched its glow in the dripping-pan, the odour is not so very bad, and we prepare to eat.

Now, we have eaten in a variety of places in our time, and with the eating we have drunk – quaffing the regal wine of Champagne in an ex-palace – that is to say, emptied glasses of what was said to be genuine Clicquot; but we dare not venture to assert that it was not gooseberry. Reversing Mr Hullah’s legend, “per scalam ascendimus,” we have dined off an Abernethy biscuit and a “penn’orth” of shrimps in a recess of Waterloo Bridge – a redbait dinner in a granite hall, with a view of the river both ways, equalling or excelling that from Lovegrove’s; and, therefore, we were not above asking the opinion of friends right and left as to the quality of the joints on cut.

“Try the beef, guv’ner,” says a gentleman in the style of head-dress known as a “deerstalker,” which he wore while he trowelled his dinner into his mouth with the blade of a very wide knife. “Try the beef, guv’ner – the weal and ’am won’t do. Somethin’s turned, either the weal or my stummick.”

A gentleman in a great-coat on my right suggests “line o’ mutton,” while a very red-nosed man in front – red-nosed, but the very antithesis of the holy Stiggins – quotes beefsteak pudding; but we like the look of the beef proposer, and the sound of the dish; so, forgetful of rinder and every other pest, we seek to gain the attention of the hot nymph in waiting. No easy task, though, for the maiden, evidently own sister of the Polly who captivated Smallweed, junior, is in all directions in the space of a few seconds.

In luck though at last, and we announce that we will take a plate of beef – roast.

“And taters?”

“And taters.”

“And brockylow?”

“And brockylow.”

“Stout?”

“Stout’s hard,” hints our beefy friend, and we decide upon “half-and-half.”

Five minutes after we are served with a prime plate off some prime ribs of beef, three fine potatoes in their brown jackets, grinning all over, and looking temptingly mealy-mouthed; a tolerably fine head of broccoli that would suggest “cathoppers and grassipillars” were the season more advanced, while even now one cannot help shuddering and thinking of Fenianism and slugs; “a bread;” and, lastly, the beer supposed to be soft, or rather not hard.

Now, if the place had been ventilated, twenty degrees cooler, free from steam, smell, and tobacco smoke; it the knives had been what the cloth should have been, and what the salt was not; if my neighbours had not picked their teeth with their forks; if the mustard-pot had had no pipe ashes in its jaundiced throat; if the pint pots had not made the tables quite so gum-ringed; and lastly, and very briefly, if Cabby himself had been a little less demonstrative in his eating, and a little more guarded in his conversation: why, we could have made a very satisfactory dinner. But as the few above-mentioned trifles, and a mangy dog at our feet, militated against our getting a comfortable meal, why, the result was not quite so well as might be expected.

The trade going on was fast and furious. Cabbies went out and Cabbies came in; joint after joint was devoured, and the naked bones lay on the steaming pewter desert like those of the vulture-torn camel in far Araby. Cabby was certainly here at his best – the bow was unstrung, and he seemed to be enjoying himself. He seemed rather Indian – Red Indian – in his eating; laying in a good store, as though doubtful when time or money would again be propitious for a hearty meal; while jokes flew about – many at the expense of unwary fares and swells, for whom, as a rule, Cabby seemed to entertain a profound contempt.

We were not there long, but the topics of the day were settled again and again in the most satisfactory of ways, though probably not in accordance with the ideas of our statesmen. Mr Sothern was pitied; and gin, rum, whisky, and brandy declared the only table spirits. Fenianism was stigmatised as “rowdy”; Jamaica turned inside out; and the Parliamentary campaign mapped down. We noted what we could while finishing our “toke”; but we were upon enemies’ ground; and who knows the fate of spies discovered amid the freemasonry of Cabland. We thought of all this, and did not so much as point a pencil within the sacred precincts; but we recollected what we could – not much, though, for after dinner the digestive organs form a combination against those devoted to thinking. We came, however, to the conclusion that Cabby loves good living – bodily, if not morally; and we fear that he possesses the amiable weakness that exists to so large an extent amongst the London poor – namely, that of living well to-day, and letting to-morrow take care of itself. To-morrow may be a bad day, and then he goes not to his club; but contents himself with a “small German” upon his box; or a kidney-pie at the corner; or lower still, perhaps, he may have but a mealy potato from a can, or a “penn’orth” of peas-pudding on a scrap of a newspaper, the aroma of whose ink imparts no improved flavour. But so it is throughout the world, Earth’s creatures remembering that on the blackest day there is another side to the cloud, and that sooner or later the sun will shine again for rich and poor alike.

Cabby says luck’s sure to turn sometime; so he munches his potato on or in his cab; goes “tic” for a screw of tobacco, for which he seldom finds the screw on too tightly, and then smokes and waits patiently for a fare. When he is down on his luck, and has nothing else to live upon, he exists upon Hope; and she deals as gently with the rough-clothed, battle-scarred veteran of the streets as with the Hon Charley Fitzgauntlet of the Blues, when Fortune frowns and he has gambled away half his patrimony at the Derby. But if Cabby makes himself comfortable at times, surely he is not much to be blamed, for this world is not peopled with abstemious Dr Franklins, and when Cabby has the money in his pocket, and smells a good dinner, who can blame him that he eats, pays, and then waits for the next? Perhaps it comes punctually, perhaps it does not; still he waits, as Trotty Veck did, for his jobs; the bells cried, “Job coming soon, Toby;” and it always did come sooner or later. And so, like Toby’s, Cabby’s job comes sooner or later, and then he does as wiser men do – eats, drinks, and is merry, “quaffing amber draughts from the pearly pewter’s foam” – draughts that make glad his heart, and sometimes unsteady his hand. But cab-horses are not given to run away – we have sometimes wished they were – that is, if they would keep in the right direction. Still it is very rarely that Cabby meets with a mishap through careless driving. Accidents he does have, ’tis true; but, considered in relation to the thousands of miles traversed, their paucity is wonderful.

“But they’re a shocking set, my dear; lazy, good-for-nothing creatures – cheating, story-telling fellows. Whatever you do, take the man’s number before you enter his cab.”

So says Mrs British Matron. But this is not all true. Cabby can cheat, lie, and be good for nothing; but he has his honest phase; and, poor fellow, he has a hard time of it.

The wind whistles down the street on a dark night; the rain or sleet drives in cutting clouds round the corners; and Dives’ son and daughter, to return from dinner or party, send for a cab. The first Cabby has been sitting for a couple of hours fareless upon his box, and as his half-frozen Rosinante is drawn up at the door of the well-lit house, Cabby stiffly descends, and begins to dance upon the pavement, and beat warmth into his breast after the popular mode of “Two thieves whopping a rascal.”