James Greenwood - The True History of a Little Ragamuffin

“I wish there was no mothers,” said Jerry; “what’s the good on ’em? They on’y whack yer, and get yer into rows when your father comes home. Anybody as is hard up for a mother can have mine, and jolly welcome. I wish she would die.”

“P’r’aps she will soon, Jerry,” I replied, by way of comforting the poor fellow.

“She’d better,” said Jerry, with threatening brows.

“Why had she better, Jerry?”

“Never mind why. You’ll know why, one of these days, and so will all the jolly lot on yer as lives in Fryingpan Alley. You know Guy Fox, don’t yer? Him as comes about on the fift of Nowember?”

“Yes, yes, Jerry, I know.”

“Werry well, then. Don’t you ask any more questions, ’cos it’s a secret.”

“Do tell us, Jerry! Do tell us, and you shall have another bite; up to here, see!”—and I partitioned off a big bit of the apple with my fingers and thumb for Jerry to bite.

“No, not up to there, nor not if you gives me the lot,” replied Jerry, eyeing the little apple contemptuously; “why, it’s ever such a secret. It ’ud make you funk so, that you’d be afeared to shut your eyes when you went to bed. I might let you into it, if you stood a baked tatur; and that ’ud be like chucking it away.”

Five minutes after, Jerry and I were seated on the threshold of a dark warehouse doorway, (it was evening,) in Red Lion Street; and while he discussed the baked potato, he revealed to me the particulars of his terrible secret

“I’m a savin’ up,” whispered he. “I’ve got as high- as fippence. Leastways, when I ses fip-pence, it’s fivepen’orth; so it’s all the same.”

“Fivepen’orth of what, Jerry?”

“Fireworks,” replied Jerry, in the lowest of whispers, and with his lips close to my wondering ear. “I’ve got a Roman candle, nine crackers, and a squib. Sky-rockets would be the things; but they’re so jolly dear.”

“Where are they, Jerry? Whereabouts is the Roman candle and the crackers? What are you going to do with ’em, Jerry?”

“They ’re stuffed in the bed—in our old woman’s bed,” replied Jerry, cramming the last piece of hot potato into his mouth, his face assuming a most fiendish expression. “I’m a savin’ up till I buys enough fireworks to fill the jolly old tick quite full. Then I’m goin’ to buy some gunpowder. Then I’m a-goin’ to get up early one morning with my gunpowder, and lay a train under the bedstead, and down the stairs, and out into the street Then I’m a-goin’ on the tramp, dropping my gunpowder, mind yer, all the way as I goes; and when I gets about up to Peckham, I’m a-goin’ to set light to my train; and up ’ll go the old woman over the houses, blowed into little bits.”

Whether Jerry Pape seriously contemplated this diabolical murder, or was merely imposing on me, I cannot, of course, be certain. Most probably the latter. I firmly believed in him at the time, however; and for several nights afterwards lay abed trembling, in the dark, in momentary expectation of a tremendous explosion, and one of the largest “bits” of Mrs. Pape falling down our chimney.

To return, however, to my history.

My mother dying on the Friday, her funeral was fixed to take place on the ensuing Tuesday, that being a slack day at the markets, and therefore suitable to my father’s convenience.

From the time of my mother’s death until the day of her burial, I was so little at home as to be altogether unaware of the preparations that were going on towards that melancholy event. I did not even sleep at home, Mrs. Winkship having considerately placed at my disposal, at her house, the comfortable little crib which her niece Martha had slept in when she was a child. I should even, have missed the sight of mother’s coffin being carried in at Number Nineteen, had not the lady who lived opposite, and with whom I was taking tea, luckily caught sight of it, and, hurriedly catching me up in her arms, stood me on a table before the window that I might look. “See, Jimmy! see!” said she; “unkivered, with black nails; quite a pictur of a coffin I call that, now!”

There was not much fuss about the Fryingpan Alley funerals. The people were buried in a business-like manner, at a business price, and there was no sentimental nonsense about the matter. I think I have said that I knew nothing of the preparation; but this is not quite correct. It happened that I was in Jenkins’s room when the person living in the parlours called up the stairs that here was Mr. Crowl’s man “come to take the measure and presently, hearing a strange step, I peeped out at the door to see what Mr. Crowl’s man was like. I found him to be a dirty-faced man, with hairy arms, and his shirt sleeves tucked above the elbows; and he had a brown paper cap on. He smoked a dirty pipe as high up the stairs as Jenkins’s door; but when Mrs. Jenkins gave him the key of our door, he stuck the end of it into the pipe-bowl, and extinguished the fire, and put the pipe in his waistcoat pocket. He carried a pair of trestles on his shoulder, and observed that he thought he might just as well bring them with him now as to come on purpose to-morrow. He went up by himself, and presently he came down with a square pencil in his mouth and a tape-measure about his neck, conning the “dimensions,” as he called them, and which were figured down on the smooth side of a scrap of dirty sandpaper.

It was an old-established custom in Fryingpan Alley, and all the other courts and alleys thereabout, that when a person died, his female relatives wore the regular sort of mourning attire-black bonnets and shawls, &c.—but his male relations wore nothing of the kind. They followed the body to the grave in their ordinary flannels and fustians, and their only emblem of bereavement was a wisp of black crape round the upper part of the arm, after exactly the same fashion, indeed, as soldiers wear their badges of mourning for any defunct member of the Royal family. Sometimes, in addition to the crape armlet, a bit of the same material would be worn round the cap; but this was considered not at all necessary, and as rather approaching what is known as “toffishness”—as near an approach to it, indeed, as could be by any means tolerated. Had any male dwelling in our alley ventured to turn out in a black coat and trousers, and, to crown all, a tall black hat, he would have been subject to the withering scorn of every inhabitant, and the tall black hat would certainly have been knocked from his head before he had reached Turnmill Street.

And yet it must not be imagined that this prejudice against orthodox mourning attire arises out of brutal-mindedness and contempt of death. It has its origin in “fashion.” It may seem odd to associate so dandy a thing as fashion with costermongerism, but it is quite true that they are closely associated. No man is more anxious “to do the thing to rights” in the matter of clothes than the prosperous barrow-man. At the period of which I am writing, Spitalfields set the fashion, and not a costermonger in London but scrupulously followed its dictates—from the seal-skin cap upon his head to the arrangement of the clinkers in the “ankle-jacks” in which his feet were encased. Fashion in Spitalfields was as capricious as the goddess that sways her sceptre in Regent Street. It was the correct thing for the costermonger, whatever branch of industry he might pursue, to wear round his throat—bunchy, loosely tied, and elegantly careless—a very large, highly-coloured silk pocket-handkerchief. This the costermonger calls a “kingsman.” This season its pattern would be yellow, with a green “bird’s-eye” spot; next season it would be red, with a blue splash; and as the cost of a “kingsman” was about seven-and-sixpence, and as there was nothing to be done with the old-fashioned one but to let the pawnbroker have it for as much as he would lend on it, the annual pecuniary sacrifice in this matter alone was not inconsiderable. As regards waistcoats, if my memory serves me, Spitalfields fashion was not quite so inexorable. So long as it was an ample waistcoat, and profusely and cheerfully “sprigged,” that was enough. His jacket was of flannel, or velveteen, or fustian—it didn’t matter which, so long as the pattern of the buttons was according to the prevailing mode. It was the buttons that stamped the garment. If “plain pearly shankers” were Fashion’s latest edict, to sport glass “blue bells,” or brass buttons of the game-keeping school, impressed with a horse and hounds, a fox’s head, or some other such emblem of the chase, would be to declare yourself a “slow coach” at the very least. Knee-breeches were just going out of fashion when I was a little boy, and “calf-clingers” (that is, trousers made to fit the leg as tight as a worsted stocking,) were “coming in.” Even the hair and whiskers of the costermonger, like that of more civilised folk, used to be governed by fashion. Sometimes “jug-loops,” (the hair brought straight on to the temples, and turned under ,) would be the rage; another season, “terrier-crop” would be the style. There were three fashions for whiskers when I was a child, and they were variously known as “blue-cheek,” (the whisker shaved off, and leaving the cheek blue;) “bacca-pipe” (the whisker curled in tiny ringlets;) and “touzle” (the whisker worn bushy.) “Terrier-crop” and “blue-cheek” had, I recollect, a long run.