James Greenwood - The True History of a Little Ragamuffin

The amount of ingenuity expended by me towards keeping that child quiet might, properly applied, have served for the invention of the steam-engine or the electric telegraph. “Would she go out a-walking with her Jimmy?” Sometimes, especially if it were a moonlight night, she would agree. Of course, it was only make-believe going a-walking; but she wasn’t to know that. We had to dress, as though I meant it. There used to hang up behind the door an old black crape bonnet of Mrs. Burke’s, and this I used to tie on her head, wrapping my jacket round her for a cloak. My walking costume consisted solely in an old hairy cap of my father’s, reserved and hidden between the bed and the bedstead for the purpose. It was very bad on cold nights to paddle about the uncarpeted floor in this way; but there was no help for it: to have put my trousers on would have jeopardised the success of the scheme.

When we were dressed and ready to start, an imaginary Mrs. Burke would address me through the door, bidding me take that dear baby for a nice walk, and show her the shop where they sold such beautiful sugar-sticks; and to this I would dutifully reply that I was quite ready, and meant to start immediately. Then we would start; but, for our lives, couldn’t find the room door. This piece of strategy was the soul of the performance. We couldn’t find the door, try our hardest. We wanted to get out to go and buy that sugar-stick, and we couldn’t, because that wicked door was hiding. The big crape bonnet was invaluable in carrying out the cheat, its black sides rising like walls on either side of her face, and serving the purpose of “blinkers,” so that her vision was limited to the strictly straightforward, and side-glancing rendered impossible. The luck that attended this manoeuvre was of three qualities. Under the influence of the first quality, she would in the course of half-an-hour or so, drop off to sleep in my arms, and remain so while I stealthly slid into bed with her; (it was in hopes of this result that I refrained from putting on my trousers before we set out walking.) If my luck was but middling, she would grow so cold and tired as to ask to be put into bed; or she would be brought to see the feasibility of my suggestion that we had better both lie down and watch the window till the naughty door came back again. The worst of this arrangement was, that she frequently would lie still long enough only for us both to become warm and comfortable, and then to insist on going a-walking again. The worst luck of all was, when she would not go a-walking with her Jimmy; when she turned a deaf ear to promises of sugar-sticks to-morrow; when my imitations of cats and dogs, and donkeys and mad bullocks, instead of inducing her silent wonder and admiration, drove her frantic from terror, and she would have more “bar.” “Bar” was her word for bread and butter, and “Bar! bar! bar!” was her only answer to everything I could say.

At such times my stepmother would hammer at the wall with a stick.

“What are you doin’, wid the dear child, you young scoundhrill?”

“She wants more ‘bar.’”

“And is it too great a throuble for ye to get up and get her some, lazy-bones?”

“How can I? There ain’t none.”

“How do ye mane, ain’t none?”

“She’s ate it all. Can’t you hear what she keeps hollerin’?”

“Ate it all, you little liar! What! You’ve been up to your hoggish tricks ’agin, have you? and shtole it all away from the little craythur. Well, you’d betther make her quiet. You know what you’ll get if you bring me in there.”

She was right. I did know “what I should get,” having had it so often; and, with tears in my eyes when it came to this, I would beg of Polly to be quiet. Not she. She had heard mammy’s voice, and grew more rampagious than ever. Then, with my heart in my mouth, I would presently hear a half-aloud threat from the next room, and a shuffling of hasty feet, and a scrambling at the lock of the door, and, raging like an angry cat, in would rush my stepmother with nothing on but her bed-gown and frilled nightcap. Without a moment’s warning, she would fall on me and pummel my unprotected body without mercy; she would wring my head about and knead her bony fists about my sides, till my breath was used up and I could not cry out. My father never knew the extent of the punishment I suffered on these occasions, for all the while she was paying into me, she was clacking in her loudest voice, not about how she was serving me, but how she would serve me if I ever ate away the baby’s food again.

“Don’t talk about it; let him have it, the greedy warmint,” my father would cry out, as he lay hearing all the threatening, and none of the spanking. “You lets him off too easy, and that’s where he takes advantage of you.”

“It’s little more timpting I can bear before I’ll do it,” she would answer; “so take care, my fine fellow.” And then, when she returned to her own room, she would say, “It’s very well to talk of bating him, Jim; but it’s best left alone, you may depind. If we can’t rule him by kindness, we can’t rule him at all. You may bate and bate; but two divils ’ll come in at the gate you bate one out of.”

Strangely enough, soon as ever I had taken my whacking and Mrs. Burke had betaken herself to her own apartment, Polly would cuddle down and be as good as gold, and compose herself to sleep, as though nothing was the matter. Of course, there was nothing objectionable in this as far as it went; the worst of it was, that it really looked as though I could keep her quiet if I liked. Indeed, when at last I mustered courage enough to complain to my father, he told me so.

“I ain’t got no pity for you,” said he; “an obstinate little beggar like wot you are deserves all he gets and a good deal more.”

“Well,” I answered, (this was on a morning following a whacking which made my ribs feel as though the skin was all grazed off them,) “she ain’t a-goin’ to knock me about much longer.”

“Ain’t she, though?” was my father’s scornful reply. “Why ain’t she?”

“When I grow a bit bigger I’ll show her,” I vengefully replied.

My father stared at me, and then laughed.

“If I was big enough,” continued I, encouraged by the laugh, “I’d punch her nose! I’d kick her legs till she didn’t have a bit to stand on. I hate her.”

My father laughed again, and appeared to have some little trouble in composing his countenance to a proper expression of sternness.

“Come, don’t you jaw me in that way, so I tell you; because it ain’t my place to stand and hear it,” said he.

“She tells you lies—dozens of lies,” I further continued; and it coming into my mind what he had said about the hardships of carrying a child about, I thought I might make capital of it. “I never gets no play,” said I. “I’m at work from the time I get up till I go to bed, and yet she won’t leave me alone.”

“How d’ye mean at work?”

“Why, nursing Polly and”—

“Well, and what if you do mind the kid?” interrupted he. “The kid can’t mind itself, can she, you hard-hearted young wagabone? Do you want to loll about and live on me and yer mother? Why, I’d be ashamed on it if I was as big as you.”

“I wish I could get a job of work to go to,” said I, earnestly.

“ You wish!” sneered he. “Jobs of work don’t come a-knocking at people’s doors and a-asking to be done. If you wanted a job of work you’d go and look arter it.”

“Where, father?” I asked eagerly.

“Where? why, anywhere,” replied he, warming with the subject. “Hain’t there the markets? Why, when I goes to the ’gate (Billingsgate) or the garden (Covent Garden) as early as four and five o’clock, when you are snoring in bed, I sees boys which, in pint o’ size you’d make two of, dodgin’ about ’bliged to yearn a penny before they can get a cup of coffee to warm ’em.”