James Greenwood - The True History of a Little Ragamuffin

Ripston said it was his “motter” too; and so we went to a soup-shop in Long Acre, and all made a very hearty dinner—and there then being enough in hand for supper, and sixpence over, Mouldy kindly proposed that that should be spent in buying me a pair of boots; and Ripston agreeing, in the course of the afternoon we took a stroll to Petticoat Lane, and for the sixpence bought a largish, but very decent pair of high-lows.

It was my original intention to have presented the reader with a day-by-day chronicle of my career as a market prowler; indeed, to this end I had covered at least fifty sides of writing-paper, and there they now lie on my table, cancelled, and doomed to be converted into pipe-lights, for which their crisp, smooth nature admirably adapts them.

And I believe the reader will agree with me, when he is made acquainted with the reason, that these fifty pages are very properly abandoned. The fact is, each page, representing a day, is so much like another, that, except for trifling differences, there is no telling this from that, and, goodness knows, I have enough to tell without boring the reader by insipid repetitions. The days of my market prowling were curiously alike; at least, the weeks were. From Monday morning until Saturday we rose, in the morning by daybreak, made our way to Covent Garden, perambulated the self-same beats in search of the selfsame jobs, and carried the same sort of loads; or, trade being slack, we pilfered from the selfsame baskets, and carried the result of our depredations to the old rascal that lived in Coal Yard, Drury Lane, and afterwards dined according to the quality of our hick. As Mouldy had truly observed from the beginning, “sometimes it ran as high as roast pork, and sometimes it was not a lump of bread from mornin’ till night.” Still, and as I before remarked, come Saturday, to review the luck of the week would be to find that there was scarcely a penny’s difference between it and the week before—the same amount of roast pork or its equivalent, the same dearth of bread, the same amount of cane at the hands of the market beadle, the same average of nights with and without straw in our van.

In a worldly sense, an experience of five months as the partner of Mouldy and Co. found me pretty much as when I started. As the reader will perhaps remember, my stock of wearing apparel at the last-mentioned time was not extensive; consisting, indeed, of one pair of trousers, one shirt, and a ragged old jacket. Now, I still had a shirt and trousers; and the jacket falling to pieces, its place was supplied by a coat—not much of a coat, although there was a great deal of it; but still, quite as good as the jacket. As at starting, I was shoeless, the sixpenny high-lows being worn off my feet, and the profits proving insufficient to warrant a renewal of such luxuries—a circumstance highly significant, as showing how seldom we lighted on elevenpenny days.

It was about the middle of May when I joined Mouldy and Ripston; and now, with the reader’s permission, we will let those fifty pages I was speaking of lie undisturbed, and make a skip to October of the same year. Apart from business, little had happened to me worth recording. In the course of the five months I went seven or eight times to the “gaff” in Shoreditch, and enjoyed it very much. Once I was locked up all night at Bow Street station-house, on suspicion of having stolen a little dog. It was a little slate-coloured dog, with long hair hanging over its eyes. I never had a thought of stealing it. It followed me one Saturday from Covent Garden down to the arches, and rather than turn it away we gave it a lodging in our van that night and all the next day—which was Sunday, and always a pinching time with us—and gave it some of our bread. The police found it in our van when they came round that Sunday night, and being informed who brought it there, hauled me off there and then, and no doubt I should have been sent to prison had not Ripston—between whom and myself there had sprung up the fastest friendship—bestirred himself in the matter; and, ascertaining to whom the dog belonged, went boldly to the house—a great house it was, in one of the west-end squares—and gaining admittance by saying he had “come concerning that little dog,” told the lady all about it from first to last, which not only led to my honourable acquittal, but to my receiving a reward from the lady of five shillings. Two half-crowns! Throughout our whole partnership, never had we at one time possessed nearly as much money. It was decided that we should enjoy ourselves on it. We dined at the cookshop, having veal and bacon and green peas for dinner, and half a pint of beer each when we came out, which was rash, inasmuch as, not being used to it, it excited us to such a pitch of extravagant jollity, that nothing would suit but that we must take the roof of the twopenny omnibus to Shoreditch, Ripston and Mouldy smoking a three-halfpenny cigar each, and Mouldy being so ill that we were all turned out of the “gaff” before the piece was half over, and had to walk home, penniless, in the rain.

One morning—this was about five weeks after I ran away from home—I met a man in the market who lived somewhere near Fryingpan Alley, and who knew my father. I had seen them together dozens of times. As soon as he saw me, he made a run at me, and it was only by dodging round a cabbage-waggon that I was able to avoid him. Knowing that my father sometimes worked in the market, I always kept a good look-out, assisted by my partners, who, from my description, were well aware of the sort of man my father was.

On the morning following that on which I encountered the man, however, we all kept our eyes open sharper even than in ordinary, and, as it turned out, not unnecessarily. About seven o’clock, Mouldy, who though engaged on a job of summer cabbages, was vigilantly on the look-out for the enemy, suddenly uttered a warning whistle, and directed my attention towards two individuals coming from the fruit-market.

In an instant I recognised them—the man who the day before had so nearly caught me, and my father. He was very white, as was invariably the case when he was in a great passion, and he carried under his arm an old donkey-whip, which, as he had no donkey of his own, I might fairly assume he had borrowed of a friend for the occasion.

He was looking about him very eagerly, and it unfortunately happened that, owing to the manner of his approach, if I ran away, it would be right across the open vegetable-market, and he could not fail to see me. There seemed no escape for me; and as, hiding behind Ripston, I caught another glance at his pale face, my knees trembled and my lips tingled.

“He’ll have me, Rip; he’s sure to ketch me. Oh, s’welp me, Rip! on’y look at him and that whip.”

Without replying, Ripston began to step back, giving me a dig with his elbow to do the same while I remained in his rear. In this manner we approached a great pile of empty gooseberry-sieves; and getting to the back of the pile Ripston pulled away half a dozen, signed for me to squeeze myself into the hole thus made, and, when this was accomplished, he piled back the baskets a-top of me, and took his seat on the edge of a bottom one. And barely was my hiding completed when, as I lay crouched in my hole, I heard my father’s voice—

“He won’t run agin for one while if I do ketch him. Stay a minnit; let’s ask this feller if he has seen him; he seems like one of his own kidney.”

So saying, he came straight up to Ripston, who was coolly scraping and munching a carrot.

“I say, Jack,” said my father, “d’ye happen to have seen a kid in a old corderoy jacket and trowsis lurkin’ about the market this mornin?—kid about so high?”