James Greenwood - The True History of a Little Ragamuffin

“Now, look here!” said he; “we don’t want a bushel of words over the bargain. I see now that you are a deserving lad, and we’ll make a rise on our first bid. We’ll give you a shilling for the lot.”

“Too much,” observed Mr. Ike.

“I shan’t take it. Here, take back your sevenpence. I don’t mind throwin’ the stockn’s in—eighteenpence the lot. I wouldn’t take that if I wasn’t so precious hungry.”

The two young gentlemen had continued walking along while we were discussing the matter, and presently they turned down a street leading towards Saffron Hill. Just as I spoke about being so very hungry, we came up to a little, dingy chandler’s shop, not yet shut up, and in the window of which was a cold-boiled cushion of bacon and some loaves of bread.

“It’s only your gammon about being hungry,” observed Mr. Barney.

“Well I hain’t eat a mouthful since seven this mornin’,” I replied. “I don’t know if you call that being hungry.”

“Hungry as all that, and won’t take a shillin’ when it’s offered to him!” said Mr. Ike.

“Ain’t had nothing to eat since seven o’clock this morning!” observed Mr. Barney, halting before the window of the chandler’s shop. “So awful hungry he don’t know what to do, and yet refuses money, a quarter of which would get him a regular blow out! Oh! it’s all crammers—it must be. Why, for about fourpence he might buy half a loaf and a whole lot of that bacon!”

There are few things more tempting to a sharp-set and not high-bred appetite than a plump boiled cold cushion of bacon. This one happened to be a particularly plump cushion, perfect only for a little wedge cut out of it just at the knuckle part. I felt as though I could have eaten every bit of it. I itched to take the shilling, but it did seem a shame to let the boots and stockings go at such a miserable figure. I turned my eyes resolutely away from the bacon!

“I must have eighteenpence,” I said.

“Oh, well! since you want eighteenpence so bad, p’r’aps you’ve got something about you as would tell up to the value of it. Got a handkerchief?”

“No.”

“Got a pocket-knife?”

“No.”

“Got nothing at all in your pockets? Feel.”

“It’s no use feelin’; I ain’t got nothink but jest what you can see—just what’s on my back.”

“Oh, well. I don’t want to know anything about your private affairs, either on your back or off your back. All I know is, that I buy anything that anybody offers me.”

And as the young Jew spoke be looked meaningly up and down at me, from my Scotch cap to my knee-breeches.

“Anything,” repeated he, “I can buy, you know, if it’s to the amount of eighteen shillings—let alone eightpence—if it comes to that. So long as I can see my way to turning an honest penny, it makes no difference to me what I buy—not the least.”

What was Mr. Barney driving at? Did he mean that he would buy my whole suit of clothes, and give me eighteen shillings for it? If I might judge from the wretched price he had given me for my boots and stockings, I could hardly hope so. I would have been glad to sell them for half the money; and it seemed that there could be no mistake about his being willing to buy the lot at some price. How the sale could be accomplished was altogether a puzzler; I only hoped that it might. Of all things—after getting something to eat—it was necessary that I should get out of the tell-tale bottle-green bob-tail and smalls.

“Well, if you’ve a mind to deal you’d better look sharp about it,” said Mr. Barney, rattling the money in his breeches pocket.

“But we—we can’t deal out here.”

“Oh, yes, we can! I’ve reckoned ’em up all but the shirt. I s’pose there is a shirt—isn’t there?”

“Yes; but I ain’t a-goin’ to pull it off out here, so don’t you think it.”

“I didn’t ask you to. All I asked you was to put a price on it,” replied Mr. Barney.

“Haven’t you got a shop or anythink?” I asked.

“Well, not exactly a shop—more of a ware’us, ours is.”

“Ah! let him come home; that’ll be best, Barney,” spoke Mr. Ike.

And so saying, with my stockings in his pocket and my boots tucked under his arm, Mr. Barney and the other young gentleman began walking sharply towards Saffron Hill, while I kept just behind them. Presently, on arriving at the dingiest part of the “Hill,” they paused before a private house, of which Mr. Ike had the key, and in we all three went, along the dark passage, and up a flight of creaking stairs to a back room on the second floor.

“Hold hard! I’ll strike a light,” said Barney.

He did so, and lit the wick of a tin oil-lamp, with a reflector at the back of it, that was nailed against the wall—enabling me to see the sort of place Mr. Barney’s “warehouse” was. It was exactly like a rag-shop, without the bones and bottles, and the brilliant pictures and verses about “Mrs. Saveall and Mrs. Wasteit;” and another, much in vogue at that time, entitled “The Contrast,” in which were pictured a lean and ghastly wretch leaning against a workhouse wall, on the one hand; and on the other, an elegant swell, with rings on his fingers and varnished boots on his toes, lounging on a seat near the Serpentine river in Hyde Park, in company with a splendid female creature, the feathers in whose bonnet alone must have cost a mint of money, and a tremendous run upon that fleet and valuable bird, the ostrich; while the verses under the picture informed you that the gentlemen above pictured were brothers and that the sole reason for the wide difference in their worldly condition was, that one “had boarded his bones and saved his fat,” while the other had been less prudent.

These badges of the regular rag-shop trade were missing from Messrs. Ike and Barney’s establishment; but there were old hats heaped in a corner so high, that the crown of the topmost crushed and battered beaver reached to the ceiling, nearly; while in another corner was a heap of old boots and shoes, blue and mouldy, and of all sorts and sizes, from the patent-leather to the clayey, scouch-heeled, long-tongued ankle-jack of the navvy. Hanging from pegs driven into the four walls, and piled on a long board that stood on trestles, was a pile of every conceivable article of male and female attire, thrown together pell-mell, and emitting a sickening odour of encroaching mildew and mustiness.

But, for all that, it was a living-room. The hat heap, and the boot heap, and the bunches of old breeches and coats swelling out from against the walls and the piled-up bench, left a clear space of about six square feet before a fire-place and a fire-grate, (before which was suspended a great, closely-woven fire-guard;) and this was where the two young gentlemen “lived”—where they ate and drank and made merry. It was evident that it was so; for on the mantle-shelf there was a gridiron but recently used, as might be seen by the trickling tears of grease that extended from it, and hung suspended from the shelf-edge; if you wanted further evidence as to its being a living-room, there it was, before the fire-place—a tea-tray on an extended camp-stool, and, set out thereon, two dirty cups and saucers and a coffeepot, a scrap of butter on a cabbage-leaf, and three-parts of a loaf. It was a sleeping-chamber, besides; if a bed-like bundle tied in a patchwork quilt, and protruding from under the bench, went for anything. Just above the bench hung a little looking-glass; and on a mite of elbow room at the corner of the bench, and under the looking-glass, there was a ragged comb and a hair-brush to match, some heavy finger-dented hair-grease in a gallipot, and one dirty “dicky” and a collar, showing how and where the two young gentlemen had got up the splendid appearance that had so imposed on me when I first beheld them in Hatton Garden.