James Greenwood - The True History of a Little Ragamuffin

“What?” I inquired, seeing that Spider paused.

“You don’t ’appen to have another a’penny ’sides the one for the wood, do yer?”

“Yes, I have got another, why?”

“Wouldn’t you like a drop of hot coffee, young un? Hot coffee is so lovely when yer jints feel all of an ager. I’ve got a pot we could boil it in; you can get half-a-nounce for a a’penny.”

Had the price of the half-ounce been the five-pence halfpenny remaining when the wood was bought, I don’t think I could have resisted the beseeching look that accompanied his suggestion; so off I went, and in ten minutes returned, and in five times ten minutes afterwards the iron skillet was a cheerful spectacle: Spider gratefully crouching at one side of it, and I at the other, sipping our coffee, I from the bottom part of the yellow earthenware jug which was fractured when Spider threw it after his dog, and he from an old iron spoon, with which he dipped the comforting beverage from the bubbling coffee-pot as it stood on the fire—hot enough, I should think, to scare away the most obstinate ague that ever settled in poor mortal’s “jints” to plague him.

If it did not scare away the demon that tormented poor Spider, it at least charmed it quiet for a time, and he grew quite chatty. He told me how that being an orphan, and an inmate of the workhouse as long as he could remember, four years ago he was bound ’prentice to Mr. Belcher, the parish paying the person the liberal premium of seven pounds ten, in consideration of which the master-sweep agreed to instruct him, Tobias Chick, in the art and mystery of chimney-sweeping, to clothe him suitably, feed him liberally, and cherish him in sickness. For fully a year, trade being brisk, and Tobias proving industrious and active, (indeed, it was his marvellous agility in mounting a chimney that had earned for him the title of “Spider,”) Mr. Belcher had faithfully fulfilled his terms of the contract, till there came an unlucky day in the depth of winter when Mr. Belcher was applied to clear out a long disused steam-engine boiler, and being of a handy size for such a job, it fell to the lot of the Spider to descend into the great boiler through the man-hole, and pass the greater part of the day lying his full length on the icy cold iron, scraping away at the furred interior. The result was that rheumatism made such a firm settlement in the poor fellow’s legs, that in the course of a few months he found himself quite unable to stand on them, and he was of no further use as a chimney-sweep. Since that time until within the last few months, Mr. Belcher, unwilling that the disabled Spider should fall an easy prey to that “old man of sin,” whose delight it is to find “mischief still for idle hands to do,” installed him in the “kitchen” to wait on his numerous flock of boys, in the fulfilment of which office he prepared the coffee for breakfast, and the gruel for supper; and he devoted himself to the promotion of order and harmony generally. With the decay of Mr. Belcher’s business, however, and the passing of that ruinous anti-chimney climbing Act of Parliament, Spider’s occupation as cook and housekeeper came to an end, and here he was. Mr. Belcher didn’t want him, and offered seven pounds ten to take the burden off his hands, but the parish was much too wideawake to do anything of the sort; with three years yet unexpired of the term of the apprenticeship contract, and the tolerable certainty that poor Spider would die within that period, and require burying, they preferred that Mr. Belcher should go on cherishing Tobias Chick in sickness as he promised to do.

“Do you get plenty of grub?” I asked him.

“Well, cert’ny, not so much as I could eat; but Lor’, it ain’t for me to grumble, bein’ a dead weight, and not so much as earnin’ my salt, don’t yer see? not, as far as I can make out, and from what Sam tells me, there’d be much for me to do if I was ever so hearty. Why, Sam tells me as how sometimes they don’t take a pound among ’em all the week through. That’s bad, you know.”

“I s’pose it’s them night jobs in the country that tells up,” I remarked.

“Yet, I’m jiggered if I can make it out,” continued Spider, not heeding my observation; “here’s only a pound bein’ earnt, and yet there’s new drab coats, and new sating gownds, and a pony not enough but there must be a new horse bought, not a knacker’s sort of horse, mind yer, but a regler clipper; a chestnut; goes like steam, Sam ses it do.”

“Well, I s’pose he don’t keep the horse for a ornyment; I’ve heard of people makin’ a werry tidy thing by having’ horses and carts.”

“Ah! but s’pose they keep ’em and don’t work ’em,” said Spider, lowering his voice to the softest of whispers; “s’pose they keeps their horse shut up in the stable all day?”

“Then, I should think they had nailed it.”

“Give thirty pound for it. Sam see it paid for.”

“And never worked it?”

“Never in the day-time.”

“What do you mean, never in the day-time?”

“It’s night-time when the big brown horse is put in harness, never on’y at night-time,” observed Spider, with an impressiveness that showed the subject of the brown horse’s nocturnal excursions to be one that he had pondered. “Hush! Don’t you say that I spoke a word about it.”

“Why not? It ain’t no secret that there is a brown horse, is it?” I asked.

“It ain’t no secret that there is a brown horse; oh no, that’s right enough,” returned Spider, with the same air of mystery.

“Then, what is the secret?”

“Where he goes to,” whispered Spider solemnly, from behind the bowl of his coffee-spoon.

“He goes to them night jobs, what pays so well, don’t he? didn’t you just say that he did?”

“Yes! them jobs what pays so well; them country chimbleys wot so werry often want sweepin’, and which ain’t got no soot in ’em—not a common sort of soot anyways,” returned Spider, chafing his sooty nose with the spoon-bowl, and shaking his head dubiously. And at this moment, Sam came in, putting an end to the queer conversation.

It was not long before I discovered that Spider and Sam had told me nothing but the truth, when they said that my opportunities of learning the trade of chimney-sweeping would be but few.

There was really next to nothing for me to do. It seldom happened that there were more than half-a-dozen jobs for Mr. Belcher and Ned Perks to divide between them, and Sam went with one, and I with the other. My work was over by ten or eleven o’clock in the morning, nor was it of a sort to tire me, consisting as it did in nothing more arduous than carrying part of the machine as we went from one house to the next, handing the sticks at a job to Mr. Belcher to be screwed one into the other, taking them from, and bundling them up as he unscrewed them and sweeping up the hearth when the job was at an end. Certainly it would not have cost Mr. Belcher half-an-hour’s extra trouble a-day to have dispensed with my services altogether. After breakfast-time I was free to amuse myself in any way I chose; and as my food was regular, tolerably good, and plentiful, the dearth of trade did not cause me much anxiety.

Better still, it appeared to cause Mr. Belcher no anxiety. He seemed to have quite as much work as he cared about, and did not trouble himself to get more. More might have been got, I am sure, and by a no more troublesome process than bawling “sweep” in the streets as we went along of mornings. But this, although prompted by a knowledge of my small utility to my master I more than once suggested, he would by no means allow. It wasn’t respectable, he said. There was his house, and there was his bell, free to anyone to pull that had occasion to pull it; if people did not like to pull it, they might do the other thing. He always had plenty of money in his pocket, and was accustomed to partake freely of rum and milk with Mr. Perks early in the morning, and use the parlour of the George and Dragon in the evening, drinking glass after glass of gin and water, and smoking a long parlour pike.