THE TRUE HISTORY LITTLE OF A RAGAMUFFIN. CHAPTER I. IN WHICH ARE NARRATED A FEW PARTICULARS OF I was born at Number Nineteen, Fryingpan Alley, Turnmill Street, in the Parish of Clerkenwell. shutter a coffin-lid, almost-would serve as a The breadth of coffins and the narrowness of our alley used to occupy my thoughts a great deal, and there were very few of our neighbours whose height and breadth I had not considered, and settled within my mind how hard or how easy it would be to carry his body out. It is scarcely probable that the reader is acquainted with the locality in question, and even less probable, if he undertook a journey of exploration in search of it, that any great amount of success would attend his labours. This especially, if he addressed himself to the individual best qualified to give him the required information. This would be the Clerkenwell costermonger. He may have resided within ear-shot of Clerkenwell Church bells all his life; nay, he may be a lodger in Turk's Head Alley, which is not more than twenty paces from my alley, and still he will shake his head ignorantly in reply to your question. Fryingpan Alley, Turnmill Street! He never heard tell of it. He knows all the courts and alleys thereabout. There's Rose Alley, and Lamb and Flag Court, and Two persons in particular caused me tremenCrozier's Alley, and Fringpun Alley. The last- dous anxiety on this account-the one being the mentioned comes closest to what you are inquir-landlord of the "Dog and Stile," out in Turning after; but that can't be the one, because it is in Tummel Street. Even though he had a suspicion that your "Fryingpan" and his "Fringpun," and his "Tummel" and your " Turnmill" were identical, it is very doubtful if you would gain advantage, your use of the full and proper terms being regarded by him as priggish affectation; and against all such it is the costermonger's creed to set his countenance. Nevertheless, Fryingpan Alley is a fact; a disgraceful one, probably, but one that is undeniable. Passing Clerkenwell Sessions House from Coppice Row, it is the second alley on the left-hand side of the way; and coming at it down Turnmill Street from the Smithfield end, it is on the right, past the coppersmith's and the great distillery, and next to Turk's Head Alley. Except that the stone step at the mouth of the alley is worn quite through to the bricks beneath, and the name-board above has been renewed, its outward appearance is exactly the same as when, nearly twenty years ago, I used to live there: the same dingy, low-arched entry-so low that the scavenger, with his basket on his shoulder, is obliged to slacken at his knees to enable him to pass under it, and so narrow that a shop mill Street; and the other an elderly lady, who lived near the mouth of the alley. The publican, although he did not reside in the alley, was, nevertheless, there a great deal, chiefly in consequence of the many difficulties that stood in the way of his recovery of the pots and cans he lent to his customers; and if Mr. Piggot sometimes lost his temper while in pursuit of his property, it was really not to be wondered at. It was not at all an uncommon thing for him to discover the bright pewter borrowed of him overnight resting on the hob of a fire-place, half filled with the dregs of the coffee that had been boiled in it at breakfast, and so burnt and blackened as to require a vigorous application of Mr. Piggot's broad, fat thumb, wetted and roughened with cinder-ash, before he could convince himself that the vessel bore his name and sign. He had been known to enter a room (he had a way of never knocking at a door) to take an Irish stew or a dinner of cabbage and bacon off the fire, and, tilting it all into the fender, walk off triumphantly with the gallon can it was cooking in. He used to work himelf into the most dreadful passions on these and similar occasions, and to stamp and swear till his eyes rolled and the pimples on his nose stood out in a way that was terrible to witness. "You shall never have a pot or can out of my house again-may I drop dead if you do!" was the threat he was constantly using, rolling his glaring eyes up towards the ceiling as he spoke. But he never kept his oath. The very worst defaulter was never refused after a second, or, at the outside, a third application; and it would only have been what he was always asking for if, one fine morning, Death had taken him by the heels and laid him flat along the cobble-stones of our alley. the ways of eating and drinking. In wet weather she sat in the passage; but while it remained fine overhead, neither breakfast, dinner, nor tea would drive her from the nosebag. She had no other lodger but a niece-a lanky, pock-marked young woman, who wore her hair much strained in a backward direction, and there secured in a great bunch. The frightful disease that had so seared her face had also robbed her of an eye, so that altogether she could not be called handsome; but, like her aunt, she was a good-hearted creature, and helped me to a meal many and I often thought about it. What if such a hor- many a time. She kept the key of the barrowrible thing should happen! How ever would shed in Dog and Stile Yard, and undertook the they lift him up and carry him round to his pub-house-cleaning for her aunt, and prepared her lic-house? Even now, when he passed out load- meals. ed, though he went shoulder first and sidling, his cans rasped and clanked against the wall. True, he did not appear to be a very solidly-built man, and there were fellows in our alley who, as pushers of loads, would give in to no man; still, if once Mr. Piggot's shoulders got blocked in the doorway, it was very certain that the harder they pushed the rounder he would become, and that they certainly would have a great deal of trouble with him. They were meals! Since that memorable time it has been my good fortune to partake of many dinners that might fairly be called excellent; but not one of them ever came up to those Mrs. Winkship used to partake of. At breakfast or at tea she was nothing very great; but at dinner she was splendid. The coke-measure, being of the half-bushel size, was of a convenient height for sitting on before a bottom-up apple-sieve. The apple-sieve was the dining-table; and certain as stroke of one o'clock, you might see Mrs. Winkship shift her coke-measure from the doorway to under the parlour-window, and hear her call out, "Ready, Martha, when you are!" and then Martha would raise the parlour-window, and arrange on the window-sill the salt and the vinegar, and the pepper and the mustard; then she would bring out the apple-sieve, already spread with a cloth as white as bran-new calico; and then she would bustle back into the parlour again, and hand the dinner out at the window to Mrs. Winkship. But if I felt concern on poor Mr. Piggot's behalf, what were my sensations as I pondered on the chances of Mrs. Winkship's demise, and its inevitable consequences? Mrs. Winkship was an elderly lady living at the entrance of the alley. If a single pound, she was full five stone heavier than Mr. Piggot, to say nothing of her being considerably shorter and thicker. But it was not entirely on account of her superior size that I felt more interest in Mrs. Winkship's case than in the publican's. As for Mr. Piggot, so long as they succeeded in removing his body, how would not have troubled me in the least; It was always something with plenty of gravy indeed, so far from being affected by the fact of in it-rich to look at, luscious, and smoking hot; his dying, I have no doubt that, had I been in- but the most wonderful feature of Mrs. Winkformed that that event had taken place on his ship's dinners was their smell. There are meats own premises, I should have greatly rejoiced by nature delicious-smelling-roast pork, for inthat now all chances of the occurrence of the stance; but-and how Martha managed it I could calamity that haunted me were at an end; but never, from that day to this, imagine-she seemed in Mrs. Winkship's case, respect-not to say to possess the power of conferring an odour of downright love and gratitude-entered very con- baked crackling on the tamest meats; to conjure siderably into the question. She was a woman out of them a fragrance that seemed to cry aloud of business. I don't know exactly what she with a voice that could be heard from one end of called herself, but she followed the business left the alley to the other. Certainly, fancy may have by her husband, which was that of lending bar- had a great deal to do with it; or that smelling rows and money to the many fruit-hawkers that being our share, we made the most of it; or it lived in our alley. It was Mrs. Winkship's boast may possibly have happened that Mrs. Winkship's that since Mr. W.'s death, which had happened dinner and its odour being altogether without thirteen years ago, she had never journeyed out competition, its virtues appeared more forcibly. of Turnmill Street, except on the one occasion Whether either of the above conjectures explains of her venturing as far as the Royal Coburg the fact, I can't say; I only know that exactly as Theatre, at Lambeth, in the pantomime season, I have never seen such dinners, so have I never when she had slipped down the gallery stairs and smelt any such. It was a common remark amongst sprained her ancle. Her constant station was us boys and girls, that it seemed to be always the threshold of her own house, where, seated Sunday with Mrs. Winkship. After dinner she on an upturned coke-measure, with a nosebag drank rum and water-hot, invariably. In the full of chaff for a cushion, she kept watch the depth of winter, when the snow was on the livelong day. The peculiar nature of her busi- ground, and she sat on the coke-measure wearing ness, or, more properly speaking, of her custom-a hairy cap with ear-lappets, and wrapped in a ers, compelled it. Unless she caught the fellows when they returned home after disposing of their stock, and insisted on their "squaring up" before they went indoors, she was sure to be a loser. The difficulties of her business, however, offered no material hindrance to her enjoying herself in coachman's box-coat, she would drink it; in the summer time, when the cobble-stones of the alley were hot to naked feet, and the gutters too warm for a refreshing dabble in them, she drank it hot and strong as ever. Did we respect Mrs. Winkship the less on account of this weakness? Did we despise her, and taunt her, and make fun of her? We did | ways a bit of a favourite with her; and the good not. How could we, when we saw how jolly it afternoon I speak of was once when I was quite made her, and considered what a profitable weak-free, in consequence of my stepmother going out ness it was to us? We used to fetch it for her, to a tea-meeting and taking little Polly with her. three pen'orth at the time. We used to lurk in Still I can declare, and with a clear conscience, the shadow of doorways, and peep from window- that it was not on any such mercenary grounds blinds, keeping a sharp eye on her till the arrival as how much I should be out of pocket that Mrs. of the moment for action-the moment when she Winkship's probable death troubled me. My waddled back from the parlour window to the concern was what would they do with her, supdoorway with her seat, and sat herself down posing she should die? Next to burying her at thereon, with her fat arms contentedly folded on the water-butt end of the alley, where the renther lap. We used to take it in turns. The way collector lived, and which was consequently much was to stroll from your lurking-place and saunter the quietest and best-behaved end, the only way towards her in the most undesigning manner pos- out of the difficulty, as it appeared to me, was to sible, and when you approached close enough to fix a tall crane and sling her over the house-tops address her innocently, and as though the thought into Turnmill Street-a notion no doubt put into had that moment popped into your head, asking my head by what I had observed of the crane if she happened to want anything fetched. Her and its action amongst the wharves and baconway, then, was to look up in an astonished man- warehouses in Thames Street, and elsewhere in ner, and as though she thought you had made a the neighbourhood of Billingsgate. mistake, taken her for somebody else, possibly. "Did you speak to me, boy?" "Yes 'm. I'm going into Tummel Street to fetch some treacle, in a minute, for my mother; I thought perhaps you might want some tea, or something'm." "No thanky, boy; my tea I've got, and my milk will be here presently. I don't think I stand in need of anything." When it came to this, the way of the boy was to thank her very civilly, and to look perfectly satisfied, and as though he well knew that since Mrs. Winkship was all right in the matters of tea and milk, she could not by any earthly possibility require anything else. If, on the contrary, the boy acted differently; if he winked, or looked knowing merely, and grinned as much as to say, "Why, what's the use of carrying on with all this jolly nonsense? You know what you always have and what you want, and I know what you always have and what you want; give me the halfpence, and say no more about it." I say if he said, or even looked, anything of this sort, he would have been sent about his business in a twinkling, and scratched out of the lady's good books for no end of time; but if he managed the business neatly, and turned away promptly and respectfully when he had got Mrs. Winkship's answer, it was next to a certainty that she would exclaim presently "Oh, ah! now you are here, boy, you may as well run round to Mr. Piggot's for me. You know Piggot's?" 66 Piggot's! Piggot's! Oh, yes, I know now. Sign of the 'Dog and Stile,' I think it is, mum." "That's it. Go you there and ask for threepen'orth of best rum, hot, with a bit of lemon; and there's a brown for yourself." After the ice was thus broken, the business to be transacted during the remainder of the afternoon was comparatively easy, and consisted in keeping a watchful eye on her liquor, and, almost before she had recovered her breath from the finishing gulp, which was invariably a large one, to be seen hovering in her vicinity. I have earned as much as twopence-halfpenny in this way in a single afternoon. This certainly was more than the average daily earnings of Mrs. Winkship's messengers-more, indeed, than I sometimes took of her in the course of an entire week, because I nearly always had the baby in my arms. But I was al I am glad to be able to state, however, that I was spared the spectacle of Mrs. Winkship's removal out of Fryingpan Alley, whatever was its nature. On the memorable morning of my flight from my birthplace, as I ran out of the alley in such a tremendous fright, I passed her enthroned on the coke-measure, humming as was her wont, and looking as hale and hearty as her best friend could wish. As I darted out of the archway, I nearly ran foul of a boy bearing in his hand threepen'orth of hot rum. But she has gone somehow. When, but a few months since, filled with the hope of meeting at least one or two of my very limited number of friends of past times, I went to have a peep at the old place, my first glance up the alley was for the familiar cokemeasure; but it was not. My inquiries were vain. Nobody could tell me what had become of the kind old barrow-woman; indeed, as well as I could make out, no one living there at the present day had ever seen or heard of such a person. She was before their time. Nor was this very surprising, after all. Death was never for long a stranger in our alley. His seeds were sown broadcast on that fruitful bit of ground, and the grim reaper often came a-mowing there. Nineteen years is a long time. In every harvest-field, however, there is always an odd nook or corner, be it never so small a one, that the scythe passes by, leaving a few stalks standing. In one such corner in the neighbourhood of Fryingpan Alley still stood and flourished the shop of the bird-fancying barber who has shaved my father hundreds of times. I, too, had had some dealings with him, though not of a character to invoke the use of the tools of his proper trade. The transactions that had taken place between us were of a purely commercial sort. Once I bought a guinea-pig of him for fivepence; and on another occasion a pigeon, his property, flew in at our window, and was captured by me and returned to the barber on payment of fourpence-the pigeon ransom as fixed by Act of Parliament. Mr. Slaney, however, had no recollection of me. My brown face, more than half-covered by an Australian-grown beard, passed with him as a perfectly strange face. When I asked him what had become of Mrs. Winkship, he replied that no such a name was known in that locality. I pursued the subject, however, and urged him to rouse his memory, telling him that I was actuated by something more than idle curiosity, (as indeed I was,) and hinted that I should consider the smallest scrap of information cheap at half-acrown; when it suddenly flashed to Mr. Slaney's mind that he knew Mrs. Winkship and what had become of her. Thirteen years ago that very month, my informant assured me—and old Wagstaff, the basket-maker on the opposite side of the way, could have corroborated his statement if he hadn't died last August-Mrs. W. was arrested for shop-lifting, and the case being very clear against her, she was convicted and transported beyond the seas for the term of fifteen years. I paid the unscrupulous story-teller the half-crown; but neither at the time, nor since, could I bring myself to believe a word that he told me. The bare notion of that great, fat, tender-hearted creature "lifting" or carrying away anything from a shop (unless by sheer weight she had carried away the flooring) was too ridiculous to be seriously thought of for a single moment. In other respects, however, and as before stated, the alley was in pretty much the same condition as when I had left it. From beside this window hung the rope of onions; from the next, the slabs of dried cod; and from the next, several spits of fresh herrings undergoing the process of conversion to "Yarmouth bloaters." As in the old times, too, it was "washing day" with several of the inhabitants; and likewise, as of old, there were the tattered counterpanes, and scraps of orange-coloured blanketing, and the patched shirts, and the flannel jackets, drying on lines stretched out from the upper window-sills by means of regular clothes-props, or make-shift broomsticks. As of old, too, there at the upper end of the alley was the great leaky water-butt, and it being nine o'clock in the morning, the water was "on," and the old-fashioned pushing, and driving, and skirmishing for water, was also "on" at full blast. Nineteen years had not improved the water supply in Fryingpan Alley. Three-quarters of an hour was the time during which the precious fluid was kept flowing from the main, and in order to make the most of it, the tap at the bottom of the butt was wholly withdrawn, and the water made to spout out in a tremendous way. The rush about the butt was the rush of old, or as like it as peas in one pod. There were the big, bony, slatternly women slipshod, and with their hair uproarious, each grasping the handle of her pail as though she would lief use the water vessel as a weapon of war, against anyone who should have the hardihood to insinuate that hers was not the next turn. There was the big hulking Irish boy, with his saucepan to be filled, pushing and elbowing amongst the little girls with their pots and kettles, and treading with his cruel hob-nailed boots on their poor naked toes, to make them get out of the way; and once again, here comes the great bully costermonger, with his oily side locks, and his yellow silk neckerchief big as a bolster, and his short pipe cocked insolently at the corner of his mouth, hauling along a great sack full of oysters. He doesn't hurry himself in the least. He comes along leisurely, making straight for the water-butt; and seeing him coming-hearing the clatter of his clout boots on the stones-the hulking Irish boy, the little drudges with their naked feet, even the bony pail-grasping shrews fall back, away from the water-spout; or, if the boldest of them ventures on another potful, she leans over for it smirking cringingly at the approaching beast with the oyster-bag. How can they do otherwise? The approaching beast is "Flash Jack." He has the strength of a horse, and the ferocity of a bull-dog. Nothing less than three policemen ever took Jack to the station-house; there is not a man in the alley that Flash Jack cannot lift by the hips, and throw him over his shoulder as easy as he can break a tobacco pipe. If you don't like his "goings on," you are free to take it out of hím-any two of you! He has been known to send four moderately able men flying, but then he used his feet, and bit a great deal. Now, who will dispute Flash Jack's right to monopolise the water-spout just so long as it pleases him? Who will peril his pan or pail by leaving it in Jack's way? No one. They are mum as mice. Stay a little while, my friend. If you live long enough you will be growing older by and by, and there are growing up in the alley other Flash Jacks, who one day will then fall on you and give you just such a horrible beating as I suppose you gave the Flash Jack that I used to know, and ever afterwards you will shuffle in and out of the alley, afraid almost to assert that your life is your own. You will be glad to stand aside with your few whelks or winkles in your little basket, and wait until every one is served, even down to the hulking Irish boy. And serve you right, Jack. I'd give sixpence to be there and see it. Just as it used to be, all this, and among my earliest recollections. Are they the very earliest ? Up the alley, and down the alley, I search for something that may suggest earlier, but am unsuccessful, until I begin to scan the houses from top to bottom-until my eyes light on the third-floor windows of Number Nineteen, and it is like returning to the port from which I made sail for my first voyage. The windows are exactly the same. There may be a brown paper patch or so the less, or a rag plug or two the more, than in the old days; but brown paper and old rags are the same all the world over, and as I look up, they are so much the self-same windows, that at that moment were the sash to be lifted, and an uproarious red head protruded therefrom, and there was to proceed from it a shrill hoarse voice, screaming "Jimmy! Jimmy, ye shpalpeen! I'll have the blood of ye if ye don't git off that shtep this minnut, and walk about wid her and shtop her owlin!" I should not be very much astonished. I have been cajoled, and counselled, and abused from those windows many a score of times. In the room to which they belong, my sister Polly was born, when I was little more than five years old. In that room with the paperpatched windows my mother died, shutting her eyes on the world and its troubles within about fifteen minutes after my sister Polly opened hers. Let me, however, hasten to disabuse the mind of the reader who imagines that the red-haired woman with the shrill voice was my mother. She was my step-mother. Of the kind of woman that my mother was, I retain but a half-and-half sort of remembrance. As I look up at the tattered windows, another face besides the hateful face just alluded to, appears there; dim, however, as though seen through a curtain of gauze. It is 1 the face of a woman, with dark hair and eyes | certainly, and a pale face; but whether she is pretty, or ugly as sin, is more than I can say. That is what I mean when I say that I don't recollect what sort of woman she was. As to the sort of mother she was to me, the feeling of love I still cherish toward her, taken in consideration with the short time I knew her, is sufficient to settle that. One thing, however, I never could make out. If she was the good and worthy woman I am ready to vouch, how was it that my father was so continually rowing with her, and calling her evil names? Why did he beat her, and make her cry so? One name in particular he took to calling her some months before Polly was born, and that was "Judas." He would shake his great fist in her face and grind his teeth, and call her "Judas! Judas!" as though she were a rat, and he would like to stamp her to death as one. He would curse her eyes and limbs, and throw his boots, and cups and saucers at her, and spank her about the head till her long black hair fell all about her face, and roar out "You infernal blood-selling Judas, if it wasn't for the boy's sake I'd strangle you!" There was a great mystery about this bloodselling business. Ready as was my father to throw it in her teeth, as the saying is, on the slightest provocation, or on no provocation at all, he never went into the details of the case, and, more extraordinary still, she never seemed to expect that he should. She never replied, "It is false," or inquired what he meant by it. That is, to my knowledge. It is very possible that she may have denied it until she grew tired of doing so, finding that it was better to bear the reproach silently. Again, whatever was my mother's crime, father had his reasons for not making it public. Often enough while quarrelling with her, he would bellow it out loud enough for the whole alley to hear; but if any one-even his most intimate chummet him next day, and gave a hint that he would like to hear further particulars, my father never would gratify him. I know this as a fact; for at that time I had just come into my first suit of corduroys, and father was very proud, and liked to take me about. He used to take me to the barber's on Sunday mornings, to get his weekly shave, and I used to sit by his side on the form while he was waiting his turn to be lathered. "Isn't he a star?" one of my father's companions would observe to another, in reference to me. "He all'us looks as though he'd just been fresh 'arthstoned-don't he, Bob?" "He do so. I never see such a kid; he's a credit to your old woman, Jim, anyhow?" "Yes, she's a werry good mother, no doubt on it," my father would answer, shortly. "And a werry good wife, Jim ?" 'Strickly as such, there's no denying on it," was Jim's answer. "P'r'aps you puts it a little too strickly, Jim?" "Ah! who ses so?". "No, no; nobody ses so. But you do let her have it awfully hot sometimes, Jim-now don't you?" before me and say as she do get it hotter than she ought?" "Well, 'course she must deserve it, or else you wouldn't call her" "What?" interrupted my father, getting up on his feet. "Well, names. Of course, nobody can tell why you call 'em her, 'cos nobody knows." "And nobody ain't going to know," replies father, in the tones a man uses when he wishes it to be understood that there has been enough said on the subject. "It ain't nobody's business to know, nor yet to inquire. She knows, and that's enough. When she comes a-grumbling to you, and telling you her grievances, you come and tell me; then we'll see about it." CHAPTER II. IN WHICH, BY THE NARRATION OF THE STORY OF MY UNCLE BENJAMIN'S GREAT MISFORTUNE, SOME LIGHT IS THROWN ON THE BLOOD-SELLING MYSTERY. I BY no means promise that the little light I am able to throw on the blood-selling of which my mother was accused will be entirely satisfactory to the reader. I simply offer it as the best I can give. How it came to my knowledge, whether I was an eye-witness, or heard it from her lips, I shouldn't like to say. Most likely I am indebted pretty equally to both sources. It was all about my Uncle Benjamin, who was my father's brother. He was a younger man than my father by several years, and slimmer, and more genteel in build. He was better looking, too, and better off; though why he should be, considering that my father worked from morning till night, and Uncle Benjamin never appeared to work at all, was not quite clear. He was a swaggering, joking sort of young man, and smoked cigars. He didn't come much to our house, and I was very glad of it; for although whenever he came he invariably gave me a sixpence, and sent for something to drink for my mother and father, sure as ever he was gone there would be a tremendous row, which was sure to begin out of nothing at all. As, for instance, mother would say, "Don't touch that little drop of gin that's left, Jim; it is for my lunch to-morrow. Ben said so." "Oh! when did Ben say so? Not in my hearing!" "He said so when you was down-stairs, Jim." "Burn you and Ben too; you're always talking, and whispering, and sniggering together when I'm down-stairs, or somewhere else out of sight; butcher me if you ain't. He's a butchering sight too fast; and so are you, you -!" In this, or a similar way, the row invariably began and was continued. This, however, was before Uncle Ben got married. He married a girl named Eliza, who was employed at gaiter-making somewhere in the city. After they got married, Uncle Benjamin came less frequently than ever to our house. Indeed, I think my mother was against the match, as she "No hotter than she deserves," my father re-used to speak in a very cross way about it, and plies, growing fierce, and turning round on his in- say, "A pretty doll she is to be any man's wife!" terrogator; can you, or any man here, stand | And at this my father would turn on her with |