CHAPTER VII I TAKE A SHOP
Last chapter closed with a bitter confession of incompetence on my part that I would not make if I could help it, but alas it is too true. Account for it I cannot, except by saying that I began by getting into debt, as I have before said, and never afterwards until the end of that régime came was I able to emerge from the condition of poverty I have attempted to describe, not though my struggles were incessant and certainly severe. It tinged my whole life and robbed me of my rightful proportion of joy, this want of ability to manage my own affairs upon a very small and strictly stationary income. If this condition of things may be taken for granted, whether with blame or pity, it will simplify matters a good deal and save me humiliating allusions to it every now and then.
So time fled along in rapid fashion, for now I never had a moment to spare. And still further to curtail the time at my disposal, I, finding the burden of the rent in the west of London too grievous to be borne, to say nothing of the cruel anxiety of letting lodgings unfurnished, decided to migrate to the far east of London, between Upton Park and East Ham. There I had heard that a neat five-roomed house with a long garden could be hired for seven and six a week inclusive of all rates and taxes. (I believe the same house would fetch nearly if not quite double now.) That was a rental I felt able to pay, and even if the great distance from my employment did mean extra expense, it was well worth a struggle to have a home to ourselves freed from the incubi of lodgers or sub landlord.
So with great hopes of making the last move for a long time, I commenced the big business. It must be confessed that the auspices were not very bright, my wife being too ill to stand upon her feet, my eldest child a toddler of five, and my next one quite a baby. But in those days such details hardly fretted me, I was so used to them. And consequently it was with a stout heart that, having succeeded in hiring a big van and horse and man, at one and sixpence an hour, I commenced the long day's labour at seven in the morning. I carried my wife and little ones into a good Samaritan next door, who looked after them, while my helper and I dismantled the home and carefully stowed it in the van. For once I had found a man who was willing to work as hard as I could, and who did not seize every opportunity to suggest rest and refreshment. So we got on very well indeed.
By nine o'clock all was ready, my wife was comfortably secured upon a sofa lashed to the tailboard of the van, the baby was accommodated with an impromptu cot on the keyboard of the piano, and the five-year-old also had a place for her little chair. So we started off for our new home facing the twelve miles between us and that distant suburb without misgivings, though it was certainly anything but a picnic for the horse. I do not recall how many times we halted, only I know that but few of them involved the spending of money, that being as usual a very limited quantity with me. But at five o'clock the weary trudge was over, and with fresh energy we tackled the task of getting the chattels indoors. With such good will did we both work that by six all was over, and the hard-working carman, apparently satisfied with my moderate tip of a shilling, and sixteen and six for the hire of the vehicle, departed and left me to the tackling of my biggest task of the day.
I felt as if I would much rather lie down and rest, but it is astonishing what you can do when you must, and finding fresh energy somewhere I soon had the helpless wife and children fairly comfortable, with a bit of fire in a bedroom. While thus engaged I was drawn to the window by a tremendous crash of thunder and flash of lightning, and there, outside one of the opposite houses, was ranged on the pavement nearly the whole of a family's furniture exposed to the full fury of a torrent of rain. Indeed it was pitiful, and my discontent at the heavy task before me was changed into great gratitude when I realised what I had escaped from by only a few minutes.
I went back to my work with a good heart, and before midnight, when dead beat, I crawled into bed and fell at once into a sleep so sound that even the heavenly artillery failed to disturb me, I had reduced my new abode to something like order. I was up again at 5.30, having ever been able, no matter how weary, to rise at any time necessary, and after another hour's work at straightening things out, sallied forth to find someone who would come and help my helpless ones during my absence. This I fortunately succeeded in doing in time, and at 7.30 I was on my way to the office looking forward to a good rest for my muscles all day, even if my brain would certainly be superlatively active.
Now I am quite well aware that in chronicling the above I am laying myself open to the charge of being jejune, trivial, etc., and I know too, that to many men of my own class such details as I have given above will be so familiar that they will wonder why ever I should have written about them. But somehow I have felt that, as in the subjects of my other books, a little plain and simple truth amidst the flood of invention by writers who have merely looked on, might not be out of place, might indeed be of use. For I hold that it is impossible, even for those who are most interested but do not live the life, however keen they may be, to portray faithfully all the day and night doings of the people they write about. They may and do try hard and honestly to fulfil their self-imposed task, but as long as they can retire to their comfortably furnished homes and nicely served meals whenever they like, they will never be able to describe truly, however much they wish to do so.
For a little while the novelty of setting my house in order and the delight of having a garden for the first time in my life prevented me from dwelling upon the obvious disadvantages of the change of abode I had made. But when I came to realise that in order to live at a low rent and have a little house to myself I had to put in nearly four hours a day travelling, I began to wonder whether I had not been foolish after all. This was long before the days of the extension of the District Railway to East Ham, and I could only keep my travelling expenses within possible limits by taking a workman's ticket, not available after 7 A.M., to Fenchurch Street, and walking thence to Victoria. This long journey, during which I was perforce idle, played havoc with my business of picture-framing, yet still I managed to keep my hand in, and indeed improved a little in that I had a small workshop to myself now, and no longer made frames on the kitchen table.
And I should be ungrateful indeed if I did not remember most affectionately the delights of Wanstead Park and Epping Forest. Many and many a pilgrimage I made in the summer with the children packed in a big perambulator and a bag containing all the materials for a homely picnic slung on the handles to those sylvan glades, and here, at no other expense save the muscular effort, enjoyed a delightful holiday, the best perhaps I have ever known, because purely unconventional and costless. I had the satisfaction of feeling too that, in spite of the rapidity with which streets of small houses like the one I was living in were springing up all around me, the grand forest would never be built on any more, would always be available for such poor workers as myself.
Nevertheless I confess I did mightily begrudge the great waste of time involved in my much travelling. In the summer it was not so bad, but in winter I and many more in like case, who for motives of economy got to our respective places of employment long before we could get in, suffered much from lack of shelter from cold and wet. Just one of the many unconsidered evils of living in a vast and over-crowded city. My extra work of picture framing suffered also, not merely because customers in my new neighbourhood were exceedingly scarce, everybody being so poor, but because of the long, long distance I had to fetch materials, especially glass, which in the crowded trains at night was a most ticklish and brittle load. I cannot now realise definitely the sudden rushes I used to make through the heart of the city at the busiest hour of the evening, my struggle with the clambering crowds up the steep stairs in Fenchurch Street Station, and the journey homewards in the close-packed, reeking compartment, dreading every moment lest a lurch of the train should damage my precious burden. It is all like some hideous nightmare, those wet and foggy nights when my lungs seemed fit to burst with coughing, and all my senses warned me to go slow, while my needs spurred me, and many times I had to stop and remember how many were in far more evil case than myself, or I should have indeed fallen by the wayside.
Yet this life too I endured for three years, at the end of which time I was fully convinced that living so far away from my daily work was for me at anyrate a profound mistake. Also I had another child and was in consequence driven harder than ever, was more desirous than ever to have some steady auxiliary to my exiguous income, some means of getting clear of that furniture incubus which kept my nose to the grindstone. Besides all these things I had often in winter, despite my early leaving home, to spend several hours on the way to the city by reasons of floods, to which our neighbourhood then seemed particularly liable, and had been curtly warned by the Powers above me that I would do well to move nearer to my work if I wished to retain it. Which warnings gave me a cold chill at the heart, for although I was in age not much past thirty, I was already beginning to feel old from the strain of living, and I knew how scanty were the chances of getting another such berth as mine should I lose the one I had now got.
But I doubt whether even these powerful incentives to a change would have been sufficient to make me move, but for an event which changed the whole course of my life. For one thing, where was I to go and enjoy better conditions than those under which I now lived? Even apartments were now not to be thought of, for I had three children, and except in such neighbourhoods as I dared not descend to, no one would let apartments to people with a family. This again is one of the factors governing the lives of the workers which those comfortable souls who wail about the declining birth-rate do not think of. God knows it is hard enough for any poor worker in England to maintain a growing family in decency, without being treated worse than a beggar or a criminal in seeking to find lodgment for them which he is ready to pay for. Thousands of men have been driven to pauperism or practical socialism by the accursed system of oppression—no children wanted.
So that every enquiry I made about lodgings nearer my work threw me back to the grim fact that in some respects, I was better off now than any change could make me. And then came the event, the impulse from without, which drove me against my own better judgment into the thorny and difficult ways of the small shopkeeper. My wife received a small legacy, one that had been left contingent upon the death of a woman who enjoyed the income of the bequest for life. She died, and the capital was divided among a very large number of expectant folk, none of whom received, according to their ideas, much more than a tithe of what was really due to them. My wife's share was well under £200, but even that was a fortune to our entirely restricted vision. Of course the first and most important question to be decided was how to dispose of this money to the best advantage so that we might feel the benefit of it? But underlying this there was a feeling upon my part that as it was not mine in any sense my wife should have the disposal of it, so long as she did not insist upon, as I once heard a County Court Registrar pithily remark, frittering it away upon paying my outstanding liabilities. No, I do not exactly mean debts, but in clearing up those burdens which demanded regular instalments of so much a month.
I am glad to say, however, that nothing was farther from her ideas than that, for as she put it, the furniture was all worn out long before it was paid for, being such utter rubbish, and therefore the longer its vendors could legitimately be kept waiting for their ill-gotten gains the better. Alas, to be wise after the event is futile, yet I am now sadly inclined to think that had such a proposal been made by her and accepted by me it would have been better for all of us. At anyrate this book would not have been written, nor, I feel certain, any other of the small library that I have written during the last ten years.
Her suggestion, no, it was more than that, it was a demand, was that this money should be laid out in taking a shop. A double-fronted shop whereof one side should be devoted to art pictorial in the shape of its accessories, engravings, frames, artistic materials, etc., and the other to what is rather pompously called art needlework, and fancy goods, the latter being an enormously elastic term.
To say that I was alarmed would be putting matters much too mildly. I was appalled. I dreaded beyond expression increasing my already heavy liabilities. I doubted with a scepticism of the blackest my ability to run a shop for myself, however well I might be able to do it for another—in fact, I saw nothing in the proposal but disaster. But my wife, confident in her powers as a shopkeeper (having had no experience) and fired with a laudable desire to help in the collection of the family income, insisted, even at the length of declaring that if I would not take a shop she would without my help. And that I saw would be avoiding an imaginary Scylla for the terrors of a real Charybdis. So I yielded, ungracefully, but completely, and thenceforward until the time which shall complete this narrative never did I know a care-free hour.
The first thing was to find the shop, and if I were able in Mr Pett Ridge's delightful manner to detail our experiences in those pilgrimages I doubt not that the recital would make several readable columns. The lies we were told would fill several volumes. The fortunes we were sure to make were so vast that they were unspendable. Every miserable, little, obviously hopeless shop was lauded so that I began to fear a complete obsession, and at last I declared that I would not take any advertised business at all, I would build up a business of our own. Yes, I used those memorable words, and, to my shame be it said, without even the excuse that I believed them myself. Miserable man that I was, I felt certain that this enterprise of ours was foredoomed. I knew, none better, that there was nothing of the Napoleon about me, that I was far too prone to take no for an answer for anything of that kind to be possible.
Presently I began to feel that this quest of a shop was destined to bring me prematurely to my grave. East, west, north, and south I sought, and now I felt no nearer than at the outset to the object of my search. At last I found what apparently was exactly the thing, a double-fronted shop with a sufficient number of living rooms above, in a business thoroughfare within easy reach of town, and at the fairly reasonable rent of £40 a year. I knew no one who could tell me anything about the character of the neighbourhood, so I had to form my own conclusions as to the prospects of business there. And in any case I was so weary of searching for the apparently unattainable that I was willing to be deceived had anybody tried to persuade me. But that I think was the determining factor. Nobody did try to influence me. The man who owned the shop and carried on the business of a grocer next door did not seem at all anxious to have me for a tenant, in fact he was most reticent and retiring when approached, which may have been genius on his part, although I never saw cause to suspect him of anything of the kind.
At anyrate I persuaded myself that I should never find any better shop than this for my purpose and I closed the bargain by paying handsel, and fixing the date for coming in. Then I had to turn my attention to the fitting up of this shop, for it was absolutely bare, just three match-boarded walls which by the way were covered with some messy alleged varnish which never dried, and the double front as aforesaid. I procured several price-lists from firms whose speciality was the fitting up of shops, and after a prolonged study of them came to the conclusion that to fit up this shop in even the most economical way, according to their specifications, would absorb our entire capital and necessitate our procuring stock entirely on credit. Which was absurd; for we had no credit, at least in my innocence of business I knew of none. Later, I learned to my sorrow that the obtaining of credit was easy in almost an exactly inverse ratio to the difficulty of meeting the bills when they came in.
In this difficulty of fitting the shop, however, as in so many others that I have encountered, I had not the privilege of retreat. I had burned my bridges and had perforce to advance in what at first appeared to be a hopeless task. But I am getting on too fast, for of course, before I could begin shop-fitting it was necessary that I should move in, this operation being in itself, with my limited resources, a sufficiently formidable one. But here again, I met with a powerful coadjutor in the man that used to serve us with vegetables and coals at Upton Park, a burly costermonger who had risen to the dignity of a little shop and a horse and van from the humble beginnings of a hand-barrow. It was his proud boast that he would rather at any time go hungry himself than refuse a poor customer half a hundred of coals or a few pounds of potatoes because she had no money. He and I often had a yarn and had become great friends, so that when I enlisted his aid in moving the long distance from Upton Park to Lordship Lane, East Dulwich, I felt that relief which only comes from implicit reliance upon someone whom you feel is stronger than yourself. I know all about self-help and have been compelled to practice it all my life, but the joy of having a friend, how great and how pleasant it is!
With his powerful aid the moving out was got over with comparative ease, but even so, it was dark before we arrived at our destination, the children being cold, tired, and hungry. And then a difficulty occurred which almost daunted me. I had the key of the shop, but my landlord had bolted up inside so that I could not get in. And when I went to him he offered me my handsel money back, mumbling something about "matters not being satisfactory." What he meant I do not even now know but that was what he said, and there was I in the street with all my belongings, ten miles from the home I had left at 8 A.M. and with three small children. My friend and ally here arose to the occasion. He literally bullied the landlord into letting us in, a thing I could never have done, and presently I found relief from my anxiety in the feverish activity of getting our chattels indoors. I never heard, and so I can never tell, why my landlord desired to evade his bargain regardless of my sufferings, nor, although I even now feel curious, shall I ever know.
Oh, that good fellow, how he did work as if he had just begun his day instead of having been at it since about 4 A.M. He helped me set up the beds, straighten up a living room, lit a fire, fetched some supper from a local pork butcher's, and at last with an earnest enquiry as to whether he couldn't do anything more for me, supposed he'd better be getting towards home as he had to be up at three the next morning. Falteringly I assured him that he had done far more than I could ever have expected and what was I in his debt? he said brusquely, "Oh, I ain't got no time to bother abart that nar. You get strite an' I'll pop over an' see yer in a few dyes. Good night missus, good night guvnor," and he was gone. It was two months before I saw him again, and then only because I sought him out in my first leisure. And he would not take a penny more than ten shillings. I paid him that, but I have never discharged, because I cannot, the heavy debt of gratitude he laid upon me, more especially for the knowledge of how good and kind one poor man can be to another. I have had many such experiences, but each one has been peculiarly fragrant, especially sweet in itself, a standing rebuke to me for once holding a doctrine of the innate depravity of mankind.
As soon as he had gone I realised that I was so tired that I could hardly stand, and so I made haste to put things in readiness for the morning and get to bed. But once there my life-long habit asserted itself, and I had to find a book for a little read before sleep. And to my great content I found Mark Twain's "Innocents at Home," and read for perhaps the hundredth time the touching story of Scotty Briggs and the callow minister. In it I forgot my troubles, my weariness of body and mind and apprehensions for the future, and with a happy sigh I laid the book down, blew out the candle, and went to sleep. Years after, dining with Mark Twain at the Devonshire Club, I told him of the incident and saw his deep tender eyes fill with tears. He silently put out his hand and said "shake." Now can there be any higher reward for a writer than this, that he has been able by his books to make his fellow-creatures forget for a while the burden that has been crushing them, and has lifted them into new hope and energy for the coming unknown day? I think not.
CHAPTER VIII GETTING BROKEN IN
This, the most momentous move of my life, as I think, was made on a Monday in the autumn of about 1890. The year doesn't matter anyhow. I know that it was about sixteen or seventeen years ago, or when I was thirty-three or thirty-four years of age. That Monday I had taken leave from the Office, the day being deducted from my allowed twenty-eight days of summer vacation, as was customary with us. By favour of the authorities we were even allowed to take half days of leave, which prevented us from doing what we believed our happier brethren in the pukka Civil Service could always do, ask to step out after lunch and not come back that day. It also I suppose preserved as much of our self-respect as was possible, for we were thus able to say that we at anyrate did not rob our masters the public of any of our valuable time.
This reserve of time, however, was far too valuable commercially to me to be lightly drawn upon, and so, rising at five the next day, I did as much as possible towards getting straight before eight, when I started to walk to the Office, a little over four miles, but with the prospect of a long day's rest, as far as my body was concerned, in front of me. That week was one of the busiest in my whole life. My office work had to suffer, doubtless, for amid the dancing columns of figures or snaky automatic curves I could always discern the counters, shelves, showcases, etc., of this new daemon, the shop. Moreover, I had to interview wholesale people, dealers in art embroidery, crewels, etc., dealers in fancy goods, dealers in mouldings, etc., and open accounts upon the strength of that little capital, now fast dwindling away.
My education was rapid that week. I heard hundreds of new trade terms, of the existence of articles for sale of which I never before dreamed, of possibilities of profit making that were dazzling, and I remembered them all. But I kept no account of my growing liabilities, loading my memory with everything, and whenever an uneasy feeling persisted in making itself noticed that I was plunging far beyond my resources, I fell back upon the consoling hope that I should soon square everything when the shop was opened. And I had determined to open that shop on the following Saturday. I ordered a couple of thousand hand-bills advising the resident gentry of Slopers Island, as East Dulwich was then sarcastically called, that F. T. Bullen proposed opening the premises at 135 Lordship Lane, S.E., on Saturday next as a high class Emporium for the sale of fancy goods, and all the necessaries for the production of art needlework.
There was also a notice to the effect that Carving, Gilding, and Picture Frame Making, would be executed on the premises with promptness and dispatch, Artists Materials would be kept in stock, Oil Paintings restored, and their Frames Re-gilded, while expert opinion would be given free to would-be Picture Buyers, Amateur Framemakers would be supplied with materials at City Prices, and the Best Window Glass would be cut and sold. Builders supplied at Trade Prices. I need hardly say that I had advice in drawing up this precious circular or I should never have dared aspire to such sublime heights of mendacity—even now—though it is not easy—I blush to think on what a slender possibility of performance I based all those grandiloquent promises.
After all they did little harm. For I hired boys to distribute my bills in the best districts, paying them liberally upon their solemn promises to knock at each door, where there was no letter box, so as to make sure of my bills entering the houses. Next morning walking over Denmark Hill—it had rained somewhat heavily during the night—I saw my bills almost carpeting the sidewalk and roadway, and after my first bitterness of soul at the sad waste had passed off, I accepted the situation as a judgment on me from above for my shameless exaggerations. I never consoled myself by thinking of the specious and spacious lies of the Company promoter, the sufferers from which all contributed to his wealth, out of which he often gave liberally to religious institutions and felt a perfect glow of satisfaction thereat. But for all my experience I was both ignorant and simple, which may serve as a reason for my penitence, but no excuse.
The opening day arrived—I had been up nearly all the previous night putting the finishing touches to the appearance of the shop and the arrangement of the stock, and flattered myself that it looked pretty well. My wife, who had an innate genius for art needlework, was in charge of that department, and we had arranged that in the event of orders for picture framing coming in with an overwhelming rush, she was to promise, in case the customers would not accept her assurance that I would do the work as cheaply as possible from the patterns they might select, that I would wait upon them at their residences later on.
So I left that morning for the Office, standing for a moment on the opposite side of the Lane, to gaze with pardonable pride upon the bright shop with its blue and gold Fascia of
"Art Needlework Bullen and Picture Framing."
It did look pretty, and although anything but an optimist I confess I did hope that its attractions would be irresistible to the passers-by; he or she, especially she, would feel compelled to come in and buy something. Of course, being an eminently genteel concern I could not have, in the usual suburban fashion, a band of music performing in the first floor front with the windows open, nor two or three raucous voiced men exchanging witticisms with the passers-by upon their stupidity in missing an opportunity like this of parting with their brass with a thousand to one chance of getting the best value for it in the 'ole world, and if I could have there was no money to pay for it. But I confess that as I stood and looked at the pretty little show, I had a vision of past experiences in raging seas among savage men amid primitive conditions where life depended upon muscle and sinew and grit, and I felt indeed as if I had sold my birthright for a mess of pottage, or rather the promise of it, since it certainly was not yet delivered.
It was my long Saturday at the Office—for in these days we only had alternate Saturday afternoons off—and how I got through it I do not know. I expect I sorely vexed those above me by the frequency of my errors. But I pictured my wife with the shop full of eager buyers utterly unable to cope with the rush of trade. I built castle after castle in Spain, I was retiring from the office to take charge of an ever increasing business demanding all my energies, and building up a competency for my old age.
At last five o'clock came and I hurried homewards full of conflicting emotions. But never in my deepest pessimism had I allowed myself to contemplate the reality as it confronted me upon arrival at the shop. At that time on Saturday afternoon there was not a single person in front of the shop, nor when I entered was there anyone inside! I passed through into the parlour and enquired in a subdued manner what the day's fortune had been. I learned at once that not a single person had entered the premises that day with the idea of buying anything. There had been several beggars and people asking for change (they could hardly have come to a more hopeless place on such a quest since our total stock of currency was less than five shillings) but customers—none.
I was staggered, for I was unprepared. Nevertheless I put as good a face upon it as I could and solaced myself with some tea. But it was rather a mournful meal for the thought would continually obtrude itself "if this is the beginning what will the end be like"? However, there was still plenty to do in the "getting straight" process, and being busy at that I had no time to brood over this inexplicable repugnance of the public to patronise me. Not that it was a busy thoroughfare—far from it. Lower down some trade was being done, but up where I was it looked like a new neighbourhood, I could not realise that it was a London suburb with a great population. I did not then know that for some mysterious reason Lordship Lane, except in one very small section of it, had always been shunned by shoppers, who went much farther afield to do their purchasing, down to Rye Lane, Peckham, or even as far as Brixton.
So that sad day closed with never a potential buyer, and that delicate perishable stock staring at me like the fruit of a crime, while the gas from the six burners flared away as if rejoicing in the expense it was causing me. So at eleven o'clock, I closed the emporium, and basket in hand sallied forth to buy our frugal Sunday's dinner, thinking somewhat bitterly that people must have food and clothing, but art needlework and picture frames, being unnecessary luxuries, they had evidently decided to do without.
I went to bed that night with a heavy heart, because now the fact that I was in debt without hope of repayment stared me in the face, nagged at me, would not let me shut it out, and for once my hitherto unfailing solace, reading, was of no avail. At last I summoned up my mental resources, and determined that since I had done all I could, it was worse than useless to worry about the unfortunate result. Doubtless I had done wrong, but with the most innocent and praiseworthy intentions, and so I would sleep—and I did.
The next day, Sunday, was a gloomy one for me, for I knew no one in the vicinity, and missed sorely my usual happy association with some body of open-air preachers, and I felt almost outcast from human sympathy, which, though it may be a confession of weakness, I always had a craving for. But I got through the day somehow, my children wondering what made their father so dull, such bad company, and was heartily glad when bedtime came, and I could again seek the beautiful solace of sleep.
When I awoke again on Monday morning at five o'clock, and commenced to busy myself about the house, it was with a feeling that was new to me then, but which never left me during all the time that shop, like some infernal incubus, clung to my neck. It was a sense of utter hopelessness of ever doing any good in this business, coupled with the absolute necessity of going on with it. I know I may be thought a poor minded craven for being daunted in this wise thus early, but I must plead that I had a prophetic instinct, besides my tangible experience, and the grim fact of all these bills presently falling due. But I can honestly say that this sense of hopelessness did not, as far as I am aware, ever prevent me from doing my best and working my hardest to make the best of what I felt to be a very bad job.
When I got to the office I realised that the shop must be dismissed from my mind altogether while at my desk if I was to retain my post. For I could take no half measures; I must either not think about it at all or think of nothing else. So I took hold of myself resolutely, and fixed my mind on my work, compelling an interest in it that I had never been able to feel before. And it did me good in two ways. It relieved me of the hateful round of useless thought about the shop, and it salved my conscience, which was worrying me very much about the way in which I was certainly neglecting my most important duties. But I found it pretty hard to answer the inquiries of one or two friends to whom I had confided my plans for going into business. I had to be frank with them as to what had happened, and also to feign a hope, which I did not feel, that things would soon improve.
However, taking things on the whole I felt much better in spirit when I returned home on Monday evening. I felt, that, knowing the worst, I could hardly help expecting a little improvement, and as to the future—well, that was hardly my concern now. So that I was almost cheerful when I entered the shop door, and not too much startled when my wife rushed to meet me beaming, and crying, "I've sold something!" I was sorely tempted to be sarcastic but forebore, and merely said quietly, "I am glad to hear that, what have you sold?" "One of those pretty photo-frames out of my window, and here's the money," producing a shilling, and pointing to the two frames which remained of the same kind. Then I laughed long and loud, for the irony of the situation went clean through me. She stared at me in bewildered fashion, saying, "What on earth is the matter with you?" She evidently thought I was mad.
I answered, "Nothing, I'm sane enough, but seeing that our first business transaction in the shop is to sell an article for a shilling which cost us eighteenpence, I do not know what I might have been if I hadn't laughed." And I have to laugh now when I think of it. That was our first customer, and she had a bargain. Somehow I persisted in looking at the transaction in a humorous light, and so it didn't hurt us, and presently fate made us amends by bringing a friend in who was to me for all those grievous four years a veritable godsend. He was, like myself, a stranger in the neighbourhood, indeed he was a stranger to London, having come up to take charge of a branch library. He "happened in" as the Americans say, just to ask if I had some kind of nails or screws or something like that, for he was an ingenious chap, and always doing something or other to make the temporary library over which he presided more fit for its purpose without too much extra expense.
We got into conversation quite easily, and he was speedily in possession of my story. For, I was literally aching to tell it to someone, and I could not have found a more sympathetic listener. He was, I think, one of those people who are often cruelly described as "nobody's enemy" but his own, but who should be better described as everybody's friend but his own, for a more unselfish chap never lived, and that character is, whatever its other faults may be, possessed of the golden virtue of helpfulness in an eminent degree.
Well, before we had been talking an hour he was installed as the friend of the family, in which unenviable position, as far as he was concerned, he reigned without a rival all the time we had the business. It was a bright and cheery episode, and did me more good than a hundred customers would have done, so that I went to bed that night feeling quite contented, and happy. I had found a friend who would be a friend indeed.
The first proof I had of the value commercially of my new friend's help was that coming in contact with so many people at the library, he recommended me as a picture-framer in season and out. Anyhow he got me work, which, whether it paid or not, was what I ardently desired. For while I was doing something I was, as Kipling says, swallowed up in the clean joy of creation, and nothing else then mattered very much to me. So gradually customers began to flow in, very gradually it is true, but they did come, and although my gains were small I made many good friends who did their best to recommend me to others. I had a workshop on the first floor which was a chosen haunt of my intimates, who, their work being done, used to come and perch amidst the unpicturesque litter and watch me at work, preferring apparently to be there in thirsty discomfort to being in the local saloon bar. But how they did smoke! We had a varied compound of odours up there, boiling glue, sour paste and general dustiness, but the whole rank compound was leavened, and I think purified, by tobacco smoke, diligently emitted by my friends as they watched me at work.
The curious part of these gatherings was that I had nothing to offer these guests, no refreshment, either wet or dry. I was far too poor for that. Not that any of them ever seemed to expect anything but a precarious seat on the edge of a box, or even standing room. They brought their own tobacco and talked and smoked while I worked, and when at last the job was finished and I had to say, "Now, you fellows must clear out, I've got to take this job home," they would go reluctantly—except occasionally that some of them would insist upon lending me a hand with my load to the door of the house that I was bound to. Ah, it was a strenuous time and full of worries, but I know now that it had its own peculiar charm and value, also a certain zest which I shall never know again.
Noble sportsmen spend huge sums and risk life and limb hunting game, I was gambling with my health and strength for an elusive stake, and, generally speaking, the odds were against me. And what made the venture of more intense interest was of course the helpless dependents. These made it impossible for me to halt even if, as often happened, I lost heart. It must be a good thing to be compelled to go on, it often makes a hero out of quite an ordinary person, raising him to heights of effort of which he never dreamed himself capable. All the more honour therefore to those, who, without these incentives, press forward to their goal in defiance of every hindrance.
I now began to realise in full measure the minor trials of the shop-keeper. The mere buying and selling, the commercial side of the business had in it a good deal of pleasure, but there was little in the more sordid details of keeping the stock dusted, the shop clean, the windows bright. Oh, those windows! they had a fascination for the children of the neighbourhood, whose chief delight appeared to be to get a lump of horse-dung or mud or filth of any sort and smear on them immediately after I had spent an hour's hard work in getting them clean. And I did begrudge the time for doing this, yet I couldn't afford to pay for having it done, that would indeed have been taking the exiguous gilt off the all too scanty gingerbread. And there was yet another prime difficulty. I dared not let a customer go who wanted anything that I had not in stock at the time, but would promise to get it whatever it was. And so I had to make continual rushes to the city after office hours, the travelling expenses almost invariably eating up double the profits, rather than have a customer go elsewhere and say that he or she could not get what they wanted from me.
This is the main difficulty of a suburban shop like mine was, started with insufficient capital, for it is impossible to keep a stock on hand sufficient to meet the needs of all customers, so vastly varied are the details of nearly every business now. But in this matter the wholesale dealers are kindness and courtesy itself. They might very well neglect the small, hardly beset trader, or refuse to supply him unless he gave a substantial order, but in my experience they are just as courteous and ready to meet the wants of the smallest of their customers as they are of the huge retailers who spend scores of thousands of pounds per annum with them. I always think of this when I read diatribes in the press about the laxity of British trade methods abroad, and wonder how much truth there can be in them.
This, however, is trenching upon the ground of high commercial politics, very far removed indeed from my feeble shopkeeping, and so I must needs return humbly to the principal difficulty encountered on the left hand side of my shop, or let us say grandiloquently, "The Fancy and Art Needlework Department." When customers began to come in we soon found that they almost invariably wanted something we had not got in stock, often something which we had never heard of, and when we hinted that the demand was infrequent or unusual, lifted shoulders and half-closed eyes proclaimed most eloquently profound disbelief in our statements, or an equally profound belief in our unfitness for the particular business in which we were engaged. I was often tempted to believe that ladies upon whose hands time hung heavy did of malice aforethought study our poor windows, and finding that something in the art needlework line which they knew of was not there (alas that was not difficult), would enter boldly and ask for it. If by some happy but unusual chance we had it, and displayed it triumphantly, nothing was easier than to decry its quality or tint or something, and retiring say that they would think about it. Doubtless in this employment there was great sport to be found, seeing the number of women who practised it, but it needed the exercise of much patience and amiability to take it politely when once we had begun to realise that it was a game to these folks, and nothing more.
Still I make no doubt but that this trial did us good, in that no one can exercise patience and politeness without becoming more patient and polite. Only when the making of a sale was almost imperative by reason of present need for money there was often a sick feeling at the heart upon realising that the comfortably dressed, bejewelled woman upon whom we were attending so assiduously had not the remotest idea of making a purchase, but was only passing the time away in what was to her a pleasant fashion. Such behaviour, so common among women of leisure, is hard enough upon paid employees of a shop, but it is very much harder upon such people as depend upon the scanty earnings of the shop itself. Ah well, it was only another of the lessons I was learning that, as a sardonic shopkeeper friend of mine said one day, a small trader in London must be a transgressor, in that his way was certainly hard.
CHAPTER IX IN HARNESS
Now indeed I began to realise, in spite of what I so often read in the daily papers, something of the optimistic pushfulness of the commercial traveller. The shop had not been open very long when they began to call, and such was their power of persuasion, so eager were they to sell me something, however little, so as to get a foot in as it were, that I often felt grateful that I was away all day. I left concise orders that nothing was to be bought, but on the occasions when I happened to be at home I felt so soft and yielding in the hands of these persistent pushers of their employer's wares that I could not but pity my wife, charged as she was with the duty of saying no to men who refused to recognise such a word as belonging to any language.
They were so polite, so gentlemanly, so pathetic, and so well informed. They seemed able to talk upon any subject, although they all had a marvellous knack of twisting any topic round to the one they were interested in. The luxuriance and fruitfulness of their imaginations, too, always impressed me, and although I always deprecated them wasting their time over so impecunious a tradesman as I was I had a good deal of joy in their company, bright and cheerful as it always was. But I have also to confess that they were dangerous counsellors. Their pleading for small orders, just one line, their utter indifference to the payment, making it so fatally easy to get into debt, I look back upon now with horror. And yet I suppose it is of the essence of business, this hopeful airy outlook upon life. I now see that I might have stocked my shop with the choicest products, might have made it glow again and—but never mind—that comes later. I am not, never was, a strong-minded person; except in certain very restricted directions I am exceedingly prone to take the line of least resistance, but I do feel just a little puffed up with the knowledge that I was so often able to say no and stick to it in spite of all the blandishments of those delightful drummers.
I had been about a year in the shop when I realised that I could no longer expect to do any good whatever with the fancy department. The Islanders had obviously no aspirations in the direction of crewel work, applique or any other form of art embroidery. Or if they had they did not consider that my emporium was the place to satisfy them. So I began to face the possibility of writing off all the expenditure on that side as a loss, and the only question was, whose? For beyond all controversy I was now in debt—how much I would not know, dared not contemplate. But as my picture-framing was still a going concern, and subject to sudden spasmodic accessions of trade, I was always kept on the tenterhooks of expectation—I dare not say hope—that one big order might put things right. In this I was doubtless somewhat encouraged by a sympathetic fellow-clerk, who used to suggest to me the possibility of my getting orders for frames to be exhibited say in all the stations from King's Cross to Aberdeen, and just for fun we often used to speculate upon the profits to be obtained from such a contract. I knew perfectly well that I stood not the slightest chance of getting such a bit of fat as such a contract would be, but I felt that it cost nothing to build a castle or two upon its possibilities, and so I did.
Indeed I wanted some romance in my grey life now, for I was getting hemmed in on every side. The rates kept going up, the gas bills were crushing, sickness was perennial with us owing to the bad drainage of the house, and to make matters very much worse, the structural conditions of the place rendered it barely habitable. The landlord would do nothing, and I could do nothing, towards making the house fit to live in; and in consequence, as he lived next door, our relations, as they say in the newspapers, were strained. I blamed him then, but now I repent that I did so, for he was a poor man also, and he must have often felt that his rent was in the greatest danger. As indeed it was, although I gratefully remember that I did pay him all that he was entitled to, not indeed without some slight coercion, but still I did pay.
Fortunately for me I had made the acquaintance of some religious bodies in the neighbourhood, and I had now some employment for my Sundays. This was a prime necessity for me, for I had never been able to go to church in the ordinarily accepted sense of the term. I wanted to be up and doing. And as I had been used to this for years I felt the loss of it very much on coming to East Dulwich. And until I had made myself known and received invitations to speak in the open air meetings, I was quite unhappy. For no matter how much else I had to do, this particular business seemed to be indispensable to my wellbeing, to supply a need that nothing else would. I suppose that many of our present Members of Parliament owe their positions to the same compelling desire of holding forth to their fellows in the open air forum, of seeing the effect that their oratory has upon their hearers. Now I am not going to recapitulate the experiences I have set down in the "Apostle of the South East," but only to point out that this life of mine was as you might say triangular. First in point of importance, but not I fear in consideration, was the office, when I drew my regular recurring pay. Next the shop, which I never knew whether to class as an awful incubus or a pleasant recreation (it was both at times), and lastly the evangelistic work in the open air which claimed most of my Sundays. I might perhaps make up the square by bringing in my domestic life, but that would involve writing of details that are quite private, and so I leave that side to be assumed as a sort of leaven running through the whole lump.
From which foregoing outlines it may be taken for granted that my life was fairly full, that I had no need to kill time. Yet so true is it that the busiest people are always those who seem to have time at their disposal, that I managed to keep up my reading, not merely of books but newspapers, and followed all the events of the day with the keenest interest. But this was not, as it never has been, from an ardent desire to educate myself, and reach out ambitiously after something better than I was doing. If in all I have written hitherto there is one word that can be construed into a vain-glorious asking for praise on account of my energy, my perseverance, my earnest desire to get on and all the rest of the nauseous twaddle, I beg my readers to forgive me, and to believe that I had not, never had, never can have the slightest intention of posing in this manner.
My Apologia must be this: I worked hard because I was afraid of the consequences if I didn't, not at all because I was naturally industrious, energetic, or ingenious, for I know that I was none of these things, or rather that I had none of these fine qualities. I read whenever I could, whatever I could, because I loved reading for its own sake, and I read good stuff because I had a natural distaste for rubbish. A good book could and can still make me forget all earthly ills, all my surroundings, in fact make me cry and laugh and wonder, while a bad book makes me absolutely ill if I persevere in reading it.
To return to another development of my business as a picture-framer consequent upon opening a shop. Delightful people came in and talked, first about pictures and their frames, then about art in all its branches (which by the way necessitated me reading up "Art"), and then by an easy transition to any subject in which they were interested at that particular time. Sometimes these breaks in the greyness of everyday life were welcome, and led to most useful acquaintanceships and friendships; but sometimes when I had an order to finish and deliver for urgent reasons, I talked with a wild pre-occupied look and itching hands, longing to tell my suave interlocutor to go to Jehannum or elsewhere, and let me get on with my work, yet not daring to do so for fear of offending a potential customer.
Yet very often when such a one had given an order for a one-and-ninepenny frame and had gone away, my over-wrought nerves refused to allow me to finish what I had in hand. Because, principally, of the glass. Now your born glass-cutter has no nerves, cannot have. In the nice handling of a diamond across a virgin sheet of fifteen-ounce glass, the slightest imaginative tremor must have fatal results, that is as regards the profit to be made from clean cutting. But this important matter must be much more particularly explained, for to me it has often meant the difference between profit and loss, to say nothing of the pains I endured by reason of my inability to swear—for only language lurid, loud, and long, could relieve my labouring bosom, I felt sure, on many of these occasions.
Be it known to you then that the ordinary picture-framer's glass comes from Belgium in cases containing I forget how many sheets each about fifty inches long and thirty-six inches wide, and weighing roughly fifteen ounces to the square foot. The price per case varies continually, but it may be safely assumed that, given a skilful cutter, a retail price of twopence halfpenny a square foot will yield a profit of about twenty five per cent. Only, much of this glass has so many air bubbles in it, is so uneven in thickness, that it can only be used for pictures on the assumption that the customer will not mind a bubble giving a sinister twist to some character's eye in the picture, or in certain lights, a series of blotches upon the whole scene. It is really window glass, but when Christmas number plates must be framed in competition for about eighteenpence each, no poor framer can afford to regard trifles like that. And then its uneven substance in such large sheets makes the manipulation of it a matter of extreme difficulty except to those in constant practice and with highly trained skill. Now very early in my occupation of a shop I learned that I must give up my old fiddling system of buying my glass ready cut in Westminster and carrying it home, for many reasons, not the least of these being that I got no profit out of it.
So I bought a diamond for twelve and sixpence, and happened to get a very good one. Then I ordered a case of glass, and unconsciously with it I received a stock of trouble out of all proportion to any profit I was ever likely to make. Nothing that ever I undertook gave me so many tremors, cost me so much sweat, as did this truly diabolical business of glass-cutting. The rough case in which the sheets came standing on its edge at the end of the shop was to me the abode of devils—I approached it trembling, drew out a great wavering sheet, and lifted it on to the sloping table covered with baize which I had made. If I got it there all right I heaved a great sigh of relief, and usually went about some other job for a little while to steady my nerves before tackling the more important business of cutting. That is if there was no one waiting for a square. If there was, although my mouth was dry and my heart was thumping furiously against my ribs I had perforce to assure a jaunty air and even, God help me, hum a tune while my teeth almost chattered. "Conscience doth make cowards of us all," but so does poverty and dread of loss which can be ill borne, and I will back poverty to be the greater maker of cowards. I know it will be thought that I am making a lot of this trivial matter, but I solemnly declare that during my seafaring career, in the presence very often of the most appalling dangers, I have never felt the sickness of heart that has come over me when one of the huge sheets of glass, has, despite all my care, fallen in a heap of tinkling fragments from my shaking hands.
I have many memories of painful endurance connected with glass, but one stands out prominently from all the rest. It was on a Friday, and I had rather a large order in hand which if I got in that night I might reasonably hope to get the money for on Saturday, and so be ready for that rapidly recurring bug-bear, Saturday night. I had three original sheets of glass left in the case, ample to fill the order I had in hand, even with a little more than my average allowance of accidents. I was singing blithely at my work when the tell-tale bell over the shop door announced a customer. With a sigh I laid down my tools, for in the midst of a job like that at nine o'clock at night I dreaded interruption, the more that I usually found it profitless, trivial, and annoying. I found a man in the shop twiddling a piece of string in his fingers, and my heart sank, for I knew that meant glass cutting, my customers for glass nearly always bringing their dimensions on pieces of string. He asked me quietly for a strip of glass "that size" throwing the string on the counter, that size being four feet long, by four and a half inches wide. For one moment I meditated telling him to go elsewhere, but an infernal spasm of pride came to me for my undoing, and assuming an air of nonchalance to hide my smouldering rage I drew out the first of my three sheets and laid it on the operating table. I laid the cutting laths on it and drew my diamond along its surface for about a foot when click! it cracked diagonally across. There was a cry of sympathy from my enemy, but without a word I removed the pieces and drew out another sheet. That literally fell to fragments as I was lifting it on the table.
Now my nerves were fretted to fiddle strings, but with the calmness of despair I laid hold on the third and last sheet taking absolutely no heed of some remarks which the man was making behind me. I got that on the table all right and cut the strip off, but as I was handing it to him it fell in three pieces. I went on to cut another strip and the remainder cracked in two lines making it almost useless for any purpose. Then almost blind and deaf with suppressed rage and misery I turned to my customer saying in a queer sounding voice, "I've got no more glass to break, you'll have to go somewhere else." And then he said something, I don't know what it was, but I suddenly lost control of myself and poured forth my sentiments.
I was wrong, unjust, and rude, for it was certainly no fault of his, and I have no excuse whatever, but oh it was hard to have to spoil six or seven shillings worth of glass, to have ruined my chance of completing the order I had in hand, and, as far as I could see, to have jeopardised the poor kids' Sunday dinner—which was the unkindest stroke of all. He had no sooner gone, with his measly sixpence still in his pocket, than I shut up the shop, put away my tools, turned out the gas, and went to bed with a book. But it was long ere I could make any sense out of the printed characters—they all danced amid a glittering halo of broken glass.
I had made several spasmodic efforts next day to overtake the difficulty which had fallen in my way, but unsuccessfully, and at 9 P.M. having done all I could towards the order, short of getting the glass for it, was standing disconsolately by my bench fingering in my trousers pocket a shilling and a few coppers—all I had, on a Saturday night, to "get the things in," as we say, for Sunday. Suddenly there came shrilling up the stairs a cheerful whistle—four notes of the ascending diatonic scale—the signal of my inestimable chum Bob from the library over the way. It was literally what the Hindus call a Hawa-dilli, a heart lifter, whenever I heard it, but never more so than now. I gave the response, and he came bounding up—full of beans as usual. "Well, old stick, how—" and then he stopped, my haggard look I suppose daunted him. "Why, what's up then?" he queried. "Broke all your glass?" I nodded gloomily, and then because I was selfish, and full of my own trouble, I burst out and told him all.
He listened in silence, but with a face full of sympathy, and when I had finished he said, thrusting his hands down deep into his pockets, "That's too bad; and I haven't got three bob myself. But wait a bit—I believe I can touch Curwen for a quid till pay day—I'll be back in a minute," and he was gone. He seemed to be back almost immediately, with a joyful face, shouting, "All right, old man, here's half the plunder," holding out half a sovereign to me. Did I take it? Certainly I did; the possibility of not doing so never occurred to me, for I knew even then that I would do the same as Bob had done had I the opportunity. Yes, I took the money, and in a few minutes had laid in my supplies for Sunday with an easy mind, but without extravagance.
This which is noted as if it might be an extraordinary occurrence, was nothing of the sort. Something similar happened many times, indeed it was a fair sample of the friendship I enjoyed with this particular man—a true fellowship which I am glad to mention as a sample of the goodwill existing between chums, and as far removed from the cold-blooded so-called charity of the majority of those who have great possessions as can well be. If I dared I would like to add to it by giving some instances of similar kindnesses received from one or two others, not perhaps quite so intimate, but quite as kindly meant, and as spontaneously offered. Only, alas, I know that to be more explicit upon this head would be to offend those generous hearts most grievously. They belong to the small select class who hate the idea of their left hand knowing what their right hand does. Above all creeds they yet practically obey the highest of all, and do their good deeds with a shame-faced shrinking from publicity that is simply inexplicable to those whose names figure so prominently in subscription lists.
Amidst all the memories of that strenuous time, which cluster so thickly around me as I write, none are more delightful than these—of the sympathy and practical help I met with from those who were almost as poor as myself. And, be it noted, not one of these dear friends were in sympathy with the work which lay nearest my heart, the open-air preaching. They were not Christian Brothers, nor did they feel at all inclined to come under my teaching. It is, I fear, a lurid commentary upon the way in which, within the churches, practical Christianity is followed up, that in all my extensive experience, most of the individual helping, the ready sympathy in practical ways for those in trouble has come from "unbelievers" as they are contemptuously termed. An enormous amount of "charity" is dispensed by the churches in orthodox ways with due recognition of the donors, and often more than adequate reward to the agents who distribute, but at whatever cost I must affirm that it is nothing either as regards quantity, quality, and effectiveness, with that individually given by those who make no claim upon the name of Christian at all. What does this mean? To me it means that while the Christian says that he is unworthy of the least of the Father's mercies, he endeavours to find out before bestowing a halfpenny in charity that the recipient shall be worthy in his estimation of his charity! I speak as a man, but that is my opinion.
CHAPTER X THE COTTAGE ORNÉE
There must have been in the minds of those who have read so far, and who have had some practical experience themselves, a dim enquiry, how did this feeble tradesman keep out of the County Court? For to those who have ever been in a like position to mine, the terror of the County Court, the nearest approach to the Cadi under the palm tree that modern jurisprudence can know, has been ever present. It is true that after I became unable to pay my wholesale purveyor's bills as they came in, I was put to great straits in writing, requesting, yes, begging, for time to pay for what I had bought, because I had not yet sold it, nor indeed had I any hope of doing so. These, however, were not the people to sue me in a small debts court. Nor since I never had credit from the neighbouring shopkeepers had I any difficulty with them, poor people, whose only remedy, and that a weak one, with rogues lay in the County Court.
Thus it came about that I only knew the charming little one-story building in the Camberwell New Road, which some delightful writer, I forget who, has characterised as the "Cottage Ornée," by sight, and its inscription, cut into the stucco of its façade, "Lambeth County Court," never gave me a qualm. Every day I passed it either on foot or, when I was well to do, on the twenty-four a shilling tram, which ran from Camberwell Green to Vauxhall Station, and it really never occurred to me that one day I should be all too familiar with the precincts. That day came, however, and in a peculiar manner. I had hinted that I was on none too good terms with my landlord, who lived next door be it remembered, and our closer acquaintance did not at all improve our relations. The fact is, I suppose, that he never understood me, and I am sure I never understood him. He was trying to make a living out of his shop next door and the little property which I rented from him, and resented any attempts I made to compel him to render my premises more habitable. I naturally saw things from my own standpoint, and reprobated him for a soulless despot, who, having secured me as a lessee of his rotten, tumble-down premises, expected me, while paying him a heavy rental, to keep them in repair, which I resented accordingly; and at last matters came to the pitch of my refusing to pay any more rent until that desirable messuage, which I was lessee of, should have its roof repaired and made tenantable, as I put it, for human beings.
He did not see eye to eye with me, and fell back upon the landlord's best friend, a bum-bailiff, called in our vernacular, with every inflection of emphasis that dislike could suggest, "th' bum." A most unenviable occupation, and one requiring a front of brass, as well as a great deal of callous energy. Such men should have no feelings, and usually appear as if they had none, for they are willing for a consideration that all the odium incurred by the landlord should be transferred to them. There are, of course, exceptions to this general rule, for some bailiffs are kindly and generous and honest, but I unfortunately came across a bad specimen of the genus indeed. He entered my shop one day, during my absence, and enquired for me, well knowing that I was away at the Office, and gradually wormed his way into the confidence of my wife by representing himself to her as a friend who was deeply interested in my welfare, and anxious to arrange amicably the little difference, as he put it, between my landlord and myself. She was quite won by his manner, and entertained him with tea until my arrival, when she introduced him to me in his assumed character.
I was quite as easily gulled as she was, and after a few minutes amicable conversation, during which he repeatedly professed to be able to smooth matters between my landlord and myself, as it was so undesirable that neighbours such as we were should be on bad terms, I showed him over the house, and pointed out to him its deplorable condition. In this connection I also mentioned my many difficulties, and the impossibility of my undertaking the necessary repairs even if I felt disposed to, which I most emphatically did not. This confidence of mine corroborated what my wife had been telling him, though that I did not then know, and should have made him sorry for the task he had set himself. But presently, to my amazement, he said, quite casually, "Well, about this quarter's rent, don't you think you'd better pay it and save trouble?" I stared at him for a moment, not even then realising that I had been entertaining a wolf in sheep's clothing, and then replied, "I couldn't pay it anyhow before the end of the month" (it was then about the twentieth), "but I shan't pay it until he makes the place fit to live in."
"Oh well," he answered coolly, "you know your own business best, I suppose. I've done all I can, and if you won't pay, I must leave a man in possession, that's all. He's waiting outside. There's my card," and with that he displayed to my horror-stricken gaze a piece of pasteboard on which the words, "Broker and Appraiser" stood out apparently in letters of fire. My eyes were opened indeed, but it was too late. I could only promise to do what I could on the morrow, and plead that in the meantime he would keep his man off the premises, in view of the harm in a business sense it would undoubtedly do me. This, after much apparent cogitation and very grudgingly, he consented to do on my solemn promise to have the money there for him, with his fee in addition, the next evening at six o'clock. And then he strode out with the air of a conqueror, all his suavity of demeanour having vanished with the necessity for it.
Eight pounds to be obtained by six o'clock the next day! No credit anywhere, not a bit of portable property pawnable, and pay-day ten days off. Yes, I know what you are thinking, reader, "Is it possible that this man had let his rent fall due without making any provision for it?" To go into explanations would take far too long, and would, besides, not be over profitable, so the easiest way is to say that I had been so foolish and improvident, and whatever other epithet may be chosen, and not for the first time either. But hitherto I had always managed to pay up well within the usual days of grace allowed without having a bailiff presented to me.
I'm afraid I did not get much sleep that night, which was unusual, for although I did not sleep long I slept soundly as a rule. One fact stood out prominently in my memory, the advertisement of a philanthropist in one of the streets off the Adelphi, who was always prepared to advance to gentlemen in permanent employment, who might be temporarily embarrassed, £5 on their simple note of hand without any bothering security whatever. Prudence whispered, "Don't do it." Necessity growled, "You must." And so next day, during my luncheon hour, I hurried with a thumping heart to the address given in the advertisement. The matter was simplicity itself. The gentleman was a well-fed young Hebrew of quiet manners, who merely asked me a civil question or two and referred to a red book. "All right, Mr Bullen, you can have £5 on your signing this promissory note to pay £5. 10s. this day month." I accepted eagerly, shook hands cordially, and in two minutes was speeding back to the office with this precious fiver in my pocket. The making up of the other £3 was a matter of much more difficulty, and I am not justified in giving details, but I hurried home at five with £7. 19s. 6d. in my pocket, and a feeling of ability to face anybody and anything.
But had I known it, I had just taken a step that cost me afterwards more suffering than I even now care to think of. That simple little fiver, so easily borrowed at 120 per cent. per annum, and parted with directly to pay a debt that ought never to have become a debt! Well, I cannot say that it the was beginning of sorrows, but it certainly was the beginning of a great accession to the sorrows I already had. And I went home as glad as a boy who had just passed his first examination, as pleased as if I had just found five pounds instead of having added some rivets to the chain already round my neck.
The broker was waiting for me when I got home—when I saw him I felt with a chill that he knew all that I had been doing to get his claim settled—and I greeted him manfully, but without effusion, lugging the money out of my pocket and pushing it over towards him. He counted it in silence and gave me a receipt, and then said, as if it was an after-thought, "Oh, a friend of mine asked me to give you this as I should be seeing you." This was a summons to the Lambeth County Court to give reasons why I should not summarily pay an account of £7 odd incurred for attendance and medicine some five months before. What I thought as I gazed at the document I do not know, what I said were the banal words "All right, I'll attend to it." Yes I could attend to it, returnable in a week's time too. My pay of £9. 3s. 4d. never seemed to go very far in the settling of the demands made upon me, but this month it seemed as if it were a mere farce to take it up at all, so little would it do. And then there were the poor rates, the gas account, the water rate, and a few other little things of that kind, to say nothing of the perfectly ridiculous yet nevertheless imperative necessity of obtaining food for six persons.