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.