Since the destruction by fire of the Royal Exchange in 1838, there
has been added to the curiosities of Cornhill a thickset, sturdy, and
hirsute crossing-sweeper--a man who is as civil by habit as he is
independent by nature. He has a long flowing beard, grey as wood smoke,
and a pair of fierce moustaches, giving a patriarchal air of importance
to a marked and observant face, which often serves as a painter’s
model. After half-an-hour’s conversation, you are forced to admit that
his looks do not all belie him, and that the old mariner (for such was
his profession formerly) is worthy in some measure of his beard.
He wears an old felt hat--very battered and discoloured; around his
neck, which is bared in accordance with sailor custom, he has a thick
blue cotton neckerchief tied in a sailor’s knot; his long iron-grey
beard is accompanied by a healthy and almost ruddy face. He stands
against the post all day, saying nothing, and taking what he can get
without solicitation.
[Illustration: THE BEARDED CROSSING-SWEEPER AT THE EXCHANGE.
[_From a Photograph._]]
When I first spoke to him, he wanted to know to what purpose I intended
applying the information that he was prepared to afford, and it was
not until I agreed to walk with him as far as St. Mary-Axe that I was
enabled to obtain his statement, as follows:--
“I’ve had this crossing ever since ’38. The Exchange was burnt down
in that year. Why, sir, I was wandering about trying to get a crust,
and it was very sloppy, so I took and got a broom; and while I kept a
clean crossing, I used to get ha’pence and pence. I got a dockman’s
wages--that’s half-a-crown a-day; sometimes only a shilling, and
sometimes more. I have taken a crown--but that’s very rare. The best
customers I had is dead. I used to make a good Christmas, but I don’t
now. I have taken a pound or thirty shillings then in the old times.
“I smoke, sir; I _will_ have tobacco, if I can’t get grub. My old woman
takes cares that I have tobacco.
“I have been a sailor, and the first ship as ever I was in was the Old
Colossus, 74, but we was only cruising about the Channel then, and took
two prizes. I went aboard the Old Remewa guardship--we were turned over
to her--and from her I was drafted over to the Escramander frigate. We
went out chasing Boney, but he gived himself up to the Old Impregnable.
I was at the taking of Algiers, in 1816, in the Superb. I was in the
Rochfort, 74, up the Mediterranean (they call it up the Mediterranean,
but it was the Malta station) three years, ten months, and twenty days,
until the ship was paid off.
“Then I went to work at the Dockyard. I had a misfortune soon after
that. I fell out of a garret window, three stories high, and that kept
me from going to the Docks again. I lost all my top teeth by that fall.
I’ve got a scar here, one on my chin; but I warn’t in the hospital more
than two weeks.
“I was afeard of being taken up solicitin’ charity, and I knew that
sweeping was a safe game; they couldn’t take me up for sweeping a
crossing.
“Sometimes I get insulted, only in words; sometimes I get chaffed by
sober people. Drunken men I don’t care for; I never listen to ’em,
unless they handle me, and then, although I am sixty-three this very
day, sir, I think I could show them something. I _do_ carry my age
well; and if you could ha’ seen how I have lived this last winter
through, sometimes one pound of bread between two of us, you’d say I
was a strong man to be as I am.
“Those who think that sweepin’ a crossing is idle work, make a great
mistake. In wet weather, the traffic that makes it gets sloppy as
soon as it’s cleaned. Cabs, and ’busses, and carriages continually
going over the crossing must scatter the mud on it, and you must look
precious sharp to keep it clean; but when I once get in the road, I
never jump out of it. I keeps my eye both ways, and if I gets in too
close quarters, I slips round the wheels. I’ve had them almost touch me.
“No, sir, I never got knocked down. In foggy weather, of course, it’s
no use sweeping at all.
“Parcels! it’s very few parcels I get to carry now; I don’t think I
get a parcel to carry once in a month: there’s ’busses and railways so
cheap. A man would charge as much for a distance as a cab would take
them.
“I don’t come to the same crossing on Sundays; I go to the corner of
Finch-lane. As to regular customers, I’ve none--to say regular; some
give me sixpence now and then. All those who used to give me regular
are dead.
“I was a-bed when the Exchange was burnt down.
“I have had this beard five years. I grew it to sit to artists when I
got the chance; but it don’t pay expenses--for I have to walk four or
five miles, and only get a shilling an hour: besides, I’m often kept
nearly two hours, and I get nothing for going and nothing for coming,
but just for the time I am there.
“Afore I wore it, I had a pair of large whiskers. I went to a
gentleman then, an artist, and he _did_ pay me well. He advised me to
grow mustarshers and the beard, but he hasn’t employed me since.
“They call me ‘Old Jack’ on the crossing, that’s all they call me. I
get more chaff from the boys than any one else. They only say, ‘Why
don’t you get shaved?’ but I take no notice on ’em.
“Old Bill, in Lombard Street! I knows him; he used to make a good thing
of it, but I don’t think he makes much now.
“My wife--I am married, sir--doesn’t do anything. I live in a
lodging-house, and I pay three shillings a-week.
“I tell you what we has, now, when I go home. We has a pound of bread,
a quarter of an ounce of tea, and perhaps a red herring.
“I’ve had a weakness in my legs for two year; the veins comes down, but
I keep a bandage in my pocket, and when I feels ’em coming down, I puts
the bandage on ’till the veins goes up again--it’s through being on my
legs so long (because I had very strong legs when young) and want of
good food. When you only have a bit of bread and a cup of tea--no meat,
no vegetables--you find it out; but I’m as upright as a dart, and as
lissom as ever I was.
“I gives threepence for my brooms. I wears out three in a week in the
wet weather. I always lean very hard on my broom, ’specially when
the mud is sticky--as it is after the roads is watered. I am very
particular about my brooms; I gives ’em away to be burned when many
another would use them.”