The young sweeper who had been styled by his companions the “King” was
a pretty-looking boy, only tall enough to rest his chin comfortably
on the mantel-piece as he talked to me, and with a pair of grey eyes
that were as bright and clear as drops of sea-water. He was clad in a
style in no way agreeing with his royal title; for he had on a kind of
dirt-coloured shooting-coat of tweed, which was fraying into a kind of
cobweb at the edges and elbows. His trousers too, were rather faulty,
for there was a pink-wrinkled dot of flesh at one of the knees; while
their length was too great for his majesty’s short legs, so that they
had to be rolled up at the end like a washerwoman’s sleeves.
His royal highness was of a restless disposition, and, whilst
talking, lifted up, one after another, the different ornaments on the
mantel-piece, frowning and looking at them sideways, as he pondered
over the replies he should make to my questions.
When I arrived at the grandmother’s apartment the “king” was absent,
his majesty having been sent with a pitcher to fetch some spring-water.
The “king” also was kind enough to favour me with samples of his
wondrous tumbling powers. He could bend his little legs round till they
curved like the long German sausages we see in the ham-and-beef shops;
and when he turned head over heels, he curled up his tiny body as
closely as a wood-louse, and then rolled along, wabbling like an egg.
“The boys call me Johnny,” he said; “and I’m getting on for eleven,
and I goes along with the Goose and Harry, a-sweeping at St. Martin’s
Church, and about there. I used, too, to go to the crossing where the
statute is, sir, at the bottom of the Haymarket. I went along with
the others; sometimes there were three or four of us, or sometimes
one, sir. I never used to sweep unless it was wet. I don’t go out not
before twelve or one in the day; it ain’t no use going before that; and
beside, I couldn’t get up before that, I’m too sleepy. I don’t stop out
so late as the other boys; they sometimes stop all night, but I don’t
like that. The Goose was out all night along with Martin; they went all
along up Piccirilly, and there they climbed over the Park railings and
went a birding all by themselves, and then they went to sleep for an
hour on the grass--so they says. I likes better to come home to my bed.
It kills me for the next day when I do stop out all night. The Goose is
always out all night; he likes it.
“Neither father nor mother’s alive, sir, but I lives along with
grandmother and aunt, as owns this room, and I always gives them all I
gets.
“Sometimes I makes a shilling, sometimes sixpence, and sometimes less.
I can never take nothink of a day, only of a night, because I can’t
tumble of a day, and I can of a night.
“The Gander taught me tumbling, and he was the first as did it along
the crossings. I can tumble quite as well as the Goose; I can turn a
caten-wheel, and he can’t, and I can go further on forards than him,
but I can’t tumble backards as he can. I can’t do a handspring, though.
Why, a handspring’s pitching yourself forards on both hands, turning
over in front, and lighting on your feet; that’s very difficult, and
very few can do it. There’s one little chap, but he’s very clever, and
can tie himself up in a knot a’most. I’m best at caten-wheels; I can
do ’em twelve or fourteen times running--keep on at it. It just _does_
tire you, that’s all. When I gets up I feels quite giddy. I can tumble
about forty times over head and heels. I does the most of that, and I
thinks it’s the most difficult, but I can’t say which gentlemen likes
best. You see they are anigh sick of the head-and-heels tumbling, and
then werry few of the boys can do caten-wheels on the crossings--only
two or three besides me.
“When I see anybody coming, I says, ‘Please, sir, give me a halfpenny,’
and touches my hair, and then I throws a caten-wheel, and has a look at
’em, and if I sees they are laughing, then I goes on and throws more of
’em. Perhaps one in ten will give a chap something. Some of ’em will
give you a threepenny-bit or p’rhaps sixpence, and others only give
you a kick. Well, sir, I should say they likes tumbling over head and
heels; if you can keep it up twenty times then they begins laughing,
but if you only does it once, some of ’em will say, ‘Oh, I could do
that myself,’ and then they don’t give nothink.
“I know they calls me the King of Tumblers, and I think I can tumble
the best of them; none of them is so good as me, only the Goose at
tumbling backards.
“We don’t crab one another when we are sweeping; if we was to crab
one another, we’d get to fighting and giving slaps of the jaw to one
another. So when we sees anybody coming, we cries, ‘My gentleman and
lady coming here;’ ‘My lady;’ ‘My two gentlemens;’ and if any other
chap gets the money, then we says, ‘I named them, now I’ll have
halves.’ And if he won’t give it, then we’ll smug his broom or his cap.
I’m the littlest chap among our lot, but if a fellow like the Goose was
to take my naming then I’d smug somethink. I shouldn’t mind his licking
me, I’d smug his money and get his halfpence or somethink. If a chap as
can’t tumble sees a sporting gent coming and names him, he says to one
of us tumblers, ‘Now, then, who’ll give us halves?’ and then we goes
and tumbles and shares. The sporting gentlemens likes tumbling; they
kicks up more row laughing than a dozen others.
“Sometimes at night we goes down to Covent Garden, to where Hevans’s
is, but not till all the plays is over, cause Hevans’s don’t shut afore
two or three. When the people comes out we gets tumbling afore them.
Some of the drunken gentlemens is shocking spiteful, and runs after a
chap and gives us a cut with the cane; some of the others will give us
money, and some will buy our broom off us for sixpence. Me and Jemmy
sold the two of our brooms for a shilling to two drunken gentlemens,
and they began kicking up a row, and going before other gentlemens and
pretending to sweep, and taking off their hats begging, like a mocking
of us. They danced about with the brooms, flourishing ’em in the air,
and knocking off people’s hats; and at last they got into a cab, and
chucked the brooms away. The drunken gentlemens is always either jolly
or spiteful.
“But I goes only to the Haymarket, and about Pall Mall, now. I used to
be going up to Hevans’s every night, but I can’t take my money up there
now. I stands at the top of the Haymarket by Windmill-street, and when
I sees a lady and gentleman coming out of the Argyle, then I begs of
them as they comes across. I says--‘Can’t you give me a ha’penny, sir,
poor little Jack? I’ll stand on my nose for a penny;’--and then they
laughs at that.
“Goose can stand on his nose as well as me; we puts the face flat
down on the ground, instead of standing on our heads. There’s Duckey
Dunnovan, and the Stuttering Baboon, too, and two others as well, as
can do it; but the Stuttering Baboon’s getting too big and fat to do it
well; he’s a very awkward tumbler. It don’t hurt, only at larning; cos
you bears more on your hands than your nose.
“Sometimes they says--‘Well, let us see you do it,’ and then p’raps
they’ll search in their pockets, and say--‘O, I haven’t got any
coppers:’ so then we’ll force ’em, and p’raps they’ll pull out their
purse and gives us a little bit of silver.
“Ah, we works hard for what we gets, and then there’s the policemen
birching us. Some of ’em is so spiteful, they takes up their belt what
they uses round the waist to keep their coat tight, and’ll hit us with
the buckle; but we generally gives ’em the lucky dodge and gets out of
their way.
“One night, two gentlemen, officers they was, was standing in the
Haymarket, and a drunken man passed by. There was snow on the ground,
and we’d been begging of ’em, and says one of them--‘I’ll give you a
shilling if you’ll knock that drunken man over.’ We was three of us; so
we set on him, and soon had him down. After he got up he went and told
the policemen, but we all cut round different ways and got off, and
then met again. We didn’t get the shilling, though, cos a boy crabbed
us. He went up to the gentleman, and says he--‘Give it me, sir, I’m the
boy;’ and then we says--‘No, sir, it’s us.’ So, says the officer--‘I
sharn’t give it to none of you,’ and puts it back again in his pockets.
We broke a broom over the boy as crabbed us, and then we cut down
Waterloo-place, and afterwards we come up to the Haymarket again, and
there we met the officers again. I did a caten-wheel, and then says
I--‘Then won’t you give me un now?’ and they says--‘Go and sweep some
mud on that woman.’ So I went and did it, and then they takes me in a
pastry-shop at the corner, and they tells me to tumble on the tables in
the shop. I nearly broke one of ’em, they were so delicate. They gived
me a fourpenny meat-pie and two penny sponge-cakes, which I puts in my
pocket, cos there was another sharing with me. The lady of the shop
kept on screaming--‘Go and fetch me a police--take the dirty boy out,’
cos I was standing on the tables in my muddy feet, and the officers was
a bursting their sides with laughing; and says they, ‘No, he sharn’t
stir.’
“I was frightened, cos if the police had come they’d been safe and sure
to have took me. They made me tumble from the door to the end of the
shop, and back again, and then I turned ’em a caten-wheel, and was near
knocking down all the things as was on the counter.
“They didn’t give me no money, only pies; but I got a shilling
another time for tumbling to some French ladies and gentlemen in a
pastry-cook’s shop under the Colonnade. I often goes into a shop like
that; I’ve done it a good many times.
“There was a gentleman once as belonged to a ‘suckus,’ (circus) as
wanted to take me with him abroad, and teach me tumbling. He had a
little mustache, and used to belong to Drury-lane play-house, riding
on horses. I went to his place, and stopped there some time. He taught
me to put my leg round my neck, and I was just getting along nicely
with the splits (going down on the ground with both legs extended),
when I left him. They (the splits) used to hurt worst of all; very bad
for the thighs. I used, too, to hang with my leg round his neck. When
I did anythink he liked, he used to be clapping me on the back. He
wasn’t so very stunning well off, for he never had what I calls a good
dinner--grandmother used to have a better dinner than he,--perhaps only
a bit of scrag of mutton between three of us. I don’t like meat nor
butter, but I likes dripping, and they never had none there. The wife
used to drink--ay, very much, on the sly. She used when he was out to
send me round with a bottle and sixpence to get a quartern of gin for
her, and she’d take it with three or four oysters. Grandmother didn’t
like the notion of my going away, so she went down one day, and says
she--‘I wants my child;’ and the wife says--‘That’s according to the
master’s likings;’ and then grandmother says--‘What, not my own child?’
And then grandmother began talking, and at last, when the master come
home, he says to me--‘Which will you do, stop here, or go home with
your grandmother?’ So I come along with her.
“I’ve been sweeping the crossings getting on for two years. Before
that I used to go caten-wheeling after the busses. I don’t like the
sweeping, and I don’t think there’s e’er a one of us wot likes it. In
the winter we has to be out in the cold, and then in summer we have to
sleep out all night, or go asleep on the church-steps, reg’lar tired
out.
“One of us’ll say at night--‘Oh, I’m sleepy now, who’s game for a doss?
I’m for a doss;’--and then we go eight or ten of us into a doorway of
the church, where they keep the dead in a kind of airy-like underneath,
and there we go to sleep. The most of the boys has got no homes.
Perhaps they’ve got the price of a lodging, but they’re hungry, and
they eats the money, and then they must lay out. There’s some of ’em
will stop out in the wet for perhaps the sake of a halfpenny, and get
themselves sopping wet. I think all our chaps would like to get out of
the work if they could; I’m sure Goose would, and so would I.
“All the boys call me the King, because I tumbles so well, and some
calls me ‘Pluck,’ and some ‘Judy.’ I’m called ‘Pluck,’ cause I’m so
plucked a going at the gentlemen! Tommy Dunnovan--‘Tipperty Tight’--we
calls him, cos his trousers is so tight he can hardly move in them
sometimes,--he was the first as called me ‘Judy.’ Dunnovan once
swallowed a pill for a shilling. A gentleman in the Haymarket says--‘If
you’ll swallow this here pill I’ll give you a shilling;’ and Jimmy
says, ‘All right, sir;’ and he puts it in his mouth, and went to the
water-pails near the cab-stand and swallowed it.
“All the chaps in our gang likes me, and we all likes one another. We
always shows what we gets given to us to eat.
“Sometimes we gets one another up wild, and then that fetches up a
fight, but that isn’t often. When two of us fights, the others stands
round and sees fair play. There was a fight last night between ‘Broke
his Bones’--as we calls Antony Hones--and Neddy Hall--the ‘Sparrow,’
or ‘Spider,’ we calls him,--something about the root of a pineapple,
as we was aiming with at one another, and that called up a fight. We
all stood round and saw them at it, but neither of ’em licked, for
they gived in for to-day, and they’re to finish it to-night. We makes
’em fight fair. We all of us likes to see a fight, but not to fight
ourselves. Hones is sure to beat, as Spider is as thin as a wafer, and
all bones. I can lick the Spider, though he’s twice my size.”