I was anxious to see the room in which the gang of boy
crossing-sweepers lived, so that I might judge of their peculiar style
of house-keeping, and form some notion of their principles of domestic
economy.
I asked young Harry and “the Goose” to conduct me to their lodgings,
and they at once consented, “the Goose” prefacing his compliance with
the remark, that “it wern’t such as genilmen had been accustomed to,
but then I must take ’em as they was.”
The boys led me in the direction of Drury-lane; and before entering one
of the narrow streets which branch off like the side-bones of a fish’s
spine from that long thoroughfare, they thought fit to caution me that
I was not to be frightened, as nobody would touch me, for all was very
civil.
The locality consisted of one of those narrow streets which, were it
not for the paved cartway in the centre would be called a court. Seated
on the pavement at each side of the entrance was a costerwoman with her
basket before her, and her legs tucked up mysteriously under her gown
into a round ball, so that her figure resembled in shape the plaster
tumblers sold by the Italians. These women remained as inanimate as
if they had been carved images, and it was only when a passenger went
by that they gave signs of life, by calling out in a low voice, like
talking to themselves, “Two for three haarpence--herrens,”--“Fine
hinguns.”
The street itself is like the description given of thoroughfares in the
East. Opposite neighbours could not exactly shake hands out of window,
but they could talk together very comfortably; and, indeed, as I passed
along, I observed several women with their arms folded up like a cat’s
paws on the sill, and chatting with their friends over the way.
Nearly all the inhabitants were costermongers, and, indeed, the narrow
cartway seemed to have been made just wide enough for a truck to
wheel down it. A beershop and a general store, together with a couple
of sweeps,--whose residences were distinguished by a broom over the
door,--formed the only exceptions to the street-selling class of
inhabitants.
As I entered the place, it gave me the notion that it belonged to
a distinct coster colony, and formed one large hawkers’ home; for
everybody seemed to be doing just as he liked, and I was stared at as
if considered an intruder. Women were seated on the pavement, knitting,
and repairing their linen; the doorways were filled up with bonnetless
girls, who wore their shawls over their head, as the Spanish women do
their mantillas; and the youths in corduroy and brass buttons, who were
chatting with them, leant against the walls as they smoked their pipes,
and blocked up the pavement, as if they were the proprietors of the
place. Little children formed a convenient bench out of the kerb-stone;
and a party of four men were seated on the footway, playing with cards
which had turned to the colour of brown paper from long usage, and
marking the points with chalk upon the flags.
The parlour-windows of the houses had all of them wooden shutters, as
thick and clumsy-looking as a kitchen flap-table, the paint of which
had turned to the dull dirt-colour of an old slate. Some of these
shutters were evidently never used as a security for the dwelling, but
served only as tables on which to chalk the accounts of the day’s sales.
Before most of the doors were costermongers’ trucks--some standing
ready to be wheeled off, and others stained and muddy with the day’s
work. A few of the costers were dressing up their barrows, arranging
the sieves of waxy-looking potatoes--and others taking the stiff
herrings, browned like a meerschaum with the smoke they had been dried
in, from the barrels beside them, and spacing them out in pennyworths
on their trays.
You might guess what each costermonger had taken out that day by the
heap of refuse swept into the street before the doors. One house had
a blue mound of mussel-shells in front of it--another, a pile of the
outside leaves of broccoli and cabbages, turning yellow and slimy with
bruises and moisture.
Hanging up beside some of the doors were bundles of old strawberry
pottles, stained red with the fruit. Over the trap-doors to the cellars
were piles of market-gardeners’ sieves, ruddled like a sheep’s back
with big red letters. In fact, everything that met the eye seemed to be
in some way connected with the coster’s trade.
From the windows poles stretched out, on which blankets, petticoats,
and linen were drying; and so numerous were they, that they reminded
me of the flags hung out at a Paris fête. Some of the sheets had
patches as big as trap-doors let into their centres; and the blankets
were--many of them--as full of holes as a pigeon-house.
As I entered the court, a “row” was going on; and from a first-floor
window a lady, whose hair sadly wanted brushing, was haranguing a
crowd beneath, throwing her arms about like a drowning man, and in her
excitement thrusting her body half out of her temporary rostrum as
energetically as I have seen Punch lean over his theatre.
“The willin dragged her,” she shouted, “by the hair of her head, at
least three yards into the court--the willin! and then he kicked her,
and the blood was on his boot.”
It was a sweep who had been behaving in this cowardly manner; but still
he had his defenders in the women around him. One with very shiny hair,
and an Indian kerchief round her neck, answered the lady in the window,
by calling her a “d----d old cat;” whilst the sweep’s wife rushed
about, clapping her hands together as quickly as if she was applauding
at a theatre, and styled somebody or other “an old wagabones as she
wouldn’t dirty her hands to fight with.”
This “row” had the effect of drawing all the lodgers to the
windows--their heads popping out as suddenly as dogs from their kennels
in a fancier’s yard.