At the present time there is only one English boy going about the
streets of London dancing, and at the same time playing his own musical
accompaniment on a tin whistle. There are two or three Italian boys
who dance whilst they perform on either the flute or the hurdy-gurdy,
but the lad who gave me the following statement assured me that he was
the only Englishman who had made street whistling and dancing “his
profession.”
He was a red-headed lad, of that peculiar white complexion which
accompanies hair of that colour. His forehead was covered with
freckles, so thick, that they looked as if a quantity of cayenne
pepper had been sprinkled over it; and when he frowned, his hair moved
backwards and forwards like the twitching of a horse shaking off flies.
“I’ve put some ile on my hair, to make me look tidy,” he said. The
grease had turned his locks to a fiery crimson colour, and as he passed
his hands through it, and tossed it backwards, it positively glittered
with the fat upon it.
The lad soon grew communicative enough, and proceeded to show me a blue
jacket which he had bought that morning for a shilling, and explained
to me at the same time how artful he had been over the bargain, for the
boy had asked eighteenpence.
I remarked that his shoes seemed in a bad state, for they were really
as white as a baker’s slippers from want of blacking, and the toe of
one gaped like the opening to a tortoise-shell. He explained to me that
he wore all his boots out dancing, doing the double shuffle.
“Now these ’ere shoes,” he said, “cost me a shilling in Petticoat-lane
not a week since, and looked as good as new then, and even now, with a
little mending, they’ll make a tidy pair of crab-shells again.”
To give force to this remark, he lifted his leg up, but, despite his
explanation, I could not see how the leather could possibly be repaired.
He went through his dances for me, at the same time accompanying
himself on his penny whistle. He took his shoes off and did a hornpipe,
thumping his feet upon the floor the while, like palms on a panel, so
that I felt nervous lest there should be a pin in the carpet and he be
lamed by it.
The boy seemed to have no notion of his age, for although he accounted
for twenty-two years of existence, yet he insisted he was only
seventeen “come two months.” I was sorry to find, moreover, that he
was in the habit of drinking, seldom going home after his night’s work
without being intoxicated; and, indeed, his thin body and pinched
face bore evidence of his excess in this respect, though, but for his
assertion that “he was never hungry, and food was no good to him,” I
should have imagined, at the first glance, that he was pining with want.
He seems to be among the more fortunate of those who earn their living
in the streets, for although I questioned and cross-questioned him in
every possible way, he still clung to his assertion that he made 2_l._
per week. His clothes, however, bore no evidence of his prosperity, for
his outer garment was a washed-out linen blouse, such as glaziers wear,
whilst his trousers were of coarse canvas, and as black on the thighs
as the centre of a drum-head.
He brought with him a penny whistle to show me his musical talents,
and, certainly, his execution of the tin instrument was rapid and
certain.