admirable! Christian resignation and its consequent fortitude are
written on his brow. His eyes roll imploringly, but no sound escapes
him. The expression of his features almost pronounces, “Christian
friend, purchase my humble wares, for _I scorn to beg_. I am starving,
but tortures shall not wring the humiliating secret from my lips.” He
exercises a singular fascination over old ladies, who slide coppers
into his hand quickly, as if afraid that they shall hurt his feelings.
He pockets the money, heaves a sigh, and darts an abashed and grateful
look at them that makes them feel how keenly he appreciates their
delicacy. When the snow is on the ground he now and then introduces a
little shiver, and with a well-worn pocket-handkerchief stifles a cough
that he intimates by, a despairing dropping of his eyelids, is slowly
killing him.
THE SWELL BEGGAR.
A singular variety of this sort of mendicant used to be seen some years
ago in the streets of Cambridge. He had been a gentleman of property,
and had studied at one of the colleges. Race-courses, billiard-tables,
and general gambling had reduced him to beggary; but he was too proud
to ask alms. As the “Ashamed Beggar” fortifies himself with a “pad,”
this swell-beggar armed himself with a broom. He swept a crossing.
His clothes--he always wore evening-dress--were miserably ragged and
shabby; his hat was a broken Gibus, but he managed to have good and
fashionable boots; and his shirt collar, and wrist-bands were changed
every day. A white cambric handkerchief peeped from his coat-tail
pocket, and a gold eye-glass dangled from his neck. His hands were
lady-like; his nails well-kept; and it was impossible to look at him
without a mingled feeling of pity and amusement.
His plan of operations was to station himself at his crossing at
the time the ladies of Cambridge were out shopping. His antics were
curiously funny. Dangling his broom between his fore-finger and thumb,
as if it were a light umbrella or riding-whip, he would arrive at his
stand, and look up at the sky to see what sort of weather might be
expected. Then tucking the broom beneath his arm he would take off his
gloves, fold them together and put them into his coat-pockets, sweep
his crossing carefully, and when he had finished, look at it with
admiration. When ladies crossed, he would remove his broken hat, and
smile with great benignity, displaying at the same time a fine set
of teeth. On wet days his attentions to the fair sex knew no bounds.
He would run before them and wipe away every little puddle in their
path. On receiving a gratuity, which was generally in silver, he would
remove his hat and bow gracefully and gratefully. When gentlemen walked
over his crossing he would stop them, and, holding his hat in the true
mendicant fashion, request the loan of a shilling. With many he was a
regular pensioner. When a mechanic or poor-looking person offered him a
copper, he would take it, and smile his thanks with a patronising air,
but he never took off his hat to less than sixpence. He was a jovial
and boastful beggar, and had a habit of jerking at his stand-up collar,
and pulling at his imperial coxcombically. When he considered his day’s
work over, he would put on his gloves, and, dangling his broom in his
careless elegant way, trip home to his lodging. He never used a broom
but one day, and gave the old ones to his landlady. The undergraduates
were kind to him, and encouraged his follies; but the college dons
looked coldly on him, and when they passed him he would assume an
expression of impertinent indifference _as if he cut them_. I never
heard what became of him. When I last saw him he looked between forty
and fifty years of age.
CLEAN FAMILY BEGGARS.
Clean Family Beggars are those who beg or sing in the streets, in
numbers varying from four to seven. I need only particularize one
“gang” or “party,” as their appearance and method of begging will do as
a sample of all others.
Beggars of this class group themselves artistically. A broken-down
looking man, in the last stage of seediness, walks hand-in-hand with
a pale-faced, interesting little girl. His wife trudges on his other
side, a baby in one arm; a child just able to walk steadies itself
by the hand that is disengaged; two or three other children cling
about the skirts of her gown, one occasionally detaching himself or
herself--as a kind of rear or advanced guard from the main body--to cut
off stragglers and pounce upon falling halfpence, or look piteously
into the face of a passer-by. The clothes of the whole troop are in
that state when seediness is dropping into rags; but their hands
and faces are perfectly clean--their skins literally shine--perhaps
from the effect of a plentiful use of soap, _which they do not wash
off before drying themselves with a towel_. The complexions of the
smaller children, in particular, glitter like sandpaper, and their
eyes are half-closed, and their noses corrugated, as with constant and
compulsory ablution. The baby is a wonderful specimen of washing and
getting-up of ornamental linen. Altogether, the Clean Family Beggars
form a most attractive picture for quiet and respectable streets, and
“pose” themselves for the admiration of the thrifty matrons, who are
their best supporters.
Sometimes the children of the Clean Family Beggars sing--sometimes the
father “patters.” This morning a group passed my window, who both sang
and “pattered.” The mother was absent, and the two eldest girls knitted
and crochetted as they walked along. The burthen of the song which the
children shrieked out in thin treble, was,
“And the wild flowers are springing on the plain.”
The rest of the words were undistinguishable. When the little ones had
finished, the man, who evidently prided himself upon his powers of
eloquence, began, in a loud, authoritative, oratorical tone:--
“My dear friends,--It is with great pain, and affliction, and trouble,
that I present myself and my poo--oor family before you, in this
wretched situation, at the present moment; but what can I do? Work I
cannot obtain, and my little family ask me for bread! Yes, my dear
friends--my little family ask me for bread! Oh, my dear friends,
conceive what your feelin’s would be, if, like me, at the present
moment your poo--oor dear children asked for bread, and you had it
not to give them! What then could you do? God send, my dear friends,
that no individual, no father of a family, nor mother, nor other
individual, _with_ children, will ever, or ever may be drove to do
what--or, I should say, that which I am now a-doing of, at the present
moment. If any one in this street, or in the next, or in any of the
streets in this affluent neighbourhood, had found theirselves in the
situation, in which I was placed this morning, it would be hard to
say what they could, or would have done; and I assure you, my dear
friends,--yes, I assure you, from my heart, that it is very possible
that many might have been drove to have done, or do worse, than what
I am a doing of, for the sake of my poo--oor family, at the present
moment, if they had been drove, by suffering, as I and my poo--oor wife
have been the morning of this very day. My wife, my kind friends, is
now unfortunately ill through unmerited starvation, and is ill a-bed,
from which, at the present moment, she cannot rise. Want we have known
together, my dear friends, and so has our poo--oor family, and baby,
only eight months old. God send, my dear friends, that none of you, and
none of your dear babes, and families, that no individual, which now is
listening to my deep distress, at the present moment, may ever know the
sufferin’s to which we have been reduced, is my fervent prayer! All I
want to obtain is a meal’s victuals for my poo--oor family!”
(Here the man caught my eye, and immediately shifted his ground.)
“You will ask me, my dear friends,” he continued, in an argumentative
manner, “you will ask me how and why it is, and what is the reason,
which I cannot obtain work? Alas! my dear friends, it is unfortunately
so at the present moment. I am a silk-weaver in Bethnal Green, by
trade, and the noo International Treaty with France, which Mr.
Cobden--” (here he kept his eye on me, as if the political reason were
intended for my especial behoof)--“which _Mr. Cobden_, my dear friends,
was depooted to go to the French emperor, Louis Napoleon, to agree
upon, betwixt this country and France, which the French manufacturers
sends goods into this country, without paying no dooty, and undersells
the native manufacturers, though, my dear friends, our workmanship
is as good, and English silk as genuine as French, I do assure you.
Leastways, there is no difference, except in pattern, and, through the
neglect of them as ought to look after it better, that is, to see we
had the best designs; for design is the only thing--I mean design and
pattern--in which they can outdo us; and also, my dear friends, ladies
as go to shops will ask for foreign goods--it is more to their taste
than English, at the present moment; and so it is, that many poo--oor
families at Bethnal Green and Spitalfields--and Coventry likewise,
is redooced to the situation which I myself--that is, to ask your
charity--am a doing of--at the present moment.”
I gave a little girl a penny, and the man, still fixing me with his
eye, continued--
“You will ask me, my dear friends, praps, how it is that I do not apply
to the parish? why not to get relief for myself, my de--ar wife, and
little family? My kind friends, you do not know the state in which
things is with the poor weavers of Bethnal Green, and, at the present
moment, Spitalfields likewise. It comes of the want of knowledge of
the real state of this rich and ’appy country, its material prosperity
and resources, which you, at this end of the town, can form no idea
of. There is now sixteen or seventeen thousand people out of work.
Yes, my dear friends, in about two parishes, there is sixteen or
seventeen thousand individuals--I mean, of course, counting their
poo--oor families and all, which at the present moment, cannot obtain
bread. Oh, my dear friends, how grateful ought you be to God that you
and your dear families, are not out of work, and can obtain a meal’s
victuals, and are not like the sufferin’ weavers of Bethnal Green--and
Spitalfields, and Coventry likewise, through the loss of trade; for, my
dear friends, if you were like me, forced to what I am doing now at the
present moment, &c., &c., &c.”
NAVAL AND MILITARY BEGGARS
are most frequently met with in towns situated at some distance from
a seaport or a garrison. As they are distinct specimens of the same
tribe, they must be separately classified. The more familiar nuisance
is the
TURNPIKE SAILOR.
This sort of vagabond has two lays, the “merchant” lay, and the
“R’yal Navy” lay. He adopts either one or the other according to
the exigencies of his wardrobe, his locality, or the person he is
addressing. He is generally the offspring of some inhabitant of the
most notorious haunts of a seaport town, and has seldom been at sea,
or when he has, has run away after the first voyage. His slang of
seamanship has been picked up at the lowest public-houses in the
filthiest slums that offer diversion to the genuine sailor.
When on the “merchant lay” his attire consists of a pair of tattered
trousers, an old guernsey-shirt, and a torn straw-hat. One of his
principal points of “costume” is his bare feet. His black silk
handkerchief is knotted jauntily round his throat after the most
approved models at the heads of penny ballads, and the outsides of
songs. He wears small gold earrings, and has short curly hair in the
highest and most offensive state of glossy greasiness. His hands and
arms are carefully tattooed--a foul anchor, or a long-haired mermaid
sitting on her tail and making her toilette, being the favourite
cartoons. In his gait he endeavours to counterfeit the roll of a true
seaman, but his hard feet, knock-knees, and imperceptibly acquired
turnpike-trot betray him. His face bears the stamp of diabolically low
cunning, and it is impossible to look at him without an association
with a police-court. His complexion is coarse and tallowy, and has none
of the manly bronze that exposure to the weather, and watching the
horizon give to the real tar.
I was once walking with a gentleman who had spent the earlier portion
of his life at sea, when a turnpike sailor shuffled on before us. We
had just been conversing on nautical affairs, and I said to him--
“Now, there is a brother sailor in distress; of course you will give
him something?”
“_He_ a sailor!” said my friend, with great disgust. “Did you see him
spit?”
The fellow had that moment expectorated.
I answered that I had.
“He spit to wind’ard!” said my friend.
“What of that?” said I.
“A regular landsman’s trick,” observed my friend. “A real sailor never
spits to wind’ard. _Why, he could’nt._”
We soon passed the fellow, who pulled at a curl upon his
forehead, and began in a gruff voice, intended to convey the
idea of hardships, storms, shipwrecks, battles, and privations.
“God--bless--your--’onors--give--a--copper--to--a--poor--sailor--
as--hasn’t--spliced--the--main--jaw--since--the--day--’fore--
yesterday--at--eight--bells--God--love--yer--’onors--do!--I--
avent--tasted--sin’--the--day--’fore--yesterday--so--drop--a--
cop--poor--seaman--do.”
My friend turned round and looked the beggar full in the face.
“What ship?” he asked, quickly.
The fellow answered glibly.
“What captain?” pursued my friend.
The fellow again replied boldly, though his eyes wandered uneasily.
“What cargo?” asked my inexorable companion.
The beggar was not at fault, but answered correctly.
The name of the port, the reason of his discharge, and other questions
were asked and answered; but the man was evidently beginning to be
embarrassed. My friend pulled out his purse as if to give him something.
“What are you doing here?” continued the indefatigable inquirer. “Did
you leave the coast for the purpose of trying to find a ship _here_?”
(We were in Leicester.)
The man stammered and pulled at his useful forelock to get time to
collect his thoughts and invent a good lie.
“He had a friend in them parts as he thought could help him.”
“How long since you were up the Baltic?”
“Year--and--a--arf,--yer--’onor.”
“Do you know Kiel?”
“Yes,--yer--’onor.”
“D’ye know the ‘British Flag’ on the quay there?”
“Yes,--yer--’onor.”
“Been there often?”
“Yes,--yer--’onor.”
“Does Nick Johnson still keep it?”
“Yes,--yer--’onor.”
“Then,” said my friend, after giving vent to a strong opinion as to the
beggar’s veracity, “I’d advise you to be off quickly, for there’s a
policeman, and if I get within hail of him I shall tell him you’re an
impostor. There’s no such house on the quay. Get out, you scoundrel!”
The fellow shuffled off, looking curses, but not daring to express them.
On the “R’yal Navy” lay, the turnpike sailor assumes different
habiliments, and altogether a smarter trim. He wears coarse blue
trousers symmetrically cut about the hips, and baggy over the foot. A
“jumper,” or loose shirt of the same material, a tarpaulin hat, with
the name of a vessel in letters of faded gold, is struck on the back
of his neck, and he has a piece of whipcord, or “lanyard” round his
waist, to which is suspended a jack-knife, which if of but little
service in fighting the battles of his country has stood him in good
stead in silencing the cackling of any stray poultry that crossed his
road, or in frightening into liberality the female tenant of a solitary
cottage. This “patter,” or “blob,” is of Plymouth, Portsmouth, Cawsen’
Bay, Hamoaze--ships paid off, prize-money, the bo’sen and the first
le’tenant. He is always an able-bodied, never an ordinary seaman, and
cannot get a ship “becos” orders is at the Hadmiralty as no more isn’t
to be put into commission. Like the fictitious merchant-sailor he calls
every landsman “your honour,” in accordance with the conventional rule
observed by the jack tars in nautical dramas. He exhibits a stale plug
of tobacco, and replaces it in his jaw with ostentatious gusto. His
chief victims are imaginative boys fresh from “Robinson Crusoe,” and
“Tales of the Ocean,” and old ladies who have relatives at sea. For
many months after a naval battle he is in full force, and in inland
towns tells highly-spiced narratives of the adventures of his own ship
and its gallant crew in action. He is profuse in references to “the
cap’en,” and interlards his account with, “and the cap’en turns round,
and he says to me, he says--” He feels the pulse of his listener’s
credulity through their eyes, and throws the hatchet with the
enthusiasm of an artist. “When we boarded ’em,” I heard one of these
vagabonds say--“oh, when we boarded ’em!” but it is beyond the power of
my feeble pen to relate the deeds of the turnpike true blue, and his
ship and its gallant, gallant crew, when they boarded ’em, I let him
run out his yarn, and then said, “I saw the account of the action in
the papers, but they said nothing of boarding. As I read it, the enemy
were in too shallow water to render that manœuvre possible; but that
till they struck their flag, and the boats went out to take possession,
the vessels were more than half a mile apart.”
This would have posed an ordinary humbug, but the able-bodied liar
immediately, and with great apparent disgust, said, “The papers! the
noo--o--o--s-papers! d----n the noo--o--o--s--papers. You don’t believe
what they says, sure_ly_. Look how they sarved out old Charley Napier.
Why, sir, _I was there, and I ought to know_.”
At times the turnpike sailor roars out a song in praise of British
valour by sea; but of late this “lay” has been unfrequent. At others
he borrows an interesting-looking little girl, and tying his arm up in
a sling, adds his wounds and a motherless infant to his other claims
upon the public sympathy. After a heavy gale and the loss of several
vessels, he appears with a fresh tale and a new suit of carefully
chosen rags. When all these resources fail him he is compelled to turn
merchant, or “duffer,” and invests a small capital in a few hundred
of the worst, and a dozen or two of the very best, cigars. If he be
possessed of no capital he steals them. He allows his whiskers to grow
round his face, and lubricates them in the same liberal manner as his
shining hair. He buys a pea-coat, smart waistcoat, and voluminous
trousers, discards his black neckerchief for a scarlet one, the ends
of which run through a massive ring. He wears a large pair of braces
over his waistcoat, and assumes a half-foreign air, as of a mariner
just returned from distant climes. He accosts you in the streets
mysteriously, and asks you if you want “a few good cigars?” He tells
you they are smuggled, that he “run” them himself, and that the
“Custom-’us horficers” are after him. I need hardly inform my reader
that the cigar he offers as a sample is excellent, and that, should he
be weak enough to purchase a few boxes he will not find them “according
to sample.” Not unfrequently, the cigar-“duffer” lures his victim to
some low tavern to receive his goods, where in lieu of tobacco, shawls,
and laces, he finds a number of cut-throat-looking confederates, who
plunder and illtreat him.
It must not be forgotten that at times a begging sailor may be met, who
has really been a seaman, and who is a proper object of benevolence.
When it is so, he is invariably a man past middle age, and offers for
sale or exhibition a model of a man-of-war or a few toy yachts. He has
but little to say for himself, and is too glad for the gift of a pair
of landsmen’s trousers to trouble himself about their anti-nautical
cut. In fact, the real seaman does not care for costume, and is as
frequently seen in an old shooting-coat as a torn jacket; but despite
his habiliments, the true salt oozes out in the broad hands that dangle
heavily from the wrists, as if wanting to grip a rope or a handspike;
in the tender feet accustomed to the smooth planks of the deck, and in
the settled, far-off look of the weather-beaten head, with its fixed
expression of the aristocracy of subordination.
In conclusion, a real sailor is seldom or never seen inland, where he
can have no chance of employment, and is removed from the sight of the
sea, docks, shipmates, and all things dear and familiar to him. He
carries his papers about him in a small tin box, addresses those who
speak to him as “sir” and “marm,” and never as “your honour” or “my
lady;” is rather taciturn than talkative, and rarely brags of what he
has seen, or done, or seen done. In these and all other respects he is
the exact opposite of the turnpike sailor.
STREET CAMPAIGNERS.
Soldier beggars may be divided into three classes: those who really
have been soldiers and are reduced to mendicancy, those who have been
ejected from the army for misconduct, and those with whom the military
dress and bearing are pure assumptions.
The difference between these varieties is so distinct as to be easily
detected. The first, or soldier proper, has all the evidence of drill
and barrack life about him; the eye that always “fronts” the person
he addresses; the spare habit, high cheekbones, regulation whisker,
stiff chin, and deeply-marked line beneath from ear to ear. He carries
his papers about him, and when he has been wounded or seen service,
is modest and retiring as to his share of glory. He can give little
information as to the incidents of an engagement, except as regards
the deeds of his own company, and in conversation speaks more of the
personal qualities of his officers and comrades than of their feats of
valour. Try him which way you will he never will confess that he has
killed a man. He compensates himself for his silence on the subject of
fighting by excessive grumbling as to the provisions, quarters, &c.,
to which he has been forced to submit in the course of his career. He
generally has a wife marching by his side--a tall strapping woman, who
looks as if a long course of washing at the barracks had made her half
a soldier. Ragged though he be, there is a certain smartness about the
soldier proper, observable in the polish of his boots, the cock of his
cap, and the disposition of the leather strap under his lower lip. He
invariably carries a stick, and when a soldier passes him, casts on him
an odd sort of look, half envying, half pitying, as if he said, “Though
you are better fed than I, you are not so free!”
The soldier proper has various occupations. He does not pass all his
time in begging: he will hold a horse, clean knives and boots, sit as
a model to an artist, and occasionally take a turn at the wash-tub.
Begging he abhors, and is only driven to it as a last resource.
If my readers would inquire why a man so ready to work should not be
able to obtain employment, he will receive the answer that universally
applies to all questions of hardship among the humbler classes--the
vice of the discharged soldier is intemperance.
The second sort of soldier-beggar is one of the most dangerous and
violent of mendicants. Untamable even by regimental discipline,
insubordinate by nature, he has been thrust out from the army to prey
upon society. He begs but seldom, and is dangerous to meet with after
dark upon a lonely road, or in a sequestered lane. Indeed, though he
has every right to be classed among those who will not work, he is not
thoroughly a beggar, but will be met with again, and receive fuller
justice at our hands, in the, to him, more congenial catalogue of
thieves.
The third sort of street campaigner is a perfect impostor, who being
endowed, either by accident or art, with a broken limb or damaged
feature, puts on an old military coat, as he would assume the dress
of a frozen-out gardener, distressed dock-yard labourer, burnt-out
tradesman, or scalded mechanic. He is imitative, and in his time plays
many parts. He “gets up” his costume with the same attention to detail
as the turnpike sailor. In crowded busy streets he “stands pad,” that
is, with a written statement of his hard case slung round his neck,
like a label round a decanter. His bearing is most military; he keeps
his neck straight, his chin in, and his thumbs to the outside seams of
his trousers; he is stiff as an embalmed preparation, for which, but
for the motion of his eyes, you might mistake him. In quiet streets and
in the country he discards his “pad” and begs “on the blob,” that is,
he “patters” to the passers-by, and invites their sympathy by word of
mouth. He is an ingenious and fertile liar, and seizes occasions such
as the late war in the Crimea and the mutiny in India as good distant
grounds on which to build his fictions.