THE SWEEP'S LEGACY
(1900)
Most visitors among the poor have come across the person who believes that he has a large fortune kept back from him by the Queen, aided and abetted by the gentlemen of Somerset House and other public offices.
I once knew a sweep in Whitechapel who was firmly persuaded that he had a legacy of five hundred pounds in the Bank of England. "Yes, lady, if I had my rights, I should not be so poor. My aunt, Lady Cable Knight—she married a tip-top nobleman, she did—left me on her dying bed five hundred pounds in gold. The money's in the Bank of England. I seed it there myself on a shelf, labelled A. A.—Anthony Adams—but I ain't no scholard, and the gentleman behind the counter said I must have a scholard to speak for me. The money is there right enough, and I've got my aunt's marriage lines, so that proves it clear."
At first I paid little heed to his story, but after a time I got fond of the old sweep, and began to wonder if I could not help him to obtain this legacy. He was a good old man—always serene, always "trustful in the Lord," though he well knew the pangs of hunger and cold, for younger and stronger men were crushing him out of his profession. A poor deformed creature lived with him—one of those terrible abortions found in the homes of the poor—epileptic, crippled, hydrocephalous, whom I took for the son of the house but on inquiry I found he was no relation.
"We were neighbours up George Yard, lady; no, he ain't no son of mine, H'albert ain't. He's very afflicted, poor chap, and 'is own family would have nothing to do with 'im, so I gave 'im a 'ome. The lad don't eat much, and the Lord will reward me some day. If I only had that money, though, we might live comfortable!" Of course it was strictly against the rules of the Buildings for "H'albert" to share the room, but even women rent-collectors have hearts.
"If you only had some proof of your claim to the money, I would try to help you," I said one day when the rent had been missed. I had noticed the little room getting barer and shabbier week by week, and to-day the old man, his wife, and "H'albert" looked pinched and blue with cold and hunger. Already I had secretly paid a visit to Somerset House to inspect the will of Lady Cable Knight.
"Well, I've got my aunt's marriage lines; doesn't that prove it? But the Queen she gets 'old of us poor people's money. We've no chance against the rich; we're no scholards—they never larnt us nothing when I was a boy. The man in a paper 'at, that sells whelks in Whitechapel, knows all about it, but he's no scholard neither."
Touched by the want of scholarship amongst his friends, I put my attainments at his service, and we went together to claim five hundred pounds in gold, labelled "A. A." on a shelf in the Bank of England.
I half hoped that, after the habit of his class, the old man would not "turn up." But when I got out of the train at Broad Street, our place of rendezvous, I saw him waiting at the corner, "cleaned" for the occasion, in a strange old swallow-tail coat that might have figured at stately Court dances when George III was king. On his arm he carried a coarse bag of sacking, not quite cleansed from soot. We attracted no small attention as we passed through the City, and it was quite a relief when the classic walls of the Bank hid us from the vulgar gaze, though it was no small ordeal to face the clerks and explain our errand. But I suppose those gentlemen are used to monetary claims of this kind, and to their eternal honour be it said that they never smiled, not even at the production of the sooty marriage certificate by way of establishing our claim.
When at last we passed out again into the roar and glare of the street, the bag provided for the spoil empty as before, I saw the old man draw his sleeve across his eyes, leaving a long sooty trail. "It's no good, ma'am; the poor have no chance against the rich. I didn't even see the bag marked A. A. this time. Most likely the Queen and those gentlemen have spent it all long ago. But I thank you, lady, all the same, and will you allow me to pay your fare for coming down to speak for me?"
When his offer was refused, he wrung my hand in silence, and then turned eastwards towards his home.
I watched him till he disappeared in the crowd, a forlorn and pathetic figure, not without dignity in his strange old-world garb.
AN ALIEN[1]
"No, I ain't got it, ma'am; he says I'm a foreigner. I filled up the papers same as you told me, and then the gentleman called and asked for the birth-certificate, same as you said he would. 'I ain't got it,' I says. 'I suppose when I was born children were too common and folks too busy to go twenty miles down the hillside to crow over a baby at Carlisle Town Hall. There were fifteen of us all told, and my father only a farm labourer; if he went abroad the work stayed at 'ome, and 'e'd no time for gallivanting with seventeen mouths to fill. But I've got my baptism here all right; my mother was a pious body, and as soon as she could stand up she went to be churched and take the new stranger to be washed free of original sin in font-water; 'ere's the date written on it, 1837—year Queen Victoria began her most happy reign—you'll believe that, I suppose, in a parson's 'andwriting? Stands to reason I was born afore I was christened; they couldn't put the cross on my forehead, now could they, till my face was out in the world? Silly talk, I calls it, so now don't say no more, but pay me that five shillings and give me the book with the tickets—same as other ladies!'
"'You've lost your domicile,' he says.
"'Don't know what that is,' I says.
"'Married a foreigner,' he says.
"'Well, and if I did, that ain't no business of yours, my lad; you weren't born nor thought of and he died afore you come near this wicked world. He's been dead wellnigh on fifty year, so 'e didn't cross your path to worry you. Couldn't talk English? I says as 'e talked a deal better than you. I understood what 'e says, and I can't make 'ead nor tail of your silly talk, my lad, so there. Coverture? No—I ain't 'eard of that—no, nor naturalization either; you go down and fetch up Mrs. Nash—she's a rare scholard, she is—such a one for her books and poetry. Perhaps she'll make sense of your long words, for I can't. I lived afore the school-boards, and all the schooling I got I found out for myself sitting up in bed at night a-teaching myself to read and write. Not as I think much of all the larning myself; the girls can't keep a 'ome together as we used, and though the boys sit at the school desks a-cyphering till they are grown young men, they seem allus out of work at the end of it,' I says.
"'Yes, yes, you needn't olloa, my lad; I'm not deaf, though I am old and grey-headed. So I can't have the pension because fifty years ago I fell in love and married a steady young man, who worked hard, and knew how to treat his wife (which 'alf you Englishmen don't), though 'e was a Frenchman? I tell you marriage don't matter; 'usbands are come-by-chance sort of people—you go a walk in the moonlight, and you kisses each other, and then, afore you're clear in your mind, you're standing at the altar, and the "better for worse" curse a-thundering over you. Ah! well, poor Alphonse didn't live long enough to get worse, and his death made me a widow indeed, and though I was only twenty-two, and plenty of men came after me, I never took none of 'em. I didn't want no nasty bigamous troubles on the Resurrection morning. Why should five years out of my seventy-two change me into a Frenchy? What counts is my father and mother, and my childhood by Helvellyn,' I says. 'I'm British-born, of British parents, on British soil. I've never stirred from my land, and I can't speak a word of nowt but English, so stop your silly talk, my lad. And then,' I says, 'if my husband made me a Frenchy, ain't I English again by my sons? (it says in the Book a woman shall be saved by child-bearing)—two of 'em in the Navy and one of 'em killed and buried at Tel-el-Kebir, and a dozen grandsons or more a-serving of Her Majesty in furrin parts—yes, I allus say "Her Majesty"; I've been used to the Queen all my life, and Kings don't seem right in England somehow.
"What stumps me is that you gone and paid a pension to that woman opposite; now, she's an alien and a foreigner if you like—can't speak a word of English as a body can understand, and she hates England—allus a-boasting about Germany and the Emperor and their army, and how they'll come and smash us to pieces—she married an Englishman, so that makes her English—'eavens, what rubbish! Why, 'e died a few years after the wedding, and she's only been here a couple of years at the most; I remember them coming quite well. So she's English, with her German tongue and her German ways, just because she belonged for a couple of years to an English corpse in the cemetery; and I, with my English birth and life and sons, am French because of my poor Alphonse rotted to dust fifty years ago. Well, England's a nice land for women, a cruel step-dame to her daughters; seems as if English girls 'ad better get theirselves born in another planet, where people can behave decent-like to them, and not make it a crime and a sin at seventy for marrying nice young men who court them at eighteen. I pray as God will send a plague of boys in the land and never a girl amongst them, so that the English people shall die out by their own wickedness, or have to mate only with furriners."