It was weary work. The long dusty road seemed endless. Several times I was tempted to go into a public-house and try and do a show. But directly I set up my little table, my nerve forsook me, and out I came again. When night fell I chopped some wood for a farmer’s wife, who gave me in return a glass of milk and a crust of bread and cheese and permission to sleep in the barn.
Eventually I reached Southend, hungry, thirsty, and footsore. Also I was penniless, having been forced to part with my six coppers in order to keep myself in food on the road, thereby spoiling my best tricks. All day long I prowled about, watching the buskers at work on the beach, but never being able to pluck up sufficient courage to make a start myself.
I had managed to get a room by promising to pay at the end of the week, but after the first morning, when I ate a breakfast that I am afraid astonished and frightened my landlady, I was denied further board unless I paid something on account, which, of course, I was unable to do. For three days I prowled around, living as best I could, watching with hungry eyes the picnic parties on the beach, and greedily devouring the scraps they left after they took their departure. I never felt so famished in all my life before.
On the morning of the fourth day, a Bank Holiday, a letter came from my mother. She wrote that she had got the brokers in, that my little sisters were crying for bread, and would I please send her some money? That did it. I felt that it was now or never. And, marching down to the beach, I set up my little table, and soon had quite a respectable audience—respectable in point of size that is to say—gathered round me.
Then again the fatal shyness came over me; stage fright in its first, worst, and most terrible form—only there was no stage. My legs shook under me, my knees knocked together, my tongue felt as if glued to the roof of my mouth. I almost think I would have made a bolt for it once more, but for the fact that the crowd hemmed me in on every side.
Ten minutes passed by. My audience began to show unmistakable signs of impatience. “Get a move on, kid!” they cried; “start your bloomin’ show.” Thus adjured I began. But just as I was in the middle of my first trick, there was a commotion on the outskirts of the crowd, people jostling and shoving, pushing and being pushed, and a moment or two later four burly nigger minstrels burst through to where I was. I got a punch on the back of my neck that sent me sprawling, and when I scrambled to my feet I was just in time to see my poor little cheese-box table go flying seaward, propelled by a vigorous kick from the biggest and burliest of the niggers.
I was too weak from hunger to even try to retaliate, too flabbergasted at the unexpected, and as it seemed to me unprovoked and unwarrantable, attack to attempt to expostulate even. I just stood stock-still, open-mouthed and trembling, while the leader of the buskers asked me, in language the reverse of polite, what in thunder I meant by taking their pitch, for which they paid, and which nobody else therefore had the right to occupy?
There was some further talk, and then I learnt for the first time that the sands at Southend belonged to the corporation, and that buskers were not allowed to perform there without permission, and without paying for the privilege. Naturally I was terribly downhearted at this, and I suppose I showed it, for after the niggers had given their show they clubbed round amongst themselves, and handed me two shillings. “Best clear out, youngster,” they told me, not unkindly. “You can’t do anything here without capital.”
Their advice seemed good advice. So that very day I started to tramp back to London. I had retrieved my table, and although I had been compelled to sell my rabbit in order to buy food during my stay in Southend, I still had with me my pack of cards, and one or two other trifles. With these, on the way back, I gave four shows at as many separate “pubs.” One of these shows netted me fourpence, the other three yielded nothing. I reached home after a week’s absence, weak, weary, and ill, to find a welcome of words waiting for me, and that was all. There was not a morsel of food in the house, not even the proverbial crust, and the broker’s man had cleared out most of the furniture.
For these reasons I am not likely ever to forget my first “provincial tour.” That night I cried myself to sleep, the hunger gnawed at my vitals, and I don’t believe there was an unhappier lad in England than I was just then.