Confessions of a Tradesman

by Frank Thomas Bullen

Last chapter closed with a bitter confession of incompetence on my part that I would not make if I could help it, but alas it is too true. Account for it I cannot, except by saying that I began by getting into debt, as I have before said, and never afterwards until the end of that régime came was I able to emerge from the condition of poverty I have attempted to describe, not though my struggles were incessant and certainly severe. It tinged my whole life and robbed me of my rightful proportion of joy, this want of ability to manage my own affairs upon a very small and strictly stationary income. If this condition of things may be taken for granted, whether with blame or pity, it will simplify matters a good deal and save me humiliating allusions to it every now and then.

So time fled along in rapid fashion, for now I never had a moment to spare. And still further to curtail the time at my disposal, I, finding the burden of the rent in the west of London too grievous to be borne, to say nothing of the cruel anxiety of letting lodgings unfurnished, decided to migrate to the far east of London, between Upton Park and East Ham. There I had heard that a neat five-roomed house with a long garden could be hired for seven and six a week inclusive of all rates and taxes. (I believe the same house would fetch nearly if not quite double now.) That was a rental I felt able to pay, and even if the great distance from my employment did mean extra expense, it was well worth a struggle to have a home to ourselves freed from the incubi of lodgers or sub landlord.

So with great hopes of making the last move for a long time, I commenced the big business. It must be confessed that the auspices were not very bright, my wife being too ill to stand upon her feet, my eldest child a toddler of five, and my next one quite a baby. But in those days such details hardly fretted me, I was so used to them. And consequently it was with a stout heart that, having succeeded in hiring a big van and horse and man, at one and sixpence an hour, I commenced the long day's labour at seven in the morning. I carried my wife and little ones into a good Samaritan next door, who looked after them, while my helper and I dismantled the home and carefully stowed it in the van. For once I had found a man who was willing to work as hard as I could, and who did not seize every opportunity to suggest rest and refreshment. So we got on very well indeed.

By nine o'clock all was ready, my wife was comfortably secured upon a sofa lashed to the tailboard of the van, the baby was accommodated with an impromptu cot on the keyboard of the piano, and the five-year-old also had a place for her little chair. So we started off for our new home facing the twelve miles between us and that distant suburb without misgivings, though it was certainly anything but a picnic for the horse. I do not recall how many times we halted, only I know that but few of them involved the spending of money, that being as usual a very limited quantity with me. But at five o'clock the weary trudge was over, and with fresh energy we tackled the task of getting the chattels indoors. With such good will did we both work that by six all was over, and the hard-working carman, apparently satisfied with my moderate tip of a shilling, and sixteen and six for the hire of the vehicle, departed and left me to the tackling of my biggest task of the day.

I felt as if I would much rather lie down and rest, but it is astonishing what you can do when you must, and finding fresh energy somewhere I soon had the helpless wife and children fairly comfortable, with a bit of fire in a bedroom. While thus engaged I was drawn to the window by a tremendous crash of thunder and flash of lightning, and there, outside one of the opposite houses, was ranged on the pavement nearly the whole of a family's furniture exposed to the full fury of a torrent of rain. Indeed it was pitiful, and my discontent at the heavy task before me was changed into great gratitude when I realised what I had escaped from by only a few minutes.

I went back to my work with a good heart, and before midnight, when dead beat, I crawled into bed and fell at once into a sleep so sound that even the heavenly artillery failed to disturb me, I had reduced my new abode to something like order. I was up again at 5.30, having ever been able, no matter how weary, to rise at any time necessary, and after another hour's work at straightening things out, sallied forth to find someone who would come and help my helpless ones during my absence. This I fortunately succeeded in doing in time, and at 7.30 I was on my way to the office looking forward to a good rest for my muscles all day, even if my brain would certainly be superlatively active.

Now I am quite well aware that in chronicling the above I am laying myself open to the charge of being jejune, trivial, etc., and I know too, that to many men of my own class such details as I have given above will be so familiar that they will wonder why ever I should have written about them. But somehow I have felt that, as in the subjects of my other books, a little plain and simple truth amidst the flood of invention by writers who have merely looked on, might not be out of place, might indeed be of use. For I hold that it is impossible, even for those who are most interested but do not live the life, however keen they may be, to portray faithfully all the day and night doings of the people they write about. They may and do try hard and honestly to fulfil their self-imposed task, but as long as they can retire to their comfortably furnished homes and nicely served meals whenever they like, they will never be able to describe truly, however much they wish to do so.

For a little while the novelty of setting my house in order and the delight of having a garden for the first time in my life prevented me from dwelling upon the obvious disadvantages of the change of abode I had made. But when I came to realise that in order to live at a low rent and have a little house to myself I had to put in nearly four hours a day travelling, I began to wonder whether I had not been foolish after all. This was long before the days of the extension of the District Railway to East Ham, and I could only keep my travelling expenses within possible limits by taking a workman's ticket, not available after 7 A.M., to Fenchurch Street, and walking thence to Victoria. This long journey, during which I was perforce idle, played havoc with my business of picture-framing, yet still I managed to keep my hand in, and indeed improved a little in that I had a small workshop to myself now, and no longer made frames on the kitchen table.

And I should be ungrateful indeed if I did not remember most affectionately the delights of Wanstead Park and Epping Forest. Many and many a pilgrimage I made in the summer with the children packed in a big perambulator and a bag containing all the materials for a homely picnic slung on the handles to those sylvan glades, and here, at no other expense save the muscular effort, enjoyed a delightful holiday, the best perhaps I have ever known, because purely unconventional and costless. I had the satisfaction of feeling too that, in spite of the rapidity with which streets of small houses like the one I was living in were springing up all around me, the grand forest would never be built on any more, would always be available for such poor workers as myself.

Nevertheless I confess I did mightily begrudge the great waste of time involved in my much travelling. In the summer it was not so bad, but in winter I and many more in like case, who for motives of economy got to our respective places of employment long before we could get in, suffered much from lack of shelter from cold and wet. Just one of the many unconsidered evils of living in a vast and over-crowded city. My extra work of picture framing suffered also, not merely because customers in my new neighbourhood were exceedingly scarce, everybody being so poor, but because of the long, long distance I had to fetch materials, especially glass, which in the crowded trains at night was a most ticklish and brittle load. I cannot now realise definitely the sudden rushes I used to make through the heart of the city at the busiest hour of the evening, my struggle with the clambering crowds up the steep stairs in Fenchurch Street Station, and the journey homewards in the close-packed, reeking compartment, dreading every moment lest a lurch of the train should damage my precious burden. It is all like some hideous nightmare, those wet and foggy nights when my lungs seemed fit to burst with coughing, and all my senses warned me to go slow, while my needs spurred me, and many times I had to stop and remember how many were in far more evil case than myself, or I should have indeed fallen by the wayside.