Confessions of a Tradesman

by Frank Thomas Bullen

I went to bed that night with a heavy heart, because now the fact that I was in debt without hope of repayment stared me in the face, nagged at me, would not let me shut it out, and for once my hitherto unfailing solace, reading, was of no avail. At last I summoned up my mental resources, and determined that since I had done all I could, it was worse than useless to worry about the unfortunate result. Doubtless I had done wrong, but with the most innocent and praiseworthy intentions, and so I would sleep—and I did.

The next day, Sunday, was a gloomy one for me, for I knew no one in the vicinity, and missed sorely my usual happy association with some body of open-air preachers, and I felt almost outcast from human sympathy, which, though it may be a confession of weakness, I always had a craving for. But I got through the day somehow, my children wondering what made their father so dull, such bad company, and was heartily glad when bedtime came, and I could again seek the beautiful solace of sleep.

When I awoke again on Monday morning at five o'clock, and commenced to busy myself about the house, it was with a feeling that was new to me then, but which never left me during all the time that shop, like some infernal incubus, clung to my neck. It was a sense of utter hopelessness of ever doing any good in this business, coupled with the absolute necessity of going on with it. I know I may be thought a poor minded craven for being daunted in this wise thus early, but I must plead that I had a prophetic instinct, besides my tangible experience, and the grim fact of all these bills presently falling due. But I can honestly say that this sense of hopelessness did not, as far as I am aware, ever prevent me from doing my best and working my hardest to make the best of what I felt to be a very bad job.

When I got to the office I realised that the shop must be dismissed from my mind altogether while at my desk if I was to retain my post. For I could take no half measures; I must either not think about it at all or think of nothing else. So I took hold of myself resolutely, and fixed my mind on my work, compelling an interest in it that I had never been able to feel before. And it did me good in two ways. It relieved me of the hateful round of useless thought about the shop, and it salved my conscience, which was worrying me very much about the way in which I was certainly neglecting my most important duties. But I found it pretty hard to answer the inquiries of one or two friends to whom I had confided my plans for going into business. I had to be frank with them as to what had happened, and also to feign a hope, which I did not feel, that things would soon improve.

However, taking things on the whole I felt much better in spirit when I returned home on Monday evening. I felt, that, knowing the worst, I could hardly help expecting a little improvement, and as to the future—well, that was hardly my concern now. So that I was almost cheerful when I entered the shop door, and not too much startled when my wife rushed to meet me beaming, and crying, "I've sold something!" I was sorely tempted to be sarcastic but forebore, and merely said quietly, "I am glad to hear that, what have you sold?" "One of those pretty photo-frames out of my window, and here's the money," producing a shilling, and pointing to the two frames which remained of the same kind. Then I laughed long and loud, for the irony of the situation went clean through me. She stared at me in bewildered fashion, saying, "What on earth is the matter with you?" She evidently thought I was mad.

I answered, "Nothing, I'm sane enough, but seeing that our first business transaction in the shop is to sell an article for a shilling which cost us eighteenpence, I do not know what I might have been if I hadn't laughed." And I have to laugh now when I think of it. That was our first customer, and she had a bargain. Somehow I persisted in looking at the transaction in a humorous light, and so it didn't hurt us, and presently fate made us amends by bringing a friend in who was to me for all those grievous four years a veritable godsend. He was, like myself, a stranger in the neighbourhood, indeed he was a stranger to London, having come up to take charge of a branch library. He "happened in" as the Americans say, just to ask if I had some kind of nails or screws or something like that, for he was an ingenious chap, and always doing something or other to make the temporary library over which he presided more fit for its purpose without too much extra expense.

We got into conversation quite easily, and he was speedily in possession of my story. For, I was literally aching to tell it to someone, and I could not have found a more sympathetic listener. He was, I think, one of those people who are often cruelly described as "nobody's enemy" but his own, but who should be better described as everybody's friend but his own, for a more unselfish chap never lived, and that character is, whatever its other faults may be, possessed of the golden virtue of helpfulness in an eminent degree.

Well, before we had been talking an hour he was installed as the friend of the family, in which unenviable position, as far as he was concerned, he reigned without a rival all the time we had the business. It was a bright and cheery episode, and did me more good than a hundred customers would have done, so that I went to bed that night feeling quite contented, and happy. I had found a friend who would be a friend indeed.

The first proof I had of the value commercially of my new friend's help was that coming in contact with so many people at the library, he recommended me as a picture-framer in season and out. Anyhow he got me work, which, whether it paid or not, was what I ardently desired. For while I was doing something I was, as Kipling says, swallowed up in the clean joy of creation, and nothing else then mattered very much to me. So gradually customers began to flow in, very gradually it is true, but they did come, and although my gains were small I made many good friends who did their best to recommend me to others. I had a workshop on the first floor which was a chosen haunt of my intimates, who, their work being done, used to come and perch amidst the unpicturesque litter and watch me at work, preferring apparently to be there in thirsty discomfort to being in the local saloon bar. But how they did smoke! We had a varied compound of odours up there, boiling glue, sour paste and general dustiness, but the whole rank compound was leavened, and I think purified, by tobacco smoke, diligently emitted by my friends as they watched me at work.