Confessions of a Tradesman

by Frank Thomas Bullen

Now indeed I began to realise, in spite of what I so often read in the daily papers, something of the optimistic pushfulness of the commercial traveller. The shop had not been open very long when they began to call, and such was their power of persuasion, so eager were they to sell me something, however little, so as to get a foot in as it were, that I often felt grateful that I was away all day. I left concise orders that nothing was to be bought, but on the occasions when I happened to be at home I felt so soft and yielding in the hands of these persistent pushers of their employer's wares that I could not but pity my wife, charged as she was with the duty of saying no to men who refused to recognise such a word as belonging to any language.

They were so polite, so gentlemanly, so pathetic, and so well informed. They seemed able to talk upon any subject, although they all had a marvellous knack of twisting any topic round to the one they were interested in. The luxuriance and fruitfulness of their imaginations, too, always impressed me, and although I always deprecated them wasting their time over so impecunious a tradesman as I was I had a good deal of joy in their company, bright and cheerful as it always was. But I have also to confess that they were dangerous counsellors. Their pleading for small orders, just one line, their utter indifference to the payment, making it so fatally easy to get into debt, I look back upon now with horror. And yet I suppose it is of the essence of business, this hopeful airy outlook upon life. I now see that I might have stocked my shop with the choicest products, might have made it glow again and—but never mind—that comes later. I am not, never was, a strong-minded person; except in certain very restricted directions I am exceedingly prone to take the line of least resistance, but I do feel just a little puffed up with the knowledge that I was so often able to say no and stick to it in spite of all the blandishments of those delightful drummers.

I had been about a year in the shop when I realised that I could no longer expect to do any good whatever with the fancy department. The Islanders had obviously no aspirations in the direction of crewel work, applique or any other form of art embroidery. Or if they had they did not consider that my emporium was the place to satisfy them. So I began to face the possibility of writing off all the expenditure on that side as a loss, and the only question was, whose? For beyond all controversy I was now in debt—how much I would not know, dared not contemplate. But as my picture-framing was still a going concern, and subject to sudden spasmodic accessions of trade, I was always kept on the tenterhooks of expectation—I dare not say hope—that one big order might put things right. In this I was doubtless somewhat encouraged by a sympathetic fellow-clerk, who used to suggest to me the possibility of my getting orders for frames to be exhibited say in all the stations from King's Cross to Aberdeen, and just for fun we often used to speculate upon the profits to be obtained from such a contract. I knew perfectly well that I stood not the slightest chance of getting such a bit of fat as such a contract would be, but I felt that it cost nothing to build a castle or two upon its possibilities, and so I did.

Indeed I wanted some romance in my grey life now, for I was getting hemmed in on every side. The rates kept going up, the gas bills were crushing, sickness was perennial with us owing to the bad drainage of the house, and to make matters very much worse, the structural conditions of the place rendered it barely habitable. The landlord would do nothing, and I could do nothing, towards making the house fit to live in; and in consequence, as he lived next door, our relations, as they say in the newspapers, were strained. I blamed him then, but now I repent that I did so, for he was a poor man also, and he must have often felt that his rent was in the greatest danger. As indeed it was, although I gratefully remember that I did pay him all that he was entitled to, not indeed without some slight coercion, but still I did pay.

Fortunately for me I had made the acquaintance of some religious bodies in the neighbourhood, and I had now some employment for my Sundays. This was a prime necessity for me, for I had never been able to go to church in the ordinarily accepted sense of the term. I wanted to be up and doing. And as I had been used to this for years I felt the loss of it very much on coming to East Dulwich. And until I had made myself known and received invitations to speak in the open air meetings, I was quite unhappy. For no matter how much else I had to do, this particular business seemed to be indispensable to my wellbeing, to supply a need that nothing else would. I suppose that many of our present Members of Parliament owe their positions to the same compelling desire of holding forth to their fellows in the open air forum, of seeing the effect that their oratory has upon their hearers. Now I am not going to recapitulate the experiences I have set down in the "Apostle of the South East," but only to point out that this life of mine was as you might say triangular. First in point of importance, but not I fear in consideration, was the office, when I drew my regular recurring pay. Next the shop, which I never knew whether to class as an awful incubus or a pleasant recreation (it was both at times), and lastly the evangelistic work in the open air which claimed most of my Sundays. I might perhaps make up the square by bringing in my domestic life, but that would involve writing of details that are quite private, and so I leave that side to be assumed as a sort of leaven running through the whole lump.

From which foregoing outlines it may be taken for granted that my life was fairly full, that I had no need to kill time. Yet so true is it that the busiest people are always those who seem to have time at their disposal, that I managed to keep up my reading, not merely of books but newspapers, and followed all the events of the day with the keenest interest. But this was not, as it never has been, from an ardent desire to educate myself, and reach out ambitiously after something better than I was doing. If in all I have written hitherto there is one word that can be construed into a vain-glorious asking for praise on account of my energy, my perseverance, my earnest desire to get on and all the rest of the nauseous twaddle, I beg my readers to forgive me, and to believe that I had not, never had, never can have the slightest intention of posing in this manner.

My Apologia must be this: I worked hard because I was afraid of the consequences if I didn't, not at all because I was naturally industrious, energetic, or ingenious, for I know that I was none of these things, or rather that I had none of these fine qualities. I read whenever I could, whatever I could, because I loved reading for its own sake, and I read good stuff because I had a natural distaste for rubbish. A good book could and can still make me forget all earthly ills, all my surroundings, in fact make me cry and laugh and wonder, while a bad book makes me absolutely ill if I persevere in reading it.

To return to another development of my business as a picture-framer consequent upon opening a shop. Delightful people came in and talked, first about pictures and their frames, then about art in all its branches (which by the way necessitated me reading up "Art"), and then by an easy transition to any subject in which they were interested at that particular time. Sometimes these breaks in the greyness of everyday life were welcome, and led to most useful acquaintanceships and friendships; but sometimes when I had an order to finish and deliver for urgent reasons, I talked with a wild pre-occupied look and itching hands, longing to tell my suave interlocutor to go to Jehannum or elsewhere, and let me get on with my work, yet not daring to do so for fear of offending a potential customer.

Yet very often when such a one had given an order for a one-and-ninepenny frame and had gone away, my over-wrought nerves refused to allow me to finish what I had in hand. Because, principally, of the glass. Now your born glass-cutter has no nerves, cannot have. In the nice handling of a diamond across a virgin sheet of fifteen-ounce glass, the slightest imaginative tremor must have fatal results, that is as regards the profit to be made from clean cutting. But this important matter must be much more particularly explained, for to me it has often meant the difference between profit and loss, to say nothing of the pains I endured by reason of my inability to swear—for only language lurid, loud, and long, could relieve my labouring bosom, I felt sure, on many of these occasions.

Be it known to you then that the ordinary picture-framer's glass comes from Belgium in cases containing I forget how many sheets each about fifty inches long and thirty-six inches wide, and weighing roughly fifteen ounces to the square foot. The price per case varies continually, but it may be safely assumed that, given a skilful cutter, a retail price of twopence halfpenny a square foot will yield a profit of about twenty five per cent. Only, much of this glass has so many air bubbles in it, is so uneven in thickness, that it can only be used for pictures on the assumption that the customer will not mind a bubble giving a sinister twist to some character's eye in the picture, or in certain lights, a series of blotches upon the whole scene. It is really window glass, but when Christmas number plates must be framed in competition for about eighteenpence each, no poor framer can afford to regard trifles like that. And then its uneven substance in such large sheets makes the manipulation of it a matter of extreme difficulty except to those in constant practice and with highly trained skill. Now very early in my occupation of a shop I learned that I must give up my old fiddling system of buying my glass ready cut in Westminster and carrying it home, for many reasons, not the least of these being that I got no profit out of it.