Confessions of a Tradesman

by Frank Thomas Bullen

After swallowing my coffee, I fled as fast as my legs would carry me towards my place of business (sounds important, doesn't it?), which, when I reached it, was a roaring vortex of noise. For the railway vans had just arrived from Paddington Station, and the huge churns of milk were being shifted with much clangour and shouting from the street to the cellar of the shop, where their contents were being distributed into the polished churns which went into the distributing vans. Every man and boy was hard at work, the majority fitting out their respective vans with cans, kettles, etc.; and in half an hour from beginning this work, every van (there were sixteen of them) with its driver and its attendant boy, a crate full of empty cans, and two brimming churns of milk, had rattled off towards the district, often three or four miles away, which was allotted to it.

In summer this eager rush and excitement was rather pleasant, and more in the nature of a huge frolic than otherwise; but in winter, on bitter, bleak, snowy, or wet mornings, it was undoubtedly terribly hard upon such children as I, poorly clad and insufficiently fed, as most of us were. There were two of us in my van besides the driver, it being a heavy district, and there was consequently considerable rivalry between my fellow-worker and myself, which kept both of us from lagging. Our boss was a gruff, unsociable sort of fellow, but he must have had a soft spot in his heart somewhere, for he invariably pulled up at the first coffee stall (it was set against a dead wall, nearly opposite the entrance to Kensington Palace Gardens, I remember), and treated each of us to a pennyworth of coffee and cake; and this kindness he repeated when we had finished our round, if the weather was cold.

Upon arriving at the commencement of our district we at once flew into violent activity, distributing the milk in cans down the areas and at the doors; but at seven we began to serve at the doors, the servants being about, and many a chunk of cake and mug of hot coffee fell to my lot from kind-hearted kitchen-maids. So, taking it all round, it was not entirely unpleasant if very exhausting. But one thing I have never been able to understand, the wonderful memory we developed. We carried no books, and yet when we returned to the shop at about eight, each of us went before the cashier and repeated, without an effort apparently, as he read out the numbers of the houses, the quantity of milk we had served them with. I do not remember learning this, and indeed it seemed to come naturally to all of us. And when it is remembered that out of 150 gallons of milk we were only allowed one quart for margin, it can easily be understood that we must have been pretty correct.

We had an hour allowed for breakfast, and then the boys had to return and wash and polish the big cans or kettles, as we called them, a task which took us till the afternoon, when we sallied forth again in all the glory of white smocks, shining cans, and trim equipages. This was the pleasant time, for there were nice little snacks obtainable at kitchen doors, and many an opportunity of making a dishonest halfpenny by selling milk to strangers, which deficiency in our pails we made up by giving short measure to regular and large customers, but never, as far as I know, by calling in the aid of the pump. At night when we returned, and the men took their vans off to the stables, the boys washed up the hundreds of small cans under the acute supervision of an old foreman. All the cans were washed and rinsed, were stacked with open lids ready for the morning, and at about 9.30 we were released.

I do not know how long this strenuous employment claimed me, but I know that I was one day discharged suddenly without explanation. The only reason I can assign is that some of my petty pilferings of milk had been discovered, and the only excuse I can give is that of all my earnings I never had a halfpenny to call my own—it all went for my keep.

Why or how I went to my next place I shall never know. It is to me and always has been a profound mystery. It was at a "lath-render's," a place where laths were made by hand from curved fillets of Russian pine, with a groove down the centre as if showing whence the pith had been removed, that had often aroused my wonder as to their use. I was to receive, as far as I remember, small wages, and certainly no food, but I was to learn the business! But my only occupation while I was there was to tie up chips for sale and keep the fire going in the stove, although I watched the men splitting the long laths from the billets with a sort of hatchet with keenest interest. Ah, yes, I used to saw the billets into lengths, I remember, but not to any extent. I was too small for such strenuous labour.

Well, my whole course there is misty in retrospect, but deeply flavoured with the pleasant scent of the pine wood, except the manner of my leaving, which was sudden, dramatic, and mysterious. I have said that my principal occupation was the tying up of chips. There were naturally a great many of these, and they were made into bundles by the aid of a rude machine, and sold, largely to laundresses, who used to send for them as being more economical than the bundle-wood at the oil-shops. Now what perverse demon tempted me I know not, but one day I thought it would be a desirable thing to conceal in the heart of each bundle a lump of clinker from the stove! No possible benefit could accrue to me from doing this, and had my reasoning powers been in working order, I must have known that detection and subsequent disaster must inevitably be swift.

But I did not think, and I did include clinkers in my bundles, with the result that one day a horde of infuriated washerwomen, mostly of Irish extraction, descended upon the shop armed with clinkers, with which, after briefest prologue, they pelted my unfortunate and totally innocent employer. He, poor man, could do nothing but close the establishment under this rapid fire of missiles; and then, thinking quickly, turned upon me and flung me out, not, I rejoice to say, as a sacrifice to the mob, but by a rear door, whence I escaped along the canal side. Explanation of my conduct I have none, and there I must leave the matter. It may have been the budding of incipient genius, but in the mellow light of retrospect I confess that it appears very like the act of a lunatic of which I had been guilty.

Again, I was free and still characterless. This time I suffered, as no doubt I deserved, hunger, thirst, and pain before I again entered employment, but when I did get a berth it promised fairer than any of my previous ones. Just how I fell in with this astounding piece of luck, I have forgotten, but what is indelibly impressed upon my memory is the fact that in my new situation I received board and clothing and two shillings a week—quite sufficient to pay for my poor little bed in a room which I shared with a cobbler, who used it for a workshop, toiling far into the night after I had gone to sleep; but while I was awake, entertaining me vastly with scraps of quaint philosophy. No wonder I was what they used to call an old-fashioned kid! But bless that dear old cobbler's heart. He was gentle, kind, and wise, except in one direction, but even in his cups I never remember hearing him say ought that a little child might not listen to, or ask and obtain the meaning of unsullied. He was very fond of me, and I of him. I daresay we meant a great deal to each other, meeting as we did in that little eddy out of the great rapids of life, and without visible effort supplying each other's needs. I well remember meeting him one day—it must have been when I was looking for a job—surrounded by a little mob of children "avin a gime wiv im" in the vernacular. Taking me gently by the arm he said, with a grand wave of his free hand, "Now here is an example for you, ill-mannered brats that you are, that can only shout 'Ullo, Trotty.' I know I trot, I know I am old, but you are ill-bred to remind me of it, and as for this dear child!" And much to my horror and entire discomfiture, he lifted me up and kissed me. I did not get over that, or escape the consequences of his ill-timed affection for a long time, I promise you.

But I am forgetting Mr Green, my employer. He kept an establishment in Westbourne Grove for the manufacture and sale of paper patterns of fashionable dresses. In those far-off days I think he must have been a pioneer in this business, and I know he used to visit Paris periodically, in order to obtain the latest modes; and returning with them, his wife and her assistants reduplicated them in coloured paper, which elaborate models were exhibited in a grand show-room and sold. My business was to wear a fine suit of clothes with many silvered buttons, and lie hidden in the hall to conduct clients upstairs to the show-rooms, which was on the first floor over a shop. Another and more important part of my duties was to carry parcels to clients' houses, at which times I wore a shiny top-hat bedecked with silver braid. Indeed, so fine was I that my old companions of the street forbore to guy me, but paid me undisguised tribute of admiration for my splendour.