THE COSTER-GIRL.
“Apples! An ’aypenny a lot, Apples!”
[From a Daguerreotype by Beard.]
A lad about fourteen informed me that “brass buttons, like a huntman’s, with foxes’ heads on em, looked stunning flash, and the gals liked em.” As for the hair, they say it ought to be long in front, and done in “figure-six” curls, or twisted back to the ear “Newgate-knocker style.” “But the worst of hair is,” they add, “that it is always getting cut off in quod, all along of muzzling the bobbies.”
The whole of the coster-boys are fond of good living. I was told that when a lad started for himself, he would for the first week or so live almost entirely on cakes and nuts. When settled in business they always manage to have what they call “a relish” for breakfast and tea, “a couple of herrings, or a bit of bacon, or what not.” Many of them never dine excepting on the Sunday—the pony and donkey proprietors being the only costers whose incomes will permit them to indulge in a “fourpenny plate of meat at a cook’s shop.” The whole of the boys too are extremely fond of pudding, and should the “plum duff” at an eating-house contain an unusual quantity of plums, the news soon spreads, and the boys then endeavour to work that way so as to obtain a slice. While waiting for a market, the lads will very often spend a shilling in the cakes and three cornered puffs sold by the Jews. The owners toss for them, and so enable the young coster to indulge his two favourite passions at the same time—his love of pastry, and his love of gambling. The Jews crisp butter biscuits also rank very high with the boys, who declare that they “slip down like soapsuds down a gully hole.” In fact it is curious to notice how perfectly unrestrained are the passions and appetites of these youths. The only thoughts that trouble them are for their girls, their eating and their gambling—beyond the love of self they have no tie that binds them to existence.
The Life of a Coster-Lad.
One lad that I spoke to gave me as much of his history as he could remember. He was a tall stout boy, about sixteen years old, with a face utterly vacant. His two heavy lead-coloured eyes stared unmeaningly at me, and, beyond a constant anxiety to keep his front lock curled on his cheek, he did not exhibit the slightest trace of feeling. He sank into his seat heavily and of a heap, and when once settled down he remained motionless, with his mouth open and his hands on his knees—almost as if paralyzed. He was dressed in all the slang beauty of his class, with a bright red handkerchief and unexceptionable boots.
“My father” he told me in a thick unimpassioned voice, “was a waggoner, and worked the country roads. There was two on us at home with mother, and we used to play along with the boys of our court, in Golding-lane, at buttons and marbles. I recollects nothing more than this—only the big boys used to cheat like bricks and thump us if we grumbled—that’s all I recollects of my infancy, as you calls it. Father I’ve heard tell died when I was three and brother only a year old. It was worse luck for us!—Mother was so easy with us. I once went to school for a couple of weeks, but the cove used to fetch me a wipe over the knuckles with his stick, and as I wasn’t going to stand that there, why you see I aint no great schollard. We did as we liked with mother, she was so precious easy, and I never learned anything but playing buttons and making leaden ‘bonces,’ that’s all,” (here the youth laughed slightly.) “Mother used to be up and out very early washing in families—anything for a living. She was a good mother to us. We was left at home with the key of the room and some bread and butter for dinner. Afore she got into work—and it was a goodish long time—we was shocking hard up, and she pawned nigh everything. Sometimes, when we had’nt no grub at all, the other lads, perhaps, would give us some of their bread and butter, but often our stomachs used to ache with the hunger, and we would cry when we was werry far gone. She used to be at work from six in the morning till ten o’clock at night, which was a long time for a child’s belly to hold out again, and when it was dark we would go and lie down on the bed and try and sleep until she came home with the food. I was eight year old then.
“A man as know’d mother, said to her, ‘Your boy’s got nothing to do, let him come along with me and yarn a few ha’pence,’ and so I became a coster. He gave me 4d. a morning and my breakfast. I worked with him about three year, until I learnt the markets, and then I and brother got baskets of our own, and used to keep mother. One day with another, the two on us together could make 2s. 6d. by selling greens of a morning, and going round to the publics with nuts of a evening, till about ten o’clock at night. Mother used to have a bit of fried meat or a stew ready for us when we got home, and by using up the stock as we couldn’t sell, we used to manage pretty tidy. When I was fourteen I took up with a girl. She lived in the same house as we did, and I used to walk out of a night with her and give her half-pints of beer at the publics. She were about thirteen, and used to dress werry nice, though she weren’t above middling pretty. Now I’m working for another man as gives me a shilling a week, victuals, washing, and lodging, just as if I was one of the family.
“On a Sunday I goes out selling, and all I yarns I keeps. As for going to church, why, I can’t afford it,—besides, to tell the truth, I don’t like it well enough. Plays, too, ain’t in my line much; I’d sooner go to a dance—its more livelier. The ‘penny gaffs’ is rather more in my style; the songs are out and out, and makes our gals laugh. The smuttier the better, I thinks; bless you! the gals likes it as much as we do. If we lads ever has a quarrel, why, we fights for it. If I was to let a cove off once, he’d do it again; but I never give a lad a chance, so long as I can get anigh him. I never heard about Christianity; but if a cove was to fetch me a lick of the head, I’d give it him again, whether he was a big ’un or a little ’un. I’d precious soon see a henemy of mine shot afore I’d forgive him,—where’s the use? Do I understand what behaving to your neighbour is?—In coorse I do. If a feller as lives next me wanted a basket of mine as I wasn’t using, why, he might have it; if I was working it though, I’d see him further! I can understand that all as lives in a court is neighbours; but as for policemen, they’re nothing to me, and I should like to pay ’em all off well. No; I never heerd about this here creation you speaks about. In coorse God Almighty made the world, and the poor bricklayers’ labourers built the houses arterwards—that’s my opinion; but I can’t say, for I’ve never been in no schools, only always hard at work, and knows nothing about it. I have heerd a little about our Saviour,—they seem to say he were a goodish kind of a man; but if he says as how a cove’s to forgive a feller as hits you, I should say he know’d nothing about it. In coorse the gals the lads goes and lives with thinks our walloping ’em wery cruel of us, but we don’t. Why don’t we?—why, because we don’t. Before father died, I used sometimes to say my prayers, but after that mother was too busy getting a living to mind about my praying. Yes, I knows!—in the Lord’s prayer they says, ‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgives them as trespasses agin us.’ It’s a very good thing, in coorse, but no costers can’t do it.”