“After I’d worked London pretty well, I sometimes would start off a few miles out to the towns and villages; but, generally, it wasn’t much account. The country chaps like sich tunes as ‘The Barley Stack,’ or ‘The Little House under the Hill.’ I often used to whistle to them while they danced. They liked jigs mostly, and always paid me a penny a dance each.
“I recollect once when I was whistling before a gentleman’s house down at Hounslow, he sent his servant and called me in. I was taken into a fine large room, full of looking-glasses, and time-pieces, and pictures. I was never in sich a room before, all my life. The gentleman was there with his family,—about six on ’em,—and he told me if I’d whistle, and learn his birds to sing, he’d give me a sovereign. He had three fine brass-wire cages, with a bird in each, slung all of a row from the ceiling. I set to work ‘like a brick,’ and the birds begun to sing directly, and I amused ’em very much. I stopped about an hour and a half, and let ’em have all sorts of tunes, and then he gave me a sovereign, and told me to call again when I come that way; but before I left he said the servants was to give me something to eat and drink, so I had dinner in the kitchen with the servants, and a jolly good dinner it was.
“From Hounslow I walked to Maidenhead, and took a lodging for the night at the Turk’s Head. In the evening some countrymen come into the tap-room and kicked up a row with the missus because she couldn’t lodge ’em. She run in to turn then away, when three of ’em pitched into her right and left; and if it hadn’t been for me and another chap she’d have got killed. When they got her down I jumped upon the table and snatched up the only weapon I could find, a brass candlestick, and knocked one of ’em down senseless, and the other fellow got hold of a broomstick and give it ’em as hard as he could, till we beat ’em right out of the place. There happened to be some police outside, drilling, who came over and took three of them to the stocks, where they was locked in for twenty-four hours. The next day the magistrate sentenced ’em to three months’ imprisonment each, and I started for London and never whistled a tune till I reached it, which was three days afterwards. I kept on at the old game, earning about 2s. 6d. a-day, till the militia was being called out, and then I joined them, for I thought it would be the best thing I could do. I was sworn in by Colonel Scrivens at Eton Mews. We was taken into a stable, where there was three horses. Four of us laid hold of a book altogether; and then, after asking us if we had any complaints, or were lame, or any way unfit for service, or was married, or had any children; and when we had said No, he asked us if we was free, able, and willing to serve in her Majesty’s militia, in either England, Ireland, Scotland, or Wales, for the term of five years, if so long her Majesty required our services; and when we said we was, we took the oath and kissed the book.
“The same day, which was the 11th of June, 1854, we was packed off from the Waterloo Station for Portsmouth. After being drilled for three weeks I was returned for duty, and went on guard. The first guard I mounted was at Detached Dock at Portsmouth—it’s where the convicts are. I didn’t do any whistling there, I can tell yer; I’d different sorts of work, for part of our duty was to bury the poor fellows that died after coming home invalided from the Crimea. The people through that used to call us the ‘garrison undertakers.’ I was there thirteen months, and never, the whole time, had more than two nights’ bed a-week; and some part of the time the weather was very frosty, and we was often over our ankles in snow. I belonged to the 4th Middlesex, and no corps ever did so much duty, or went through so much hardships, as ours. From Portsmouth I was ordered, with my regiment, 950 strong, to Buttervant, county Cork, Ireland. When we reached the Irish Channel a storm arose, and we was all fastened under hatches, and not suffered to come upon deck for four days, by which time we reached the Cove of Cork: the Colonel’s horse had to be thrown overboard, and they, more than once, had serious thoughts of throwing all the luggage into the sea as well. I was ten months in Ireland. I didn’t do any whistling there; and then the regiment was ordered home again on account of the peace. But before we left we had a day’s sport, consisting of greasy-pole climbing, jumping in sacks, racing after a pig with a greasy tail, and all them sort of things; and at night the officers had a grand ball. We landed at Portsmouth on a Monday morning at four o’clock, and marched through to the station, and reached Hounslow about four o’clock the same afternoon. A month after we were disembodied, and I came at once to London. I had about 1l. 5s. in my pocket, and I resolved in my own mind never to go whistling any more. I went to my father, but he refused to help me in any way. I tried for work, but couldn’t get any, for the people said, they didn’t like a militia man; so, after having spent all my money, I found that I must either starve or whistle, and so, you see, I’m once more on the streets.
“While I was in Ireland I absented myself from the barracks for twenty-one days, but fearing that a picket would get hold of me, I walked in one morning at six o’clock. I was instantly placed under arrest in the guard-room, where I remained four days, when I was taken before the Colonel, and to my great surprise I saw, sitting aside of him, the very gentleman who had given me the pound to whistle to his birds; his name was Colonel Bagot, as I found out afterwards, and he was deputy-magistrate for Middlesex. He asked me if I was not the chap as had been to his house; I told him I was, so he got me off with a good reprimand, and saved me being tried by a court-martial. When I first took to sleeping at lodging-houses they was very different to what they are now. I’ve seen as many as eighteen people in one cellar sleeping upon loose straw, covered with sheets or blankets, and as many as three in one bed; but now they won’t take in any little boys like as I was, unless they are with their parents; and there’s very few beds in a room, and never more than one in a bed. Married people have a place always parted off for themselves. The inspector comes in all times—often in the middle of the night—to see that the regulations ain’t broken.
“I used, one time, to meet another man whistling, but like old Dick, who was the first at the profession, he’s gone dead, and so I’m the only one at it now anywhere. It’s very tiring work, and makes you precious hungry when you keep at it for two or three hours; and I only wish I could get something else to do, and you’d see how soon I’d drop it.
“The tunes that are liked best in the streets is sich as ‘Ben Bolt’ and ‘Will you love me then as now?’ but a year or two ago, nothin’ went down like the ‘Low-back Car.’ I was always being asked for it. I soon gets hold of the new tunes that comes up. I don’t think whistling hurts me, because I don’t blow so hard as ‘old Dick’ used. A gentleman come up to me once in the street that was a doctor, and asked me whether I drunk much, and whether I drawed my breath in or blowed it out. I told him I couldn’t get much to drink, and he said I ought at least to have three half-pints of beer a-day, or else I should go into a consumption; and when I said I mostly blowed out when I whistled, he said that was the best, because it didn’t strain the lungs so much.”
Whistling and Dancing Boy.
At the present time there is only one English boy going about the streets of London dancing, and at the same time playing his own musical accompaniment on a tin whistle. There are two or three Italian boys who dance whilst they perform on either the flute or the hurdy-gurdy, but the lad who gave me the following statement assured me that he was the only Englishman who had made street whistling and dancing “his profession.”