Directly I entered the house where I had been told he lodged, I knew that I had come to the right address; for the staircase smelt of turpentine as if it had been newly painted, the odour growing more and more powerful as I ascended.
The little room where the man and his family worked was as hot as an oven; for although it was in the heat of summer, still his occupation forced him to have a fire burning for the purpose of melting and keeping fluid the different ingredients he spread upon his papers.
When I opened the door of his room, I was at first puzzled to know how I should enter the apartment; for the ceiling was completely hidden by the papers which had been hung up to dry from the many strings stretched across the place, so that it resembled a washerwoman’s back-yard, with some thousands of red pocket-handkerchiefs suspended in the air. I could see the legs of the manufacturer walking about at the further end, but the other part of his body was hidden from me.
On his crying, “Come in!” I had to duck my head down, and creep under the forest of paper strips rustling above us.
The most curious characteristic of the apartment was the red colour with which everything was stained. The walls, floor, and tables were all smeared with ochre, like the pockets of a drover. The papers that were drying were as red as the pages of a gold-leaf book. This curious appearance was owing to part of the process of “catch ’em alive” making consisting in first covering the paper with coloured size, to prevent the sticky solution from soaking into it.
The room was so poorly furnished, that it was evident the trade was not a lucrative one. An old Dutch clock, with a pendulum as long as a walking-stick, was the only thing in the dwelling which was not indispensable to the calling. The chimneypiece—that test of “well-to-do” in the houses of the poorer classes—had not a single ornament upon it. The long board on which the family worked served likewise as the table for the family meals, and the food they ate had to be laid upon the red-smeared surface. There was but one chair, and that the wife occupied; and when the father or son wished to sit down, a tub of size was drawn out with its trembling contents from under the work-table, and on this they rested themselves.
“We are called in the trade,” said the father, “fly-paper makers. They used to put a nice name to the things once, and call ’em Egyptian fly-papers, but now they use merely the word ‘fly-papers,’ or ‘fly-destroyers,’ or ‘fly-catchers,’ or ‘catch ’em alive, oh.’
“I never made any calculation about flies, and how often they breeds. You see, it depends upon so many things how they’re produced: for instance, if I was to put my papers on a dung-heap, I might catch some thousands; and if I was to put a paper in an ice-well, I don’t suppose I should catch one.
“I know the flies produce some thousands each, because if you look at a paper well studded over with flies, you’ll see—that is, if you look very carefully—where each fly has blown, as we call it, there’ll be some millions on a paper, small grubs or little mites, like; for whilst struggling the fly shoots forth the blows, and eventually these blows would turn to flies.
“I have been at fly-catcher making for the last nine years. It’s almost impossible to make any calculation as to the number of papers I make during the season, and this is the season. If it’s fine weather, then flies are plentiful, and the lads who sell the papers in the streets keep me busy; but if it’s at all bad weather, then they turn their attention to blacking boots.