A Poor Man's House

by Stephen Sydney Reynolds

5

A DUTCH AUCTION

Almost every evening, just now, Mrs Widger goes off to a Dutch auction of hardware and trinkets at the Market House. She usually brings home some small purchase, worth about half the money she has paid; but if she were to go to an entertainment at the Seacombe Hall she would be not nearly so well amused as by the auctioneer and the other housewives, and at the end of the evening she would have nothing whatever to show for her money. Besides, the children would never go off to bed quietly if they imagined that she was going to a real entertainment. As she did not return very early last night, Tony and I got our own supper—bread, cheese, a great deal of Worcester sauce, and a pint of mother-in-law [stout and bitter] from the Alexandra. Then we drew up to the fire and smoked. John, healthy and powerful fellow, had been arguing in the daytime on the beach, that if a youth cannot do a man's work at seventeen, he never will. Tony disagreed. Twenty-five to thirty-five, he says, is a man's prime for strength and endurance together. Nevertheless, he is sure that he often did more than a man's work long before he was seventeen, which led him to talk about his boyhood, when Granfer and Gran Widger had frequently not enough food in the house for their many children to eat. "Us had to rough it when I wer a boy, I can tell 'ee," says Tony. "'Twer often bread an' a scraape o' fat an' Get 'long out o'it!"

TONY'S DUTIES

At nine years old, Tony was put with old Cloade, the grocer, now dead; and by the time he was twelve, he was earning four shillings a week, not a penny of which he ever saw or had as 'spending money'; for his mother used to go to the shop every Saturday night and lay out all poor Tony's wages in groceries. The only pocket-money he ever received was a copper or two 'thrown back' from what he could earn by going to sea for mackerel early enough to return to work by half-past six in the morning. Besides running errands, he had to clean boots and knives and to scrub out and tidy up the bar, which in those days was attached to every Devon grocery. Then he could go home to breakfast. And if old Cloade was going up on land, shooting, Tony had to get up and wake him at half-past three and to cork bottles or something of that sort before the master started out for his day's sport. And again, if Tony had fallen foul of any of the shop assistants during the day, had cheeked them perhaps, or stayed overlong at meals, then, waiting till closing time at eight or nine in the evening, they would send him a couple of miles inland, to the top of the hills, with a late parcel of groceries. His possible working day was from 3.30 a.m. to 10.0 p.m.

The chief part of his work, when he was not cleaning up or running errands, was the sorting of fruit and the cracking of sugar. Every nail of his fingers has come off more than once on account of the damage done them by the sugar-cracker. Better than any national event, he recollects the introduction of cube sugar. "When they tubs o' ready-cracked sugar fust come'd down to Seacombe, 'twer thought a gert thing—an' so 'twas."

Nearly every year an attack of (sub-acute?) rheumatic fever gave him a painful holiday, during which he crawled about the crowded cottage at home on his hands and knees. The one advantage of his irregularly long hours was that, if work were slack, he could linger over his meals. It was the assistants who kept a sharp eye on his movements. Them he hated—and cheeked. "The more I done, the worse they treated me. An' as I grow'd up an' did often enough more'n a man's work, so I got to know it. One day I stayed home more'n an hour to breakfast, an' one on 'em asted me wer I'd a-been, an' I said as I'd had me half-hour to breakfast, an' he said as I'd had an hour an' a half, an' I told 'en 'twern't no business o' his an' dared 'en to so much as touch me or I'd knock his head in, which I could easily ha' done—an' there wer the master standin' by! 'Fore I knowed, he gie'd me one under one yer wi' one hand, an' one under t'other yer wi' t'other hand; knocked me half silly; an' said if he had any more o' my chake he'd send me going thereupon. 'Iss, I said, 'an I will go, an' if I can't pick up a livin' on the baych wi' fishin' (I 'adn't no boats then, n'eet for years a'ter), an' if I couldn't pick up a livin' wi' fishin', I'd go to sea. An' I took an' lef the shop, an' went wi'out me pay due nor nort further about it.

"Well, I should think as I stayed away two or dree days, saying as, if I couldn' live by the sea, I'd go off tu sea. By'm-by, ol' Mr Cloade—I could al'ys get on all right wi' he hisself—'twer they assistants.... Mr Cloade come'd down to baych an' said as he'd rise me wages be two shillings, from four shillings to six a week. So I went back. But 'twern't for long, for I wer turned seventeen then, an' strong, an' I knowed that six shillin's a week, every penny o' which mother laid out in groceries—p'raps givin' me dreepence for meself latterly—that wern't no wage for me doing more'n a man's work, early an' laate, at everybody's beck an' call. 'Twern't vitty.

BRUISED ORANGES AND BRUISES

"It come'd soon a'ter.... I wer sorting oranges, an' one o' the assistants called like they al'ays did: 'Widger, Widger! Widger! Yer, Widger!' 'Twer al'ays, 'Widger! Widger!' in thic show—blarsted row! 'I wants 'ee to take thees yer parcel to Mr Brindley-Botton's (what used to live to Southview House) in time for lunch. Hurry up!'"