Alton Locke
Charles Kingsley, English novelist, poet, and clergyman, was born June 12, 1819, and died Jan. 23, 1875. The son of the rector of Chelsea, London, Kingsley went from King's College, London, to Cambridge, taking his B.A. degree in 1842, and becoming rector of Eversley in 1844. He was made one of the Queen's chaplains in 1859, and in 1873 was appointed canon of Westminster. After publishing "Village Sermons" and "The Saint's Tragedy," Kingsley took part with F.D. Maurice in the Christian Socialist movement of 1848, attacking the horrible sweating then rife in the tailoring trade, calling attention to the miserable plight of the agricultural labourer, and the need for sanitary reform in town and country. In "Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet," first published in 1849, Kingsley writes from the point of view of the earnest artisan of sixty years ago, and the success of the book, following the author's pamphlet on "Cheap Clothes and Nasty," did much to stimulate social and philanthropic work in London and other great industrial centres. Various editions of the novels of Kingsley are obtainable.
I.--A Sweating Shop
I am a cockney among cockneys.
My earliest recollections are of a suburban street; of his jumble of little shops and little terraces.
My mother was a widow. My father, whom I cannot recollect, was a small retail tradesman in the city. He was unfortunate, and when he died, as many small tradesmen do, of bad debts and a broken heart, he left us beggars, and my mother came down and lived penuriously enough in that suburban street.
My mother moved by rule and method; by God's law, as she considered, and that only. She seldom smiled. She never commanded twice without punishing. And yet she kept the strictest watch over our morality.
Sometimes on a Sunday evening the ministers of the Baptist chapel would come in to supper after the meeting. The elder was a silver-haired old man, who loved me; and I loved him, too, for there were always lollipops in his pocket for me and for my only sister Susan. The other was a younger man, tall and dark. He preached a harsher doctrine than his gentler colleague, and was much the greater favourite at the chapel. I hated him; and years later he married my sister.
When I had turned thirteen, my father's brother, who had risen in wealth, and now was the owner of a first-rate grocery business in the City and a pleasant villa at Herne Hill, and had a son preparing for Cambridge, came to visit us. When he had gone my mother told me, very solemnly and slowly, that I was to be sent to a tailor's workrooms the next day.
What could my uncle make me but a tailor--or a shoemaker? A pale, consumptive boy, all forehead and no muscle.