The Orange Girl

by Walter Besant

My last recollection of the counting-house is that of Matthew lying in a heap and shaking his fist, at me, while, behind, my uncle's face looks out amazed upon the spectacle from one door, and the clerks in a crowd contemplate the discomfiture of Mr. Matthew from another door. Then I strode off, I say, like a gamecock after a victory, head erect, cheek flushed, legs straight. Ha! I am always glad that I drubbed my cousin, just once. A righteous drubbing it was, too, if ever there was one. It hanselled the new life. After it, there was no return possible.

And so home—though the house in College Street could no longer be called a home—I now had no home—I was turned into the street. However, I went upstairs to my own room—mine no longer. I looked about. In the cupboard I found a black box in which I placed everything I could call my own: my music; my linen and my clothes. On the wall hung the miniature of my mother. Happily she had not lived to see the banishment of her son: this I put in my pocket. The fiddle I laid in its case. Then with my cudgel under my arm and carrying the fiddle in one hand and the box on my shoulder I descended the stairs—now, I must confess, with a sinking heart—and found myself in the street.

I had in my purse five guineas—the son of a most solid and substantial merchant, and I had no more than five guineas in the world. What could I do to earn a living? Since I had been for two years in my father's counting house I might be supposed to know something of affairs. Alas! I knew nothing. One art or accomplishment I possessed: and one alone. I could play the fiddle. Now that I had to depend upon my playing for a livelihood, I began to ask whether I could play well enough. At all events, I could play vigorously. But the die was cast. I had made my choice, and must make the best of it. Besides, had I not drubbed my cousin Matthew and that, as they say, with authority?

You have heard how my father accused me of intimacy with a person named Shirley, a resident in the Rules of the King's Bench. That charge I could not deny. Indeed, the person named Shirley, by all his friends called Tom, had been of late my master. Every spare hour that I had was spent with him, practising with him and learning from him. He taught a finer style than I could learn from the sailors. When I went into the counting-house I had no longer any spare hours, except in the evening, and then my master was engaged earning his bread in an orchestra. Still I could manage to visit him sometimes on Sunday evenings when my father was generally occupied with friends who loved likewise to limit and make as narrow as they could the mercies of the Almighty.

At this moment I could think of no one except Tom Shirley who could help me or advise me.

I therefore lugged my box and my violin to the Three Cranes, and took boat across to Moldstrand Stairs, from which it is an easy half mile by pleasant lanes, Love Lane and Gravel Lane, past Looman's Pond to St. George's Fields where Tom Shirley lived.

It was a little after noon when I arrived at the house. It was one of three or four cottages standing in a row, every cottage consisting of four or five rooms. They are pleasing retreats, each having a small front garden where lilacs, laburnums, hollyhock, sunflowers, tulips, and other flowers and bushes grow. In front of the garden flows languidly one of the many little streams which cross the fields and meadows of Southwark: a rustic bridge with a single hand-rail crosses the stream.

The region of St. George's Fields, as is very well known, has a reputation which, in fact, is well deserved. The fact that it is covered with shallow ponds, some of which are little better than mere laystalls, causes it to be frequented on Sundays and on summer evenings by the rude and barbarous people who come here to hunt ducks with dogs—a horrid sport: some of them even throw cats into the water and set their dogs at them. The same people come here for prize fights, but they say that the combatants have an understanding beforehand how long the fight is to last: some come for quarter-staff practice: some come for hockey or for football. Outside the Fields there are many taverns and places of entertainment: on the Fields there is at least one, the notorious Dog and Duck. Every evening except in winter these places are full of people who come to dance and drink and sing. Every kind of wickedness is openly practised here: if a man would gamble, here are the companions for him and here are rooms where he can play: if he would meet women as deboshed as himself here they may be found.

It is unfortunate for Southwark and its environs that everything seems to have conspired to give it a bad name. First of all, it was formerly outside the jurisdiction of the City, so that all the villains and criminals of the City got across the water and found refuge here. Next, the government of the place was not single, but divided by the manors, so that a rogue might pass from one manor into another and so escape: thirdly, the Sanctuary of Southwark tolerated after the Reformation at St. Mary Overies, grew to accommodate as great a number as that in Westminster where they only lately pulled down the gray old Tower which looked like a donjon keep rather than the walls enclosing two chapels. I know not whether there was such a tower at Montagu Close, but within my recollection no officer of the law dared to arrest any sanctuary man in Mint Street—their latest refuge: nor did any person with property to lose venture into that street. For first his hat would be snatched off: then his wig: then his silk handkerchief: then he would be hustled, thrown, and kicked: when he was permitted to get up it was without watch, chain, buckles, shoes, lace cravat, ruffles. Fortunate if he was allowed to escape with no more injury. The presence of these villains was alone enough to give the place a bad name. But there was more. Prisons there must be, but in Southwark there were too many. The King's Bench Prison: the Marshal-sea: the Borough Compter: the Clink: the White Lyon. So many prisons in a place so thinly populated produced a saddening effect. And, besides, there are those who live in the Rules, which are themselves a kind of prison but without walls. In another part, along the Embankment, the Show Folk used to live: those who act: those who write plays and songs: those who dance and tumble: mimes, musicians, buffoons: and those who live by the bear-baiting, badger-baiting, bull-baiting, and cock-throwing, which are the favourite sports of Southwark.

These considerations are quite sufficient to account for the evil reputation which clings to the Borough. They do not, however, prevent it from being a place of great resort for those who come up from Kent and Surrey on business, and they do not for obvious reasons prevent the place from being inhabited by the prisoners of the Rules.