Not as yet directly aiming at how
it came to pass, I will come upon it by degrees. The
natural manner, after all, for God knows that is how it came upon
me.
My parents were in a miserable condition of life, and my
infant home was a cellar in Preston. I recollect the sound
of father’s Lancashire clogs on the street pavement above,
as being different in my young hearing from the sound of all
other clogs; and I recollect, that, when mother came down the
cellar-steps, I used tremblingly to speculate on her feet having
a good or an ill-tempered look,—on her knees,—on her
waist,—until finally her face came into view, and settled
the question. From this it will be seen that I was timid,
and that the cellar-steps were steep, and that the doorway was
very low.
Mother had the gripe and clutch of poverty upon her face, upon
her figure, and not least of all upon her voice. Her sharp
and high-pitched words were squeezed out of her, as by the
compression of bony fingers on a leathern bag; and she had a way
of rolling her eyes about and about the cellar, as she scolded,
that was gaunt and hungry. Father, with his shoulders
rounded, would sit quiet on a three-legged stool, looking at the
empty grate, until she would pluck the stool from under him, and
bid him go bring some money home. Then he would dismally
ascend the steps; and I, holding my ragged shirt and trousers
together with a hand (my only braces), would feint and dodge from
mother’s pursuing grasp at my hair.
A worldly little devil was mother’s usual name for
me. Whether I cried for that I was in the dark, or for that
it was cold, or for that I was hungry, or whether I squeezed
myself into a warm corner when there was a fire, or ate
voraciously when there was food, she would still say, ‘O,
you worldly little devil!’ And the sting of it was,
that I quite well knew myself to be a worldly little devil.
Worldly as to wanting to be housed and warmed, worldly as to
wanting to be fed, worldly as to the greed with which I inwardly
compared how much I got of those good things with how much father
and mother got, when, rarely, those good things were going.
Sometimes they both went away seeking work; and then I would
be locked up in the cellar for a day or two at a time. I
was at my worldliest then. Left alone, I yielded myself up
to a worldly yearning for enough of anything (except misery), and
for the death of mother’s father, who was a machine-maker
at Birmingham, and on whose decease, I had heard mother say, she
would come into a whole courtful of houses ‘if she had her
rights.’ Worldly little devil, I would stand about,
musingly fitting my cold bare feet into cracked bricks and
crevices of the damp cellar-floor,—walking over my
grandfather’s body, so to speak, into the courtful of
houses, and selling them for meat and drink, and clothes to
wear.
At last a change came down into our cellar. The
universal change came down even as low as that,—so will it
mount to any height on which a human creature can
perch,—and brought other changes with it.
We had a heap of I don’t know what foul litter in the
darkest corner, which we called ‘the bed.’ For
three days mother lay upon it without getting up, and then began
at times to laugh. If I had ever heard her laugh before, it
had been so seldom that the strange sound frightened me. It
frightened father too; and we took it by turns to give her
water. Then she began to move her head from side to side,
and sing. After that, she getting no better, father fell
a-laughing and a-singing; and then there was only I to give them
both water, and they both died.
