Page:The True History of a Little Ragamuffin 1866.pdf/14

THE TRUE HISTORY

OF A

LITTLE RAGAMUFFIN. CHAPTER I. IN WHICH ARE NARRATED A FEW PARTICULARS OF MY BIRTHPLACE AND PARENTAGE.

I was born at Number Nineteen, Fryingpan Alley, Turnmill Street, in the Parish of Clerkenwell.

In is scarcely probable that the reader is acquainted with the locality in question, and even less probable, if he undertook a journey of exploration in search of it, that any great amount of success would attend his labours. This especially, if he addressed himself to the individual best qualified to give him the required information. This would be the Clerkenwell costermonger. He may have resided within ear-shot of Clerkenwell Church bells all his life; nay, he may be a lodger in Turk's Head Alley, which is not more than twenty paces from my alley, and still he will shake his head ignorantly in reply to your question. Fryingpan Alley, Turnmill Street! He never heard tell of it. He knows all the courts and alleys thereabout. There's Rose Alley, and Lamb and Flag Court, and Crozier's Alley, and Fringpun Alley. The lastmentioned comes closest to what you are inquiring after; but that can't be the one, because it is in Tummel Street. Even though he had a suspicion that your "Fryingpan" and his "Fringpun," and his "Tummel" and your "Turnmill" were identical, it is very doubtful if you would gain advantage, your use of the full and proper terms being regarded by him as priggish affectation; and against all such it is the costermonger's creed to set his countenance.

Nevertheless, Fryingpan Alley is a fact; a disgraceful one, probably, but ome that is undeniable. Passing Clerkenwell Sessions House from Coppiee Row, it is the second alley on the left-hand side of the way; and coming at it down Turnraill Street from the Smithfield end, it is on the right, past the coppersmith's and the great distillery, and next to Turk's Head Alley. Except that the stone step at the mouth of the alley is worn quite through to the bricks beneath, and the name-board above has been renewed, its outward appearance is exactly the same as when, nearly twenty years ago, I used to live there: the same diagy, low-arched entry - so low that the scabenger, with his basket on his shoulder, is obliged to alacken at his knees to enable him to pass under it, and so narrow that a shopshutter-s, coffin-lid, almost-would serve as a gate for it.

As a boy, I was not particularly jovial or lighthearted, and the subject of coffins and funerals used to occupy a considerable share of my attention. There were always plenty of funerals going on in our alley, especially in the summer time; indeed, if it were not so, it would be no great wonder that Fryingpan Alley and coffins should be intimately associated in my mind, since it was a funeral of a very woeful sort that roused me from babyhood to boyhood, as it were, and set me seriously reflecting on the world and its ways. However, it will be time enough to give the particulars of that melancholy business when I have fulfilled the promise made at the beginning of this chapter.

The breath of coffins and the narrowness of our alley used to occupy my thoughts a great deal, and there were very few of our neighbours whose height and breadth I had not considered, and settled within my mind how hard or how easy it would be to carry his body out.

Two persons in particular caused be tremendous anxiety on this account - the one being the landlord of the "Dog and Stile," out in Turnmill Street; and the other an elderly lady, who lived near the mouth of the alley. The publican, although he did not reside in the alley, was, nevertheless, there a great deal, chiefly in consequence of the many difficulties that stood in the way of his recovery of the pots and cans he lent to his customers; and if Mr. Piggot sometimes lost his temper while in pursuit of his property, it was really not to be wondered at. It was not at all an uncommon thing for him to discover the bright pewter borrowed of him overnight resting on the hob of a fire-place, half filled with the dregs of the coffee that had been boiled in it at breakfast, and so burnt and blackened as to require a vigorous application of Mr. Piggot's broad, fat thumb, wetted and roughened with cinder-ash, before he could convince himself that the vessel bore his name and sign. He had been known to enter a room (he had a way of never knocking at a door) to take an Irish stew or a dinner of cabbage and bacon off the fire, and, tilting it all into the fender, walk off triumphantly with the gallon can it was cooking in. He used to work himself into the most dreadful passions on these and similar occasions, and to stamp and swear till his eyes rolled and the pimples on