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clattered down the stairs with a yell, many agreeing to
come back for another free tea next week.
The scene had interested me. It was so different from
the ordinary demeanour of tramps-from the abject worm-
like gratitude with which they normally accept charity.
The explanation, of course, was that we outnumbered the
congregation and so were not afraid of them. A man
receiving charity practically always hates his benefactor-it
is a fixed characteristic of human nature; and, when he has
fifty or a hundred others to back him, he will show it.
In the evening, after the free tea, Paddy unexpectedly
earned another eighteenpence at "glimming." It was
exactly enough for another night's lodging, and we put it
aside and went hungry till nine the next evening. Bozo,
who might have given us some food, was away all day.
The pavements were wet, and he had gone to the Elephant
and Castle, where he knew of a pitch under shelter.
Luckily I still had some tobacco, so that the day might
have been worse.
At half-past eight Paddy took me to the Embankment,
where a clergyman was known to distribute meal tickets
once a week. Under Charing Cross Bridge fifty men were
waiting, mirrored in the shivering puddles. Some of them
were truly appalling specimens-they were Embankment
sleepers, and the Embankment dredges up worse types
than the spike. One of them, I
remember, was dressed in an overcoat without buttons,
laced up with rope, a pair of ragged trousers, and boots
exposing his toes-not a rag else. He was bearded like a
fakir, and he had managed to streak his chest and
shoulders with some horrible black filth resembling train
oil. What one could see of his face under the dirt and hair
was bleached white as paper by some malignant disease. I
heard him speak, and he had a goodish accent, as of a
clerk or shopwalker.
Presently the clergyman appeared and the men ranged
themselves in a queue in the order in which they had
arrived. The clergyman was a nice, chubby, youngish
man, and, curiously enough, very like Charlie, my friend
in Paris. He was shy and embarrassed, and did not speak
except for a brief good evening; he simply hurried down
the line of men, thrusting a ticket upon each, and not
waiting to be thanked. The consequence was that, for
once, there was genuine gratitude, and everyone said that
the clergyman was a good feller. Someone (in his hearing,
I believe) called out: "Well,
he'll never be a-----bishop!"-
this, of course, intended as a warm compliment.
The tickets were worth sixpence each, and were
directed to an eating-house not far away. When we got
there we found that the proprietor, knowing that the
tramps could not go elsewhere, was cheating by only
giving four pennyworth of food for each ticket. Paddy and
I pooled our tickets, and received food which we could
have got for sevenpence or eightpence at most coffee-
shops. The clergyman had distributed well over a pound in
tickets, so that the proprietor was evidently swindling the
tramps to the tune of seven shillings or more a week. This
kind of victimisation is a regular part of a tramp's life, and
it will go on as long as people continue to give meal tickets
instead of money.
Paddy and I went back to the lodging-house and, still
hungry, loafed in the kitchen, making the warmth of the
fire a substitute for food. At half-past ten Bozo arrived,
tired out and haggard, for his mangled leg made walking
an agony. He had not earned a penny at screening, all the
pitches under shelter being taken, and for several hours he
had begged outright, with one eye on the policemen. He
had amassed eightpence -a penny short of his kip. It was
long past the hour for paying, and he had only managed to
slip indoors when the deputy was not looking; at any
moment he might be caught and turned out, to sleep on the
Embankment. Bozo took the things out of his pockets and
looked them over, debating what to sell. He decided on his
razor, took it round the kitchen, and in a few minutes he
had sold it for threepence-enough to pay his kip, buy a
basin of tea, and leave a halfpenny over.
Bozo got his basin of tea and sat down by the fire to
dry his clothes. As he drank the tea I saw that he was
laughing to himself, as though at some good joke.
Surprised, I asked him what he had to laugh at.
"It's bloody funny!" he said. "It's funny enough for
Punch
. What do you think I been and done?"
"What?"
"Sold my razor without having a shave first: Of all
the fools!"
He had not eaten since the morning, had walked several
miles with a twisted leg, his clothes were drenched, and he
had a halfpenny between himself and starvation. With all
this, he could laugh over the loss of his razor. One could
not help admiring him.
XXXIV
THE next morning, our money being at an end, Paddy and
I set out for the spike. We went southward by the Old
Kent Road, making for Cromley; we could not go to a
London spike, for Paddy had been in one recently and did
not care to risk going again. It was a sixteen-mile walk
over asphalt, blistering to the heels, and we were acutely
hungry. Paddy browsed the pavement, laying up a store of
cigarette ends against his time in the spike. In the end his
perseverance was rewarded, for he picked up a penny. We
bought a large piece of stale bread, and devoured it as we
walked.
When we got to Cromley, it was too early to go the
spike, and we walked several miles farther, to a plantation
beside a meadow, where one could sit down. It was a
regular caravanserai of tramps-one could tell it by the
worn grass and the sodden newspaper and rusty cans that
they had left behind. Other tramps were arriving by ones
and twos. It was jolly autumn weather. Near by, a deep
bed of tansies was growing; it seems to me that even now
I can smell the sharp reek of those tansies, warring with
the reek of tramps. In the meadow two carthorse colts, raw
sienna colour with white manes and tails, were nibbling at
a gate. We sprawled about on the ground, sweaty and ex-
hausted. Someone managed to find dry sticks and get a
fire going, and we all had milkless tea out of a tin "drum"
which was passed round.
Some of the tramps began telling stories. One of them,
Bill, was an interesting type, a genuine sturdy beggar of
the old breed, strong as Hercules and a frank foe of work.
He boasted that with his great strength he
could get a navvying job any time he liked, but as soon as
he drew his first week's wages he went on a terrific drunk
and was sacked. Between whiles he "mooched," chiefly
from shopkeepers. He talked like this:
"I ain't goin' far in ---Kent. Kent's a tight county,
Kent is. There's too many bin' moochin' about 'ere. The
---bakers get so as they'll throw
their bread away sooner'n give it you. Now Oxford, that's
the place for moochin', Oxford is. When I was in Oxford I
mooched bread, and I mooched bacon, and I mooched
beef, and every night I mooched tanners for my kip off of
the students. The last night I was twopence short of my
kip, so I goes up to a parson and mooches 'im for
threepence. He give me threepence, and the next moment
he turns round and gives me in charge for beggin'. 'You
bin beggin',' the copper says. 'No I ain't,' I says, 'I was
askin' the gentlemen the time,' I says. The copper starts
feelin' inside my coat, and he pulls out a pound of meat
and two loaves of bread. 'Well, what's all this, then?' he
says. 'You better come 'long to the station,' he says. The
beak give me seven days. I don't mooch from no more
---parsons. But Christ! what do I
care for a lay-up of seven days?" etc. etc.
It seemed that his whole life was this-a round of
mooching, drunks and lay-ups. He laughed as he talked of
it, taking it all for a tremendous joke. He looked as though
he made a poor thing out of begging, for he wore only a
corduroy suit, scarf and capno socks or linen. Still, he was
fat and jolly, and he even smelt of beer, a most unusual
smell in a tramp nowadays.
Two of the tramps had been in Cromley spike recently,
and they told a ghost story connected with it. Years
earlier, they said, there had been a suicide there.
A tramp had managed to smuggle a razor into his cell, and
there cut his throat. In the morning, when the Tramp
Major came round, the body was jammed against the door,
and to open it they had to break the dead man's arm. In
revenge for this, the dead man haunted his cell, and
anyone who slept there was certain to die within the year;
there were copious instances, of course. If a cell door
stuck when you tried to open it, you should avoid that cell
like the plague, for it was the haunted one.
Two tramps, ex-sailors, told another grisly story. A
man (they swore they had known him) had planned to
stow away on a boat bound for Chile. It was laden with
manufactured goods packed in big wooden crates, and
with the help of a docker the stowaway had managed to
hide himself in one of these. But the docker had made a
mistake about the order in which the crates were to be
loaded. The crane gripped the stowaway, swung him aloft,
and deposited him-at the very bottom of the hold, beneath
hundreds of crates. No one discovered what had happened
until the end of the voyage, when they found the
stowaway rotting, dead of suffocation.
Another tramp told the story of Gilderoy, the Scottish
robber. Gilderoy was the man who was condemned to be
hanged, escaped, captured the judge who had sentenced
him, and (splendid fellow!) hanged him. The tramps liked
the story, of course, but the interesting thing was to see
that they had got it all wrong. Their version was that
Gilderoy escaped to America, whereas in reality he was
recaptured and put to death. The story had been amended,
no doubt deliberately; just as children amend the stories of
Samson and Robin Hood, giving them happy endings
which are quite imaginary.
This set the tramps talking about history, and a very
old man declared that the "one bite law" was a survival
from days when the nobles hunted men instead of deer.
Some of the others laughed at him, but he had the idea
firm in his head. He had heard, too, of the Corn Laws,
and the
jus primae noctis (he believed it had really
existed); also of the Great Rebellion, which he thought
was a rebellion of poor against rich-perhaps he had got it
mixed up with the peasant rebellions. I doubt whether
the old man could read, and certainly he was not
repeating newspaper articles. His scraps of history had
been passed from generation to generation of tramps,
perhaps for centuries in some cases. It was oral tradition
lingering on, like a faint echo from the Middle Ages.
Paddy and I went to the spike at six in the evening,
getting out at ten in the morning. It was much like
Romton and Edbury, and we saw nothing of the ghost.
Among the casuals were two young men named William
and Fred, ex-fishermen from Norfolk, a lively pair and
fond of singing. They had a song called "Unhappy Bella"
that is worth writing down. I heard them sing it half a
dozen times during the next two days, and I managed to
get it by heart, except a line or two which I have guessed.
It ran:
Bella was young and Bella was fair With
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