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[-256-]
CHAPTER XXIV.
BOYS.
"I ONLY know two sorts of boys - mealy boys and beef-faced boys!"
said Mr. Grimwig when Mr. Brownlow was vaunting the excellence of young Oliver
Twist. But then it must be recollected that Mr. Grimwig was an old bachelor, and
hated children. Two sorts of boys! I know twenty-two hundred sorts! First of all
there is your "regular boy," who goes to a public school and is now at
home for the holidays. He is about twelve years old, stout and firmly-built,
ruddy-faced and curly-haired ; he wears trousers of what is known as
"Oxford mixture," a species of stuff apparently specially manufactured
for the use of boys, as it is never shown to you by your tailor when you attain
to manhood. These trousers are short in the legs and white at the knees they are
smeared in the region of the pockets with reminiscences of bygone toffee; they
bulge out with concealed peg-tops, tennis-balls, and half-munched apples, and on
the hips the pocket-flaps make two large "dog's-ears." The waistcoat
was originally black, but is now of a grayish hue, from the immense quantity of
powdered slate-pencil that has been spilt over it, and a stick of this valuable
commodity is always protruding from the pocket, either through the legitimate
opening, or through a hole made by its own sharp point. Across the waistcoat,
too, runs a straight white line, [-257-] the result
of perpetual rubbings against the desk while undergoing the necessary initiation
into the mystery of pot-hooks and hangers. The contents of the waistcoat-pockets
are most probably half a peg-top, known in scholastic language as
"bacon," the aforenamed slate-pencil, a favourite "alley"
and a couple of "taws," a penny, half a stick of particoloured
nastiness known as "Boney's ribs," and popularly supposed to be a
portion of the anatomy of the late prisoner of St. Helena, and a small piece of
wood sharpened at both ends and called a "cat." The first idea
suggested by the jacket is that of universal shininess - the collar, the cuffs,
the front-flaps by the buttons, are greased and polishled to a pitch of
intensity ; under the left arm is a large excrescence caused by the handkerchief
of the owner, a small brass cannon, a long piece of whipcord with a button at
the end, and a Jew's-harp; all which are stuffed into the jacket, together with
the boy's greatest treasure, a fat buck-handled knife, which, besides the large
and small blades, contains a corkscrew, a saw, and an instrument for picking
obtrusive stones out of horses' feet - all most useful articles to a young
gentleman pursuing his education at a classical school. The socks of the regular
boy, at least as much as can be seen of them between the trouser and the boot,
are generally dirty the boot is of the Blucher pattern, laceless, but with the
flaps cleverly connected by means of a portion of the peg-top's whipcord. I am
sorry to say that your regular boy is not good at hands - these members being
generally black and grimy, with dubby, bitten nails, and tasteful decorations of
cuts and warts; neither are his ears or neck worthy of close observation. His
language is peculiarly his own - he never has heard it until he goes to school,
he never hears it (but from his own children perhaps) after he is grown up. Do
you recollect, reader, any of that wonderful tongue, and the impressions and
ideas connected with it? Do you recollect the different sorts of marbles
[-258-] called "alleys, taws, and clayeys;" the mysteries of
that pastime with the wonderful name "High-cock-a-lorum, jig, jig,
jig;" the stinging cuts of the tennis-ball inflicted at
"egg-hat;" the extraordinary game of "duck," which hadn't
the slightest connection with any feathered fowl, but was played with large
flint-stones ; the peculiarities of "tit, tat, to;" the desperate
struggles to obtain a straight line of "oughts and crosses"? Do you
recollect what you used to eat in those days? Toffee, hardbake, all-sorts, small
rum and gin bottles, sugar pipes and cigars, sugar mutton-chops and various
other joints elegantly painted and gilt, Bath buns by the dozen, acidulated
drops by the ounce, cocoa-nuts, medlars, unripe fruit of all kinds, and a
delicious preparation of frizzled quill-pen which was known as "roast beef
!" As these recollections rise up before me, I no longer wonder at the
fortunes achieved by Professor Holloway, Dr. De Jongh, and the venerable Jacob
Townsend. Bad, however, as they may be, they do no harm to the regular boy, who
has the digestion of an ostrich and the constitution of a horse, and whose
severest ailments are cured by a little salts and senna. The regular boy loves
all outdoor sports, dotes on the pantomime, and looks forward to the day when he
shall attain maturity in order that he may be a clown. He loves his father and
mother, and especially his sisters ; his brothers he both likes and licks;
grand'pa is "a jolly old brick," and grand'ma an "old
trump;" but he doesn't get on well with his maiden aunts, and their
portraits,, adorned with impossible noses, wild heads of hair, and fierce
moustaches, are to be found on the backs of slates and on the palings of the
neighbourhood generally. Of his schoolmaster he always retains a disagreeable
impression, and the schoolmaster does his best to keep it up, never believing
that any of his pupils are anything but boys, even though they have great
strapping children of their own standing by their side. His mechanical genius is
[-259-] seldom very great - his powers of
destructiveness being generally in the ascendant, and with the afore-named knife
he inscribes his name in letters varying from an inch to a foot on all
practicable places. He is not a great reader - the Arabian Nights, Robinson
Crusoe, and Peter Parley, constituting his library. His weakness is
smoking. From the first time that he has enjoyed a penny Pickwick and a dreadful
bilious attack simultaneously, he considers himself a man, and he runs the risk
of imposition, cane, and birch, to spend half an hour on a windy afternoon
behind a dreary old haystack, inhaling a nasty preparation of treacle and
cabbage-leaves. Finally, the regular boy is universally knowing, but ever
thirsting for information of a peculiar kind, generous, brave, predatory, averse
to classic learning, idle, strong, and healthy. In these last particulars, and
indeed in all others, he differs essentially from the boy who is brought up at
home, or at a private tutor's, and who, in fact, is never a "boy," but
always a "young gentleman." He is always ailing; in the winter he
wears clogs and a comforter - sometimes, indeed, a boa, to the intense delight
of the ruder youths, who assault him in the streets, and call after him by the
opprobrious epithet of "Miss." He is a puny, wizen-faced, melancholy
youth, but intensely gentlemanly withal. He wears gloves and Wellington boots,
and mittens in winter, and takes lozenges, not as other boys do, as sweetmeats
and condiments, but to do good to his chest. He never plays at any rough games ;
he never soils his fingers or his linen ; he never shouts, or screams, or
fights. He gets cuffed, and kicked, and chaffed by all public school-boys, and
retaliates not. He is good at draughts, understands the mysteries of backgammon,
and when you are dining with his family, delights them by the clever way in
which he puzzles you by astute arithmetical questions culled from the Key to
Walkinghame's Tutor's Asssitant. He is the boy who, in younger days, repeats
" My name is [-260-] Norval," standing on
a chair; and who, when he arrives at man's estate, is pronounced to be an
"agreeable rattle," and so clever in acting charades and private
theatricals. He is partial to Evenings at Home, but abjures Robinson
Crusoe as "a book that could not possibly be founded on fact." He
is the admiration of his sisters, who think him so gentlemanly and amusing, who
superintend the curling of his hair, and who work him fragile braces and useless
slippers. He is generally the son of a rich man, and accordingly is made much of
by his private tutor, who excuses his late arrival at the scholastic parlour,
who asks tenderly after his father's health, and kotous to him as only
struggling tutors can. In after life he is to society what Martin Tupper and
Coventry Patmore are to literature - he is a chip in the porridge of the world,
harmless, inoffensive, self-satisfied, and utterly useless.
The Street Boy-the Ishmael of modern times, his hand being
against every man, and every man's hand being against, and whenever there is an
opportunity upon, him. He is a bully and a tyrant, and the terror of London
generally ; the terror of old ladies, whom he hates with an instinctive hatred,
to whose pursuit he calls forth tribes of his own class, to whom he discloses
the advent of the apocryphal "mad bull," whose legs he pinches,
uttering at the same time the simulated yelpings of the maddened dog. He is
hated by foreign gentlemen of fantastic appearance, ridiculing them in the
public streets, calling attention to the length of their beard or the curious
cut of their hats and garments, and addressing them with the mystic words "Shallabala"
and "Mossoo," which he believes to be the staple idiom of their
language. He is hated by omnibus conductors, whose attention he calls by loud
cries of "Hi!" and to whom, on their looking round, he addresses the
friendly "sight;" by gaping, mooning old gentlemen, to whom he points
out imaginary balloons ; by watchmakers [-261-] and
corkcutters, who practise their occupation in the windows of their shops, and
who are driven mad by the rapid pantomime with which he imitates their
movements, and by his repeated endeavours to startle them so that their fingers
may stiffer from their inattention. He is hated by poulterers, before whose
shops he appears unceasingly, handling hares and rabbits, and crying "Mie-aw"
and "Poor puss;" by policemen for his unremitting inquiries after the
health of their inspectors, and his ardent pursuit of knowledge in the matter of
the theft of the rabbit-pie by the lame and the blind, and by all mendicants but
he is respected by the proprietors of Punch, by ballad-singers, and by the
itinerant vendors of articles, to all of whom he is an early and a constant
audience; and without his lending himself to be operated upon, how could the man
who removes the stains from our clothes hope to prosper?
Music may be said to have charms to soothe the savage
street-boy, or rather to render him tolerably quiet for the space of a few
minutes, and he will listen with complaisance even to the most cholera-producing
organ. The Ethiopians are his great delight; he likes their shirts and collars,
and the patterns of their trousers, and he more especially delights in the
leader of the band, with the tow wig and the leaden spectacles. He himself is
generally musical, and accompanies his songs with obligatos on two bits of slate
or a Jew's-harp, or, worse than all, an old Lowther Arcade accordion. Where he
picks up the tunes that he sings is a wonder - he knows them and whistles them
long before they are upon the organs and it is from his répertoire that
the burlesque writer selects those airs which he knows will be most popular and
most appreciated parodics. His Terpsichorean exercises are generally confined to
the wondrous double-shuffle, and to scraps of wild and weird-like dances
performed round the objects of his attack. He is generally engaged in some
profession - perhaps in the green-[-262-]grocery
line, when he encases his head in the empty basket as he returns from his
errands, wearing the handle as a chinstrap, and decking his person with an old
sack; or he may be a butcher, in which case he furtively adorns his hair with
suet, and wears long and pointed curls, known among the female servants in his
neighbourhood as " Bill's aggerawaters." Or he may be a printer,
black-faced and papercapped, sitting at dead of night in the outer chamber of
the grinding newspaper-writer, and never thoroughly awake. He may be a
fishmonger, with a garment of flannel which is contrived to pay a double debt,
serving him at once for apron and pocket-handkerchief; or a poulterer, or a
grocer; but whatever his occupation, he holds firm to one grand purpose, and
never allows his pleasure to be at all interfered with by his business. Walking
leisurely along with his oilskin-covered basket, filled with medicines, on the
immediate receipt of which depends perhaps life and death, he will stop and
enjoy the humours of Punch, or run half a mile in the opposite direction after a
fire-engine, or be beguiled by a cry of "Stop thief!" Of course, on
his return home, he will tell a lie to screen himself, and he summarily kicked
and cuffed indeed, looking at the wonderful life led by the street-boy-his
exposure to cold, hunger, and misery; his want of education and lack of kind
treatment - we must not wonder at his growing into the lounging,
ill-conditioned, ignorant, hardened cub, which, in nine out of ten cases, he
becomes.