by Edward Youl.
Originally published in Howitt's Journal (William Lovett) vol.1 #7 (13 Feb 1847).
In the year——well the year doesn't matter—in the depth of the winter season, a very hard frost set in, which lasted a very long time. Not such a frost as is common to ordinary winters. Nothing like it. But much more severe than England has known for the last quarter of a century. The earth bit men's toes as they trod upon it; and some of those unfortunates who, perforce, went shoeless, never, it was said, found their feet again, but had them withered up, long before the great thaw came.
Oh, it was a hard time for the poor, that: if indeed any time can be said to be easy with those, upon whose shoulders the yoke of poverty is doomed to sit. If it only galled the flesh! but it galls the soul. Of course,—for amid our selfishness, we have much real feeling for the ills of others--there were all sorts of Charities set afoot, Blanket and Flannel Charities—Soup Charities—Bread Charities—Coal Charities! But no one thought of shoes. If they had, feet would not have withered off, and as Bob Racket would have been shod by the Shoe Charity, I should have had no tale to tell.
Bob had no shoes, and his mother (his father was dead) could not afford to buy him any. After paying her rent she had just three and sixpence a week left to furnish seven mouths with food. Sixpence a mouth, less than a penny a day, and provisions were dear, as they ever are, when it is the interest of the poor to have them cheap. Therefore, as there were no Shoe Charities, Bob was like to go barefooted.
Poor Bob! The soles of his feet, from long practice in walking upon them unshod, had got hard, almost horny indeed, in substance, but the frost found them out and pinched them, as if it paid him off a grudge long owing, and did it with a spite, as dunned exquisites, of intemperate disposition, discharge their debts. The worst of it was that a quotidian threepence was of Bob's earning, and there was consequently no staying at home. Forth he must go and tread the inclement ground, when the morning clock struck eight; and if he would find his feet after half an hour's exposure to the frost he must look for them, for feel them he could not. Well-booted gentlemen glancing at his shoeless extremities, were shocked. Eyesores to gentility are naked feet. Oh, if there had but been Shoe Charities!
The mortification was that urchins more diminutive than himself noted the unshod extremities, and jeered him. There were boys and men begging who had shoes. The very horses, as Bob thought, had them; and in cordwainers' shops there were hundreds and hundreds of pairs unappropriated, asking to be worn, longing to escape from the shelves, and see the world outside, with iron tips that fretted themselves to rust because the roads were slippery with ice, and they were never taken out to slide. Hundreds and hundreds, aye, thousands and thousands of pairs, and Bob's feet smarted, and Bob's feelings winced for lack of one pair. Oh, if there had but been Shoe Charities!
Bob stopped before a shoe shop in Holborn one day, and went the length of handling a pair that dangled with many others at the door. It was a presumption that they were submitted for public touch and general inspection, and Bob thought that he underwent no risk. But a boy seeing his fingers close upon them, rushed out,
"Oh you would, would you?" cried the boy.
"Would what?" asked Bob Racket.
"Steal them shoes?"
"No," said Bob, quietly, and he went on handling them. Stout, serviceable shoes they were to look at.
"Now Tom," cried a voice inside, "what are you dawdling at the door for! There's the three pair of Wellingtons to go to Great Ormond Street."
"Eye upon the fives, father," replied the boy. The fives meaning Bob's fingers.
"I'll attend to them," said the parent. " You make a conveyance of the Wellingtons."
"Eye upon the fives," shouted Tom again. "I'm stiff if he ain't got 'em off the nail."
Bob had indeed ventured so far—to inspect them mere closely.
"What is this here, that's a interfering with them Wellingtons a going to Great Ormond Street?" cried the cordwainer, approaching the door. "Them shoes," addressing Bob, "are five and sixpence."
"Please, Sir," said Bob Racket, looking imploringly in the man's face, "would you take it by the week, sixpence a week?" and he pointed to his red and raw feet. "Cold weather, Sir."
"Yes, I take weekly payments," said the man. "Pay the first sixpence now, and I'll stow them safely away for you."
"But please, ain't I to have them at once?" stammered Bob.
"We don't do business on that principle. It wouldn't stand, eh, father?" cried Tom interposing. "Times is hard."
"Not exactly, Tom," answered the shoemaker, laughing. "Come, take those Wellingtons—and you (to Bob) pay sixpence on the nail; bring another sixpence every week, and in ten weeks the shoes are yours."
"In ten weeks the Spring will be here," sighed Bob, and walked away.
When days went by, and weeks, and January was nearly out, and no signs of the breaking up of the weather had been hinted to the sagacious in such matters, Bob Racket limped, nay, went very lame. Chilblains had scarred his poor feet until their shape was nearly lost. He suffered excruciating pain, and got no sleep o'nights. And though thousands upon thousands of unappropriated pairs of shoes burdened the cordwainers' shelves, filled their windows, hung temptingly at their doors; though skins stripped reeking from the fat sides of animals were transferred from abattoirs to tanpits, and thence to the curriers', and thence to shoemakers' workshops, where awls pierced and hammers rang on lasts and lapstones from morning to night, yet Bob Racket got no shoes.
Still the frost became more severe than ever.
For his quotidian threepence Bob did errands for a lawyer. Dark, dingy rooms that lawyer had, full of musty law books and cobwebs; windows that were never cleaned looked out upon dead blank walls; severer than in the streets, where the atmosphere came biting from the sky, was the frost in those chambers, where the warm soul of humanity was turned to chilling ice.
Bob's master was of a taciturn disposition, and seldom addressed his clerks except to give instructions. If Bob had been an automaton, a piece of machinery, doing errands by virtue of some ingenious mechanism warranted never to get out of order, and entailing no other expense than three-penn'orth of oil per diem for the lubrication of its springs and wheels, and no more trouble than the application of it, he could not have been more a cypher in the estimation of both clerks and master. Bob cleaned and dusted the desks and shelves (he could not reach the cobwebs, which clouded the angles of the ceiling like sable drapery) he fetched and carried, he was active and servile—like the poor drudge he was, in numerous capacities. Every one in the office found him the handiest fellow living,—yet human, warm breathing, endowed with life from God, and made akin to high angelic beings, he was of less account than a bird or beast brought from a foreign land would have been. A sheet of parchment covered with the hieroglyphs of a dead man's will, bequeathing an hundred acres, would have out-valued ten thousand of such items in the social scale, though every pair of naked feet had been ascending to Heaven, by the ladder which Jacob witnessed in his dream.
The lawyer was not a proud man, but he had a becoming pride, that gloss by which the old serpent, when he would disguise himself as an angel of light, retains his slough. The pride of the well-gloved exquisite who scowls at the weather-chapped hands of humanity in rags, is a becoming pride, if he may be catechumen to his own conceit. The lawyer's humility had endured Bob's naked feet through half the frosty season, when suddenly his becoming pride suggested that a naked-footed urchin was not a fitting Mercury.
"Robert Racket," said the lawyer, one morning, coming into the office fresh from his private dwelling, with extremities that the frost had sharply bitten through well-seasoned Wellingtons; "Robert Racket, where are your boots?"
"Boots, Sir?" echoed Bob, trembling. As if he, who had no shoes, could be guilty of boots.
"Boots or shoes?" thundered the lawyer. "Shoes, if you will."
"Or slippers?" suggested a clerk, mildly.
"Shoes, Sir? I ain't a got any," answered Bob, shaking at the confession of so great a turpitude.
"No?" said the lawyer, retreating a step backwards, "Not got any? Sparrow (to a clerk), this boy has a mother, a woman, Sparrow, who is bound by the laws of nature to have a heart, and she lets this boy go about in this Russian weather without shoes."
The clerk addressed as Sparrow looked at the offending feet, and the other clerks looked at them, and the lawyer looked at them, and Bob himself looked at them. Poor feet they were, blotched with chilblains, red with the incessant torture of the cold. Very poor, very offending, absolutely wicked feet.
"You may go, Sir," said the lawyer. "You may go. Pay him his threepence, Sparrow. He hasn't earned it, to be sure; but we will not stop it. He wishes to earn it, no doubt, and we will take the will for the deed. When you have got shoes, Racket, you may come again. Good bye."
And the quotidian threepence was cut off. And still the heavens sent forth a fiercer frost.
Fiercer and fiercer. God be with the poor. Longer days, shorter nights. February month. The Sun, speeding towards the Spring solstice. And still frost, frost, frost, biting at the very core of life in thinly clad humanity. Heaven, in its mercy, send few such Februaries in a century.
Blessings be upon thy head, kind lady. Seraph peace everlastingly dwell in thy breast, for looking out of thy window on that bitter February morning, and giving shoes to that poor child, not half the age of Bob Racket, which drew thy attention to its unshod feet, and heels so deeply kibed.
And the benediction of saints make thy white locks shine sunbright in the Eternities, thou aged minister of the Word, who, meeting the poor barefooted girl in the street, went with her to a shoe-shop, and saw her feet encased in warm, serviceable boots, paying for them out of thy own purse.
But Bob Racket got no shoes.
"Come, mother, tell us that story again, about uncle "Taddy," said Bob, one evening to his mother. The frost was not broken up, but was more severe than ever. "That story about uncle Jim, brave uncle Jim."
"Story, Bob, it ain't a story," replied his mother. "it's true."
"Yes, I know it is—all's one—it's as good as a story, I'm sure."
"Bless the boy, you've heard it so often."
"Do tell it, mother," said Bob's sister Kitty.
"Do mother," said little Charley.
"Please, mother," urged lesser Tommy.
"Oh, do, mother," said Mary, least of all, except Harry and the Baby, who were too little to express any wish upon the subject.
"This is it, then," said the good woman, pleased herself to please her children. "It was where the great whales are."
*But are there great whales?" asked Kitty.
"Ain't there just?" cried Bob. "You don't know, how should you?"
"It was where the great whales are; and your uncle was—"
But we must relate the story, a poor sort of story, in our own way.—The uncle was brother to Bob's mother, and went to sea in his sixteenth year. Allured by a narrative of a whaling expedition, be subsequently joined a crew destined for that fishery off the coast of Greenland. Jim Taddy, brave Jim. Whose heart warmed not as he read in the newspapers of the dive Jim had down into the deep, half frozen sea, where iceberg jostled with iceberg, and the polar air burnt so frore that the sailors became mutinous? Fathoms deep—Bob's mother exaggerated a little in her enthusiasm—among the ice he went, plunging and bubbling down, to bring up a gentleman who had joined the expedition from the love of adventure, and had fallen overboard while contemplating the lustrous hues which the setting sun reflected from the sky palaces of those extreme latitudes upon the thousand peaks and pinnacles of ice. Brave Jim Taddy, brave uncle Jim!
A very poor story. But Bob forgot his frozen feet, as he imagined the gurgling waters closing around his uncle, cleaving the sea where the great whales are.
"Uncle Jim's rich, ain't he, mother?" asked Bob.
*If he's alive, dear; the gentleman made him rich."
"I wonder, if he knew that I had no shoes, whether he would give me any?"
Bob's mother said she didn't know, for money didn't soften hearts; and people who had it were loth to part with it. But, she added, the heart of James Taddy must be greatly changed—greatly changed, indeed, if he wasn't the kindest mortal breathing. Brother of her's he was, and she had a right to speak what was in her mind.
"I'm bound," she concluded, "he would give you a pair of shoes, Bob, and many of 'em."
Though why it was, he had never found her out—had never written to her, she couldn't tell. He didn't know her name, she was aware of that, nor where she lived, and had never seen her since she was married. Perhaps supposed her dead; but he could use his pen like a schoolmaster, and he might have written. Kitty suggested that there might be a letter lying at the post-office; but the good mother shook her head, and said the postman would have delivered it, "for he knows where I live," she remarked, " if uncle Jim don't."
Bob couldn't keep away from the office, though he was no longer connected with it. A new boy had taken his place, and dusted, and swept, and went on menial errands, Well shod was the new boy in bran new Bluchers. Very lank he was; Bob wondered whether he was tall enough to reach the cobwebs.
One day—the frost wasn't broken up; the Thames, above bridge, presented one field of ice—as Bob was lingering about the office-door, Sparrow, the clerk, emerged from the lugubrious threshold. Intent upon procuring a chop was Sparrow, and a pint bottle of Guinness's stout. Sparrow rejoiced in Guinness. But, encountering Bob, who was standing with the old shoeless, offending feet, upon the curbstone of the pavement, he became oblivious of chop and porter, and, pouncing upon the discarded Mercury, bore him bodily into the lawyer's presence.
"Here he is, Sir," said Sparrow, out of breath. "Here is young Racket."
Young Racket was within a small trifle of swooning; for he remembered a stray pen, worn to the stump, which, instead of sweeping into the dust hole, he had, upon one occasion, picked up and carried home, with fell intent of teaching himself to write therewith.
"Oh, here he is," said the lawyer. "'Pon my word, Sparrow, I'm greatly obliged to you. How do you do, Racket? I'm glad to see you. Have you procured any shoes yet? I see you have not. Sparrow, do me a further service. Here are three half-crowns. Take him to the nearest shoe-shop, and fit him."
"Certainly, Sir.—With Bluchers, Sir?' said Sparrow.
"Yes; with Bluchers—warm and comforting to the ankles, Sparrow. See that the leather is seasoned and mollient. Will you have the goodness?"
"And bring him back, Sir?" asked the clerk.
"Of course. Are you hungry, Racket? Yes—ah, I thought so, Take him to an eating-house, Sparrow,—here is a fourth half-crown. Make him as plump as you can. I should suggest roast beef--but let him have what he fancies He may finish with plum-pudding.
And the bewildered Bob—his mystification momently increasing—was hurried away to be shod with Bluchers, and to eat what he fancied—terminating with plum-pudding.
"I daresay now you are preciously astonished, ain't you, youngster?" asked Mr. Sparrow, when the Bluchers had been secured to Bob's feet (as if they were never to come off again), and the second plate of roast beef was in rapid course of evanishment.
"Yes, please, Sir. It is--"
"It is, what?"
"Funny, Sir; ain't it?"
"Funny, by Jove! I should think it funny to have an uncle come home from sea, and get a lawyer to find me out, and give me ten thousand pounds," said Mr. Sparrow, winking with great pleasantry. "I should just think it was funny. How do the Bluchers feel, Racket?"
"Comfortable, Sir—uncommon—please, Sir, they pinches a little," replied Bob. "I have a uncle, Sir, as is gone to sea."
"Didn't I say so?—and come home again, with instructions to our governor to—bless my soul! here he is—How do you do, Mr. Taddy? Your nephew, Sir;—Racket, my boy, your uncle."
None other. Brave Jim Taddy, who came into the eating-house, as any stranger might.
When they got home (and Mr. Sparrow, after first returning to apprise the lawyer, went home with them, to introduce, as he said, the brother to the sister), and when the first greetings were over, Brave Jim told how, though he had often intended it, he never could get to England before, but was busied in making money, that his sister,—or, if she were married, as was most likely, her children, as well as herself, should inherit little fortunes.—How, on arriving in London, he had sought out a lawyer to set inquiry on foot, and, after weeks had passed, the lawyer, having gained the necessary clue, had told him only on that morning, that he believed, before the dusk, sister, and nieces, and nephews, would all be found. To see the tears and embraces,—Mr. Sparrow was not an effeminate man, but he fairly owned that he couldn't stand it, and bade them, if they would not burst his heart, to desist.
"It is very kind of you—very kind, indeed, Jim," said Bob's mother, "to come home from catching those great whales, and give me and my dear fatherless children so much money--"
"Ten thousand pounds," interrupted Mr. Sparrow.
"But why—why didn't you write me a letter—only one—to tell me all about you, this long while?"
"My dear sister," replied brave Jim, "how could I? I didn't know your name, if you were married, or where you were to be found,—How could I write then?"
"Oh, you might have written," persisted the good woman; "If you didn't know what my name was, and where I lived, the postman did, and he would have brought the letter."
Mr. Sparrow laughed, and brave Jim laughed, and Bob's mother, not knowing the reason of their mirth, laughed also.
Our story ends here.
Shoes—shoes for Bob Racket, and for Bob's brothers and sisters, all their lives.
Still, why are there not Shoe Charities?