Transcribed from the 1905 Chapman and Hall “Hard Timesand Reprinted Pieces” edition , email
It happened in this wise—
But, sitting with my pen in my hand looking at those wordsagain, without descrying any hint in them of the words thatshould follow, it comes into my mind that they have an abruptappearance. They may serve, however, if I let them remain,to suggest how very difficult I find it to begin to explain myexplanation. An uncouth phrase: and yet I do not see my wayto a better.
It happened in thiswise—
But, looking at those words, and comparing them with my formeropening, I find they are the self-same words repeated. Thisis the more surprising to me, because I employ them in quite anew connection. For indeed I declare that my intention wasto discard the commencement I first had in my thoughts, and togive the preference to another of an entirely different nature,dating my explanation from an anterior period of my life. Iwill make a third trial, without erasing this second failure,protesting that it is not my design to conceal any of myinfirmities, whether they be of head or heart.
Not as yet directly aiming at howit came to pass, I will come upon it by degrees. Thenatural manner, after all, for God knows that is how it came uponme.
My parents were in a miserable condition of life, and myinfant home was a cellar in Preston. I recollect the soundof father’s Lancashire clogs on the street pavement above,as being different in my young hearing from the sound of allother clogs; and I recollect, that, when mother came down thecellar-steps, I used tremblingly to speculate on her feet havinga good or an ill-tempered look,—on her knees,—on herwaist,—until finally her face came into view, and settledthe question. From this it will be seen that I was timid,and that the cellar-steps were steep, and that the doorway wasvery low.
Mother had the gripe and clutch of poverty upon her face, uponher figure, and not least of all upon her voice. Her sharpand high-pitched words were squeezed out of her, as by thecompression of bony fingers on a leathern bag; and she had a wayof rolling her eyes about and about the cellar, as she scolded,that was gaunt and hungry. Father, with his shouldersrounded, would sit quiet on a three-legged stool, looking at theempty grate, until she would pluck the stool from under him, andbid him go bring some money home. Then he would dismallyascend the steps; and I, holding my ragged shirt and trouserstogether with a hand (my only braces), would feint and dodge frommother’s pursuing grasp at my hair.
A worldly little devil was mother’s usual name forme. Whether I cried for that I was in the dark, or for thatit was cold, or for that I was hungry, or whether I squeezedmyself into a warm corner when there was a fire, or atevoraciously 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 towanting to be fed, worldly as to the greed with which I inwardlycompared how much I got of those good things with how much fatherand mother got, when, rarely, those good things were going.
Sometimes they both went away seeking work; and then I wouldbe locked up in the cellar for a day or two at a time. Iwas at my worldliest then. Left alone, I yielded myself upto a worldly yearning for enough of anything (except misery), andfor the death of mother’s father, who was a machine-makerat Birmingham, and on whose decease, I had heard mother say, shewould come into a whole