I was the envy of every boy in the Alley. There was one youth in particular, named Pape, whose father used to go about with a tinker’s barrow, mending pots and grinding scissors. He it was that recommended the purchase of the carrots, and altogether, at this period, he displayed a great amount of affection for me. He was older than I was, but hardly a bit bigger; and I well remember a conversation he and I had concerning mothers, dead and alive. He had not got a good mother. According to his account, (and I believe I was completely in his confidence at the time,) she was a woman who could consume a large quantity of spirituous liquor without being overcome by it. According to Jerry Pape, Mrs. Pape was malicious to that degree, that she would lay traps for Jerry and his brothers to fall into mischief, and then keep them without their dinner by way of punishment—spending the money that ought to have provided the mid-day meal in gin at the “Dog and Stile.”
“I wish there was no mothers,” said Jerry; “what’s the good on ’em? They on’y whack yer, and get yer into rows when your father comes home. Anybody as is hard up for a mother can have mine, and jolly welcome. I wish she would die.”
“P’r’aps she will soon, Jerry,” I replied, by way of comforting the poor fellow.
“She’d better,” said Jerry, with threatening brows.
“Why had she better, Jerry?”
“Never mind why. You’ll know why, one of these days, and so will all the jolly lot on yer as lives in Fryingpan Alley. You know Guy Fox, don’t yer? Him as comes about on the fift of Nowember?”
“Yes, yes, Jerry, I know.”
“Werry well, then. Don’t you ask any more questions, ’cos it’s a secret.”
“Do tell us, Jerry! Do tell us, and you shall have another bite; up to here, see!”—and I partitioned off a big bit of the apple with my fingers and thumb for Jerry to bite.
“No, not up to there, nor not if you gives me the lot,” replied Jerry, eyeing the little apple contemptuously; “why, it’s ever such a secret. It ’ud make you funk so, that you’d be afeared to shut your eyes when you went to bed. I might let you into it, if you stood a baked tatur; and that ’ud be like chucking it away.”
Five minutes after, Jerry and I were seated on the threshold of a dark warehouse doorway, (it was evening,) in Red Lion Street; and while he discussed the baked potato, he revealed to me the particulars of his terrible secret
“I’m a savin’ up,” whispered he. “I’ve got as high- as fippence. Leastways, when I ses fip-pence, it’s fivepen’orth; so it’s all the same.”
“Fivepen’orth of what, Jerry?”
“Fireworks,” replied Jerry, in the lowest of whispers, and with his lips close to my wondering ear. “I’ve got a Roman candle, nine crackers, and a squib. Sky-rockets would be the things; but they’re so jolly dear.”
“Where are they, Jerry? Whereabouts is the Roman candle and the crackers? What are you going to do with ’em, Jerry?”
“They ’re stuffed in the bed—in our old woman’s bed,” replied Jerry, cramming the last piece of hot potato into his mouth, his face assuming a most fiendish expression. “I’m a savin’ up till I buys enough fireworks to fill the jolly old tick quite full. Then I’m goin’ to buy some gunpowder. Then I’m a-goin’ to get up early one morning with my gunpowder, and lay a train under the bedstead, and down the stairs, and out into the street Then I’m a-goin’ on the tramp, dropping my gunpowder, mind yer, all the way as I goes; and when I gets about up to Peckham, I’m a-goin’ to set light to my train; and up ’ll go the old woman over the houses, blowed into little bits.”
Whether Jerry Pape seriously contemplated this diabolical murder, or was merely imposing on me, I cannot, of course, be certain. Most probably the latter. I firmly believed in him at the time, however; and for several nights afterwards lay abed trembling, in the dark, in momentary expectation of a tremendous explosion, and one of the largest “bits” of Mrs. Pape falling down our chimney.
To return, however, to my history.
My mother dying on the Friday, her funeral was fixed to take place on the ensuing Tuesday, that being a slack day at the markets, and therefore suitable to my father’s convenience.
From the time of my mother’s death until the day of her burial, I was so little at home as to be altogether unaware of the preparations that were going on towards that melancholy event. I did not even sleep at home, Mrs. Winkship having considerately placed at my disposal, at her house, the comfortable little crib which her niece Martha had slept in when she was a child. I should even, have missed the sight of mother’s coffin being carried in at Number Nineteen, had not the lady who lived opposite, and with whom I was taking tea, luckily caught sight of it, and, hurriedly catching me up in her arms, stood me on a table before the window that I might look. “See, Jimmy! see!” said she; “unkivered, with black nails; quite a pictur of a coffin I call that, now!”
There was not much fuss about the Fryingpan Alley funerals. The people were buried in a business-like manner, at a business price, and there was no sentimental nonsense about the matter. I think I have said that I knew nothing of the preparation; but this is not quite correct. It happened that I was in Jenkins’s room when the person living in the parlours called up the stairs that here was Mr. Crowl’s man “come to take the measure and presently, hearing a strange step, I peeped out at the door to see what Mr. Crowl’s man was like. I found him to be a dirty-faced man, with hairy arms, and his shirt sleeves tucked above the elbows; and he had a brown paper cap on. He smoked a dirty pipe as high up the stairs as Jenkins’s door; but when Mrs. Jenkins gave him the key of our door, he stuck the end of it into the pipe-bowl, and extinguished the fire, and put the pipe in his waistcoat pocket. He carried a pair of trestles on his shoulder, and observed that he thought he might just as well bring them with him now as to come on purpose to-morrow. He went up by himself, and presently he came down with a square pencil in his mouth and a tape-measure about his neck, conning the “dimensions,” as he called them, and which were figured down on the smooth side of a scrap of dirty sandpaper.
It was an old-established custom in Fryingpan Alley, and all the other courts and alleys thereabout, that when a person died, his female relatives wore the regular sort of mourning attire-black bonnets and shawls, &c.—but his male relations wore nothing of the kind. They followed the body to the grave in their ordinary flannels and fustians, and their only emblem of bereavement was a wisp of black crape round the upper part of the arm, after exactly the same fashion, indeed, as soldiers wear their badges of mourning for any defunct member of the Royal family. Sometimes, in addition to the crape armlet, a bit of the same material would be worn round the cap; but this was considered not at all necessary, and as rather approaching what is known as “toffishness”—as near an approach to it, indeed, as could be by any means tolerated. Had any male dwelling in our alley ventured to turn out in a black coat and trousers, and, to crown all, a tall black hat, he would have been subject to the withering scorn of every inhabitant, and the tall black hat would certainly have been knocked from his head before he had reached Turnmill Street.