Seven Christmas Eves: Being the Romance of A Social Evolution
9781465515872
418 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Never having had much book-learning in my time, having entered into that state of life into which it pleased them above to call me, more than fifty years before the piano began to be taught in Board-schools, with part singing on the cistern of the tonic sofas, as to hear Cheevers’s sister Eliza’s daughter Grace’s eldest Emmeline sing “Come buy my Coloured ’Errin’,” and recite “Not a Drum was ’Eard” and the “Fall of Smackerib,” makes you feel oysters creepin’ up and down the small of your back. Being a plain person, accustomed to call a spade a spade, and so hope do not give offence—I, the undersigned Mary Cheevers, washer-woman, being called on by some as I have reason, the dear Lord knows, to love and reverence, write my plain story in my own plain way, and with the best of intentions, though a difficulty with the spelling—Eliza’s Grace’s Emmeline not being always handy—and a cramped hand from soaking in the tub for many, many labouring years. Me and Cheevers was newly married at the time I am asked to go back to, and in poor circumstances, but hopeful, Cheevers doing a small trade in coke an’ cheap vegetables, and me taking in what washing I could get, which was mostly that of poor folks; but poverty will sometimes ’ide a empty cravin’ under a clean shirt, and all the more credit I says, as my motto have been throughout my whole life— and I have seen some ups and downs in my time—Keep Yourself Respectable. Me and Cheevers lived on the ground floor in Lemon’s-passage East, one room—and glad to keep that over our heads—with the bed kept under the counter in the daytime, and the sacks of coke and greens with bundles of kindling and a package of sulphur matches forming what might be called the stock-in-trade. You might have expected to see soap, but there was little if any call for such an article—except in my way of business—neither yellow nor mottled, as when only used on Saturday nights one bar will last a wonderful time, and who is to blame you if—your walk in life being a grimy one—you gets into the habit six days out of the seven of going grimy yourself? Talking of grime, I never see two poor little souls more smothered in it than Them Two. Being boy and girl and always together, I took it for granted they was brother and sister, but presently found no relations—and made the story pitifuller in my eyes, which Cheevers jeered at as my woman’s way of taking an interest in anything by the nature of sweethearting.
