The Days Before Yesterday | Page 9

These unfortunate children, too, were certain to get
abrasions on their bare feet and on their elbows and knees from the
rough edges of the bricks. The soot working into these abrasions gave
them a peculiar form of sore. Think of the terrible brutality to which a
nervous child must have been subjected before he could be induced to
undertake so hateful a journey for the first time. Should the boy hesitate
to ascend, many of the master- sweeps had no compunction in giving
him what was termed a "tickler"--that is, in lighting some straw in the
grate below him. The poor little urchin had perforce to scramble up his
chimney then, to avoid being roasted alive.
All honour to the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, the philanthropist, who
as Lord Ashley never rested in the House of Commons until he got a
measure placed on the Statute Book making the employment of
climbing-boys illegal.
It will be remembered that little Tom, the hero of Charles Kingsley's
delightful Water-Babies, was a climbing-sweep. In spite of all my care,
I occasionally met some of these little fellows in the passages,
inky-black with soot from the soles of their bare feet to the crowns of
their heads, except for the whites of their eyes. They could not have
been above eight or nine years old. I looked on them as awful warnings,
for of course they would not have occupied their present position had
they not been little boys who had habitually disobeyed the orders of
their nurses.
Even the wretched little climbing-boys had their gala-day on the 1st of
May, when they had a holiday and a feast under the terms of Mrs.
Montagu's will.
The story of Mrs. Montagu is well known. The large house standing in

a garden at the corner of Portman Square and Gloucester Place, now
owned by Lord Portman, was built for Mrs. Montagu by James Wyatt
at the end of the eighteenth century, and the adjoining Montagu Street
and Montagu Square derive their names from her. Somehow Mrs.
Montagu's only son got kidnapped, and all attempts to recover the child
failed. Time went on, and he was regarded as dead. On a certain 1st of
May the sweeps arrived to clean Mrs. Montagu's chimneys, and a
climbing-boy was sent up to his horrible task. Like Tom in the
Water-Babies, he lost his way in the network of flues and emerged in a
different room to the one he had started from. Something in the aspect
of the room struck a half-familiar, half-forgotten chord in his brain. He
turned the handle of the door of the next room and found a lady seated
there. Then he remembered. Filthy and soot-stained as he was, the little
sweep flung himself into the arms of the beautiful lady with a cry of
"Mother!" Mrs. Montagu had found her lost son.
In gratitude for the recovery of her son, Mrs. Montagu entertained
every climbing-boy in London at dinner on the anniversary of her son's
return, and arranged that they should all have a holiday on that day. At
her death she left a legacy to continue the treat.
Such, at least, is the story as I have always heard it.
At the Sweeps' Carnival, there was always a grown-up man figuring as
"Jack-in-the-green." Encased in an immense frame of wicker-work
covered with laurels and artificial flowers, from the midst of which his
face and arms protruded with a comical effect, "Jack-in- the-green"
capered slowly about in the midst of the street, surrounded by some
twenty little climbing-boys, who danced joyously round him with black
faces, their soot-stained clothes decorated with tags of bright ribbon,
and making a deafening clamour with their dustpans and brushes as
they sang some popular ditty. They then collected money from the
passers-by, making usually quite a good haul. There were dozens of
these "Jacks-in- the-green" to be seen then on Mayday in the London
streets, each one with his attendant band of little black familiars. I
summoned up enough courage once to ask a small inky-black urchin
whether he had disobeyed his nurse very often in order to be

condemned to sweep chimneys. He gaped at me uncomprehendingly,
with a grin; but being a cheerful little soul, assured me that, on the
whole, he rather enjoyed climbing up chimneys.
It was my father and mother's custom in London to receive any of their
friends at luncheon without a formal invitation, and a constant
procession of people availed themselves of this privilege. At six years
of age I was promoted to lunch in the dining-room with my parents,
and I always kept my ears open. I had then one brother in the House of
Commons, and we being a politically inclined family, most of the
notabilities of the Tory