it is a particular, and not altogether pleasant, feature of literary work in britain that should an author make a certain amount of success with a book on one particular topic, it is thenceforward tacitly assumed that he must stick to that topic, assaying no other on pain of being mercilessly taken to task by the critics. or what is worse, damned with faint praise. with this knowledge very vividly impressed upon me, i have hitherto refrained from writing upon a subject with which i have most intimate and painful acquaintance, and one that should appeal to a far wider circle of readers than any of my previous books have done. it is the subject of the small, struggling tradesman or shop-keeper.
i may, i trust, be permitted to remind my good friends, the public, to whom i owe so great a debt, that prior to going to sea i was, as some writers love to say, not entirely unconnected with trade, having for two or three years been employed with varying degrees of unsuccess by small tradesmen as an errand[pg viii] boy, etc. in this wise (although i feel sure that none of my employers would have suspected me of it), i absorbed some germs of a commercial spirit, did at any rate acquire the rudiments of trade, although in most irregular and entirely erratic ways.
during my sea-career, these germs lay entirely dormant, unfruitful; but they were undoubtedly tenacious of life, as we learn that disease germs always are; and so, when i forsook the sea upon an offer of a job ashore, a fitting environment aroused them, and they sprang into active life. not of course immediately, a period of incubation was needed. it was readily forthcoming. at the age of twenty-five, i deliberately turned my back upon a profession that then offered me nothing better than mate of a tramp at £6 per month, and accepted a berth in a public office ashore at £2 per week, having a wife and one child, and no stick of furniture for a home.
is it necessary to say that never having known any training in thrift, having indeed belonged to the least provident of all our notably improvident workers, i soon found the shoe pinching, soon discovered that forty shillings a week was devoid of elasticity, especially when curbed by payments to be made for furniture purchased on the very unsatisfactory "hire system"? perhaps not, but in any case it was this,[pg ix] coupled with the knowledge that all my fellow clerks were driven by the necessities of their miserable pay into bye-ways of supplementing their income, that lured me back to trade again. here let me digress for a purpose. many and grave scandals have been unearthed in the civil service, note well, in the higher branches even, but none i think greater than those where poorly paid clerks toiled to do the work for which their seniors were paid; said seniors being meanwhile engaged in amassing fortunes as eminent authorities upon art, the drama, or sport. but in the office where i was employed no such scandals were possible, seeing that the pay of the most powerful clerk therein was less than the annual tailor's bill of some of the superior civil service clerks. and whatever might be the value put upon our labours by those without, it is at least incontrovertible that we worked hard, so hard indeed that our superimposed labours after hours in order to keep the domestic pot boiling were cruel.
of the manner of my escape from that stygian lake with all its monotony and despair of outlook, i have perhaps said more than enough in print already, and in any case it would here be quite out of place. but of the time during which i in common with many thousands of my fellows in london endeavoured to[pg x] live respectably, and rear a family by honest toil, i feel free to speak, and if incidentally i can throw a few side-lights, humorous or pathetic, as the case may be, upon the strenuous lives led by small london tradesmen, i shall be proportionately glad.
it only remains that while in the following pages fiction finds no place, no real names are given for the most obvious reasons.
