AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
29
the little family came to London, and my grandfather obtained employment in Kent's brush making factory, which
was then in Tabard Street, a street associated as it always will be with Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims. I can still
conjure up in the mind's eye, the odd mixture he presented, of past better days and of present straitened conditions.
He would go off to work wearing a silk hat, a rather green frock coat, and a white bibbed apron tied round his waist!
He was over six feet tall, wore `dundreary whiskers' and had an eye like an hawk. Owing to his upbringing, or
rather to his lack of responsibility in the use of money, his family were often reduced to the verge of poverty, for a
whole week's wages would sometimes be entirely spent in treating anyone and everyone to drink.
I remember that my grandfather used a `Boot-Jack' which had come with him from Exeter. Again, quoting
Dickens in Little Dorrit:
`You have had a long walk, and will be glad to get your boots off. As to Daniel here, I suppose he'd never think
of taking his boots off, unless we showed him a boot-jack'.
Perhaps it is not to be wondered at that my father was never very robust, yet, although he suffered with
intermittent haemorrhage of the lungs, he lived within a few months of ninety years of age. Among the industries of
Bermondsey, owing to the vast amount of shipping, hemp ropes were in constant demand, and several rope walks
were in the vicinity of Jamaica Road. The introduction of steel ropes brought the hemp rope making to a standstill,
and my father fell out of employment. In those days there was no provision to aid such, and a desperate situation
had to be faced, and here the sterling character of my mother came into play. She had an ingrained horror of debt;
hire purchase and its equivalents were to her anathema, and so my parents left their little house and took one room in
the house in Fair Street, and there, with all the furniture they possessed stacked, I was born on April 25th 1880. A
somewhat indigent student from Guy's Hospital brought me into the world, and was glad to share the frugal Sunday
dinner that was ready. As soon as I could be left with my grandmother, my mother went back to her silk work in
Wood Street, Cheapside, so that my father would be free to make a fresh start, which he did in the leather bag
industry, starting at a nominal wage and rising to be the head of his department when he left at the age of 70.
My parents were married at Lambeth Parish Church, hard by the Lambeth Palace, which is about as near to the
Archbishop as I can hope to come. My father went to his wedding by rowing boat.
A tablet affixed to the tower records that Bryan Tuberville in the year 1711 left one hundred pounds for ever, the
interest to be used in assisting the apprenticeship of poor boys of the neighbourhood, with a notice that reads:
`N.B. None to be put to chimney sweeps'.
Lambeth Palace which adjoins the Church has been the London residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury
since the 13th Century.
The gatehouse entrance shown in the sketch was built in 1490 to take the place of an earlier one. Behind this
gateway will be found two reminders of early reformers, namely, the Lollard's Tower and the Lollard's Prison.
Queen Elizabeth's favourite, Essex, was imprisoned here in 1601.