Picture No. 1
Here begins an attempt to sketch in simple words some memories of a varied life.

I am a Londoner, and proud of it. I was born opposite the "Boston Arms", junction Road, Holloway, on February 22nd, 1868.

The earliest picture I can remember was simply a blur of beautiful colours: the gold of the sun, the green of the fields which were Tufnell Park, and the blue of the skies, and the still brighter blue of my mother's eyes. These were my heaven my earth, and my paradise.

Picture No. 2
The first home I can remember was a house in Hanley Road, Hornsey. This house was the middle one of three gaunt grey houses which stood by themselves, faced by fields, and adjacent at the back to the grounds of a large workhouse. There were four floors in this house, and my family occupied the middle two floors. My mother called it "the heart of the house". The basement rooms were occupied by a sculptor, a genial, Bohemian sort of chap, who used the scullery as a studio and pretended he liked it. He declared that he found it most convenient, as there was always plenty of water close at hand with which to wet his clay.

My father was an artist, a painter of pictures. He used the ground floor back-room as a studio. Sometimes he would paint in the garden, using the family for models.

The third ménage in this house was occupied by a couple whom I have quite forgotten.

I remember thinking how wonderful the moon was, watching it night after night from my bed, until one night, in a dream, I got up and tried to climb through the window to get this wonderful shining orb; fortunately my father heard me and caught me just in time and pulled me back to earth.

At this time I had two sisters and a baby brother. I was the eldest of the family. We were taken for long walks by a nursemaid who had beautiful hair and for this reason sometimes acted as a model to my father. When she was so engaged I had to take the youngsters for a walk, strictly limited to the pavement and within sight of the house. Thus early I was taught a sense of responsibility.

I remember the popular tunes of that day were from the opera of Madame Angot.

One last vivid vignette lingers in my mind. One cold winter's morning I was sent to the front door to take in the can of milk, when I saw a group of people at the corner surrounding a policeman. Curiosity prompted me to edge my small person amongst them, and there on the snowcovered ground I saw, to my horror, the frozen body of a murdered infant. This was my first sight of death, and I realized that there was sin and cruelty in the world.

Picture No. 3
St. John's Ville Road, Highgate, is the next place I remember; a green-shaded lamp shining down upon a wooden block which my father was painting in black and white for the engraver. He did these pictures for the Illustrated London News, Chatterbox, etc., and used the family as models. I appeared in a picture in which I represented several Indian fishermen during King Edward's visit to India. My father was constantly working, without much repayment in this world's goods. He seemed to do it for art's sake.

He had some Spartan ideas. I remember him taking me into a kind of outhouse where he had found a rat; he gave me a poker and told me to go ahead and kill the rat, which I had to do under his direction. This was to teach me to face danger. I still remember the wild rushes I made at that rat, and how enormous and ferocious it seemed.

Picture No. 4
It was a long time before I went to school. Father was waiting to afford a good school, and my education was put off week after week. At last Mother took me and the matter in hand and marched me off to York Road Board School, where I was put among the infants. I was about ten years of age and hardly knew my A B C.

One of the first sights I saw in this school was a kicking, scrambling boy being brutally thrashed by one of the undermasters. I am thankful I did not stay at that school long. Through a friend, I was able to attend a decent school. We were then living in Sandall Road. My new school was in Great College Street. I was admitted here free on condition that I swept the school after school hours, scrubbed the floors, and washed the windows in my half-holidays.

Picture No. 5
At school my nickname was "Monkey-face".

Picture No. 6
The next picture I remember was a large hospital ward, where a nurse used to come round at six o'clock in the morning with a zinc bath of cold water and a piece of tow to serve as a face-flannel. I was there for three months, and our dinner was weighed out to us. As the meat was carved, it was placed on a zinc scale-pan, and it usually reached our beds quite cold. Three times I was prepared for an operation, and three times I was sent back from the operating theatre as being too weak to undergo it. The fourth time it was successfully performed. I had a hard abscess at the side of my knee caused by a kick at football.

Picture No. 7
The next picture: jolly games at a convalescent home at Walton-on-Thames. There I met a convalescent butler, and in my youthful eyes he appeared a very grand and portly person, and gave me graphic stories of "high life" below stairs. He persuaded me that as a pageboy I should be able to lead a sheltered and delightful life, and fired me with my first ambition. I wanted to be a pageboy, with shiny buttons and two helpings of pudding every day!

After a further spell of convalescence at Bognor I returned to Sandall Road, with one desire in life: to find a situation as a pageboy.

Picture No. 8
I next remember poring over newspaper advertisements and answering likely ones in person, with invariable ill success, no doubt because I was in knickerbockers and hardly twelve years of age. At last I saw an advertisement for a boy to do housework at a house in Bartholomew Road, which was near our home. For that reason, I suppose, I was the first applicant. I was favourably received by the lady of the house, who explained to me the duties.

I was not to sleep in, and was to commence work at seven o'clock in the morning. My first job was to clean all the boots of the family of eight. Then I was to clean the brass bells and door-knocker, take the coals upstairs, feed the chickens, and help the housemaid wait at table, clean all the knives and silver, run any errands required, and clean all the windows of the three-storied house, inside and out, and polish all the looking-glasses. All this I blithely undertook to do in return for my board, uniform, and five shillings per week.

However, the mistress wished to interview my mother first, and I had to go home and explain. I first told the news to my six brothers and sisters, who applauded my efforts and envied the post. But Mother was rather dubious about it, and Father was furious. Mother was in such desperate need of food and money that she finally consented that I should take the situation for a week or two. Mother and I went off to see the lady, and the matter was settled in half an hour.

The following Monday morning I commenced work. I had an unlucky accident the first morning. There was a mirror fixed in a certain part of the hall of the house to give an illusion of space. It deceived me, and so successfully that I ran straight into it with a heavy scuttle of coals and cracked the mirror from top to bottom. I expected to be instantly dismissed, and I was given a week's notice. However, I found the mistress was mortally afraid of blackbeetles and got into her good graces again by catching them with my bare hands, thus clearing her store-cupboard of these annoying insects.

The next accident I had was on the following Sunday. I slipped on the stairs when carrying up a hot leg of mutton; the mutton slid back to the basement, making a noiseless descent. I kept my head, but lost the gravy. I went down and picked up the leg of mutton, took it back to the cook, and explained matters. "Oh, that's all right," she said. "What the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve over." She wiped the leg of mutton with the dish-cloth, poured some more hot gravy over it, and I went upstairs with it again as if nothing had happened.

Picture No. 9
A change of situation brought about by getting tired after eighteen months of sheltered family life at Kentish Town.

Again scanning the newspapers, I obtained another post. Behold me in a scarlet cap, blue claw-hammer coat, and silver buttons. The scarlet cap was marked "Refreshments".

I was to be seen daily walking up and down the trains at Euston Station, vending fruit and chocolates, which I carried jauntily balanced on a silver tray. From seven o'clock in the morning until nine o'clock at night I led this public life.

In between the departure of the various trains I had to clean the windows and polish the tables of the bars, wait at table, cut sandwiches, keep the bar stocked with Bath buns, and run errands.

I had eighteen months of this. Then my engagement was brought to an abrupt conclusion by the manager discovering me practising conjuring tricks in one of the wine-cellars when I ought to have been selling strawberries to passengers on the Scotch Express.

Picture No. 10
Again the scene was changed. I had served lunches to an old gentleman who was a director of the newly formed telephone company, and who used to talk to me of the wonders of this new instrument. On hearing of my dismissal, he offered me a post in an exchange as telephone operator. The money to start with was not very tempting--ten shillings a week and no food.

I had now had three years of pageboy's life, and was feeling an urge for something different. The exchange seemed to be one opening to a new world, so I took the opportunity and accepted the situation.

In the meantime my family had moved their domicile from Sandall Road to Brecknock Road, thence to junction Road, and later to Fortess Road, and now were settled in Countess Road. All these houses were in the neighbourhood of Tufnell Park, which was then mostly fields.

My new employment took me to Mincing Lane to one of the City exchanges. My hours were nine till six. I walked there every morning from Tufnell Park, via Brecknock Road, York Road, and Farringdon Street, and also walked back on most nights. The work was very monotonous; connecting up numbers all day long, and placating irate subscribers who couldn't get their numbers quickly enough.

I learned a good deal of diplomacy in this work, and was finally selected as an expert operator to operate the new line which had just been opened from London to Brighton, which, at that time, was considered an enormous distance to talk over. I had a pleasant time at Brighton, with an allowance for boarding. Being looked upon by the other operators there as an expert, I began to show off a little, and got into the habit of tapping my transmitter, which was formed like a box, with the end of the receiver.

One day the gentleman who installed me in the situation (he was a Scotsman, by the way) caught me at the tapping business, and in a few words told me what an unscientific ass I was. I was sent back to town in disgrace, in a humiliating position. I had been in one job for eighteen months, and had had enough of telephones. I sent in a polite resignation.

Picture No. 11
By this time I was practising conjuring hard, and set about looking for a situation which would give me more time for it. I obtained an introduction to a gentleman who was agent for the new "Albo Carbon Light" and "Stotts Gas Governors" and other gas-lighting devices. The headquarters were a small office in Fenchurch Street. Salary, nominal; commission on sales, liberal; hours, as one pleased--provided one reported at the office once a day and had sales to report.

I made a speciality of calling upon artists, persuading them to let me install an Albo Carbon Light in their studios on a sale-or-return basis. I fitted these up myself. I had to acquire a knowledge of gasfitters' work, and I dare say my fitting was as bad as the worst plumbing ever seen.

I was so keen on conjuring that I spent the little money I had in buying books and apparatus, and many a day a penny scone served for my midday meal. After eighteen months of this work I gave it up, because I thought I could now launch out as an entertainer, and after a few words with my employer over a light which I had fixed above a billiard table in Bromley--the wretched thing had boiled over and ruined the cloth--I said good-bye to gas-lights.

Picture No. 12
This last picture is dim and misty. I seem to remember countless scores of agents, hours spent in reading and castle-building, and hours spent in giving free entertainments and trial shows and five-shilling entertainments and penny entertainments, all of which seemed fruitless in feeding my ambition. A veritable hand-to-mouth existence for about a year, until at last a tour was booked which led on to fortune.