Chapter 2 — <br> Chapter II. Tom’s early life.<br>

Let us skip a number of years.

London was fifteen hundred years old, and was a great town—for that
day. It had a hundred thousand inhabitants—some think double as
many.  The streets were very narrow, and crooked, and dirty,
especially in the part where Tom Canty lived, which was not far from
London Bridge.  The houses were of wood, with the second story
projecting over the first, and the third sticking its elbows out beyond
the second.  The higher the houses grew, the broader they grew.
 They were skeletons of strong criss-cross beams, with solid material
between, coated with plaster.  The beams were painted red or blue or
black, according to the owner’s taste, and this gave the houses a
very picturesque look.  The windows were small, glazed with little
diamond-shaped panes, and they opened outward, on hinges, like doors.

The house which Tom’s father lived in was up a foul little pocket
called Offal Court, out of Pudding Lane.  It was small, decayed, and
rickety, but it was packed full of wretchedly poor families. Canty’s
tribe occupied a room on the third floor.  The mother and father had
a sort of bedstead in the corner; but Tom, his grandmother, and his two
sisters, Bet and Nan, were not restricted—they had all the floor to
themselves, and might sleep where they chose.  There were the remains
of a blanket or two, and some bundles of ancient and dirty straw, but
these could not rightly be called beds, for they were not organised; they
were kicked into a general pile, mornings, and selections made from the
mass at night, for service.

Bet and Nan were fifteen years old—twins.  They were
good-hearted girls, unclean, clothed in rags, and profoundly ignorant.
 Their mother was like them.  But the father and the grandmother
were a couple of fiends.  They got drunk whenever they could; then
they fought each other or anybody else who came in the way; they cursed
and swore always, drunk or sober; John Canty was a thief, and his mother a
beggar.  They made beggars of the children, but failed to make
thieves of them.  Among, but not of, the dreadful rabble that
inhabited the house, was a good old priest whom the King had turned out of
house and home with a pension of a few farthings, and he used to get the
children aside and teach them right ways secretly. Father Andrew also
taught Tom a little Latin, and how to read and write; and would have done
the same with the girls, but they were afraid of the jeers of their
friends, who could not have endured such a queer accomplishment in them.

All Offal Court was just such another hive as Canty’s house.
Drunkenness, riot and brawling were the order, there, every night and
nearly all night long.  Broken heads were as common as hunger in that
place.  Yet little Tom was not unhappy.  He had a hard time of
it, but did not know it.  It was the sort of time that all the Offal
Court boys had, therefore he supposed it was the correct and comfortable
thing.  When he came home empty-handed at night, he knew his father
would curse him and thrash him first, and that when he was done the awful
grandmother would do it all over again and improve on it; and that away in
the night his starving mother would slip to him stealthily with any
miserable scrap or crust she had been able to save for him by going hungry
herself, notwithstanding she was often caught in that sort of treason and
soundly beaten for it by her husband.

No, Tom’s life went along well enough, especially in summer.  He
only begged just enough to save himself, for the laws against mendicancy
were stringent, and the penalties heavy; so he put in a good deal of his
time listening to good Father Andrew’s charming old tales and
legends about giants and fairies, dwarfs and genii, and enchanted castles,
and gorgeous kings and princes.  His head grew to be full of these
wonderful things, and many a night as he lay in the dark on his scant and
offensive straw, tired, hungry, and smarting from a thrashing, he
unleashed his imagination and soon forgot his aches and pains in delicious
picturings to himself of the charmed life of a petted prince in a regal
palace.  One desire came in time to haunt him day and night:  it
was to see a real prince, with his own eyes.  He spoke of it once to
some of his Offal Court comrades; but they jeered him and scoffed him so
unmercifully that he was glad to keep his dream to himself after that.

He often read the priest’s old books and got him to explain and
enlarge upon them.  His dreamings and readings worked certain changes
in him, by- and-by.  His dream-people were so fine that he grew to
lament his shabby clothing and his dirt, and to wish to be clean and
better clad.  He went on playing in the mud just the same, and
enjoying it, too; but, instead of splashing around in the Thames solely
for the fun of it, he began to find an added value in it because of the
washings and cleansings it afforded.

Tom could always find something going on around the Maypole in Cheapside,
and at the fairs; and now and then he and the rest of London had a chance
to see a military parade when some famous unfortunate was carried prisoner
to the Tower, by land or boat. One summer’s day he saw poor Anne
Askew and three men burned at the stake in Smithfield, and heard an
ex-Bishop preach a sermon to them which did not interest him.  Yes,
Tom’s life was varied and pleasant enough, on the whole.

By-and-by Tom’s reading and dreaming about princely life wrought
such a strong effect upon him that he began to act the prince,
unconsciously. His speech and manners became curiously ceremonious and
courtly, to the vast admiration and amusement of his intimates.  But
Tom’s influence among these young people began to grow now, day by
day; and in time he came to be looked up to, by them, with a sort of
wondering awe, as a superior being.  He seemed to know so much! and
he could do and say such marvellous things! and withal, he was so deep and
wise!  Tom’s remarks, and Tom’s performances, were
reported by the boys to their elders; and these, also, presently began to
discuss Tom Canty, and to regard him as a most gifted and extraordinary
creature.  Full-grown people brought their perplexities to Tom for
solution, and were often astonished at the wit and wisdom of his
decisions.  In fact he was become a hero to all who knew him except
his own family—these, only, saw nothing in him.

Privately, after a while, Tom organised a royal court!  He was the
prince; his special comrades were guards, chamberlains, equerries, lords
and ladies in waiting, and the royal family.  Daily the mock prince
was received with elaborate ceremonials borrowed by Tom from his romantic
readings; daily the great affairs of the mimic kingdom were discussed in
the royal council, and daily his mimic highness issued decrees to his
imaginary armies, navies, and viceroyalties.

After which, he would go forth in his rags and beg a few farthings, eat
his poor crust, take his customary cuffs and abuse, and then stretch
himself upon his handful of foul straw, and resume his empty grandeurs in
his dreams.

And still his desire to look just once upon a real prince, in the flesh,
grew upon him, day by day, and week by week, until at last it absorbed all
other desires, and became the one passion of his life.

One January day, on his usual begging tour, he tramped despondently up and
down the region round about Mincing Lane and Little East Cheap, hour after
hour, bare-footed and cold, looking in at cook-shop windows and longing
for the dreadful pork-pies and other deadly inventions displayed there—for
to him these were dainties fit for the angels; that is, judging by the
smell, they were—for it had never been his good luck to own and eat
one. There was a cold drizzle of rain; the atmosphere was murky; it was a
melancholy day.  At night Tom reached home so wet and tired and
hungry that it was not possible for his father and grandmother to observe
his forlorn condition and not be moved—after their fashion;
wherefore they gave him a brisk cuffing at once and sent him to bed.
 For a long time his pain and hunger, and the swearing and fighting
going on in the building, kept him awake; but at last his thoughts drifted
away to far, romantic lands, and he fell asleep in the company of jewelled
and gilded princelings who live in vast palaces, and had servants
salaaming before them or flying to execute their orders.  And then,
as usual, he dreamed that he was a princeling himself.

he

All night long the glories of his royal estate shone upon him; he moved
among great lords and ladies, in a blaze of light, breathing perfumes,
drinking in delicious music, and answering the reverent obeisances of the
glittering throng as it parted to make way for him, with here a smile, and
there a nod of his princely head.

And when he awoke in the morning and looked upon the wretchedness about
him, his dream had had its usual effect—it had intensified the
sordidness of his surroundings a thousandfold.  Then came bitterness,
and heart-break, and tears.