The Weekly Machen
The following article is the tenth in a series by Arthur Machen for The Daily Express.
Little Men and Little Pleasures
‘Treats’ That Dick Swiveller Could Not Afford Today
by
Arthur Machen
October 16, 1918
I was saying the other day that there are great secrets in Camden Town.
I was thinking of a certain street of little houses, some of them “detached” and some “semi-detached.” They are small, utterly unpretending, but pleasant, snug habitations with green leafage between their windows and the glare and dust and grittiness of London. Each little house has a little coachhouse and stable beside it.
New here is the secret. These houses were built for people of modest and moderate means. They were inhabited by folks who were something small in the City, who were probably walked to business every morning, reserving the little pony and the “little clattering, jingling, four-wheeled chaise” for little jaunts and visits to Aunt Jane at Chipping Barnet and Cousin John at Stratford-on-the-Green. But the point is that seventy or eighty years ago small people with small means were able to live pleasantly, snugly, easily, and have their modest little treats and jollities and literally their own vines and fig trees.
Take the case of Mr. Richard Swiveller. His aunt, Rebecca Swiveller, of Cheselbourne, in Dorsetshire, left him an annuity of £150 a year, and on this income he took a cottage at Hampstead, “which had in its garden a smoking-box the envy of the civilised world.”
I suppose Dick paid about £80 a year for such a cottage—if he could find it at all. And at the end of a year his landlord would probably given him notice, “the land being ripe for development.”
Why, take another point; since we are talking of small houses in Camden Town and Hampstead and Dick Swiveller. There was Kit, Dick’s friend. Kit was paid £6 a year—all found—and on this income he was able to take his family and friends to the play and to stand treat afterwards to the extent of three dozen of oysters, bread and butter, a pot—or quart—of beer, and “something hot” to follow. To-day that evening’s treat would cost Kit something like twenty-five shillings—and a sermon on the Evils of Drink.
Is the little man of little means ever going to be able to take his little pleasures again?
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Thanks for this!
I find that the illegible words are “a smoking-box” – in chapter 73 of Dickens’s Old Curiosity Shop – the last chapter of the book, and worth a look in the context of Machen’s article for those like me who have not yet read the novel (if they do not fear spoilers) – the last two paragraphs especially, of which the very last is the single sentence: “Such are the changes which a few years bring about, and so do things pass away, like a tale that is told!”
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Much obliged! I’ve inserted the text.
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