George Silverman's Explanation (Paperback) | Released: 08 Feb 2021

NOT as yet directly aiming at how it came to pass, I will come upon it by degrees. The naturalmanner, after all, for God knows that is how it came upon me.My parents were in a miserable condition of life, and my infant home was a cellar in Preston. Irecollect the sound of father's Lancashire clogs on the street pavement above, as being different inmy young hearing from the sound of all other clogs; and I recollect, that, when mother came downthe cellar-steps, I used tremblingly to speculate on her feet having a good or an ill-tempered look, -on her knees, -on her waist, -until finally her face came into view, and settled the question. Fromthis it will be seen that I was timid, and that the cellar-steps were steep, and that the doorway wasvery low.Mother had the gripe and clutch of poverty upon her face, upon her figure, and not least of all uponher voice. Her sharp and high-pitched words were squeezed out of her, as by the compression ofbony fingers on a leathern bag; and she had a way of rolling her eyes about and about the cellar, asshe scolded, that was gaunt and hungry. Father, with his shoulders rounded, would sit quiet on athree-legged stool, looking at the empty grate, until she would pluck the stool from under him, andbid him go bring some money home. Then he would dismally ascend the steps; and I, holding myragged shirt and trousers together with a hand (my only braces), would feint and dodge frommother's pursuing grasp at my hair.A worldly little devil was mother's usual name for me. Whether I cried for that I was in the dark, orfor that it was cold, or for that I was hungry, or whether I squeezed myself into a warm corner whenthere was a fire, or ate voraciously when there was food, she would still say, 'O, you worldly littledevil!' And the sting of it was, that I quite well knew myself to be a worldly little devil. Worldly asto wanting to be housed and warmed, worldly as to wanting to be fed, worldly as to the greed withwhich I inwardly compared how much I got of those good things with how much father and mothergot, when, rarely, those good things were going.Sometimes they both went away seeking work; and then I would be locked up in the cellar for a dayor two at a time. I was at my worldliest then. Left alone, I yielded myself up to a worldly yearningfor enough of anything (except misery), and for the death of mother's father, who was a machinemaker at Birmingham, and on whose decease, I had heard mother say, she would come into a wholecourtful of houses 'if she had her rights.' Worldly little devil, I would stand about, musingly fittingmy cold bare feet into cracked bricks and crevices of the damp cellar-floor, -walking over mygrandfather's body, so to speak, into the courtful of houses, and selling them for meat and drink, and clothes to