| | 1 | Author: | Locke, William John | Add | | | Title: | The Fortunate Youth  | | | | Published: | 1998 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | PAUL KEGWORTHY lived with his mother, Mrs. Button, his stepfather, Mr. Button,
and six little Buttons, his half brothers and sisters. His was not an ideal
home; it consisted in a bedroom, a kitchen and a scullery in a grimy little
house in a grimy street made up of rows of exactly similar grimy little houses,
and forming one of a hundred similar streets in a northern manufacturing town.
Mr. and Mrs. Button worked in a factory and took in as lodgers grimy single men
who also worked in factories. They were not a model couple; they were rather, in
fact, the scandal of Budge Street, which did not itself enjoy, in Bludston, a
reputation for holiness. Neither was good to look upon. Mr. Button, who was
Lancashire bred and born, divided the yearnings of his spirit between strong
drink and dog-fights. Mrs. Button, a viperous Londoner, yearned for noise. When
Mr. Button came home drunk he punched his wife about the head and kicked her
about the body, while they both exhausted the vocabulary of vituperation of
North and South, to the horror and edification of the neighbourhood. When Mr.
Button was sober Mrs. Button chastised little Paul. She would have done so when
Mr. Button was drunk, but she had not the time. The periods, therefore, of his
mother's martyrdom were those of Paul's enfranchisement. If he saw his
stepfather come down the street with
steady gait, he fled in terror; if he saw him reeling homeward he lingered about
with light and joyous heart. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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