Dick Whittington
In days of old, there was a boy named Dick who was an orphan. His father and mother had died when he was young; so he was alone in the world; and the only living he could get was by keeping pigs in the forest. He had little to eat, rags to wear, and watched his pigs with envy as they nuzzled and grunted after their beech-mast and acorns, and grew fat and hearty. And few live things are heartier than a clean, comely pig. The only friend Dick had in the world was his cat.
Now this cat of Dick’s was a fine, sleek, black cat, very wary on its feet, and with bright green eyes. It never miaowed and seldom purred. But it was exceedingly fond of its master, ragged Dick, and—almost as if to show him its affection—would sometimes bring him a wild bird out of the bushes, and, laying it at his feet, look up through its green eyes into his face, as if to say, “Share a bite with me, master.”
Then Dick would laugh at his cat, and scratch its head. He loved its company.
One day in his ramblings with his pigs through the forest, Dick met a charcoal-burner, who gave him a sip out of his bottle. Dick stayed to talk, and as they sat together by his fire the charcoal-burner told him of his travels and adventures in all parts of the country and in other countries too. And Dick asked him about London.
“It’s a fine city,” said the charcoal-burner, “full of rich men and fine ladies and great houses, and a fine wide river with boats and bridges, and shops blazing like Old Moses, and booths, and stalls laid out with pigs’ trotters and mutton-pies, and streets paved with gold. Oh, it’s a fine city!”
“And what would a boy like me find to do there?” said Dick Whittington, for that was his full name.
“Why,” says the charcoal-burner, stirring up the fire with his foot, “make his fortune.” And he laughed.
Dick looked at the charcoal-burner in the blaze of the fire, and when he had gone back to his pigs, he began thinking about what had been told him. He built a London in his mind. He could all but smell those mutton-pies. And half-believing the charcoal-burner’s stories, he vowed he would take the road next morning and tramp off to London; and when once Dick had decided on anything he did it.
So early next morning he left his pigs in the forest, for he was afraid to go back to his master, and with his cat under his jacket, set off on his way to London. It chanced, when he reached there, that the sun was shining clear and low in the West, so that the streets with their churches and mansions looked dazzling as gold, and there was a concourse of rich men in the streets walking about or riding on horseback, and fine shops; and he came to the river, which was in flood, and there were carts and pedlars. At night, too, he saw the Lord Mayor go by—with link-boys carrying torches—in his great gilded coach, and footmen like fat porpoises.
But next day it was different. He came to filthy alleys and courts where thieves and beggars lived, and half-starved children played in the streets. And, try as he might, Dick couldn’t get work. Nobody would look at him because of his rags. They thought him a sneak-thief or pickpocket. The women in the houses where he knocked slammed the door in his face. The curs in the streets snapped at his heels because of his cat, and Puss was soon in a worse temper than it had ever been in before.
But night came down, the noise of the streets ebbed away, the lights went out in the windows, and after a short nap Dick’s cat stole off and had a hearty meal off a slab of fish it managed to steal off a fishmonger’s stall. It then caught a black rat and brought it next morning to Dick as he lay asleep on the doorstep of an empty shop.
Now it chanced that morning that a certain merchant (as he went about his business) passed by the place where Dick lay, and he saw Dick (bedraggled with dirt, bony and ragged) huddled asleep there on the doorstep, with his cat curled up beside him. There, too, the black rat lay, dead upon the step. The merchant smiled to himself at sight of the cat and the rat, then stooped and looked closer into the boy’s face. And as Dick lay asleep his face, meagre and grimy though it was, looked gentle and honest, and not sharp or cunning. The merchant liked the looks of the lad.
He shook him gently by the shoulder, and having there and then heard Dick’s story, he asked him, How would it be if he gave Dick work to do in his own warehouse? “A chance, my lad,” said he, “to prove what you’re made of.”
At this, tears of joy came into Dick’s eyes, for he was deadly footsore and hungry. But the first thing he said was, “Please, sir, if I come may I bring my cat?”
“Why,” said the merchant heartily, “Puss will be as welcome as you are, for my warehouse is packed with grain and oil and flour and bacon, so there are rats by the hundred and mice by the ten thousand. It will be a fine brisk living for your cat, and good for my merchandise.”
The cat looked up at the merchant, and licked its chops.
For a time Dick was happy enough at his work. But the huge warehouse at night was dark and solitary—nothing to be heard but squeaks and scamperings and creakings, and the chuckle and gentle drumming of the tide on the stones and timbers of the walls of the warehouse, for it was built out upon its wharf in the river—and Dick began after some months to be restless and ill at ease. At last, one night in spring, he could bear himself no longer. He clean forgot the promise he had made to his master to work with him for seven years. Worse still, he forgot the merchant’s kindness, for, if it had not been for that, Dick might long ago have starved in the streets. It seemed to him that if he stayed in the warehouse a moment longer he would be suffocated. So, with his cat under his arm, he crept out of the warehouse into the moonlight, and at first, as if frightened at the sound of his own footsteps, ran away as fast as he could, then fell into a walk, and at last came to the hill of Highgate.
When morning broke, he found himself sitting in the dew-laden grass under a hedge on this hill, a few miles out of London, but not so far that he could not hear her bells ringing. He listened to the sound of the bells stealing over the fields, for then the country was close to the city, with its woods and waters; and the bells as they rang seemed to be taking words in their voices, and saying:
“Turn-a-gain-Whit-ting-ton!
Come-back-Dick-Whit-ting-ton!
Lord-Mayor-of-London-town!”
And as Dick listened to the bells, fancying these words, he thought of his master, and his cat was cleaning its face with its paw. Four and forty times Puss passed its paw over the ear on that side of its face which was towards London. Dick counted, still listening to the bells. When, for the last time, having licked its paw, it smoothed it gently again over the same ear, it paused in its washing and looked up at its young master. It seemed to be listening too, while yet once again, on the eddying currents of the wind, the bells sang out:
“Turn-a-gain-Whit-ting-ton!
Come-back-Dick-Whit-ting-ton!
Lord-Mayor-of-London-town!”
Dick could resist their call no longer. With a sigh that was almost a groan, partly because he did not wish to go back, and partly because he was sorry he had broken his promise and run away, he got up, turned back to the warehouse, and in the early morning crept in through a window, thanking God to find everything safe. And what a scurry and squeaking there was in the back parts of the warehouse when his cat leapt in after him!
So all went well (and better) until the merchant said to Dick one day as he paid him his wages: “Well Dick, you have been with me for a full year now, and I’m satisfied with you. Now, next week I have a ship sailing for the Indies. Would you like to see the world and go too? The ladies have packed a little chest for you. You shall be cabin boy, and you shall take Puss.”
Dick was overjoyed. In a few days the ship put off from the quay and out of the Port of London, gliding over the sparkling Thames (for in those days its waters were clear as crystal and full of fish), and so out to sea. After many weeks of calm and storm, she came in sight at evening of an island where a certain Blackamoor was King, named King Ponmageelza, who had a prodigious store of gold and pearls and precious stones, and huts full of ivory.
Next morning the Captain went ashore to trade with this mighty Blackamoor. The ship had been sighted by these savages far out to sea, so the Blackamoor in his feathers and paint sat waiting for the Captain under a kind of canopy with his wives, while his slaves fanned him with peacocks’ plumes. And when the Captain drew near with his sailors he traded with him. He entertained the Captain, too, with good things (though over-rich) to eat and drink.
But while the Captain and the Blackamoor sat there at table, rats were everywhere—long-nosed, ravenous, cunning rascals that gave them not an instant’s peace. Such was the impudence of these rats that two of them, even while the Captain’s face was turned in talk with the King, scrambled up and nibbled at the yams on his plate. The Captain could scarcely talk or think for the botheration of them, they were so bold and nimble. Indeed, the King had six slaves whose only work it was to keep off the rats.
When the Captain had come back to the ship, Dick heard him talking to the bo’sun and telling him about the rats.
“Such a mort of rats you never set eyes on!” he said. “They’d pick your teeth for you while you eat!” he said.
Then Dick made bold to speak up to the Captain:
“If you please, sir, may I go ashore and take my cat with me, and see the King?”
And the Captain said, “Go, my boy; but be back when the gun fires.” For Dick had worked hard, and had taken it well when the sailors made sport of him. The Captain liked the lad.
So Dick for safety put his cat into a biscuit bag, after scratching its head and whispering into its ear that all was well, and he was put ashore from the boat, the sea calm and the sands with their tufted palm trees yellow as gold. He came to the Royal Blackamoor in the heat of the afternoon, and found him lying asleep on a couch, his slaves drowsing on either side of him, and the rats were everywhere. Dick watched them, hardly knowing what to do, standing there, and King Ponmageelza asleep, for he felt Puss scrabbling like half a dozen witches in its bag. But the rats made no more of Dick than a dummy.
Presently, indeed, one of them, even bolder than the rest, having climbed up on to the royal couch, began, as if in sheer bravado, to gnaw at the King’s toe, at which the King woke up in a rage and saw Dick standing there. Then Dick ducked his head, and said:
“If you please, your Majesty, I have got something in this bag that will keep down the rats.”
But the King merely rolled his black eyes at this, not understanding a word he said, for Dick spoke English and not in the Blackamoor’s lingo. So the King sent for an old silver-wigged savage who was a wizard and a witch-doctor. Dick repeated what he had said about the rats, and the wizard told and interpreted to the King what Dick had said. And the King said, “Oh!”
Then Dick showed the King what he had in his biscuit bag. Indeed, the very instant he loosened the string of the bag Puss sprang out with a growl like a ghollie-grampus, the first growl Dick had ever heard it utter, and before you could say Jack Robinson seventeen rats lay stricken on the floor, and the rest had scuttled back into their runs. If this was mere day-work, what of the night?
The King was pleased beyond measure. His black face shone with joy, and he said he would buy the cat. But Dick shook his head. He would lend his cat, but not sell. The King still wished, but Dick kept on and wouldn’t, and said, “No.” At length it was agreed between them that King Ponmageelza should borrow and keep the cat for one whole year, and for this the Blackamoor would give Dick twelve casks of gold and silver and precious stones, and a good bundle of tusks of ivory. It seemed to Dick he was getting a marvellous good price for the loan of his cat, but the King, having more of these things than was any good to him, thought it a bargain.
At that moment the gun sounded from the ship, and Dick, having bidden Puss goodbye, went down to the beach where there was a boat waiting for him. It was getting to evening now, but not yet dark. He told the sailors to fetch twelve empty casks; so the sailors rowed back to the ship and brought back the empty casks, and the King’s slaves filled them with gold and silver and precious stones, and then carried down the bundles of ivory. Three times the sailors rowed back and forth (from the ship), and the last time in the pitch-dark, though the sea was milky-green with a light like phosphorus in the water and the tropic stars were blazing.
When Dick reached England again, and the ship had sailed up the Thames to the wharf he knew so well, the merchant heard his tale to the end, and was delighted with his good fortune.
“See here, Master Whittington,” he said, clapping him friendly on the shoulder. “You and I will trade together, and if you do well you shall marry my daughter, and when I die you shall be my heir.”
And Dick, who owed all his good fortune to his master, blushed and said, “Yes.” Of his own free will—and glad he was to do it—he gave the merchant two of the casks cramful of the mixture of what he had had from the Blackamoor, and seven tusks of the best of his ivory. This was a present. After that he picked out from what was left enough great pearls for a necklace that would go round a slender neck, and he gave this to his master’s daughter. At which she blushed more even than Dick had. After that he worked harder than ever.
At the end of the year, when the ship came back again from her voyage to the Indies, the Captain brought with him Dick’s cat, more sleek and shapely than ever, and wearing a collar of sharkskin studded with emeralds round its neck, and these sewed in with elephant’s hair. When Dick took Puss into his arms again he couldn’t keep the tears out of his eyes; and Puss nuzzled his face and purred.
For a present, and simply in gratitude for the cat, the black King had sent Dick twelve more casks of precious stones, and another great clump of elephant’s tusks, some of them carved with animals and palms. So Dick and his master prospered more and more, until in due time Dick married his master’s daughter, whose name was Alice, became himself London’s greatest of merchants, and at last Lord Mayor.
On the very day he became Lord Mayor, as he sat in his coach, rolling over the cobbles, with the great gold mace at the window, the bells clanging in the steeples, and the people huzzaing from the streets, windows and housetops, he went back in thought to the ragged boy called Dick who had come with only his cat out of the country to the great city and was now Sir Richard Whittington, the most beloved of her freemen, and a friend of the King himself. I say, as he sat in his coach listening to the bells, he heard no more the shouting and huzzaing of the people, but only what the bells in their distant chimes had said to him years and years ago, that spring daybreak on the hill of Highgate, when by night he had run away out of the warehouse:
“Turn-a-gain-Whit-ting-ton!
Come-back-Dick-Whit-ting-ton!
Lord-Mayor-of-London-town!”
He rejoiced at thought of it, yet at the same moment felt quiet and humble.
When he got back to his mansion in the city, and before he made himself ready for the great banquet that evening, he gave his cat, who was now, alas! long past mousing, a tender young roast pigeon for its supper—a pigeon specially stuffed and garnished with rats’-tails. He had the bird served, too, on a silver platter—though Puss as soon as he set teeth into it pulled it off on to the floor. At sight of this, Lady Whittington, who stood beside him, kissed Dick on both cheeks and laughed out loud. Nor was Dick chosen Mayor of London but once. He was Mayor four times, was loved and revered by all men in the city, and famous not only in England but far and wide.
