THE HOLE IN THE WALL

BY ARTHUR MORRISON

LONDON
EYRE & SPOTTISWOODE

The Hole in the Wall was first published in 1902.
First published in The Century Library, 1947.

The Century Library is printed in England by Billing and
Sons Ltd., Guildford and Esher, for Eyre & Spottiswoode
(Publishers) Ltd., 15 Bedford Street, London, W.C. 2, and
bound by James Burn and Company Ltd., Royal Mills, Esher

To
MRS. CHARLES EARDLEY-WILMOT

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I. STEPHEN'S TALE
CHAPTER II. IN BLUE GATE
CHAPTER III. STEPHEN'S TALE
CHAPTER IV. STEPHEN'S TALE
CHAPTER V. IN THE HIGHWAY
CHAPTER VI. STEPHEN'S TALE
CHAPTER VII. STEPHEN'S TALE
CHAPTER VIII. STEPHEN'S TALE
CHAPTER IX. STEPHEN'S TALE
CHAPTER X. STEPHEN'S TALE
CHAPTER XI. STEPHEN'S TALE
CHAPTER XII. IN THE CLUB-ROOM
CHAPTER XIII. STEPHEN'S TALE
CHAPTER XIV. STEPHEN'S TALE
CHAPTER XV. STEPHEN'S TALE
CHAPTER XVI. STEPHEN'S TALE
CHAPTER XVII. IN BLUE GATE
CHAPTER XVIII. ON THE COP
CHAPTER XIX. ON THE COP
CHAPTER XX. STEPHEN'S TALE
CHAPTER XXI. IN THE BAR-PARLOUR
CHAPTER XXII. ON THE COP
CHAPTER XXIII. ON THE COP
CHAPTER XXIV. ON THE COP
CHAPTER XXV. STEPHEN'S TALE
CHAPTER XXVI. STEPHEN'S TALE
CHAPTER XXVII. IN THE BAR-PARLOUR
CHAPTER XXVIII. STEPHEN'S TALE
CHAPTER XXIX. STEPHEN'S TALE
CHAPTER XXX. STEPHEN'S TALE

CHAPTER I

STEPHEN'S TALE

My grandfather was a publican—and a sinner, as you will see. His public-house was the Hole in the Wall, on the river's edge at Wapping; and his sins—all of them that I know of—are recorded in these pages. He was a widower of some small substance, and the Hole in the Wall was not the sum of his resources, for he owned a little wharf on the river Lea. I called him Grandfather Nat, not to distinguish him among a multitude of grandfathers—for indeed I never knew another of my own—but because of affectionate habit; a habit perhaps born of the fact that Nathaniel Kemp was also my father's name. My own is Stephen.

To remember Grandfather Nat is to bethink me of pear-drops. It is possible that that particular sort of sweetstuff is now obsolete, and I cannot remember how many years have passed since last I smelt it; for the pear-drop was a thing that could be smelt farther than seen, and oftener; so that its smell—a rather fulsome, vulgar smell I now believe—is almost as distinct to my imagination while I write as it was to my nose thirty years ago. For pear-drops were an unfailing part of the large bagful of sticky old-fashioned lollipops that my grandfather brought on his visits, stuffed into his overcoat pocket, and hard to get out without a burst and a spill. His custom was invariable, so that I think I must have come to regard the sweets as some natural production of his coat pocket; insomuch that at my mother's funeral my muddled brain scarce realised the full desolation of the circumstances till I discovered that, for the first time in my experience, my grandfather's pocket was void of pear-drops. But with this new bereavement the world seemed empty indeed, and I cried afresh.