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The Old Kent Road
(Vitagraph)
By PETER WADE
Bill Simmonds Van Dyke Brook
Sarah Simmonds, his wife Mrs. Kate Price
Sue, their daughter Clara Kimball Young
Harry Gethings, a young coster Maurice Costello
Mr. Hallet, a lawyer Charles Eldridge
Spriggins, the landlord ... William Shea
Joe Simmonds, Bill's cousin Robert Gaillord
'!™\uses leave the Lord Nelson, on £j Old Kent Road, pass along it into Great Dover Street, and so by London Bridge penetrate the City. I have never heard of any bumping southward over Old Kent Road — at least, not when Bill Simmonds and his family lived thereon. The houses were mostly old, built in rows, that they could support each other in their decrepitude, maybe, and the tanners and rope-makers having a job Bermondsey way hoofed it with passing comfort. The quarter had had its member in Parliament ever since Edward the Confessor had cast a covetous eye on it, the bricklayers had succeeded in getting a railway station named after them, and costermongers still jealously guarded the visible supply of greens and pearl buttons.
At the time in which our little domestical tale opens an interminable strike was on among the dock workers, and had spread slowly westward until all the trades in the yards were affected. The price of green goods had fallen very low. Artisans stayed at home to nurse their wrath, and seemed to subsist without eating.
Bill Simmonds had made the rounds of Old Kent Road and its purlieus, even exploring undiscovered alleyways, more by habit than in quest of a market for his wares. Locked doors stared at him everywhere, and did not open to his call of the palatable. Little boys appeared to be making endless journeys with pitchers of beer, but the fresh leeks and
cabbages on his cart ended their trip each day in the shed back of No. 73, unsought for, and covered with the dusts of undisturbed wanderings. So Bill had given them over and taken to the bosom of his generous family.
On occasions he aroused himself, and walked to the docks for news, but, as a rule, he was a gloomy, smoking fixture in the household's rockingchair. The location of this receptacle, which was moved about clapped to his breeches, like the abode of a snail, was avoided by the younger generation of Simmondses as a bad bit of coast is avoided by mariners; with this disadvantage, that by reason of continual shiftings into the unexpected parts of the room, the under fry were as persistently colliding with it and its morose inhabitant. This always resulted in childish disaster, cuffed hands, bawls, and promises to be more watchful.
Sue was the only member who seemed at all to understand the alternate joy and anguish of the little Simmondses. She was a good seven years older than the next in succession (which makes it about eighteen), but each new and repeated arrival had never lost interest to her. Both by necessity and choice she had been a little mother to all the little Simmondses, her mother having her hands full about the house and in helping Bill. Now, the treacherous rockingchair seemed to fill the house completely, and the gentle Sue and her flock avoided it as best they could.
Bill was out on the docks when
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