Peter Biddulph

Peter Biddulph, by W.H.G.
Kingston

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Title: Peter Biddulph The Story of an Australian Settler
Author: W.H.G. Kingston
Release Date: October 17, 2007 [EBook #23050]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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BIDDULPH ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

Peter Biddulph, by W.H.G. Kingston.
CHAPTER ONE.
THE SETTLER'S EARLY DAYS.

From my earliest days to the present time I have been gradually
climbing up the ladder towards a comfortable berth on the top; and if a
ratlin has given way beneath my feet, I always have had a firm hold
above my head. The first step I took was off the mud on to dry ground.
I can recollect nothing clearly before that time. I was born on board a
river barge, and never left it, winter nor summer, till I was fully six
years old. One day the barge took the mud, which is not surprising,
considering that I was the only person on deck. I ran to the helm to turn
her head off the shore, but it was too late--there she stuck hard and fast.
My mother was below, tending my father, and he lay dying. It was the
barge's last voyage, and his too. Both had seen much service. The barge
never moved again, but went on rotting and rotting till the owner sold
her and she was broken up.
Father died that night, and a boat came and took mother and me on
shore, with father's body, and such property as we possessed--not much,
I fancy,--a kettle and pot, some plates, and knives, and cups, and a few
clothes,--we hadn't wanted furniture, and with these mother and I had
to begin the world. She said things might have been worse, for she
might have had a dozen children instead of one, and debts to pay--and
she didn't owe a farthing, which was a great comfort in her affliction.
My mother was indeed, while she lived, a very good mother to me, for
she taught me to distinguish right from wrong, to love the former and to
hate the latter. As may be supposed, she was very poor, and I was often
without a meal. I know, too, that she frequently stinted herself to give
me food. She lived on the banks of the Thames somewhere below
London, and I very soon found my way down to the mud, where I now
and then used to pick up odds and ends, bits of iron and copper, and
sometimes even coin, and chips of wood. The first my mother used to
sell, and I often got enough in the week to buy us a hearty meal; the last
served to boil our kettle when we had any food to cook in it. Few rich
people know how the poor live; our way was a strange one. My poor
mother used to work with her needle, and go out as a charwoman, and
to wash, when she could get any one to wash for, but that was seldom;
and toil as hard as she might, a difficult matter she had to pay the rent
of the little room in which we lived. She felt sorely the struggle she had

to endure with poverty, for she had seen better days--far better, I
suspect,--and was not accustomed to it. She was, I have reason to
believe, well educated--at all events, much above most persons in the
station in life she then occupied; and, young as I was, she taught me to
read, and to repeat poetry, and to sing psalms; and though I forget
nearly all the events of my life at that time, I remember many of the
verses she taught me; they have been a wonderful comfort to me
through life. My mother had married unwisely, I have no doubt, and if
she ever had any relations, they discarded her; so she was very soon
reduced to the condition I have described, aided by an illness which at
length terminated in her death.
I was about eight years old when I became an orphan; but my intellects
were sharpened by exercise, and I was as precocious as many children
double my age. As I was able to do something to gain my own
livelihood, the people of the house where we lodged took compassion
on me, and, instead of sending me to the workhouse, gave me the
corner of a garret to sleep in. I