{"product_id":"2940013740952","title":"Edgar Wallace by Himself","description":"Generally speaking, there is no mystery about birth, even in the least\u003cbr\u003ecreditable circumstances. The most mysterious thing that can happen to\u003cbr\u003eany man is not to be born at all. Less mystery why, swathed (one\u003cbr\u003epresumes) in voluminous shawls, one should be carried from Ashburnham\u003cbr\u003eRoad to a little court hard by the Deptford Creek which separates the\u003cbr\u003eRoyal Town of Greenwich from the unsalubrious purlieus of Deptford.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI was adopted at the age of nine days. Otherwise there might have been\u003cbr\u003efor me a romantic upbringing in Greenwich Workhouse or one of those\u003cbr\u003einstitutions whither motherless and fatherless persons of nine days old\u003cbr\u003eand having no visible means of support are brought to maturity. Happily,\u003cbr\u003ethere was a philanthropist who heard of my plight, and having for the\u003cbr\u003eworkhouse the loathing which is the proper possession of the proud poor,\u003cbr\u003ehe dispatched Clara to fetch me,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"She's adopted\", said Mr. Freeman, an autocrat in his way.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNor when he discovered that he had been mistaken as to my sex did he vary\u003cbr\u003ehis humane decision.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn name and fact he was Freeman--a liveryman of the Haberdashers'\u003cbr\u003eCompany; a Freeman of the City of London--he could trace his ancestry\u003cbr\u003eback for five hundred years through family and city records. And he was a\u003cbr\u003efish porter at Billingsgate Market. A stocky, big-featured man, with a\u003cbr\u003epowerful nose and a chin beard such as Abraham Lincoln wore.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI never saw him write anything but his name. I never saw him read\u003cbr\u003eanything but the New Testament--a big, calf-bound volume with leaves\u003cbr\u003ethat were yellow from age. He used to \"break out\" about twice a year and\u003cbr\u003edrink brandy. Then was the Testament laid reverently aside, and he would\u003cbr\u003efight any man of any size and beat him. Once he fought for two hours,\u003cbr\u003eperilously, on the edge of a deep cutting.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe had the strength of an ox; balanced on the flat leather hat he wore in\u003cbr\u003ebusiness hours, he could carry heavy cases of fish, and they were no more\u003cbr\u003eto him than such chaplets as the patricians wore.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe never did a crooked thing in his life. His wife was the gentlest\u003cbr\u003emother that ever lived. She could not write, but she could read. Mostly\u003cbr\u003eshe read aloud the murders in the Sunday newspapers, and we discussed\u003cbr\u003ehistoric criminals--Peace, Palmer (whose trial she remembered) and such\u003cbr\u003emoderns as Mrs. Maybrick. I loved them and they loved me. They are dead,\u003cbr\u003eand I am the poorer for it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI remember dimly the sinking of the Princess Alice. Greenwich had a\u003cbr\u003emaritime flavour in those days. It was a town of blue-jerseyed men, and\u003cbr\u003ein every other house in our neighbourhood was the model of a full-rigged\u003cbr\u003eship. And over most parlour mantelpieces hung a collection of brightly\u003cbr\u003ecoloured china rolling-pins, the exact significance of which I have never\u003cbr\u003eunderstood, except that they had to do with foreign travel.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy first vivid recollection in life is one of a sort of possessive pride\u003cbr\u003ein prison vans. The gloomy \"Black Maria\" that rumbled up the Greenwich\u003cbr\u003eRoad every afternoon. I recollect giving the infants' class at St.\u003cbr\u003ePeter's School a miss and toddling up Trafalgar Street to see the gloomy\u003cbr\u003etumbril pass in the rain, with a shiny warder sitting on a little\u003cbr\u003eknifeboard behind and a top-hatted driver under the tarpaulin apron in\u003cbr\u003efront.","brand":"WDS Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47070205706480,"sku":"2940013740952","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013740952_p0.jpg?v=1763589629","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013740952","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}