“Ups and Downs”

From A London Child Of The 1870s, by M.V. Hughes

A settled income has its attractions possibly, but it can never be the fun of an unsettled one. My father was on the Stock Exchange, and wavered between great affluence and extreme poverty. Neither he nor mother had a saving or economical disposition, but lived happily always, neither elated by wealth nor depressed by the lack of it.
We children were never aware of any money troubles, if such they could be called, for they made little difference to us. At no time were we allowed to spread our butter too thick. If things were going well, my father had no thought of enlarging his establishment or otherwise incurring bothers. His idea was that we should all enjoy ourselves a bit more along the old lines. When a shrinkage came we didn’t notice much deprivation, or if we did it was put down to the weather…
I suppose it must have been during a lean year, when we were devoid even of servants, that my father would inaugurate some lark. One afternoon he came home and suggested that it was just the sort of day for making toffee…
Barnholt was sent to the grocer close by for ‘a pound of his worst butter’. All grins, Barnholt flew forth on his errand. The grocer was annoyed at such a request, but, as Barnholt pointed out to him, if he had a best butter he must have a worst…
Another time it was a Welsh rabbit that my father had a mind for…Mother hovered around, shaking her head, prophesying indigestion and the doctor. But she ate her share and wished it had been bigger.
The best of these impromptu feasts was a positive shoal of sprats that my father came home with one evening.
‘They’re practically alive,’ said he, ‘and they were almost giving them away in Farringdon Market. Now, Mary, bring out your biggest frying-pan and some dripping, make up the fire, and you boys put the plates to warm. You shall have some fish on them before you know where you are.’
And lo, it was so. There was a sizzling and a tossing, and soon the crisp little fish were tumbling on to our outstretched plates, while mother was cutting bread and butter as fast as she could. I have had elegantly dressed sole at a grand dinner, salmon straight from the Dart, trout fresh from a Welsh stream, and perch that I caught myself in a Canadian river, but no fish has ever had the magic quality of those sprats ‘given away’ in London and cooked by my father.