ng Montagu Street and Montagu
Square derive their names from her. Somehow Mrs. Montagu's only son got
kidnapped, and all attempts to recover the child failed. Time went on,
and he was regarded as dead. On a certain 1st of May the sweeps arrived
to clean Mrs. Montagu's chimneys, and a climbing-boy was sent up to his
horrible task. Like Tom in the Water-Babies, he lost his way in the
network of flues and emerged in a different room to the one he had
started from. Something in the aspect of the room struck a
half-familiar, half-forgotten chord in his brain. He turned the handle
of the door of the next room and found a lady seated there. Then he
remembered. Filthy and soot-stained as he was, the little sweep flung
himself into the arms of the beautiful lady with a cry of "Mother!"
Mrs. Montagu had found her lost son.

In gratitude for the recovery of her son, Mrs. Montagu entertained
every climbing-boy in London at dinner on the anniversary of her son's
return, and arranged that they should all have a holiday on that day.
At her death she left a legacy to continue the treat.

Such, at least, is the story as I have always heard it.

At the Sweeps' Carnival, there was always a grown-up man figuring as
"Jack-in-the-green." Encased in an immense frame of wicker-work covered
with laurels and artificial flowers, from the midst of which his face
and arms protruded with a comical effect, "Jack-in-the-green" capered
slowly about in the midst of the street, surrounded by some twenty
little climbing-boys, who danced joyously round him with black faces,
their soot-stained clothes decorated with tags of bright ribbon, and
making a deafening clamour with their dustpans and brushes as they sang
some popular ditty. They then collected money from the passers-by,
making usually quite a good haul. There were dozens of these
"Jacks-in-the-green" to be seen then on Mayday in the London streets,
each one with his attendant band of little black familiars. I summoned
up enough courage once to ask a small inky-black urchin whether he had
disobeyed his nurse very often in order to be condemned to sweep
chimneys. He gaped at me uncomprehendingly, with a grin; but being a
cheerful little soul, assured me that, on the whole, he rather enjoyed
climbing up chimneys.

It was my father and mother's custom in London to receive any of their
friends at luncheon without a formal invitation, and a constant
procession of people availed themselves of this pri