Sweep: The Story of a Girl and Her Monster

Five young chimney sweeps, also known as “climbing children,” sleep in a coal bin: four boys and Nan, a girl. One of the boys, Newt, asks Nan to tell him about the Sweep; Newt dreamed of the Sweep the night before. People who sleep near Nan also tend to dream of the Sweep; specifically, they dream of the song that he and the girl with him used to sing. However, Nan refuses to admit that she is the girl in their dreams.

Roger, who has had the same dreams for the years he has slept near Nan, explains to Newt that the Sweep was Nan’s old master before Crudd (their current master), that he left Nan five years ago, and that Nan still hopes that he will return. Nan ferociously yells at Roger to shut his mouth. Roger calls Nan Cinderella, which she hates. Nan curls up to sleep as Newt cries to himself. Newt is new to the group, and his parents either died or abandoned him. Nan holds a charred clump of soot, which is always warm, and thinks of the Sweep.

Note: This chapter is italicized to indicate a temporal shift; it takes place in Nan’s past when she lived with the Sweep.

When the girl is six years old, she wakes up to discover that the Sweep has gone. At first, she assumes that he has gone to get food, but when afternoon arrives and he has not returned, she worries. They have only just arrived in London. She sees a sign on an adjacent building that reads: “Wilkie Crudd, Esq. ‘The Clean Sweep’” (14). She knows the Sweep has gone for good when she discovers his hat underneath his coat; the Sweep has previously warned the girl never to leave her hat behind. In the hat is the warm coal. The girl doesn’t know what to do or where to go.

Nan wakes to the sound of the bells of St. Florian’s Church. The sweeps hurry up the steps; they must be in the kitchen before the bell finishes its five o’clock toll. Nan has lost her char, having let go of it during the night, but she finds it again and notes in passing that it has two divots that look like a pair of eyes. One of the boys, Roger, has a penchant for cruelty and locks the door after he passes through it, so Nan has to climb up the chimney to reach the kitchen. The housekeeper, Mrs. Trundle smacks Nan with a wooden spoon in punishment for being late and does not give her any breakfast gruel.

Wilkie Crudd arrives, immaculate as usual in a white shirt and breeches. Roger presents him with his boots, which he has shined. Mrs. Trundle puts down a plate of pheasant with bread sauce for Crudd, but he explains that he will eat his fill at the weddings they will attend that day. Crudd sees that Nan has no breakfast and insists that he can’t have his best climber hungry; he offers his breakfast to her instead. Although the food smells delicious, Nan says that she is not hungry.

Nan walks to Tower Hamlets. She carries her brush and holds her char in her pocket with the other hand; she considers the eyes she thought she saw within it. She is hungry but didn’t want to play Crudd’s games with the breakfast offer. Crudd will make either Nan or Roger an apprentice and takes it in turns to either praise them or ignore them.

She joins the rest of the crew at the matchstick, a stone torch in central London where chimney sweeps wait for business. Newt is nervous about getting stuck in a chimney; it is his first day climbing. Roger tells him about other ways he might die, including from soot wart, a consumptive disease. He also alludes to the terrifying Devil’s Nudge—a way to free stuck climbers, but doesn’t explain what this is.

Nan tries to comfort Newt by telling him about the amazing view that sweeps get to see from the roofs, but she refuses to climb with him. According to a sweep named Wittles, “Nan Sparrow climbs alone. Always has. Always will” (28). Privately, Nan—who is 11—worries about what will happen when she grows into a young woman and is no longer able to fit into the chimneys.

Nan believes that, just like everyone else whom Roger trained, Newt won’t want to climb with Roger ever again. Toby, an “entrepreneur” whom she knows from the streets, is selling bits and bobs that he recovers from the banks of the river Thames. He keeps his finds in a bag that he refers to as his “emporium.”

Nan sings the song she always sang with the Sweep to attract work: “With brush and pail and soot and song! A sweep brings luck all season long!” (32). A woman approaches her, and Nan tells her that she works for The Clean Sweep, who will come for a final inspection when she is finished. The woman leads her to a large house in Marylebone, which is Miss Mayhew’s Seminary for Young Ladies. Nan hears girls singing within.

Nan is led into the kitchen through the servants’ entrance. The cook is rude and threatening and warns Nan not to take any food. The chimney is still hot from a recent fire.

Nan reaches the roof and climbs down the drainpipe to collect soot from the chimney. The soot will be sold to farmers as fertilizer.

She is then led to the next chimney, which is in a classroom filled with 20 well-dressed girls. The girls stare openly, and Nan feels self-conscious. Nan reads the riddle on the blackboard and compliments the teacher, Miss Bloom, on her pretty handwriting. Miss Bloom is shocked that Nan is a girl and that she can read; she asks Nan, “What kind of a sweep are you?” to which Nan replies, “I am…an egg,” which is the answer to the riddle on the board (42).

The Sweep taught Nan how to read using street signs, shop windows, and the words written on headstones in cemeteries. In the present, Nan climbs up the tight and winding flue. She hears Miss Bloom amazedly telling the housekeeper about how Nan solved the riddle. Miss Bloom points out that the seminary has charitable patrons, but the housekeeper laughs mockingly, saying that the idea is ridiculous. Miss Bloom suggests telling Headmistress Mayhew about Nan.

At that moment, Nan realizes that she is stuck in the chimney.

Nan tries to push herself up but only gets more tightly stuck. She calls down the flue and is answered by girls from the class, who ask if she is an egg. Finally, Miss Bloom hears her and interrupts; Nan asks for Crudd to be fetched. After a long time, the chimney cap above her is lifted away. It is Roger, not Crudd.

Nan and Roger are rivals; whoever cleans more chimneys gets a real supper, and the other gets slops. (Roger always gets slops.) He tells Newt, who is with him, that Nan obviously needs motivation, then tells Newt that he will learn what the Devil’s Nudge is. Feeling sick, Nan begs him not to do what he is about to do.

She calls to Roger, pleading with him not to go through with his plan. She hears Newt protesting below, saying, “You’ll burn her up!” (55). Nan hears phosphorus being scraped against stone and smells sulfur. Air gets pulled down as the heat increases. Nan’s shoulder pops out of its socket as she wriggles desperately, begging Roger to put the fire out. Smoke fills her lungs. She feels the char in her pocket catch fire.

Note: This chapter is italicized to indicate a temporal shift; it takes place in Nan’s past when she lived with the Sweep.

On the nights when the Sweep and Nan have no food, he makes “story soup” with bits of trash that Nan collects from the street. He stirs the objects in his hat, pulls out one at a time, and weaves each one into the imaginary story he is telling.

The Sweep also has a few “ingredients” which he has carried for a long time, including a doll’s eye, a feather, a thimble, a wooden chessman, and a swaddle. Nan asks him to make story soup with these objects, but the Sweep insists that there is a final ingredient needed. Nan never discovers what this ingredient is.

In the present, Nan wakes up, surprised to be alive. She is lying on a cold wooden floor. Beside her is a burned chimney stack—the seminary chimney. She is in a crawl space above the attic but doesn’t understand how she escaped. She isn’t burned.

She notices her char. To her astonishment, it moves. She grabs it, and it twitches in her hand. She strokes it and reassures it that she won’t hurt it. She considers that it must be a gift from the Sweep.

The char, which has a little heartbeat, eyes, and a mouth, tells Nan in a grating voice that the terror of the fire in the chimney caused it to come to life. Nan decides to name the thing, but it shoots angry flames at her when she suggests “Sootly,” “Ashkin,” and “Emberton” (68). Finally, it croaks its agreement when she settles on Charlie.

Nan finds a fruitcake under a floorboard. She and Charlie talk all night; his croaks make sense to Nan. Nan takes Charlie to the windowsill to watch the sunrise over the city.

Nan hears voices on the roof and realizes that Crudd and the other sweeps are looking for her. Crudd argues with a representative from the Board of Works, insisting that they won’t get a farthing from him unless he sees a body. He calls out to Nan, insisting that he knows that she is hiding. Crudd starts to break the door down into the crawl space. Charlie trembles in Nan’s pocket. Nan breaks a window and climbs out onto the roof. Newt is there and is shocked to see her, saying that everyone believes her to be dead. She says, “I am,” (74) and jumps from the roof.

Nan hopes that Newt will keep his sighting of her a secret. Injured by her drop from the roof, she walks painfully through the foggy streets of London, wondering where she and Charlie might hide from Crudd. They pass the House of One Hundred Chimneys, a large, abandoned house that all sweeps believe to be bad luck. Nan decides that they can hide in there. Nan climbs up the side of the house and emerges in a room. She breaks off a chair leg and Charlie produces a small fire to light it with. Using this as a torch, they explore the old house. Nan is amazed by the softness of the large bed. She and Charlie jump on it happily and then fall asleep.

Charlie and Nan clean the house as they continue to explore it. Allegedly, a ship’s captain used to live there, and Nan discovers interesting knickknacks throughout the house. After Charlie accidentally sets her pillow on fire one day, he sleeps in the fireplace and seems to draw the soot around him into himself each night; Charlie grows in size and expands his vocabulary.

Nan’s dreams of the Sweep have become more vivid after Charlie is born. She believes the two things to be connected, but Charlie cannot answer her questions. Nan avoids the neighborhoods where she might see Crudd. She sings to drum up work as usual and tells potential customers that she works for “the captain.” She sells the soot she collects to a local dustman. Nan and Charlie designate certain rooms of the house for different activities, like a Dress-Up Room, a Banging-Pots-and-Pans Room, and a Gauntlet Room (for Charlie to roll around in). Charlie designs the attic, pushing all the furniture out and calling it the Nothing Room. This is a room in which to be quiet.

Nan wants to take Charlie out for bonfire night, but he has grown too big for her pocket. She finds an old pram and puts Charlie in it, wheeling him into the street disguised as a baby. She buys Guy Fawkes masks for herself and for Charlie, along with a firecracker. The fireworks seller leans down to look in the pram and screams in fright: “M-m-monster!” (90). Charlie sits up and introduces himself. People cry out in fear and brandish brooms and ladles at him like weapons. Scared by everyone’s reaction, Charlie rolls away in fright. He accidentally rolls into a barrel of firecrackers, which explode against his smoking body. In the ensuing chaos, Nan yells Charlie’s name and tries to find him.

In her search for Charlie, Nan travels downhill, toward the East End of London where she used to live, figuring that Charlie would have rolled downhill. On the way, she passes through a labor riot. As she nears St. Florian’s Church, calling Charlie’s name, she finally hears him calling back to her. Charlie, whose heart is racing with his fear of all the people who were trying to hurt him, explains that he heard the Sweep’s voice singing inside of him and followed it toward St. Florian’s Church.

They return together to the roof of the House of the Hundred Chimneys to watch the fireworks, and Charlie explains that he thinks that the Sweep wants to tell Nan something, but that he can’t quite hear what it is. Charlie asks Nan what a monster is. Nan explains that a monster is something people are afraid of; she assures him that he is not a monster.