His father made a living as a peddler.

When I was very young, my father died. His younger brother, due to the vicissitudes of the times and to his own laziness, dissipated his own fortune and afterwards became a peddler of writing materials. He often came to our house, but when he came, my mother would scold him and he would be troubled.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot, And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot; A bundle of toys he had flung on his back, And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.

In "A Journal of the Plague Year," a 1772 fictionalized account of London's Great Plague of 1665, Daniel Defoe notes that people were quick to turn to quacks and peddlers offering "Sovereign cordials against the corruption of the air."

The peddler carried a big bundle on his back.

He was a wandering peddler.