two amid the dear old horrors. Some of the places, I know, have
disappeared. I see the winding way by which I went from Oxford
Street, at the foot of Tottenham Court Road, to Leicester Square,
and, somewhere in the
labyrinth (I think of it as always foggy and
gas-lit) was a shop which had pies and puddings in the window,
puddings and pies kept hot by steam rising through perforated metal.
How many a time have I stood there, raging with
hunger,
unable to
purchase even one pennyworth of food! The shop and the street have
long since vanished; does any man remember them so feelingly as I?
But I think most of my haunts are still in
existence: to tread
again those
pavements, to look at those grimy doorways and purblind
windows, would
affect me strangely.
I see that alley
hidden on the west side of Tottenham Court Road,
where, after living in a back bedroom on the top floor, I had to
exchange for the front
cellar; there was a difference, if I remember
rightly, of
sixpence a week, and
sixpence, in those days, was a very
great consideration--why, it meant a couple of meals. (I once FOUND
sixpence in the street, and had an
exultation which is vivid in me
at this moment.) The front
cellar was stone-floored; its furniture
was a table, a chair, a wash-stand, and a bed; the window, which of
course had never been cleaned since it was put in, received light
through a flat
grating in the alley above. Here I lived; here I
WROTE. Yes, "literary work" was done at that
filthy deal table, on
which, by the bye, lay my Homer, my Shakespeare, and the few other
books I then possessed. At night, as I lay in bed, I used to hear
the tramp, tramp of a posse of policemen who passed along the alley
on their way to
relieve guard; their heavy feet sometimes sounded on
the
grating above my window.
I recall a tragi-comical
incident of life at the British Museum.
Once, on going down into the lavatory to wash my hands, I became
aware of a notice newly set up above the row of basins. It ran
somehow thus: "Readers are requested to bear in mind that these
basins are to be used only for
casual ablutions." Oh, the
significance of that
inscription! Had I not myself, more than once,
been glad to use this soap and water more largely than the sense of
the authorities contemplated? And there were poor fellows working
under the great dome whose need, in this respect, was greater than
mine. I laughed
heartily at the notice, but it meant so much.
Some of my abodes I have utterly forgotten; for one reason or
another, I was always moving--an easy matter when all my possessions
lay in one small trunk. Sometimes the people of the house were
intolerable. In those days I was not fastidious, and I seldom had
any but the slightest
intercourse with those who dwelt under the
same roof, yet it happened now and then that I was
driven away by
human proximity which passed my
endurance. In other cases I had to
flee from pestilential conditions. How I escaped
mortalillness in
some of those places (miserably fed as I always was, and always
over-working myself) is a great
mystery. The worst that
befell me
was a slight attack of diphtheria--traceable, I imagine, to the
existence of a dust-bin UNDER THE STAIRCASE. When I spoke of the
matter to my
landlady, she was at first astonished, then wrathful,
and my
departure was expedited with many insults.
On the whole, however, I had nothing much to
complain of except my
poverty. You cannot expect great comfort in London for four-and-
sixpence a week--the most I ever could pay for a "furnished room
with attendance" in those days of pretty stern
apprenticeship. And
I was easily satisfied; I wanted only a little walled space in which
I could seclude myself, free from
externalannoyance. Certain
comforts of
civilized life I ceased even to regret; a stair-
carpet I
regarded as rather
extravagant, and a
carpet on the floor of my room
was
luxury undreamt of. My sleep was sound; I have passed nights of
dreamless
repose on beds which it would now make my bones ache only
to look at. A door that locked, a fire in winter, a pipe of
tobacco--these were things
essential; and, granted these, I have
been often
richlycontented in the squalidest
garret. One such
lodging is often in my memory; it was at Islington, not far from the
City Road; my window looked upon the Regent's Canal. As often as I
think of it, I recall what was perhaps the worst London fog I ever
knew; for three
successive days, at least, my lamp had to be kept
burning; when I looked through the window, I saw, at moments, a few
blurred lights in the street beyond the Canal, but for the most part
nothing but a yellowish darkness, which caused the glass to reflect
the firelight and my own face. Did I feel
miserable? Not a bit of
it. The enveloping gloom seemed to make my chimney-corner only the
more cosy. I had coals, oil,
tobacco in sufficient quantity; I had
a book to read; I had work which interested me; so I went forth only
to get my meals at a City Road coffee-shop, and hastened back to the
fireside. Oh, my ambitions, my hopes! How surprised and indignant
I should have felt had I known of any one who pitied me!
Nature took
revenge now and then. In winter time I had
fierce sore
throats, sometimes accompanied by long and
savage headaches.
Doctoring, of course, never occurred to me; I just locked my door,
and, if I felt very bad indeed, went to bed--to lie there, without
food or drink, till I was able to look after myself again. I could
never ask from a
landlady anything which was not in our bond, and
only once or twice did I receive
spontaneous offer of help. Oh, it
is wonderful to think of all that youth can endure! What a poor
feeble
wretch I now seem to myself, when I remember thirty years
ago!
XI
Would I live it over again, that life of the
garret and the
cellar?
Not with the
assurance of fifty years'
contentment such as I now
enjoy to follow upon it! With man's
infinitelypathetic power of
resignation, one sees the thing on its better side, forgets all the
worst of it, makes out a case for the
resolute optimist. Oh, but
the waste of
energy, of zeal, of youth! In another mood, I could
shed tears over that
spectacle of rare
vitality condemned to sordid
strife. The pity of it! And--if our
conscience mean anything at
all--the bitter wrong!
Without seeking for Utopia, think what a man's youth might be. I
suppose not one in every thousand uses half the possibilities of
natural joy and
delightful effort which lie in those years between
seventeen and seven-and-twenty. All but all men have to look back
upon beginnings of life deformed and discoloured by necessity,
accident, wantonness. If a young man avoid the grosser pitfalls, if
he keep his eye fixed
steadily on what is called the main chance,
if, without flagrant
selfishness, he prudently
subdue every interest
to his own (by "interest" understanding only material good), he is
putting his youth to profit, he is an exemplar and a subject of
pride. I doubt whether, in our
civilization, any other ideal is
easy of
pursuit by the
youngster face to face with life. It is the
only course
altogether safe. Yet compare it with what might be, if
men respected
manhood, if human reason were at the service of human
happiness. Some few there are who can look back upon a
boyhood of
natural delights, followed by a
decade or so of fine energies
honourably put to use, blended
therewith, perhaps, a memory of joy
so
exquisite that it tunes all life unto the end; they are almost as
rare as poets. The vast majority think not of their youth at all,
or, glancing
backward, are
unconscious of lost opportunity, unaware
of
degradation suffered. Only by
contrast with this thick-witted
multitude can I pride myself upon my youth of
endurance and of
combat. I had a goal before me, and not the goal of the average
man. Even when pinched with
hunger, I did not
abandon my purposes,
which were of the mind. But
contrast that starved lad in his slum
lodging with any fair
conception of
intelligent and
zealous youth,
and one feels that a dose of swift
poison would have been the right
remedy for such squalid ills.
XII
As often as I
survey my book
shelves I am reminded of Lamb's "ragged
veterans." Not that all my
volumes came from the
second-hand stall;
many of them were neat enough in new covers, some were even stately
in
fragrant bindings, when they passed into my hands. But so often
have I removed, so rough has been the
treatment of my little library
at each change of place, and, to tell the truth, so little care have
I given to its
well-being at
normal times (for in all practical
matters I am idle and inept), that even the comeliest of my books
show the results of
unfair usage. More than one has been foully
injured by a great nail
driven into a packing-case--this but the
extreme
instance of the wrongs they have
undergone. Now that I have
leisure and peace of mind, I find myself growing more careful--an