COLLAPSE
It must not be supposed that in other directions my affairs had got
any smoother as time went on; nor that, although I worked as hard as
flesh and blood would permit, that I succeeded in overtaking any of my
liabilities. Moreover, I began to receive unmistakable warnings that
my physical capacity was becoming unequal to the constant strain I put
upon it, although I only knew that my morning cough was more exhausting
than it had been, and that I always awoke in the morning feeling
dreadfully tired, much more so indeed than when I went to bed. And
always I found myself unable to keep up those terribly punctual monthly
payments, and trying to discriminate between people who would be put
off and people who wouldn't.
The first immediately unpleasant result of this discrimination or
attempted preference was in connection with my latter loan. Now please
understand that I am bringing no indictment against the money-lender,
or mean anything opprobrious in speaking of him in that way. If he
had lent me thousands instead of single pounds, he would have been a
banker, and if I had wanted his money for speculation instead of to
pay my rent and get my family food, I should have been a financier to
be esteemed instead of being a borrower to be despised. I am only,
however, concerned with the plain facts now, and they are that I sent
a polite letter of apology to the money-lender, telling him that--oh
well, you can imagine the kind of things a defaulting debtor would
say--but the whole comprising just an ordinary letter of excuse for
non-payment.
To this effusion I received no reply whatever, but two days afterwards
my surety came rushing to me in a state of great agitation, flourishing
a telegram which he had just received from his wife, to the effect that
a man had been put in possession of their furniture in default of my
payment of an instalment of the loan. Desperately he demanded of me
what I meant by such behaviour, and tearfully assured me that such an
experience had never been his before, in which I have reason to believe
he was not within the parallel lines of fact. I was as stunned as he,
and promised every reparation in my power, while I knew that nothing
short of that instalment would avail. So I immediately obtained leave
of absence, and went a-borrowing, a frequent exercise alas, but one
which I never practised without a sense of poignant shame, preventing
me from degenerating into the common species of "earbiter," as he is
vulgarly called, of the Montague Tigg type.
Miraculously, as I think, I succeeded in borrowing the £3 required,
on my faithful promise to repay at the end of the month, from a man
who was as poor as I, but more methodical, and had put it away towards
his rent. Let me say before I go any further, that I did not abuse his
trust, nor did I ever do so to anybody except in the single case of my
surety, which I was now engaged in repairing. I hope I do not put this
forward in a spirit of offensive or aggressive virtue, but I do want to
disavow any association with that rotten type of man who will promise
anything to get your money, will, having got it, squander it, and then
ridicule you for being such a fool as to lend to him, of all people
in the world. This type I am glad to say is usually of the "sporting"
breed of "boys," and has no relation to decent beings.
With my delayed instalment and my friend's freedom in my hand, I hied
me unto the ancient capitalist at Victoria. I made no complaint, for
indeed I had no ground. He made no apology, but received my money (I
beg pardon, his money) with dignity, saying that he was glad the matter
was so speedily arranged, because the aggressive process involved a lot
of trouble which he hated. But business was business, and a bargain was
a bargain, as he hoped I knew well, and--he hoped the weather would
continue fine, being indeed very seasonable for the time of the year.
And so we parted, I certainly feeling truly ashamed at having put this
good old man to so much unnecessary trouble, my friend to indignity,
and myself to so many superfluous blushes.
And as if to compensate me in some measure for what was in truth a
heavy day, I found on my arrival home quite a nice order awaiting me.
A gentleman of that fine class, the commercial traveller, who had
often patronised me before, came in and ordered four pounds worth of
pictures, paying as was his wont the money for them upon giving the
order, and telling me that I could deliver them any time within the
month. By great good fortune I had everything necessary to carry out
the order in stock, and as soon as he was gone, I set to work with a
glad heart. For I was like a cork, easily depressed, but popping up
again serenely as soon as the pressure was removed. However, I could
not be allowed even that small interregnum of peace, for at about ten
a man came in with some inquiry about my charges for framing. I paid
as much attention as I always did to his questions, but unfortunately
had to leave him in the shop for a few minutes, while I went into my
workshop. When I returned he was gone, and so was my glass-cutting
diamond, which was lying upon the baize-covered table on which I cut my
glass.
It was a heavy loss to me, for I had got used to its _cut_, and
although its price was only 12s. 6d. I never had another that I could
use properly, not being at all expert anyhow. I will not deny that this
made me feel very unhappy, for when there was so much lying around
stealable that would never be missed, I did feel it hard that a fellow
should come in and steal my principal tool, for which at the outside he
would only be able to realise about three and sixpence in pawn. Still I
suppose I ought to be thankful that this was the sole theft I suffered
from in all my business career, only somehow the present loss was so
great that I was very grieved over it, and moreover I had to send to
a local glass-cutter, with whom I was not on any the best terms on
account of being a trade rival, for some squares of glass in order to
complete my contract in time.
About this month I managed to get a little extra money in a way that
seems fantastic, but which came to me as a very welcome addition to
my spasmodic earnings. A young gentleman who had been an occasional
customer came to me one evening, when I was trying to hammer out an
article or story on the counter for want of something more immediately
profitable to do, and asked me if I had any objection to model for him.
I did not recognise the verb in its present application, and begged
him to explain. It then appeared that he was an artist who earned most
of his living by illustrating magazines, articles, and stories, and
being extremely conscientious, he needed the living model so that his
pictures should be vraisembleable as possible. But the professional
model was not to be found in East Dulwich, and so in his extremity he
thought of me as a man probably eager to earn an honest shilling in
whatsoever strange ways.
After a few enquiries I closed with his offer of one and sixpence per
hour (always very generously interpreted), and promised to come up to
his house as soon as I had closed the shop, or say about 10.30 P.M. I
went, and laid the foundation of a friendship that still endures, the
artist in question having illustrated several of my books and done so,
in my poor opinion, better than any other living artist could have
done. But I am getting on too fast.
It must be remembered that as yet I had no experience of "modelling,"
knew absolutely nothing of what it meant to stand for half an hour
in one position, and in parenthesis I may say that I never learned
well. But I did my best, and my employer was pleased to say that my
intelligent appreciation of what he wanted was much more useful to him
than would have been the trained immobility of any professional model.
But oh! how I suffered. I thought I knew what hard work, what endurance
was. I got a severe shock. In justice to myself I must ask my readers
to remember that I had been up since 6 A.M., and it was now nearly
midnight, and that even if I had not been using my thews and sinews all
that time I had been up and about. Anyhow I know that after striking an
attitude which satisfied my employer and maintaining it for say seven
or eight minutes, I felt as if I was in some infernal torture chamber,
and though very anxious to _earn_ my money and to win approval I had to
give in.
But my employer was kindness itself, and though naturally intensely
anxious to carry out his ideas, he never took the slightest advantage
of my position, or insisted upon any pound of flesh. So far from that,
and I cannot tell what it meant to me then, as soon as my time was up I
was invited to a good supper, which his charming wife had prepared, and
at which I was made to feel a welcome guest, with no thought of that
hardly earned eighteen pence in the background. How much this kindly
intercourse helped me I have no means of knowing, but the impression it
made upon me at the time is no keener than the sense I have now of how
kind it was; and I have been an honoured guest in that friend's house
for the last ten years.
This seems, in these desultory confessions, a right and fitting place
to set forth the fact that in many of my customers I found friends.
By which I mean people who think about you, who would take trouble
for you, or would make sacrifices to help you, who grieve over your
misfortunes and rejoice when you are doing well. And how precious they
are. I have always been a great stickler for the proper definitions of
words such as Freedom, Love, Friendship, Truth; and I do wish people
would not lightly talk of _friends_ when they only mean some casual
acquaintance who knows little of them and cares less. I can frankly
assert that the only pleasant recollections I have of my shop-keeping
days, connected with business that is, are associated with the many
kindly folks whom I served. Of course my particular business lent
itself to closer relations with customers than ordinary shop-keeping,
since I had to discuss their desires with them, and give them the
benefit of my experience. The one drawback attached to this was that I
often spent three or four times as long discussing a trifling order as
it was worth; but that was counterbalanced by my sometimes getting a
big order with a very small amount of talk.
It did occasionally happen that I, as the Yankees happily and
metaphorically put it, struck a snag even in this, and one glaring
instance lingers luridly in my memory. A neighbouring tradesman, with
whom I was on most friendly terms, very kindly gave me an introduction
to a well-to-do customer of his at Tulse Hill. My friend was a builder
and decorator, and had done a great deal of work for this gentleman,
to their mutual satisfaction. So when, one day, his customer asked him
about getting some old English frames regilded he recommended me, and
did not, in ordinary business fashion, stipulate that he should have
a commission upon the transaction. Cheered by my friend's description
of his customer, I waited upon the latter, and was received in the
most jolly fashion as a guest, and not in any patronising spirit,
refreshments being produced and some pleasant general talk ensuing. I
was then shown the work and asked for an estimate. This I gave after
close calculation, and with due consideration of the fact that my
customer had probably obtained other estimates before asking for mine.
But to my intense amazement, the gentleman, upon hearing the sum named,
immediately said that he could get the work done in the best style for
just one quarter of the sum I had named! Now there was nothing for
me to do but give him the lie direct had I obeyed my first impulse.
But I stifled it, and mildly said that such a price as he had quoted
meant gilding with German metal, as the quantity of gold leaf required
to cover those frames would cost three times the sum. He, of course,
said that he didn't know anything about that, the price given him by a
gilder in the Minories was for English gold. I then rose to go, saying
that I regretted not being able to go further in the matter. He then
said he did not want to disappoint me, and what was the lowest I could
do the job for? I replied quietly that I had quoted the lowest possible
price for regilding, and one that was less than half what would be
demanded by a big West End firm, but that if he cared to have the
frames renovated and touched up where necessary I could meet him with
an estimate of half the first amount quoted, but explaining fully that
this would be in no sense regilding. After a lot of talk he agreed, and
I undertook the work.
My kindly gilder, for I could not do the work myself, never having
been able to master the delicacy of touch required in this exceedingly
technical operation, made every effort, as he always did, to help me to
make the best of a bad bargain, cutting his price as I had cut mine.
And he did his touching up so well, that when the work was finished
I felt that my customer would say that it would have been a waste of
money to have had those frames regilded, they looked so well. Now my
part of the work so far consisted in getting the six heavy frames to
my shop from Tulse Hill, having first removed the pictures from them,
and the completion of my task would be to return them, fitting the
pictures in again and hanging them; and my share of the profits were
almost precisely what a carrier would have charged for the job. But in
the meantime, my customer had removed to Clapham Common, and the task
of delivering those frames, which required the most careful handling,
was thereby vastly increased in difficulty. However, I tackled it
successfully by the aid of the gilder, who, wanting his money, agreed
to wait at a neighbouring hostelry until I should return with the spoil.
My customer's satisfaction at the way in which the work had been done
could not be concealed, and indeed the pictures did look very fine when
in position. Then he asked me nonchalantly if I had brought the bill. I
handed it to him. He glanced at it and said, "Oh! you have made a gross
mistake. You agreed to do the work for £2 pounds, and this bill is for
£5." For a moment I was speechless, and then replied as calmly as I
could, "I have made no mistake, sir; you wanted me to do the work for
£2, and I told you it was impossible. I have to pay my gilder £4. 5s.,
and he is now waiting for the money at the Plough."
"Well," he rejoined casually, "that's nothing to do with me; you'll get
£2 or nothing. You can please yourself."
Now I am anything but a courageous man, but I felt desperate, and
although he towered over me like a giant with a very threatening air, I
said, quite coolly, "You owe me £5 for work done, and I shall not leave
this house until I get it," at which he laughed merrily and retorted,
"Ah! so that's your little game is it? Very well, stay here until I'm
tired of you, then I'll throw you into the road." So I sat down on the
nearest chair (I was then in a partly furnished drawing room), and
resigned myself to wait. Fortunately, there was a book there, Kipling's
"Light that Failed," and I began to read.
Now strange as it my seem, so great is the power of detachment
from circumstances over which I have no control that I have always
possessed, that I read that book through with the utmost enjoyment,
only an occasional cross current of compunction traversing my mind
for the weary wait imposed upon my faithful coadjutor. I had finished
the book about a quarter of an hour, which means that I had been in
the house nearly four hours, when the _gentleman_ came in and said,
with assumed surprise, "What, you here still? How much did you say
you wanted?" "£5," I replied quietly. "All right, here you are," he
answered, holding out a £5 note to me. I took it, examined it, said
"thank you," and walked out of the house.
Tame ending, was it not, to such a dramatic situation, and tamer still
the fact that my only sensation was one of satisfaction that I had got
the money. I joined my gilder, who was, I regret to say, distinctly the
worse for liquor, having had, as he said, no option but to beguile the
long afternoon by taking eight special Scotches for the "good of the
house." However I explained the situation to him, handed him his money,
and made haste home feeling that if ever I had earned fifteen shillings
in my life I had done so on this occasion. In conclusion of this
episode, I regret to have to add that my friend who had recommended
me to this "genial sportsman," as I heard somebody call him, had the
grievous misfortune to lose £50 of hardly earned money due to him from
the same merry gentleman. I cannot trust myself to comment upon this
behaviour which, alas, is all too common among a certain class who
habitually live beyond their means and regard the poor tradesman as
fair game. If they can only borrow from him as well their delight seems
proportionately heightened.
And now I had a sudden gleam of joy, a bit of pleasure so keen that it
made me forget for the time all my troubles. I had a story accepted,
and it appeared in print. Many of my readers will know what that meant,
but I will not believe that any one could have been more delighted
than I was. Not that I built up any airy structures of hope, of fame
and fortune as an author upon it, but I could not help feeling that
it was wonderful how I, without any of the usual educational aids,
in competition with the mighty army of able writers ever assaulting
harassed editors in London, and under the stress of such stern
life-conditions as mine, should have accomplished such a feat. True it
was only in a boy's paper, _Young England_, true that the pay was only
a guinea, and that I waited six months for it, but the golden glorious
fact remained that I saw myself in print.
Perhaps it is strange that I did not then neglect the business
which yielded me nothing but debt and disappointment, and throw all
my energies into this new channel. A profound distrust of my own
abilities, and an idea that this was just a bit of curious good luck
may possibly account for my apathy, but whatever it was I know that for
a long time I was content to rest upon my laurels in the literary arena
and to grub along in the shop. The verb I have used just expresses it;
I grubbed and got ever deeper and deeper into the mire, and to the
well-meant advice of my friends as to why on earth I did not give up
the unequal struggle and go bankrupt before it killed me, I could only
render the same answer as before, that bankruptcy spelt workhouse
because I should inevitably lose my job.
But one spring morning I received a warning too urgent to be neglected
(though I did not heed it then). I was rushing off to the office as
usual after four hours of the hardest work and nothing in me since
the previous midday meal, except sundry cups of tea, when just in the
middle of Green Lane, Dulwich, I felt the world slipping from under me,
and with hardly a struggle I was gone for the time. I often thought
somewhat resentfully afterwards how much better for me it would have
been not to have revived again into a world already over stocked with
mediocrities, how easy and pleasant and satisfactory it would have
been to have had the ever-gnawing question of how to live settled
authoritatively for me. That, however, was not to be, for presently I
came to, awoke as it were from a pleasant sleep, and gazed wonderingly
around.
There was no one in sight, for it was then a most secluded pathway at
that early hour of the day, and I gradually realised my surroundings.
I had fallen very pleasantly upon a grassy and weed over-grown patch
at the side of the St Olave's playing grounds, so that I was not
bemired or disreputable looking. My first thought was of the office,
to get there as soon as possible, and make what excuse I could for
my late arrival--for I felt that it must be near noon, as I had no
means of knowing the time. So I struggled to my feet, only to find
that nature had her authoritative say in the matter, for I trembled
so that I could not stand erect, and I felt all gone inside. Moreover
there was a curious numbness at my finger ends which seemed to me to
presage paralysis. Therefore I gave up the office idea and crept back
at the easiest pace I could manage to the house of a gentleman in East
Dulwich Grove, nearly next door to James Allen's School, who had often
patronised me but never, although a local physician of great repute,
attended me or any of my family.
He received me with the utmost kindness and bade me lie down after
giving me some sal volatile, also forbade me speaking a word until
he gave me leave. So I lay on his sofa watching him at work until my
over-burdened heart and overstrung nerves had quieted down. Then he
cross-examined me as to my mode of life, my health generally, and at
the end of my answers, said quietly, "Now, my friend, advice is usually
flung away upon such people as you have declared yourself to be, so I
will not advise you. But I tell you, from my utmost convictions, that
at the rate you are now living, and in the present condition of your
vital powers, your time here on earth is limited to one year, or at the
outside eighteen months. If, however, you ease off, slow down, don't
work like a fiend or race after trains like a madman, you may live the
allotted span."
I was about to reply when he interposed, saying sadly, "I know you'll
tell me it's a counsel of perfection. It's one of the tragedies of
our profession that we continually have to give counsel which the
patient cannot follow. But we cannot help that. Now, I'll listen to
what you have got to say." And he did. I detailed to him as to a
father confessor, the uttermost particulars of my business, my debts,
and the conditions under which I held my clerkship. He listened most
sympathetically, most kindly, and then threw up his hands with a
gesture as of one compelled to dismiss the case from his mind.